When he got home, Roberto crawled into his bed and immediately fell into a deep, dreamless sleep. He hadn’t slept like this for months, ever since things had started going badly for him and his circadian rhythm had been thrown off.

At three in the evening, he woke up feeling incredibly hungry. He cooked one hundred and fifty grams of pasta with pesto, ate and went out for a walk. When he returned, an hour later, he noticed an envelope in his mailbox. There was no return address, but the flap read “Villa degli Amorini” and inside there were eighty euros in banknotes. Ten for every hour worked. No invoices. Just money. After counting them, Roberto put them back in the envelope and took them to his apartment.

For about ten minutes, Roberto remained on the sofa in the living room, his mind completely blank. He looked at the coffee table in front of the sofa, full of cigarette butts, receipts printed on shiny thermal paper and empty packages of cookies, instant ramen and chips. Eighty euros. For a day's work it wasn't a little or a lot. But if that was the salary, getting by wouldn't be a problem.

Roberto tried to dedicate himself to his usual activities before getting ready for his second night at Villa degli Amorini, but he realized he didn't feel like it. He felt a strange tension in anticipation of the shift that awaited him, and he ended up vegetating until eight thirty in the evening without moving an inch.

As he had done the day before, he cooked himself a cutlet with a side of cherry tomatoes for dinner and left the house at nine.

The experience he had accumulated during the first day made each of his actions less uncertain and better finalized.

He introduced himself at the intercom, entered the building, underwent the metamorphosis into a goblin, undressed in the locker room, took the elevator and went up to the third floor. That evening among his colleagues there were again G307, G345 and G357, but in place of G323 there was a new goblin: G316.

The first task to be performed was once again to carry the old ladies to bed. Roberto realized that he had become much more efficient. In the midst of the usual pandemonium, he managed to transport three old ladies in wheelchairs to their beds, without getting dirty with shit. He also convinced an old lady who did not want to stop watching TV to get up with threats.

Once again Genoveffa caused problems. She was the last one left in the recreation room, and she didn’t want to go to bed. Since Roberto had managed to make her give up the previous evening, G307 entrusted him with the thankless task.

With the two of them left alone in the large room, Roberto sat down at the table where the usual game of burraco had come to a hasty conclusion, in the chair opposite to Genoveffa. The seat was so wide that the little green goblin felt like he was sitting on a throne. Meanwhile Genoveffa, who had seen herself interrupted again from her game at the best moment, was still holding her cards in her hand, showing a certain frustration.

Roberto, despite his limited goblin mind, sensed that asking for pity again would not have the same effect as the previous evening. Therefore he had to set up a dialogue that would convince her. With his six fingers intertwined and his hands resting on his lap, he began in a generic manner, asking: “You are different from the others. You are healthy. You are strong. Why are you here?”

“Oh, I see that you are slowly mastering the gift of speech. My compliments, goblin. In any case, it is none of your business,” replied Genoveffa, completely uninterested in her interlocutor’s approach.

“The others are demented. The others eat, shit, sleep, wait for death. There is no point of discussion with the others. Don’t you want to talk?” Roberto, not very clearly, was trying to offer himself as a confidant. He hoped that by getting the woman to vent he would soften her up. He hoped that by behaving differently from the other goblins, by showing himself as a friendly figure with whom a dialogue was possible, he would convince her to collaborate.

Despite the ambiguity of Roberto’s words, Genoveffa immediately grasped his intentions: “And how would you be different from them, you pathetic little monster? They eat, shit and sleep. You eat, shit, sleep and spend your nights torturing helpless old women. You both await death, you outside, they in here. If they offered you a job here, you’re like everyone else. Do you think that a little self-criticism is enough to make you different, better? What’s special about you?”

Roberto’s eyes shone with determination: “I’m talking to you.”

“So they made a mistake in recruiting you. Now you have two choices. Learn to do your job by turning off your brain, or give it up. Tonight I’ll beat you, you can’t escape your destiny this time too,” Genoveffa replied, rising threateningly from her chair, ready to overturn the table on Roberto.

But Roberto didn’t let himself be intimidated: “Why are you here?”

Genoveffa snorted: “I’m here because that ungrateful daughter of mine got me declared legally incompetent. Happy now? I had other plans for my old age, and she didn’t like the way I spent my retirement pension. The way she sees it, the old have stolen the future from the young, and the only way they can be useful is to milk them until they kick the bucket. But if they enjoy life, they can’t be milked. So she sold me, locked me up here, hoping my will would break.”

Roberto had seen Genoveffa’s anger flare up as she uttered the answer he had worked so hard to get out of her. The plan now threatened to backfire.

“Your mind is sound. Go away,” Roberto suggested, trying to distract her from her violent intent.

“Hah! You make it sound easy! I’m stuck, just like you. Escape, what for? They’d bring me back here right away. In the eyes of the judiciary system and the rest of the world, I’m a lunatic. Ever since I came in here, three months ago, goblins have been taking me to bed and then keeping me awake all night making a racket. Who would believe my words anymore?” Genoveffa yelled.

For starters, she could have left out that last part. Secondly, she could have found a lawyer, a good one. It didn’t make sense for a clear and present individual to be declared legally incompetent in a civilized country, Roberto thought. There really had to be a solution. Expressing those concepts with his limited goblin faculties, however, seemed far too complicated.

“G379! What the fuck are you doing?! You’re taking too long!” G345 howled from the door of the recreation room, brandishing a broom, “She has to go to bed! Damn, is this that hard? She has to go to bed, to bed, to bed!”

Genoveffa turned with murderous rage toward the intruder, and walked toward him. A satisfied grin appeared on G345’s face, and he prepared to beat Genoveffa’s thighs as soon as she was within range. But as the blow was about to go off, Genoveffa suddenly grabbed the broom handle and tore it from the Goblin’s hands, then slammed him to the ground by pushing him by the shoulder and planted a foot in his pubis, exactly where the scrotum of a normal human being would be.

In a blind fury, the old woman rubbed the pink slipper at her feet with a periodic intra- and extra-rotatory movement of the ankle between the emaciated legs of G345, who was letting out atrocious screams. When the goblin's groin was reduced to a foul greenish pulp, the satisfied woman turned to Roberto before leaving the room: "It seems you will be spared tonight too. But tomorrow you won't be so lucky."

At that moment, Roberto discovered another prodigious property of the goblin body. Running to G345's aid, he saw his wounded pelvis recompose and heal. Roberto reached out a hand to his colleague, but he stood up on his own and slapped it angrily: "Fuck you, you asshole! That was your part, not mine!"

Genuinely dismayed, Roberto shrugged and replied: "I was working on it."

"Sure, asshole, you could have worked on it until dawn!" G345 shouted, stamping his feet on the ground.

In any case, the rest of the team was waiting to continue with the work, so their skirmish couldn't last long.

The second task, washing the floors, went off without a hitch. The contents of the buckets overflowing with water and piss were diligently dropped on every square inch of the third floor’s pavement.

When it was time to take the vitals of the residents, however, an unexpected development occurred.

Entering room 304, the goblins noticed that one of the two old women housed there was sick. She was breathing heavily and barely moving, with a pained grin on her face. Thinking back, Roberto remembered that he hadn’t seen her in the recreation room that night. It was the old woman who during the previous shift kept saying she wanted to die, even though he couldn’t remember her name.

“She’s sick! Oh, shit, she’s sick!” G316 exclaimed, putting his hands to his temples.

G307, in his role as leader, ordered: “You, G379, go to the infirmary booth and call the doctor. The rest of you, proceed to take the vitals of the other old woman!”

“Call the doctor? What doctor?” Roberto asked in panic.

“Go to the booth. There’s a piece of paper hanging on the wall, and it says everything you have to do,” G357 explained briefly.

Roberto sensed that the whole deal smelled fishy. He was starting to see a pattern: the veteran goblins passed all the trouble to the newcomers whenever they had the chance, and if they didn’t succeed, they got pissed off.

Trying to shake off that feeling, Roberto obeyed. He ran breathlessly toward the booth, and ran his gaze along the white walls in search of the piece of paper he was looking for. There was a single yellow post-it, stuck at the height of the table on which was placed an old olive-green telephone. The post-it read: “DR. PLAKK, 384-3257993.”

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Roberto grabbed the opaque plastic handset and dialed the number on the hard black buttons. The call forwarding tone repeated monotonously for a few seconds, then a rough, scratchy voice answered on the other end.

“Fuck. Plakk’s speaking. Villa degli Amorini? Shit, it’s three in the morning!”

“Hello, the doctor? An old woman is sick!”

“No shit! Why else would you have called? What’s her problem?”

“I don’t know… she’s breathing badly. I really don’t like her face.”

“What the fuck do you mean ‘I don’t know, she’s breathing badly’? What are her vital signs?”

“Her… vital signs?”

“Her vital signs! Blood pressure, oxygen saturation, heart rate!”

“We didn’t get them. We called as soon as we saw she was sick.”

“Good job, great job. What’s the patient’s name?”

“…”

“So?!”

“Actually… I don’t know…”

Roberto heard a long list of curses. A lot, really. Then: “I get it, I’m coming. For the love of Christ, let me find the patient’s medical records ready to be leafed through. And in the meantime, give her some oxygen.”

The doctor hung up, and Roberto was left holding the receiver and staring into space. After a few seconds, his synapses fired. He put the phone back in its place and ran out into the hallway. The group of goblin colleagues were emerging from room 305, cackling. Roberto shouted at them, “Where are the old ladies’ records?”

“The old ladies’ records? You mean the therapy sheets? They’re in a cabinet downstairs, in the drug storage room,” G307 replied, grinning broadly.

Roberto, having received the information, rushed down the stairs, forgetting the existence of the elevator. He reached the drug storage room, located the cabinet, and after rummaging through the files and documents, found a register on which “WOMEN’S THERAPY” was written in capital letters.

He then realized that he didn’t remember the old lady’s name. All that haste had been counterproductive. The long list of names didn’t ring any bells. Maria Ravenna, Nicoletta Gerani, Assunta Di Carlo, Concetta Giusti, Beatrice Angelucci, Anna Marchesi, Eleonora Rivoli, Elisabetta Lucerna, Diana D’Alfonso…

And now? To cut to the chase, Roberto took the entire register and returned to his floor.

When he reached the landing of the women’s ward, Roberto remembered that the doctor had given him another instruction, but he had forgotten what it was about. So he went to wait for her arrival in room 304, so he could watch over the sick woman.

Since there was a wait, he thought it would be a good idea to try to find out the old woman's name. He shook her by the shoulders and asked, "Madam, what is your name?"

The old woman looked at him with wide eyes, while her chest rose and fell convulsively and her breathing gurgled. But she did not answer.

"Madam, your name!" Roberto continued.

The old woman rolled her eyes and coughed.

"Your name, your name, your name!" Roberto insisted, starting to get into the typical goblin frenzy.

"Eleonora! Her name is Eleonora! Let me sleep!" the lady in the other bed retorted. Roberto wanted to show her a contrite expression to manifest his regret for having woken her, but his grotesque face was completely expressionless. Therefore the old woman did not understand and simply turned on the other side.

After waiting with the dying Eleonora for about ten minutes, Roberto heard a hoarse voice coming from the corridor: “It’s Plakk. So, which of you brainless dickheads called?”

Roberto hurried to meet him, exclaiming: “Me! Me!”

The figure of Doctor Plakk loomed at the entrance to the ward, bizarre and imposing. He was covered in black leather from the tip of his toes to the tip of his hair, revealing only his pale ears. He wore high boots, leather pants, a trench coat that reached his knees, gloves, a mask with mirrored lenses reminiscent of gas masks on his face and a fedora on his head. In his right hand, Doctor Plakk held the handle of a doctor’s briefcase, also in black leather.

Having seen Roberto leave room 304, Dr. Plakk headed there on his own, passing the little goblin who followed him. He glanced inside and said, “shit.”

He took a pulse oximeter out of his bag, and as he stuck it on the woman’s finger, he scolded Roberto, “How many fucking times do I have to tell your demented colleagues? If someone has trouble breathing, you have to raise the back of the bed. And where’s the oxygen?”

“I… I’m new,” Roberto justified himself, and ran to the foot of the bed looking for the switch to raise it. He couldn’t. Dr. Plakk dodged him and pressed the pedal that the goblin couldn’t find.

The pulse oximeter read 84, heart rate 102.

“I see you’re new, moron. Oxygen! Have your colleagues bring a tank!” Doctor Plakk yelled.

Roberto immediately set off to find the other goblins, who had now reached room 309. They weren’t happy to see him arrive. But it was inevitable that one of them would go: it was dangerous to piss off Plakk. After a short and heated discussion, the choice fell on G357.

G357 immediately ran to the infirmary and emerged dragging a yellow tank larger than himself, with a green mask that dragged on the floor like a lizard’s tail. He entered room 304, and Roberto followed him.

The two goblins were coldly greeted by Doctor Plakk: “Her blood pressure is high. 160 systolic, 95 diastolic. That mask is dirty, but it’s better than nothing. Hurry up and put the oxygen on her, then I have to listen to her chest.”

Roberto and G357 looked at each other and then got to work. After a minute and a half of frantic operations, they observed the result with satisfaction. Eleonora had the mask on her chin and her ears were tied with elastic bands and had turned red.

Doctor Plakk shook his head, astonished. He adjusted the mask on Eleonora’s face and then turned the knob on the tank. Bubbles began to gurgle in the water valve.

“Good, now put her in a sitting position,” Doctor Plakk ordered.

The two goblins tried to lift Eleonora’s torso, without success. The woman was heavy and was putting up too much resistance.

“Forget it, turn her on her side,” Doctor Plakk contented himself with listening only to the patient’s lung apices, since the diagnosis was already clear. Then, gravely, he stated, “I hear crackles. The patient is developing acute pulmonary edema. I would administer two vials of furosemide and call an ambulance, if you have no objections.”

“What do we know? You’re the doctor, do what you have to do,” G357 snapped.

Plakk didn’t take that response well. He punched G357 hard in the nose, which sunk into his skull and sprayed emerald green blood. “You never know shit, huh? Then why do you work here? Why do you have frail, dependent, completely demented patients that you can’t handle? Why does this shit always happen at night, and when it’s almost too late?” Plakk vented.

“You know. Those are our guidelines,” G357 simply replied, his nose returning to its original shape, expanding like a balloon.

“Get me a stretcher for transport,” Plakk knew that insisting and losing his temper was pointless. For the sake of the patient and his own sanity, the best course of action was to leave that hellhole as quickly as possible.

The two goblins carried the stretcher while Dr. Plakk administered the medicine, then together they moved the patient. Finally, Plakk dialed the emergency number on his cell phone and asked, “What’s the lady’s name?”

“Eleonora,” G357 replied.

“Eleonora Rivoli, I think,” Roberto echoed, rubbing his hands.

“You think? What do you mean ‘you think’? Er… Hello, this is Doctor Plakk. I’m calling to request an ambulance at Villa degli Amorini, for a patient with a probable acute pulmonary edema. Yes. Yes, her name is Eleonora Rivoli. All right,” Plakk hung up and put his phone in a pocket of his trench coat. Then, turning to Roberto, he howled angrily: “I told you to look for her medical records! How can you not know her name?!”

Roberto, shielding himself with Eleonora’s therapy sheet, defended himself: “Here it is! Here it is!”

“I told you the medical records, not the therapy sheet! Imbecile! That way I can guess her chronic pathologies, but not her remote medical history!” Plakk shouted, after snatching the sheet from his hand.

Roberto looked at him in confusion.

“Never mind, I’ve had enough,” Doctor Plakk said. Then he put his bag on the stretcher at the patient’s feet, took the oxygen tank in his right hand and, pushing the stretcher with his left, went to take the elevator.

Roberto breathed a sigh of relief. The experience had been agony, but it was finally over. Eleonora was no longer his problem. “That Doctor Plakk is certainly strange,” he observed, putting a hand on G357’s shoulder.

G357 moved away and replied: “He hates this place, and he hates us. But it seems he owes the director some kind of debt, and he’s forced to work here. Every time he comes he acts crazy, even though it’s pointless. He knows how things work. What a jerk.”

Then G357 added: “Come on, we have to change the diapers.”

It was already 4:27 and the rest of the night proceeded without further surprises. Roberto got dirty with shit again, but that was an inevitable outcome of that specific task.

Once again, after his shift, Roberto refused breakfast with his colleagues and went straight to take a long shower. Afterwards he got dressed and left Villa degli Amorini, returning to his human form.

The feeling of having just woken up from a dream numbed his memories again. Yet this time the rational part of his brain could not help but linger and mull over the experience he had just had.

The fact that there was some paranormal aspect in Villa degli Amorini had been declared from the very first moment. And that was a notion that had to be taken for granted, like an axiomatic truth. What the human mind gets stuck on when examining paranormal events are the borders where they mingle with known reality, in which the contrast between what responds to the natural laws of the universe and what does not becomes immediately evident.

Who was Dr. Plakk? A human being like Roberto and all the other goblins? Had he worn the gas mask inside Villa degli Amorini, or had he arrived dressed like that from his office? Had the call center at the emergency number really taken a doctor who said his name was “Doctor Plakk” seriously? Where had he disappeared to when he went down in the elevator with Eleonora?

The cigarette that Roberto had lit in the courtyard of Villa degli Amorini was smoking itself, while he, lost in his thoughts, headed towards the gate. Realizing the thick band of ash that had accumulated on the incandescent tip of the cigarette, he took a drag.

Roberto concluded that as long as his eighty euros would arrive on time, even those questions could remain unanswered.