“Mr. Genneth, please wake up. Please. I don’t wanna be all alone.”

I awoke to the sound of a child crying.

“Mr. Genneth… please. Andalon is sorry for yelling. I’m… I’m sorry!”

My eyes blinked open, I—

Angel’s feet…

I was upside down.

Actually, no. My head was upside down. My neck wrapped over the edge of the toilet bowl, bent at an impossible angle, leaving my head hanging in the bowl.

I sat up with a yell. Water dripped down my PPE visor. My head dangled on my neck like I was a broken marionette.

A scratching noise brushed at the back of my collar, ending tingles down my spine and tail.

That’s right, I thought. I have a tail now.

I reached for the back of my neck. My fingers graced bone jutting out from my skin; bone, and something fibrous, like a fiber-optic cable torn open. I shuddered with disgust as I pressed my hand onto the extruding bone pushing it back into my neck through the wound it’d opened. And then, something clicked.

I was pretty sure I’d just slid one of my vertebrae back in place.

For a moment, all of the back of my neck tingled intensely, but then everything stiffened and my head jostled back into its proper place. Panicking, I patted my fingers on the back of my neck. Everything there felt fine, except… there was now a coat of wyrm-scale covering where the wound had been

There was a gasp. “Mr. Genneth?”

Gathering my senses, I looked forward to see Andalon kneeling in front of me, in the middle of the toilet stall. Tears rolled down her cheeks.

“Y—… you…” she stammered in disbelief. “Mr. Genneth!”

She flung herself at me, only to phase straight through me. Her head passed through my chest, and from there probably into the toilet, but, instead of turning back to look, I scrambled out of the stall on my hands and knees.

I’d maxed out my recommended lifetime dose of “horseplay with ghosts”, and had no intention of adding any more. I yelped as I realized I was about to press my hands and knees onto shattered glass, but managed to skid to a stop before I sliced myself open. Carefully—lunging forward on my knees—I reached up and grabbed the edge of the sink and used it to pull myself onto the still-numb feet at the ends of my trembling legs.

Had I broken my neck?

Holy Angel.

My neck had broken. I’d felt my gosh-darned spinal cord get severed by the edge of the toilet seat, and then felt the severed bits beneath my fingertips when I’d woken up afterword.

I groaned softly. “Fudge…”

My thoughts flashed back to my last Andalon-adjacent restroom experience: back then, I’d bitten through my tongue, and I’d gotten a front-row seat to watch fungal tissue wriggle out from the wound and stitch it shut from within.

My tail squirmed in my pants, joining my trembling legs. With the exception of my chest and my tail, I still felt dead.

My neck twitched, and my hand flew to touch it.

Correction: with the exceptions of my chest, tail, and—now—the back of my neck, I still felt dead, only this time, I really had died. My two day trial version of undeath had gotten promoted to a premium account, not that premium undeath felt any different from the trial version.

“Widdershins,” I muttered.

“This is what happens when stuff goes wrong!” Andalon said.

Turning around, I locked eyes with Andalon, while keeping my grip on the porcelain secure. She had walked out of the toilet stall. She stepped barefoot on the glass, yet didn’t suffer from it in the least.

Tears of heartache mixed with the tears of joy on her face. “You didn’t save Frank-Frank right, Mr. Genneth!” She pursed her lips. “It’s all because you weren’t listening!”

I was still shaking, and, in an attempt to get it to stop, I did my deep breathing exercises, tightening my grip on the sink so that I wouldn’t slip while doing so. I didn’t know if I could still bleed out, and—even if I could—I didn’t know if it would kill me, and recent evidence suggested it wouldn’t—but that only made me even less inclined to want to find out.

“Alright Andalon,” I said, I’m listening now.” I spoke softly, trying my very best not to scream, though that meant giving up on trying to keep my voice from breaking. “I promise you,” I said, bowing to her, “I. Am. Listening.” I shuddered in between every word.

Andalon smiled excitedly. “R-Really?” She bounced in place.

Not really knowing what to do, I used my foot to sweep the worst of the broken glass underneath the sinks and then hobbled over to the bench by the door. I sat down, only to yelp and leap up at the pain of sitting on my tail.

Mumbling under my breath, I raised my head and shook my arm at the world in general. Taking yet another deep breath and casting an awkward glance at Andalon—who had no idea what was going on—I looked down and undid my belt and fly. Reaching back, I pulled my tail down through the left side of my undergarments and threaded it into my left pants-leg before carefully pulling up my pants and sealing everything up again. Finally, I sat down on the edge of the bench, and this time I made sure to put my weight on my right thigh.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

“Do you really mean it?”Andalon asked. “You’ll listen?”

I nodded. “I’m sorry for yelling, Andalon.” I almost bowed all over again.

“Nobody’s…” she gasped in surprise. Her tears glinted in her eyes. “Nobody’s ever said sorry to Andalon before.”

I probably should have expected that

“Things have,” I sighed, nodding again, “things been stressful for me lately. Very stressful. I’m not really ready for everything to go crazy, but it is going crazy and…”

I gulped.

“What is stress?” she asked.

Beast’s teeth, a question I could actually answer!

Here I was, recently returned from the dead and growing a tail, and the little blue-haired spirit girl from my dreams was asking me what stress was.

Talk about living in interesting times…

My wyrm-memory told me I’d once read the dictionary definition of the “stress”, which was “a state of mental or emotional strain (or tension) resulting from adverse or demanding circumstances”, but I didn’t say that to Andalon because I was all but certain that she wouldn’t understand it. Sighing, I pursed my lips for a moment as I thought out a more Andalon-friendly answer. “It’s the badness you feel when things are hard or mean or sad or angry, but you really, really don’t want them to be hard or mean or sad or angry.”

Andalon looked down in dejection. “Then Andalon has been very, very, very stress for a very, very long time.”

I smiled gently, cautiously sympathetic. “That doesn’t sound very fun at all.”

She nodded.

I still didn’t understand what Andalon was, but it seemed like if I treated her like she was just any other young child, I’d be able to keep our relationship—what else would I call it?—in a semi-functional state.

I decided to keep explaining things to her. “Andalon,” I said, “when people get stressed, they sometimes do things they didn’t really mean to do. Stress makes people do things they wouldn’t have done if they weren’t stressed.”

“Is that why Mr. Genneth yelled at Andalon?” she asked.

Moonlight Queen, she gets it!

I nodded. “From now on,” I said, “I want you to know that if I yell at you, it’s only because I’m stressed and scared.”

She nodded. “I understand.”

“Now, please, if there’s anything—anything at all—that you can tell me that might help me better understand things and feel less stressed, please, tell me.”

“That’s great!” Andalon said, bouncing excitedly. She wriggled in her nightgown. “That’s supah great!”

“Why is it great?” I asked.

“Cuz I just remembered more stuffs!”

“Did you remember why you keep appearing and disappearing?” I asked. “And can we fix it?”

She tilted her head to the side. “Fix what?”

I bit my lip and then pressed my palms together.

“I need to be able to talk to you when I want to talk to you. I can’t have you disappearing or appearing when I least expect it.”

Furrowing her brow—focusing—Andalon nodded. “I remember that now.”

Closing my eyes, I muttered under my breath. “Thank the Angel.”

“Is somethin’ wrong Mr. Genneth?” she asked.

“No,” I said, sniffling. I rubbed my face on my sleeve. “Just… please, tell me.”

She nodded again. “Well… when I go to the not-here-place, it’s because I’m is sleepy. Andalon can’t wake up when Mr. Genneth is too hungry.”

I nodded.

So, of course, as usual, the problem was ultimately my fault. It said a lot about my mental state that I found comfort in the familiarity of that diagnosis.

I rubbed the inner corners of my eyes.

“Alright, how can I make you appear when you aren’t sleeping?” I asked. “And, what’s the not-here-place?”

“The not-here-place is, uh… it’s… it’s the place that is not here,” she said, after a moment of lost thought.

I made an executive decision to be happy with that answer.

“And I came ‘cause I heard you say, ‘Andalon, I don’t want to die’. It was real loud, and it made Andalon… very stress.”

I sighed.

“This is good, Andalon, you are answering my questions.”

She perked up at that. “Andalon is doing good?”

“Yes—and you will continue to do good and help me, as long as you keep trying your best to answer my questions. I’m listening now, and the more questions you answer, the less stressed everyone will be.”

Her eyes went wide. “Really?”

“Yes,” I said.

She nodded shakily in response.

“Andalon is ready to make the stress go away.”

That’s the spirit…

I cleared my throat. “Why did… ” my voice broke. “Why did Jim explode?”

“Wha?” Andalon looked confused.

Could I show her?

I thought back to my first encounter with Frank’s ghost. At the time, one of my memories of Brand had literally appeared mid-air. And then, there was my music—what I’d heard on the way to visit Brand and Dr. Skorbinka in the lab in 1Ba318. It had been like a lucid dream, only I’d been awake. I guess you could call it hyperphantasia—an overactive imagination.

Focusing, I thought back to Jim’s last moments. His screams; the blood, trickling from his orifices. I imagined my experience of that moment appearing in the air like a real-life thought bubble, or a magical drive-in movie theater.

The result was potent and immediate.

Jim appeared before us in a video without borders. I saw him as I’d seen him then, sitting on the examination table, right beneath me. The image’s perspective changed as Memory-Me relived my decision to flee the room, giving us one last look of Mr. Draunborn as Memory-Me glanced over his shoulder as he slammed the door shut.

The playback ended right as Jim exploded, but not before it had traumatized Andalon down to the core. She was devastated. She absolutely lost it, letting out a shrieked, and then breaking down in screaming sobs.

“No!” she cried. “No no no no no no—”

“—Andalon,” I said, “how you’re feeling right now? That’s how I’ve been feeling all the time since last night.” I tried to make my point without making myself into the bad guy. “I don’t know what’s going on, and I’m scared out of my mind. And now… now I think I’m turning into a demon—the kind of demon that my religion says causes the end of the world!”

“W-What’s a demon?” Andalon asked.

“They’re evil beings, Andalon. Some are made from the souls of the worst sinners. Demons bring suffering and death wherever they go. They spread hate, lies, perversion, madness, sickness—all the evils of the world. They tempt good people, and lead them into doing evil, and help bad people, especially those who want harm the innocent. And the Norms are the worst of them all. They were birthed from the chaos that existed before the creation of the world. They’re the leaders of the demons. And when the Last Days come, they’re going to take over the world.”

“That’s awful!” she said.

I nodded. “I know. It’s why I’m so scared.”

“What?” She was aghast.

“Andalon, I think the Last Days have already begun. From what you told me, Andalon, your wyrms sound a heck of a lot like the Demon Norms. And I think I’m turning into one of them!”

“No!” Vehemently, Andalon shook her head. “No no! Wyrmehs don’t do that! They’re good! They help people! They save people! You’re not becoming a demon, Mr. Genneth! You’re not! Wyrmehs are supposed to help the ghosts!”

“Why am I seeing these ghosts?”

“I told you,” she said, “because I put them in you! Andalon saves them, so that you and other wyrmehs can help them.”

“Andalon,” I said, “taking people’s souls sounds a lot like something a demon would do. What proof do you have that I’m not turning into a demon? What proof do you have that your wyrms aren’t the Norms of Hell? In my religion, in the Last Days, the Norms break out of Hell and lead the armies of darkness to conquer the world. They turn the world into Hell—and that sounds a lot like what the Green Death is doing.”

Andalon froze. Her blue eyes bore into me like icicles. “Hell…?” she whispered.

“Do you not know what Hell is, Andalon?”

She shook her head. “Mr. Genneth,” she whispered, “the darkness is Hell.”