I’m going to keep being a pest posting walls of unreadable guff this month, if circumstances don’t change.  I had been considering various projects, but have settled – for the moment – on The Cost.  Elevator pitch:  Troubled nurse begins to suspect foul play when babies start dying on the ward, but she cannot reach out to authorities because she’s compromised by blackmail.  It’s supernatural causes for dead kids, so if you no likey, check back with me in December, or when/if you see a post not titled The Cost plus a roman numeral.

What’s going to make this even less readable than Josefina y Blasfemia or Centennial Hills?  I’m not writing in linear fashion.  I hadn’t taken the time to prepare, so this is being written… fractally?  recursively?  Gonna come up with an outline, elaborate on it, then work the parts in whatever order feels will give the best results.  Spoiling is absolutely guaranteed; expect no surprises.  Maybe it’ll be interesting to watch?

My husband Joe “The Cubist” Vowels is doing this stuff at the same time and is less of a “sho yo ass” type than I, so expectn’t any updates on his project.  But I do like to, when possible, be working on a similar type of story to him.  He’s doing something about stalkers and sleepwalkers with a supernatural element, mine is also contemporary supernatural horror layered over real world issues.

The reason he’s working on that particular project is because it’s been an idea generator for him.  He just kept getting a lot of ideas for scenes and elements, which might not be exactly the same thing as inspiration, but is a decent second place to it.  Ammonite Samoleon calls that a “sticky” story, when you can easily come up with notions to attach to it.  There are two reasons that guy still finds work – he’s cheap, and people love to write articles re-litigating the question of whether or not he still has it.  But whatever his merits as an artist, it’s Stickyvember, yo.

Hey, remember this thing?

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A reminder of where this came from…

SPOOKTOBER 2025, DAY 11 – MEDICAL
OPTIONAL CHALLENGE:  CREEPY KID

TITLE:  THE COST

Premise:  One terrible year ten infants die one night after another, in the maternity ward of a hospital.  Nurse Christine was in the depths of a terrible relationship which made it hard to give her full attention to work, so she wasn’t tracking on everything people were saying, or what happened with her coworkers.  One year later, babies start dying one per night, and she begins to remember incidents from that time before which lead her to investigate.  Turns out some of her fellow nurses had been quietly disappeared and even murdered to conceal the true causes of death.  They’d all experienced symptoms of rabies.

Horror Element:  Right above the maternity ward is a special child, kept in isolation due to immunocompromise.  Or is she?  A hospital administrator used sorcery to ensure his daughter’s success in life, the price of which was ten innocent souls per year that she lives.  Lil’ girl is beginning to show powers of her own, besides the annual event of puking up ghostly mutant bird-things that infect the babies downstairs.  I think Christine was abusing drugs during the first outbreak and enough people know that they can blackmail her into silence or other indignities, which makes her hesitant to seek allies.  Maybe some cool doctor breaks thru her distrust and there’s a romance under pressure story.

Some Nonsense:  Cambea, a great count, appears in the likeness of a faun.  He understands the strengths of herbs and precious stones.  He makes birds descend to earth and fly before the exorcist.  And likewise they will fight and play according to their nature as if, indeed, domesticated by the exorcist.  He has twenty legions under his dominion.

Cambea is also known as Decarabia in sources later than the Geomanticarum, which seems etymologically connected to “ten” and “rage” – which is also used for rabies.  Cambea could mean “change” as in metamorphosis or “exchange” as in trade.

With that, here we go…

~The Cost~

by Bébé Mélange, age 8

It was a dark and stormy night.  Ten babies died, one night after another.  Nurse Christine Saloubi was on drugs and having a bad mental health and relationship time.  Was this, in some way, her fault?  She assumes it to be true, despite seeing things, in her altered state, that would suggest a supernatural cause.  Somehow, she gets her shit together, and a year later there’s no way it’ll happen again… until it happens again.

Some years before, hospital director Jacob Simonds was concerned about his young daughter not hitting certain milestones of intellectual development in a timely fashion, and wanted more for her in life than she was likely to achieve.  What use is nepotism, bribing for access to the best universities and jobs, if she won’t have the merits to last in a given field?  In his own college days he learned of sorcery during independent research, and credited that practice with his own career success.  Time to apply it to baby Diamond.

Why was that the first name to pop into my head?  Diamond Simonds?  Jesus.  Um.  Baby Ruby, fuckin…  Ruthie.  Man, Ruth is a weird name.  Looks so strange to me now, which is funny, because that’s my mother’s name.  It’s Ruth Simonds tho.  Not at all silly.

Mom concurred with the scheme and lost her own life in the conjuring of Decarabia.  That sacrifice made the magic more potent than Jacob had ever achieved for himself, but also bound him to a strange relationship with the demon, working its will upon the Earth.  Little Ruthie is in the hospital, isolated, slowly stealing life and power from other patients in the building.

Baby one dies and nobody thinks much of it, but the fact it’s one year to the day since the previous episode does not go unnoticed by Christine.  Baby two dies and more people notice.  Christine suffers some scrutiny, maybe from some cruel coworker?, but it’s obvious she’s not at fault.  She takes two sick days, and finds out two more babies have died.  Somehow, this has not yet triggered an investigation, but it does cause the hospital to call all hands on deck – every nurse and doctor will work every day until it stops happening.

Baby five dies, then six, and everyone is talking, going wild.  Christine remembers the strange events of the previous incident, but through a haze of drugs and trauma.  One of the doctors – oh, should I make this story gay or not? – takes notice and tries to help her, but she is tight-lipped.  Let’s say doctor is a lesbian but Christine doesn’t know about herself, milk that for tension.  Meanwhile Christine is starting to see and sense the evil, and Dr. Niamh Meehan knows she knows something.  Out with it, babe, as baby seven dies.

Heads together, they decide Director Simonds is some kinda devil guy, and launch a high-speed investigation into that, on top of their work duties.  Doc finds his college research on demonology and follows the same paths to discover the purpose of the deaths.  Meanwhile the director sees Christine’s suspicion and brings her up to take care of Ruthie – to keep her where he can see her, and possibly do evil works upon her.  Is it almost over? she wonders.

Christine sees the monster bird and chases after it, losing track.  Baby nine dies.  Nurse and Doc put their heads together again – gotta stop this death bird.  Doc does some kind of sorcery to protect all the babies, which repels the bird.  It gets larger as it returns to Ruthie, Christine sees it start to kill her.  Dad is there, and blames Nurse.  “The only way to save her life is to give your own!  Die for her, you worthless druggie scum!”  She gives up and the demon forces itself into her body.

Doc Neeve finds her and rushes her to ER.  Simonds lets her do it, confident it’s all over.  Christine may not be innocent, but she’ll be a passable baby ten for this year.  Doc helps save her life with magic, and the monster again heads back upstairs.  This time, Decarabia takes the director as the last sacrifice.

Let’s say all the girls live happily ever after, the end.  If I was John Woo I’d figure out some way for Christine to adopt Ruthie, but I’m not that ridiculous.  Close, but not quite.

I remember the movie Häxan had a realistic roasted human baby in it, but then, I may be remembering that wrong.  Infant sacrifices are just dead baby jokes unless they have names, faces, lives.  Obviously they ain’t speaking or even smiling if they’re still at the hospital, but those human larvae are receptacles for the love and hope of them what spawned ’em.  Gotta have parents howlin’ sad, at minimum.

Organizing this shit!

The prologue happens, on a dark and stormy night(s).  For Christine, bad relationship and drug trouble and dead baby stuff all come to a head during last dead baby nights.  Let’s open with baby nine dying and then run the events continuously through dead baby ten, ending with her in a total breakdown.

I

I:I  Christine is living a regular work shift, only hints of her dark past in evidence.  Introduce current staff of hospital.  Should include some nurses she doesn’t hate, some she does, and doctors, and so on.  Some grain of wondering – who remembers what happened to her last year?  Who is waiting to use that against her, in some way?  There should be someone in a position of authority who is an agent of the big boss.

I:II  Baby One beefs it.  This is not unexpected in a hospital, but tensions sharply rise.  How can I foreshadow themes?  Let’s say afterward her local enemies make ugly faces at her.  Or did she imagine them?  She’s doubting herself.  The whole story is about her guilt, feeling responsible for the first incident, leading up to attempted suicide by demon bird.  There you go, theme did.

I:III  Someone at work is abusing her.  It’s been normalized.  Why does she accept it?  But this night it’s getting worse.  Should introduce Simonds but not have him be overtly menacing at this point, some red herrings around.  What else here?

I:IV  Baby Two draws the big ace.  Now nobody can ignore, the same thing happening as last year.  Should somebody call the cops?  Some other regulatory body?  It becomes clear staying is untenable.  Christine needs to escape fast, taking sick leave.

I:V  Time off.  Therapy?  Group therapy?  Some narcotics anonymous bullshits?  Maybe she gets all the way to the edge of feeling OK-esque, just for contrast to next bit.

I:VI  Baby Three shuffles off this mortal coil.  A sympathetic character warns Christine so she has to sit there in dread until she’s called in.  The hospital’s response is to put all hands on deck – every staff member comes to stay on site, work maximum hours, until this stops.  Is the hospital actually preventing regulatory agencies & / or police from finding out?  Red herrings get more sus than ever.  Christine is tempted by drugs as she comes back to work.

II

II:I  Dr. Meehan is introduced briefly as a nice person, play up who is an ally and who is a frenemy or enemy.  Frenemy includes person who helped her snake drugs last year offering again.  What’s up with these damn babies tho?  People are literally watching all the babies all the time, trying to figure it out.  Rumors coming in from coroner’s work, or someone lying about it for ghoulish amusement.

II:II  Christine starts to “hallucinate” and Niamh tries to get her to open up, gets closer.  Baby four dies and by now Christine is fully exonerated again.  Only the creepiest of haters hopes otherwise.  Reveal about Ruth Simonds being in the hospital, more exploration of staff and situations outside the ward / the larger world.

II:III  Christine’s hallucination much more vivid now, directly leading into Baby Five death.  She’s coming unglued and more pressure from all sides to open up or cave to the unreasonable.  I feel like one of the blackmaily type people lording her previous year drug bender over her should apply some sexual menace, maybe.  I don’t wanna be that kind of exploitation writer tho, sex abusers must get blueballed.

II:IV  Baby Six death is absolutely expected.  Everyone knows the same thing is happening again but nobody knows why.  Someone would definitely rat the hospital out.  Should police show up?  Christine somehow tumbles to Simonds being involved, Niamh gets her to open up, but can’t believe it yet.

II:V  Baby Seven happening under Christine’s nose, associated with a display of weakness from her – doing drugs again? – gets her under scrutiny.  Director comes to suspect she suspects.  Niamh and her have a moment to conspire before Christine is disappeared to Ruthsitter duty.

II:VI  Niamh independently discovers the same grimoires that Simonds used to set this in motion, and tries to work out ways to protect them babies or banish demons.  Christine learns all about Ruth and her late mom and sees the source of death birds in action.  Simonds adds a third perspective, negotiating with Decarabia.

II:VI  Christine gets a tiny bit of time to conspire with Niamh before chasing down the demon on its way to kill baby nine.  Niamh’s first attempt at magic fails, but now they know exactly what went wrong and have an idea of what to do.

III

III:I  Niamh saves baby nine, turning magic back on Ruthie.  Christine is watching her die and is bullied by Simonds into dying for her.  Niamh saves Christine and the magic goes back on Simonds, defeating him.  Christine is worried that killed Ruthie.

III:II  In the aftermath they discover everything that happened – as much as is even possible.  Depending on how the writing of the story goes, by the time I write this, I should know whether or not I want the ladies to get together.  That would of course be problematic – power imbalance, relationship forged under bad circumstances, etc – but the ever after need never be defined.

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