NIXED LIKE NIXON.  As is typical of my life in recent years, NoMo is looking hella like a compleat bust this year.  Not too likely to do anything else on this story for a minute.  Who even knows?  Life really fucks with me sometimes.  It ain’t even a lack of motivation, believe me.  I wasn’t really feeling the story, but I absolutely could write it, and easily, if there weren’t highly specific factors in my day to day life fucking directly with this kind of activity.  I am not presently allowed to explain.  Maybe some years from now…  Meanwhile, I just post what I had going on right up until the hammer fell.

***
–

I’m low key finna try to write this shits contemporary style.  Did I say low key?  I meant high key.  I’m tired of making every story a period piece set in the nineties because I don’t know what the kids are saying.  I had goog’s butt search write a dialogue between teen girls in the midwest circa 2018, using slanguage in the mode moderne.  Observe.

Here is a short dialogue between three teenage girls—Chloe, Maya, and Sarah—sitting in a parked car outside a suburban Milwaukee house party in 2018…

Chloe: (Looking at her phone, groaning) Maya, tell me you brought the portable charger. My phone is dead, and if I lose my Snapchat streaks tonight I’m low-key gonna cry.

Maya: Yeah, I got you, it’s in my bag. That was so clutch of me to grab it before we dipped. But wait, look at the front door. Is that Hailey walking in right now?

Sarah: (Squinting through the window) Oh my god, yes. Look at her outfit, she is being so extra tonight. Who wears a fur jacket to a basement garage party? It’s giving basic.

Chloe: High-key agree, but honestly? Her makeup is fire. You have to admit she had a major glow up over the summer.

Sarah: Whatever, don’t gas her up too much. She’s only here because she’s trying to link up with Jordan. She’s been so thirsty for his attention all week, but he completely curved her in the hallway today. I was shook.

Maya: Wait, Jordan is even here? I thought he bailed on the squad tonight because he was too barred out from the weekend.

Chloe: No, he’s inside, but he is completely faded right now. I walked past his car earlier and he was straight up nodding in the passenger seat. It was so sketch.

Sarah: Ew. He’s such a fiend lately, it’s wild. His friends need to stop acting like he’s the G.O.A.T. just because he has a plug for pharmaceutical script. Like, half the stuff that guy buys on the street is pressed anyway. He’s tripping.

Maya: Don’t say it too loud, his brother is right over there and he is a total hater. He’ll get salty and try to throw shade at us.

Chloe: I don’t care, Jordan’s brother is a savage, he doesn’t care about anyone. Remember when he ghosted Elena after she bought him tickets to a show? Absolute broke boy behavior.

Sarah: Ugh, I’m finna go inside and get a drink before they start taxing people at the door. Let’s go.

“But wait, look at the front door.  Is that Hailey walking in right now?” is giving me “Hark, what light through yonder window breaks?”  In fair (generic upper midwestern city), where we lay our scene…

I chose 2018 because adult professionals of 2026 would have been those children in 2018, right?  I’m just gonna hafta make up my own pop culture references because I don’t know shit about the musicians from back then except that a third of them died from fentanyl, a third of them had rape allegations and still made that bag, and everyone had facial tattoos.  Right?  Any youths have anything to say about all this?  Psych (zoomer preferred spelling is “sike”).  I know no one within a mile of FtB is young.  Like, baby Vittorio is young, but he doesn’t know he’s on Candid Camera.

Anyway, that’s all in preparation for trying to write some backstoryish snippets that can be edited into the final product, wherever.  Proceeding thusly…

***

“Hey Teeny!  Hey Teeny!”

Christine heard her father Gabe yelling from downstairs just fine, at a lull between tracks.  In her room it was more comfortable to listen on a speaker than on headphones.  But did she want to get up?  She finished her pabst quickly and stood up from the desk.  The empty slipped from her hand and clacked loudly on the floor before spinning to a stop.

“Christine, don’t make me come up there!”

She stepped into the hall.  “I’m twenty-two, Dad.  On god.”

He stood in the bright amber light of the living room, his bald head and big belly dusted with shadow from the dark hall above.  The way his body was angled suggested he had company down there.  “Your little friend wants ta see you.  Should I send ‘er up?”

“No.”  She considered the state of her hygiene.  “I’ll be down in two minutes!”

“Alright.”  He conveyed her message and she disappeared into the room.

It was barely brighter than the hall, under pink accent lights and her monitor’s cool glow.  She slid in front of the screen again and opened its cam.  Her dark thick eyelashes made mascara and eyeliner a low priority, but her face had a sickly gleam that needed repair.  The AC worked just fine, but somehow summer found a way to tease the salt out of people.  She wiped the bulk of the ruined foundation off her face with a dirty t-shirt like a savage, then daubed the remainder away with proper makeup wipes from the front center drawer of her desk.  Christine did want to keep it to two minutes or less, because people were less annoying in life if you didn’t keep them waiting.  Hopefully it wasn’t anyone she wanted to look good for.  Concealing blemishes, redoing the lipstick, that would be it.

As she wheeled around to grab a hoodie, she was surprised to see the sun was still up, painting the neighbor’s house in pink and orange.  Then it was downstairs, to emerge blinking into the bright lights of the living room.  Gabe was leaning on the back of the couch, Christine’s visitor too uptight to sit for the wait.  It took her a moment to remember who she was.

“Emberlyn?”

“Christine, hey.  It’s Carlin.”  She was a younger black girl – not yet eighteen – who hardly bothered with makeup, thick glasses and combed hair in a fuzzy unglamorous pony tail.  They were both in charcoal grey hoodies, Emberlyn’s with cursive pink branding.  Her hands were buried in pockets.

“We haven’t dated in forever.  Is he OK?”

Emberlyn looked furtive and before she could speak, Gabe cut in.  “If they’re old news, I’m sorry, you shouldn’t be dragging her into his business.”

“I can speak for myself, Dad.  Emberlyn, what’s going on?”

“He’s on some broke boy shit, but it’s bad.  I’m worried.”

Gabe rolled his eyes and went back to the recliner.

“Please don’t take this the wrong way, but why do you think I can help?”

“I don’t know.  I just didn’t have any better ideas.”

“Alright.”  She shot a look back upstairs, half wondering if she should try to look any better, but that was absurd.  Carlin’s opinion about her appearance was far down the list of her concerns in life.

The short stairs spilled them into the street with momentum, like the house had spit them out.  Very slight hills rolled under the streets, so walking was alternately fast and slow, with the slower times making you wonder if you should’ve biked it.  Still, it was only eight blocks to the housing project.  Christine had gone to the same schools as those kids, but was fortunate to have never lived in those buildings – those blistering off-white boxes in erratically mowed fields of trampled dead grass and dandelions.  There were no fences and the curbs were short enough that people often treated the grass as additional parking – especially for parties.

No party raged that night but kids were everywhere, in small groups either celebrating life or quietly conspiring.  A clique of ten to thirteen year olds squatted around a ripped piece of cardboard in a patch of bare sand, playing an unknown game for unknown stakes, someone in their crowd hiding a vape as the young ladies passed them by.  Christine remembered the way, and reliving that walk brought back other memories too, shadowing her steps, threatening.  The air was a strange stifling melange of dust, tobacco, tar, and something between the scent of a port-a-potty and tang.  Walking through the door added sawdust, mildew, and dirty diapers to the mix.  A solitary cockroach raced away from them in terror, until it could find a gap to disappear into.  Milk white dome lights were peppered inside with dead bugs, and one dome was missing, the exposed bulb searing retinas as they walked below.

Emberlynn didn’t have to stop to unlock the door, walking right in.  Just past the strip of a kitchen and jammed-up closet, they were in the living room, no Carlin in sight.  Their mother was sitting on the couch in front of the TV, which blared commercials.  She had been staring through the screen into some unknown space beyond, mind stewing with emotions she was trying to suppress through drink, when the sight of Christine provoked her.  “Whossat bitsh?  Getter tha fuck outta my house!”  She was a pathetic species of monster, easily ignored.

The apartment mostly smelled like stale laundry, powerful enough to drown out the miasmas of the neighborhood, until they got to Carlin’s end of the unit, where pervasive cannabis residues were slightly less disgusting.  Despite the anticipation of this miserable scene, Christine had a moment, close to Emberlynn’s shoulder, when she was able to have a flash of sympathy for the girl.  Regardless of her own good hygiene habits, her clothes would smell awful until she had a chance to move out.

Carlin’s room was small, dominated by his bed and the window that ran along the top half of the wall.  He was laying in darkness, the lights off and the sun having nearly disappeared in the time it took them to walk over.  A passing car’s headlamps briefly illuminated a history of smudges and filth on the windowpane.  Lavishly produced beats and strings looped under a young man mumbling about drugs and suicide, easily filling the room despite the small size of the speaker – a bluetooth thing, permanently left on the wall charger.  Emberlynn didn’t let Christine flick the light switch, instead putting her cell on flashlight mode and resting it on a dresser, pointed at the ceiling.  The outlines of the body in that bed became ever so slightly more clear.

“I brought someone to see you.”  She toed the sole of his bare foot with her sneaker and he jolted.  “Bruh.  Look at us.”

He rolled onto his side for just a moment, then back onto his face, crying a muffled lament into his pillow.  Emberlynn stepped as close as she could to the wall and gestured for Christine to get closer to him.  She edged past her and crouched beside his bed.  “Carlin.  Why is your sister all shook?  What are you doing to yourself?”  Her voice cracked, uneven.  She couldn’t tell if she was too quiet to pierce the heavy blanket of sound, or if she was so loud as to sound shouty and rude.

He said something else she didn’t understand, but at least it seemed less choked with tears.

The singer said, “Swalla ’nuff pressie kill a mule erranight, Flintstone cut wih fent til it geh my shit right.”

Carlin was a Schiele sketch toned with charcoal – the grey of his flesh, of his tank top and underwear, indistinct from the grey of his mattress.  Shadows made lines of erratic thickness with blobs of deeper dark.  Christine hated to think about the bugs that could be crawling over her body, but needed to get closer, if she was going to be of any use at all.  She spread her palms on the mattress and leaned down.  The image of him became more clear, his face still mostly smashed into a pillow.  His hair was a small and unhealthy afro, not as black as his sister’s.

“Carlin, what are you going through?  What is this?”

“Why she hafta bring you here?  Fuck.”  She could finally see his face, smell his ill breath.  He looked like a child who dropped their candy in a pile of ants and aged forty years from sorrow.  Wet and dry by streaks.  Discolored.

Christine shivered and bit her lip, coloring her teeth and ruining her lipstick.  “Never mind that.  Now that I’m here, I wanna know.  What’s going on with you?”

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“I don’t have all night.  You know Emberlynn don’t get it, might as well take a shot on someone else.”

He pressed a weak fist against his forehead and scowled deeply, trying to collect himself enough to speak.  “I just.  I’m just realizin’ this is all it is.  There’s dudes that got paper, and dudes that don’t, and I’ll never.  I know, you’ll say run that hustle.  I can’t!  I don’t have any fuckin’ hustle.  I got nothing.  I’ll never have nothing!”

“Lotta broke people don’t trip like this.  There’s more, right?”

“I need shit too!  It’s like god made me just to suck and hurt and die.  Just another cuck.  Just a bad joke.”

“What is it you need, Carlin?  You didn’t need me; I know that much.”

He couldn’t speak, chewing on his fist.

“It’s drugs.”  Christine stood up.  “Cry me a fuckin’ river, dude.”  She turned to Emberlynn.  “Get him some kinda opioids and then get him in rehab.  He’s just fiending, is all.”

He flailed and she jumped, but he caught her arm.  “It’s not just the drugs!  OK, it’s the drugs, but fuck!  It’s everything!”  Now everyone could easily be heard over the music.

She slipped out of his grip and stood up, one step out of reach.  “Then stop bein’ a bitch and tell us what it is!”

“I seen the future!  I can work at one fuckin’ burger joint after another until I die.  I can prowl cars and bum and snake fuckers too.  For what?  It ain’t worth it!  It’s all we get and it ain’t worth it!”  He sank into the corner where his bed met the wall, conforming to the space like a puddle of slime, balled fists on his forehead again.  “I can’t even afford a gun or some pills to get the fuck out.”

Why not the cord on these broken blinds?  Christine thought it but would never say it.  Nobody should have to do that, but she didn’t know what else to say instead, so she hung in that gloom silent and breathless.

Emberlynn said, “Bitch!  If my brother kill himself, it’s gonna be your fault.”

Christine shook her head and ran out of the horrible room.  Behind her the ghost of a rapper said, “You wannit done right gotta do it ya self.”  An angry pink woman sneered and spat at her from the kitchen, sloshing her plastic cup of wine, and then she was in the hall.  Out the door, over the grass.

She should have been arguing against Emberlynn’s parting shot, in her head if not out loud, to prevent any sense of guilt from taking root.  She couldn’t make herself do that.  It was all about getting away.  Christine snagged a bicycle out of the yellow grass and started rolling fast.

“HEY!,” a voice cried out.  She was moving so fast the single syllable diminished before completion.

Having to brake for a car along the way snapped her out of it, and realizing she’d stolen some kid’s bike, she dropped it at the intersection and ran the rest of the way, going a block off route to reduce the odds of getting seen by pursuers.  Not that she was afraid of children, but she was very afraid of socially awkward situations.  Thanks, Emberlynn.

The block one down from her house was the end of the residential area, more dilapidation showing in those homes, the blocks just across the street from it a flatland of vast parking lots used by the commercial tenants of warehouses and factories.  A soaring overpass housed a flock of pigeons settling in for the night, and the last streetlamps came to life.  Like a signpost at the corner of the homes, a convenience store buzzed and gleamed.  She went inside…

–

As I mentioned before, this won’t be a neat linear read like the other novel-shaped things I’ve posted before.  Only read it if you’re interested in seeing the construction of a thing.  Tonight I’m gonna put more thought into the cast, as much as I can.  Brain hertz.

Christine Saloubi, RN.  She’s got into the job to escape poverty, but was always a soft touch for peer pressure, and was corrupted by the staff hooligans.  Coming back from that is not easy.

Some quicky research, let’s say hospital has about fifteen babies in regular care, five in intensive care / NICU.  On one shift that’s handled by like seven RNs – four in healthy infant care, three in NICU, one charge nurse overseeing that bunch, one pediatrician on call, one respiratory therapist, two CNAs / nursing assistants.  Each baby is assigned an attending physician, which of course can be more than one baby per doc, like, all shifts total numbers about thirty nurses, six doctors in the ward.  One medical clerk per shift, pharmacy technician, lab phlebotomist, security, biomedical equipment tech, housekeeper / janitorial…

The idea I had for the “all hands on deck” would mean people meeting people they don’t normally see, which is a good excuse for Christine and Niamh to be getting to know each other for the first time.  Christine can be night nurse, Niamh on swing shift.  Of the doctors, some will be keeping their heads low to avoid catching a malpractice case, while others will be hoping to access their inner House MD and save the day.

There’s this weird-ass old hospital building in Tacoma that I kinda love.  It has a fluted surface and round windows.  I’d only ever been in it once very briefly after my first niece was born.  I’ll set this in a fictional hospital, but it could be shaped like that.  Might actually be real easy to avoid saying the name of the place, but I should have it on standby just in case.  There are dozens of St. Joseph hospitals across the US, so that keeps it nice and legally deniable, especially if I avoid saying the name of the city.

Nurses:  Dia “Clean” Kisiakis, the main source of drug corruption, a somehow 100% functional drug fiend.  I get the impression there’s always one of these around for less successful druggies to feel jealous of.  An RN like Christine, avoids promotion to keep a low profile.  RN Amber Krogstad, part of the druggy clique that ain’t as tight as Nurse Clean but never had as deep of a bender as Christine, treats her like a cautionary tale to scare herself straight.  Still the closest thing to a completely sympatico ally, just not one brave enough to stick up for her under any circumstance.  That’s right; all the druggy nurses are white ladies.  Reprezent.

RN Keisha Rodrigues, didn’t see what Christine was like last year but got the idea, and avoids her socially, in quiet judgment.  RN Susan Yoo, could go with the petty crowd or have sympathetic moments, depending on peer situation in a given scene.  RN D’Angelo Pride, has been tempted a few times but saw enough trouble to keep himself clean.  The oldest of the healthy infant nurses, closing in on fifty.  RN Rashawn Walton, polite but quick to ghost people who are acting risky.  The last two work the least, under normal circumstances – part time for various reasons.

They all offer some support as well to the NICU, but the nurses there are NNP Samiha “Sammy” Roy, RN Matthew “Matty” Baker, NNP Josh Lippenstein, and RN Roxanne Hui.  They’re all fairly unplugged from the Healthy Infant unit drama, but rumors have them side-eyeing the whole lot of ’em.  The entire NICU staff was fired after the previous year’s incident.  Circumstances have conspired to have these nurses feeling overconfident, pinning all those dead babies on the incompetence of their predecessors.

In charge of all those nurses is Night Shift Coordinator RN Michael “Mike” Donnelly.  He had personally witnessed Christine doing things that should have gotten her fired, and has used that blackmail to his advantage.  Fortunately for her, he’s not usually feeling horny about it.  It’s been long enough at start of story that she’s fooled herself into thinking he’s over that trip.  He’s a fifty year old dude with a wife and a boat, and college-age kids.

Respiratory Therapist Ramon Duran is another replacement for one fired last year.  Somehow he never heard anything about his predecessor – too busy and too involved with day shift things.  He is ok with everyone but a little short, until trouble kicks up.  At that point he can’t help but feel others are responsible, and look at all of them with undisguised disdain.  It comes from a place of compassion for the patients, at least.

Parents I can come up with on the fly.  I don’t think I want any to be a recurring presence in the story.  There should be someone repping outside regulation at some point.  Police would be too disruptive to the plot, let’s say… State Department of Health.  BTW, u kno i’m taking whatever’s believable about these jobs off google’s ai search, fucken sue me.  Principal Healthcare Surveyor Susan Brant comes in late in the story, with a small pack of health facility surveyors, an epidemiologist public health advisor, and a healthcare engineer.  Brant would be very quick to ship out any surviving babies to other hospitals, but let’s say epidemiologist convinces her they might carry disease to another infant ward?  She might insist the close it gets to baby ten, and get stymied by Director Simonds.

Wait, his job title should be different.  Really seeing him as the boss of the place, with unchecked power over it, he should be the CEO?  I always think of that job as being within a corporation but it seems the appropriate one for a medical institution as well.  OK.  CEO Jacob Simonds.  Technically above him is the board of directors but they aren’t evil wizards so what can they do against The Power of the Sorcerer’s Will™?  Below him the henchmen, CFO and CMO Not Appearing in This Picture, Chief Operating Officer Subwizard, and Chief Nursing Officer Rubberstamp Toadington.

The doctors must be accounted for.  Of primary interest Dr. Niamh (pronounced Neeve) Meehan, Irish immigrant…  makes it sound like she stepped out of the nineteenth century.  When I fell on some stairs and acquired by own chin scar, it was an Irish doctor who sewed up le gash.  What the hell would inspire her to be on the far side of the USA from her ocean?  Not even where you can surf?  Shit I feel a toss-it-to-stochastic-parrots coming on… Got it.  The weird legal glitch that means we’re always short on doctors here, combined with laws making immigration more favorable to doctors, combined with higher salaries that naturally emerge from shitty crapitalist medicine.  The last of those is extremely unlovable.  Basically joining a system of exploitation to score loot.  For shame, doc!  For shame!

My IRL Dr. Niamh was that black-haired Irish like a lady David Byrne, skinny, high round cheekbones.  If I’m gonna have lesbian tension, is it better to do a couple that looks similar to each other or more different?  Because clearly a Christine Saloubi should be lookin’ Middle Eastern, so if Niamh is black-haired, they end up kinda alike… Let’s have Niamh be that red Irish, and tall and big, at least compared to Christine.  Kind of like Barb from Strangler Thangs but growed up.  I don’t know anything about the Irish experience of life.  About standard for Europeans?  Something I should know about it?  Saw an interview with Irish goth teens in like 1986 once.  I’ve listened to U2 and the Virgin Prunes, but I don’t see a youngish doctor in amurrica in 2026 having any interest in any of that.

Anyway.  Maybe it’s time to try to do some kind of writing that’s actually writing.  Next time!

–

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?

***

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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