Alvin tipped a handful of pills out of the Tuesday PM slot of the plastic pill sorter. Then he pulled the pitcher off the blender bottom and poured the half-ice-cream-half-Ensure strawberry-ish concoction he’d made into a plastic tumbler with a lid and a straw.
He yawned wide and itched at the bandage on his elbow. It was late, way later than he usually gave Lola her milkshake and meds and got her to bed. They’d spent over ten hours waiting today—waiting in the busted-up subway car to be shuttled back to the station, then waiting for the paramedics to get them to the vER, then waiting for the doctors to look Lola over. She had some horrifying-looking cuts and bruises on her arms and legs from falling out of her wheelchair, but the ER doc told him that it was all superficial, and as long as he kept the cuts clean and changed the bandages properly, she should heal up fine. They’d considered keeping her overnight for observation, but Lola never did well in hospitals. The risk of complications was low. Better to just take her home.
His phone pinged where he’d left it on the counter playing a chill Minecraft stream as background noise. He glanced over at the Discord message that popped up and saw a good morning from Janxie, just signing on for the day in Malaysia, followed swiftly by a note tagging him that was mostly panicked emoji. He rinsed his hands and dried them on his pants so he could type out a quick reply.
He put his phone aside, ignoring the flurry of response pings for now. He’d messaged the group from the hospital waiting room with a too-vague note around seven, then he’d been pulled into a bunch of medical paperwork and conversations with doctors and cops and totally forgotten to update anyone. Oops.
He put the pills, milkshake, and a glass of water on a tray and brought it out to the little table next to the beat-up recliner, to the small, hunched, wrinkled woman in the baggy floral dress who was staring blankly at nothing.
This was his grandmother, and other than some cousins in the Philippines he’d only met twice, the only family he had left since Mom died.
“Hey there,” he said softly, holding out the pills for her to take.
“Where’s Alvin…?” she said weakly.
“Alvin’s not here right now, but he’ll be back soon, don’t worry. Here, you need to swallow these, and then I’ve got a strawberry milkshake for you!” He did his best to keep his voice soothing and upbeat, but he was too tired to do his best acting. Still, her face lit up a little at the words “strawberry milkshake” and she swallowed the pills with no fuss.
It still stung a little, knowing that she wasn’t really asking for him when she used his name.
Alvin knew he didn’t look much like the great-uncle he’d been named for, his lola’s beloved older brother. Back when she first started getting confused about things, it took him a while to understand why telling her “I’m Alvin” upset her so much.
Then he’d tried to tell her that Alvin died over a decade ago, of cancer, in a hospital in Manila. That had not gone over well. It was way easier—and kinder, he had to believe, even if lying about something so major felt weird—to just tell her that he’d be back soon and reassure her that she was safe and everything was fine. She’d forget this conversation in a few minutes, anyway.
Alzheimer’s was the fucking worst.
Lola drank her milkshake slowly, staring blankly at nothing Alvin could see. While she was distracted, he went into the apartment’s single bedroom and pulled out a nightgown and a new adult diaper. This was another part of caring for her he’d been so incredibly uncomfortable about at the beginning, but, well, people can get used to pretty much anything. Honestly, it was harder back when Lola was a little more coherent—she’d sometimes be half-undressed and suddenly get panicked or upset when she realized there was a “strange man” in the room. It made him feel awful to freak her out like that, but it wasn’t like they had other options—he’d done endless paperwork and doctor visits to get them on the waiting lists for subsidized care, but nothing had come through yet. Nowadays, she mostly didn’t understand what was happening and let him handle the embarrassing parts with as little fuss as possible. Small blessings.
Lola put the plastic tumbler aside, and Alvin got her gently out of the chair and supported her as she shuffled through the shortest possible version of their normal nighttime routine. She was clearly exhausted, and honestly, so was he. Skipping brushing her teeth and washing her face wasn’t that big a deal, or so he told himself with a small pang of guilt.
When he finally had her settled in bed, he stripped off his jeans and button-down shirt and let them fall in a crumpled heap on the floor, then pulled on some sweats and his favorite ancient hoodie. He grabbed his laptop off the desk and settled in on the living room futon that doubled as his bed, pulling the blankets around him. He let out a deep, heavy sigh and rubbed his face. He didn’t usually have to keep up the whole hyper-responsible act for so many hours in a row, and dropping it left him feeling wrung out and dead tired.
He considered just turtling and playing some mindless game for a while, but he’d promised to check in. And he knew he’d feel better if he talked to people, even if the thought was exhausting right now. He opened Discord on his laptop and read through the messages from this afternoon.
Alvin smiled around the lump in his throat as he typed out a quick message.
His friends were the best.
Alvin left them to argue which was more ridiculous—that the government orchestrated the accident, or that it was some new, urban chupacabra—for a few minutes. He reluctantly left his blanket nest and went to the hook by the door to dig through the pockets of his coat.
The note was still in there, luckily. It was just a torn scrap of paper with a phone number written in messy blue pen and a name scrawled above it: Zenn, or maybe Zinn?
If the mail lady was in on whatever happened, she was an incredible actor. Sure, she’d kept it together enough to hand out her phone number to people, but she was visibly shaken when she came over to talk to him. He’d been distracted and freaked out at the time, but he’d at least noticed that much.
His phone pinged a few times in his hoodie pocket, and he pulled it out to see DMs from Tyra popping up on his screen.
Alvin’s stomach twisted. She was probably right, but he really didn’t have it in him to deal with it right now. Talking to the chat had cheered him up a bit, made this impossible day seem manageable. He wanted to hang on to that feeling, at least until tomorrow.
Something crashed in Lola’s room.
Alvin’s head shot up, and he started to go deal with whatever had happened, but he paused. Lola had probably tried to get up and knocked something over by accident—it had happened before plenty of times. But something in his brain was pinging “danger, danger.” He glanced at his phone, then mashed the voice call button in his DM with Tyra before shoving it back in his pocket.
There was another, louder crash from Lola’s bedroom, like the bedside table had been knocked over, all its contents scattered. With that, he dashed over and yanked the door open.
Lola was still in bed, sitting up and clutching at her blankets.
Over her stood a tall, oily-black monster like the one he’d seen on the subway.
Alvin screamed and grabbed the nearest thing in reach—a box of tissues—and threw it at the creature. It bounced off harmlessly, but it at least seemed to get the monster’s attention. The creature didn’t have a face that Alvin could see, but it definitely leaned toward him. It stopped like that for a long moment, and Alvin got the impression that it was studying him somehow.
Then, all at once like water let free of a dam, it oozed right at him.
Alvin grabbed more stuff at random off the bureau and threw it at the creature—a big bottle of vitamins, a hairbrush, and finally the lamp. Everything bounced off uselessly, the lamp smashing into a million pieces on the floor. The thing was getting closer, and Alvin scrambled backward, hoping to lure it out of Lola’s room at least, but he had no idea what to do next. He dodged backward as the thing took a swing at him. He nearly tripped over his own feet, but he managed to keep his balance; he pivoted on one foot and made a dash for the kitchenette.
He scrabbled on the counter and came back with a curved, stubby, oft-sharpened kitchen knife and the ancient cast-iron pan—the best weapons he could think of in the apartment.
He swung back around to find that the creature was literally looming over him, ready to strike. He hadn’t even heard it get close! It was in a tall, skinny, vaguely humanoid form, its arms too long for its body—Slenderman? his brain randomly threw out as he swung wildly with the knife and sliced right through its middle.
It was like trying to stab smoke—the blade went right through. But…he was sure he’d managed to hit it with the tissue box back in Lola’s room! Was it only solid some of the time? Was it some RPG thing where it was immune to slashing damage? How was he supposed to fight something like this?!
He didn’t want to fight anything!
He scrambled backward into the living room, keeping it in his sights even after he tripped over the backpack he’d left on the floor. He could hear Tyra’s tinny voice from the phone in his pocket, yelling something he couldn’t make out.
The creature was still near the kitchen counters, standing there frozen. Alvin stopped too—it felt like the thing was watching him again with its eyeless, featureless face. He held up the cast-iron pan like a shield between him and the creature, and noticed for the first time just how badly his hands were shaking.
But it didn’t come for him. It oozed out of its Slenderman form and, like a storm cloud blown by a jet stream, rushed back into Lola’s room.
Alvin didn’t think, just ran—he dashed through the door, dodged past the creature, and got between it and the bed. Lola was standing at her bedside now, holding herself up against the bedpost.
It advanced on them slowly. Alvin got an arm around Lola’s middle, ready to haul her out of harm’s way—but this thing was between them and the only exit. He wouldn’t be able to dodge past on his own, let alone while carrying someone. He gripped his pan in the other hand and prepared to swing as soon as it got close enough. A nagging voice in the back of his head told him that this was a terrible, stupid plan, but he was all out of ideas.
He felt Lola’s papery hands grasp the one he had around her like she was trying to escape his grip. He held on tighter. In that moment all he wanted in the world was to fix this somehow; he didn’t want to fight, he didn’t want monsters to be real, he just wanted a normal life and for Lola to know who he was and for this impossible thing to stop existing. But the creature reached out, unfathomably real.
Alvin’s hands exploded in dazzling light.