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“Garter… belt… stockings…”
“That’s nice.” A voice drawled from above him, and Carlos’s eyes shot open, light flooding into his vision, and he let out a groan of pain and protest, rolling over in the bed he was in, covering his eyes. “Good afternoon, Dr. Vasquez,” the doctor spoke up, as Carlos blearily opened his eyes to see a man in a white coat standing over him in what seemed to be a hospital room.
“It’s already the afternoon?” Carlos mumbled, sitting up in the bed.
“Yes—oh, that reminds me,” the doctor walked away from the side of the bed to turn on what sounded like a radio, and a beautiful, velvety voice began to speak up and fill the room, as Carlos blinked at the unfocused sight of a doctor standing near his bed.
“Where’re my glasses?” he asked, and he felt them being pressed into his hand. Thanking the man, he put his glasses back on. “What happened back there?”
“No idea, we were supposed to ask you.” The doctor replied, gesturing at the door, where Carlos realised there were several armed government agents not unlike the ones that were present during his and his team’s press conference. “They’ve come here to get a statement for you, and maybe re-education at the abandoned mine shaft, if needed.”
Carlos paled, the voice coming from the radio suddenly sharpening into painful clarity.
“And I fell in love instantly.”
He blinked, snapping out of his worried, shocked daze, and realised that the voice on the radio sounded painfully familiar…
Too familiar, he realised, when the memory of short, fluffy purple skirts and thigh high stockings and garter belts flooded his mind and a flush crossed his face unbidden, and at this one of the masked agents lurched forward to wave a strange device in his face, only to have it beep continuously, lighting up with a purple LED (wait, purple?) light blinking.
“Amplified fantastical masturbatory hallucination, resulting in loss of consciousness, they said in a voice that was neither male nor female, and at this Carlos recoiled in both surprise and shock and embarrassment, and perhaps a little mortification at how blatantly that was stated. “No need for re-education. Subject is free to go.”
The two masked agents filed out of the room silently, and for a while the air was still, the voice of the radio broadcaster the only thing audible.
Carlos eventually found his voice to speak. “What was that?” he choked out, looking up at the doctor, who shrugged.
“Standard-issue Council Dream Monitor,” he replied, “No big, but you’ve got quite the fantasies, Dr. Vasquez!” he snickered, before giving his hand to Carlos. “Well, they’ve deemed you free to go, I think it’s easy to say you’re discharged for today.”
Carlos, raising an eyebrow, took the man’s hand and got out of bed. “Who even got me here? I was at the—”
“Shh, don’t say another word,” the doctor cut him off, “Your teammates are waiting for you at your lab.” He said, ushering Carlos outside quickly, and the scientist had no choice but to do as he was being told to.
“Hey, at least tell me—what’s that radio broadcaster’s name?” he asked, gesturing at the radio, and the doctor smiled fondly.
“Oh, yes, him? His name is Cecil. He seems to like you a lot.”
At this, Carlos frowned inquisitively, but the doctor shrugged him off, and ushered him out of the room.
“Dr. Vasquez! You’re okay!” one of the lab hands gushed as he stepped inside the lab, where his team—now missing two from the original ten, crowded around him, worry and relief clear on their faces.
“Yeah, but I can’t say the same for…” he fell silent, and his team drew away from him to allow him space, nodding solemnly. “Anyway, have you told their families?”
“Sir, there wasn’t anyone to tell.” Another lab hand spoke up and Carlos’s eyes widened.
“No one to tell?”
“Dr. Vasquez, they, uh, came here to Night Vale with no one left.” His co-researcher spoke up, looking slightly sheepish, “And frankly, we all did. No family left, all of us.”
Carlos blinked at them. “You came here, to Night Vale, knowing perfectly you may never come back out alive?”
“Well, Doc, the town doesn’t appear on the map, for goodness’ sake. It was pretty elementary.” Another researcher replied, and Carlos stared at them, disbelievingly.
“If it somehow comforts you, at least we’ve already started. Sent the report in to the local radio station.” Another one spoke up, and Carlos sighed.
“… Fine. Let me have a look.”
“Cecil, the microphone’s up there,” Dana spoke up through Cecil’s headphones, and the broadcaster looked up from where he was staring—his phone—to the girl looking at him through the glass in the control room, a disapproving expression on her face.
“Dana, what are you talking about?” he asked, shrugging, as he turned a few knobs he knew would do nothing to the current broadcast intermission of random numbers of Greenwich pips for the next half-hour before he continued his broadcast.
“I understand you’re particularly proud of yourself for today’s efforts at the Post Office—Koshekh says you did a great job, and that the rip in space-time and reality at the post office was now gone, at least for the time being, by the way—” at this, Cecil gave her a thumbs-up, and she chuckled, shaking her head fondly, before continuing, “But please, stop staring at that photo of that scientist you took. He was asleep, for crying out loud. You’re being a creep.”
“Oh, but Dana, he was so perfect,” Cecil gushed, almost immediately, and Dana couldn’t help the smile that spread across her lips as she saw his eyes light up and his entire disposition brighten up. “With his perfect hair and eyes, and hands, and oh, I’ll tell you—carrying his perfect, perfect head of beautiful dark hair in my lap was more than any reward for me. I could save him over and over again, if I could.”
“Cecil, you’re a municipally-employed Magical Girl, it’s your job,” Dana drawled, “Well, aside from the radio thing, anyway.”
“Hush, let me at least have a reason for saving Night Vale other than the City Council.” Cecil pouted, petulant, and Dana giggled where she was in the control room. “Do you think Carlos would remember me? Remember the time we spent together in the Post Office?”
“Sweetie, I was there with you, you know. Carlos just shot the monster once, maybe twice?”
“Oh, he looked so brave and handsome, didn’t he? Knees shaking with strength, and his eyes—oh, his eyes,”
“Cecil, he looked pretty scared to me.”
The purple gemstone on Cecil’s necktie clip glinted slightly, glowing ominously, and Dana lifted her hands defensively, laughing. “Okay, okay! Carlos saved the day, I get it.”
“If he hadn’t shot that monster, I’d have run out of air, Dana,” he said in a sing-song voice, as if to remind her, and Dana decided that she should leave out the fact that Carlos’ gunshot actually hit a post next to the monster, and not actually the monster—that shot was all hers, rifle and all, as she hung upside-down from an alcove right above Carlos.
Eh, might as well let him have the spotlight—it was just one shot anyway.
Chuckling, she watched Cecil wink at her, before flicking a few switches and speak into the microphone again, about the findings Carlos’ team had sent in, signed under his name, despite the fact the both of them knew where he had been all morning—she and Cecil made sure he was admitted into a good room in the hospital, overseen by and actual medical doctor, and not those PhD’s that liked to wander around the hospital giving around their own diagnoses—she swore, one time, she heard a ‘doctor’ prescribe building a bridge through the patient’s throat. Never did she want to ever get sick or hurt again after that.
Not that she or Cecil will, anyway—they were protected by their patron guide, Koshekh, and his mystical Egyptian magicks.
She jolted slightly in alarm when she felt her third eye slit open on her forehead—a little something she required to have as an intern; Cecil had his own, too—and visions of a dark-haired, dark-skinned man in a white lab coat knocking on the station entrance door and stepping in after being received by an intern filled her mind, and her lips turned up into a smile.
Cecil paused in his announcements, playing another broadcast following his brief newsflash, and she waved at him wildly, as all she could see was the man making his way to where they were right now.
“Dana? What is it?” Cecil asked her, and she grinned at him.
“It’s Carlos! He’s coming here right this instant!”