Chapter 4: Motivational Sparking

  “They found a tumor in my lady bits.”

  Jeremy felt a dark, heavy cloud press down on him as his mother spoke. He sat with his wife on a couch in his mother’s trailer home. She was rubbing small circles of comfort into his back. Jeremy glanced at the woman who had decided his life complimented hers well enough to travel it with him. She was still rubbing circles of comfort into his back with an expression of concern and worry.

  His mother, Nyla, sat across from them in her tiny trailer home on the oversized gray sectional couch. Clutter and knickknacks were piled on most of the surfaces that could still be seen under the mess.

  The questionably named dining room had an oversized real wood table that was a mountain of half-opened mail. Piled amongst the mail were magazines and out-of-date calendars spanning more years than a college graduate had ever seen while studying. A clear spot on the stove’s surface and a narrow path down the hallway could be traversed to the two cramped bedrooms.

  Various shadow boxes commemorating his father’s military career and Bob Rossian paintings of wintery landscapes drawn by a family member crowded the walls everywhere. Display shelves full of the knickknacks his parents had collected over decades lay as dusty monuments of life explored. There was a decidedly patriotic theme to the mess from numerous keychains, coffee cups, and other chintzy military memorabilia crowded numerous wall displays crammed in among the other bric-a-brac.

  From the main bedroom, a guinea pig screamed in defiance that her lettuce was a little wilty and this would not stand. The musty scent of the place filled Jeremy’s nose with familiar despair at his mother’s need for small reassurances in the form of things she didn’t have room for. He wanted to take her to a flea market for more.

  The small woman in glasses with an unruly mop of red hair streaked through heavily with gray had a slack, defeated expression as she delivered the awkward words. He pulled his attention back to the conversation bomb currently exploding in front of everyone.

  Jeremy grimaced,

  “Mom, I know what a uterus is. When did they find it? How big is it? Is it cancerous?”

  His mother looked uncomfortable at him saying two of those words but responded,

  “A month ago, the VA found two masses during my last colonoscopy.”

  “Mom, they don’t enter the uterus during a colonoscopy.”

  He stopped to think about what it meant that the masses had been found during a procedure meant to explore a different organ system. Jeremy leaned forward on the couch and rubbed hard at his face with his hands. Trying not to cry, he asked,

  “Have they done a biopsy yet?”

  Jeremy’s wife, Emily, stroked the next circle into his back more gently,

  “Yes, the results came back inconclusive on one and cancerous on the other. She’s had a surgery scheduled to have them removed next month.”

  Jeremy made a soft noise of distress between a grunt and a whimper. He clamped down on memories of his father’s passing to the hated disease of cancer. Shuddering breath lent quavers to his voice,

  “How do you want to handle this, Mom?”

  The tiny woman’s expression took on an angry tone without unkindness present,

  “I’m gonna fight this, Jeremy.”

  His wife and mother froze in place, and Beazlebubbah appeared in a flash of stinky light. His hooved feet slipped on piles of clutter, and he fell over with a demonically cranky squawk of rage.

  Scrambling to his cloven feet with a display of undignified harumphness, he addressed Jeremy with arrogance and a small plastic grocery sack of save-the-troops keychains dangling from one of his horns,

  “No, no, no. That’s not the scary part. Why do you humans focus on the wrong things all the damn time?”

  Jeremy snatched a coffee cup off the crowded table in front of him. Seeing it was his dad’s favorite Mallow Cup brand yellow mug, he returned it, snatched a NASCAR-themed mug instead, and hurled it at the demon’s head. It shattered off the being’s forehead in a spray of cheap ceramic fragments that left behind a cut over one of his boned eyebrow ridges.

  Beazlebubbah clutched at the bleeding cut with one clawed hand and poked himself in the eye,

  “Gods damn it! Enough of this! Get to the scary part!”

  Beazlebubbah blinked furiously and breathed out a cloud of smoke that quickly filled the room and caused Jeremy’s chest to heave in a struggle for life as he coughed explosively, trying to expel the smoke. The figures of his mother and wife were obscured behind the cloud as a roaring sound surged through the room, shaking Jeremy as he struggled to breathe.

  The roaring faded as the smoke cleared. Jeremy found himself standing on a curb in front of Tampa General Hospital, where a box truck rumbled by, belching smoke from its exhaust stacks. An older woman with a walker was shouting at the truck,

  “This is a fucking hospital, you fucking asshole! Get those damn pipes checked!”

  Jeremy continued coughing but sputtered at her,

  “T-t-that’s not how engines work.”

  The old woman shook her fist at Jeremy in elderly rage,

  “It’s 2022, and I have fucking gout, fuck you!”

  Jeremy showed wisdom in not engaging the woman further and walked away towards the entrance to the hospital. Processing through the conga line of depression and anxiety that was the check-in station, he waited for his turn at the information desk.

  Finding the room his mother was in after her surgery from the desk clerk, he took the elevator to the third floor. The elevator doors opened on a hallway filled with medical equipment along one wall, and several nurses were standing behind wheeled mobile computer stations typing furiously. The caffeination of nurses waved him toward the central command station, also known as the nursing station, amidst the quietly bustling chaos of a hospital.

  As he approached, a harried-looking woman in scrubs with flyaways sprouting from the buns atop her head tried to give him a compassionate smile,

  “Who are you here to see, deary?”

  “Nyla Thorson, ma’am. I was told she just got out of recovery.”

  “Oh, yes. Ms. Nyla is such a sweetie, but she’s still a little out of it. She just went down for a nap a half hour ago. She made it through the surgery just fine, but Dr. Witherfork did want to talk to you. Please take a seat in the waiting room just down the hall, and he’ll be with you shortly. He’s just finishing rounds, so he shouldn’t be long.”

  Jeremy nodded to the woman, who turned her frazzled demeanor back to the computer before her, picking up the desk phone to make a call. Jeremy weaved his way back down the hallway, trying not to trample on the toes of the other nurses standing with tired postures behind their ball-and-chain, wheeled computer desks. Successfully not running into anyone, he slid into the strangely beige-carpeted walls of the waiting room. A family of three was staring at the walls. Their child asked in youthful rage,

  “Why would they put carpets on the walls though?”

  Jeremy politely ignored the flabbergasted parents as they tried to justify the design choice and focused his carefully blank mind on the TV in one corner of the room. The tired-looking TV displayed an episode of Maury Popovitch. It was another rerun of another family fighting on stage over who wasn’t or was the father. Jeremy settled into one of the uncomfortable waiting room chairs and tuned out of the world to focus on the nonsense.

  Halfway through the episode, Jeremy’s phone dinged an alert and he found that his Aunt Becky was on her way from the airport. He frowned at the audacity of the airport delaying a family member during a time of crisis but put the phone away without raging at the heavens. The mother of the family in the waiting room looked annoyed that he had acknowledged the existence of his phone.

  Two episodes later, another tired nurse had ushered the family away. A silver-haired, bespectacled gentleman in a white Dr.’s coat with green scrubs underneath entered the room. A stethoscope dangled from one of the coat pockets, and he clutched a steel coffee cup. The bags under his eyes belied the energy with which he moved.

  “Jeremy Thorson?”

  “Yes, Doctor.”

  “My name is Dr. Witherfork. We met before your mother’s surgery.”

  “Yes, doctor. I remember you. Thank you for seeing me. What’s this about?”

  “No need to be concerned. If possible, I always meet with my patients’ families after surgery.”

  “I appreciate that, but Aunt Becky isn’t here ye-“

  Jeremy was interrupted by a large older lady rushing into the waiting room with an oversized blue leather purse and a beautiful, flowered faux silk blouse. Spectacles perched on her silver-haired head precariously and she had been crying.

  “I’m here! Where’s your mother? Why did the doctor want to see us? Is she okay?”

  “Hi, Aunt Becky. Mom’s okay. She just got out of recovery a couple of hours ago. The nurse at the station said she was sleeping. This is her surgeon, Dr. Witherfork.”

  Dr. Witherfork nodded to the woman and smiled,

  “A pleasure to meet you. I was telling Nyla’s son that there is nothing to worry about. I meet with the families of all my patients after surgery. She did well. She’s a feisty woman, and as long as she keeps up with the physical therapy, I expect a good recovery from the operation.”

  “Were you able to get it all? She told me there were two masses but wouldn’t give me more details.”

  The doctor frowned but did respond,

  “If she does not wish the details discussed, I will not share them, Ma’am.”

  Jeremy poked his head into the conversation,

  “It’s okay, doctor. I am her power of attorney and her health care proxy. Both documents are on file with the hospital.”

  Dr. Witherfork raised an eyebrow but withdrew a tablet from his lab coat and started swiping. After a few moments, he nodded.

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  “You are listed, and the documents are on file according to her chart. Very well. I warn you, these are not easy details to take in.”

  The doctor reviewed the file on his tablet briefly as Aunt Becky’s face grew more worried, not less.

  “The surgery went well. She made it through fine with no complications. However, the cancerous cells have spread significantly. We removed the two masses, and a significant portion of anything that it had spread to that was not vital to her.”

  Dr. Witherfork carefully moved the clipboard to his side and maintained eye contact with Jeremy. The bags under the man’s eyes crinkled with professional concern.

  “We removed her appendix, as that had been encapsulated by one of the tumors. There is extensive fibrous tissue growth within her abdominal wall. This could be from her previous condition of endometriosis or related to the carcinomas we were able to remove. The latter is more likely. Samples were taken, and the pathologist will have more answers for you once they are analyzed.”

  Jeremy felt dizzy. He placed a hand on the carpeted wall nearby and leaned into it for support. Aunt Becky stepped in close and wrapped an arm around his waste. Dr. Witherfork gave them both a tired, sympathetic look.

  “She’s a trooper. She asked me when she could ride her motorcycle again when she came out of anesthesia. She responded well to the surgery, and I foresee no complications at this time.”

  Witherfork smiled in admiration at that before continuing.

  “In about a month, we will be placing her port for the start of her chemotherapy.”

  Jeremy pulled away from his aunt and shuffled to one of the waiting room chairs. He sat heavily and placed his face into his hands as he started to cry. Aunt Becky spoke to the doctor through a rage-choked voice and streaming tears,

  “What are her chances?”

  “It is best not to focus on the possibilities of misfortune in these circumstances. She handled the surgery well, and she should focus on physical therapy to recover fully from that. Does she have someone to stay with her during recovery?”

  Aunt Becky started shouting at the doctor as Jeremy’s heart thundered in his ears, rendering the conversation a blurring cacophony of background noise. His breathing accelerated, and pain settled into his chest with a stretching ache. It felt like a mangy stray cat had burrowed into his chest and was attempting to dig out a space for a decent nap. It pulled insistently on something that ran down the length of his arm.

  Jeremy shot to his feet,

  “This isn’t what happened! I didn’t have a heart attack!”

  Beazlebubbah strode confidently into the room as Aunt Becky and Dr. Witherfork froze in place as if someone hit a pause button on a bad TV drama. Jeremy’s pain vanished as soon as everything stopped moving.

  Becky’s hands were raised in anger as she was caught gesticulating wildly at the doctor as she froze in midmotion. Witherfork’s exasperated expression of concern looked comical in the rooted moment of time.

  Beazlebubbah wore a red lab coat in mockery of a doctor’s profession. Adjusting his spectacles in derision at the healthcare professional frozen in the storm of Aunt Becky’s fury.

  “I’m not sure he would have noticed if you had. Oh well, you can’t blame a demon for trying. Was this the scary part? Or should we continue?”

  “What’s your endgame here, Beazlebubbah?”

  “Just a reminder, Jeremy. Part of my job is to motivate our employees. Since you are a new hire in scheduling, you fit that description.”

  The world shuddered as existence flickered briefly. Beazlebubbah’s face winced in pain as Mr. Habit appeared with a soft pop next to Dr. Witherfork’s frozen form. His immaculate butler’s uniform was accompanied by a black bowler hat sitting perfectly centered on his head and another newspaper folded neatly under one arm.

  “Jeremy, I see Beazlebubbah has introduced himself. Your meeting with Yuudoh went well? Any issues so far with the new position?”

  Beazlebubbah began sidling away from the two of them with a nervous look at Mr. Habit.

  “Yes. Yes. And No. Ig and Ook have been really helpful. I want to spend my next day off at home with Mom, if possible.”

  Mr. Habit nodded politely,

  “That request should go through Mr. Brown in the future, but I can pass the message along this one time. Can you return a favor and check on that distraction in the hallway for me?”

  “What?”

  Jeremy turned to look at the doorway of the waiting room.

  Beazlebubbah dashed at Jeremy’s back, claws raised to strike. In a flash of movement, Mr. Habit rolled the newspaper up before Jeremy turned back around and swatted the demon in the face with it. A reality-cracking shimmer of light flashed as the newspaper made contact with the demonic face, silently snarling in rage at Jeremy’s turned back. The head of the demon crumpled in on itself, and its body was thrust violently against the wall of the waiting room.

  The body of the demon shattered into millions of pieces against the carpeted wall. The pieces turned to a cascade of glitter that cascaded down from the impact site. Jeremy turned back around as a soft whumpf of air-cushioned against his back. He stared at the glitter as it softly dissolved into nothingness against the wall. Faint glimmering streams emanated upwards from the pile as it dissipated.

  “Did he head to filing without me? If my paperwork isn’t completed, our deal is off, Mr. Habit.”

  “Give me your paperwork, Jeremy.”

  Jeremy withdrew the sheaf of paperwork he had folded, then stowed in his back pocket and handed it over. Mr. Habit took the papers, rolled them into a tube, and shoved them into the still-dissipating pile.

  “See that those are filed, Beazlebubbah. Or the next swat happens in a reality where it will stick.”

  A demon’s arm clad in a dirty white pinstriped shirt sleeve shot out of the shrinking pile with glinting, tacky, turquoise cufflinks. The arm gave a rude gesture to Jeremy, followed by a red-clawed thumbs up to Mr. Habit. The arm snatched the rolled-up sheaf of papers and withdrew into the last of the dissipating pile. Jeremy stared at the retreating arm grimly.

  “Can he be trusted?”

  “Obviously not. Check with Mr. Brown that they were turned in at filing during your next shift break. Beazlebubbah never finished his motivational duties either, so let’s get that taken care of and get you back to Ig and Ook. They seem worried about you.”

  Jeremy paled at the words,

  “I’m plenty motivated, Mr. Habit.”

  Mr. Habit shook his head in a negative.

  “I’m sure you think you are, but these things have an order, Jeremy. We will follow the path as it’s laid out.”

  Mr. Habit tucked the newspaper back under his arm and snapped his fingers. The world shifted around them. Jeremy found himself standing on a curb as he watched his aunt Becky trundle away in the back of an Uber she had hired to take her back to her hotel.

  There was a sobbing wreck of a man sitting on a curbside bench, his head in his hands as he cried into them, and passersby awkwardly avoided the pain on display. He and Mr. Habit looked on at the scene.

  Jeremy shifted uncomfortably, seeing a man cry so openly in public. A Lincoln town car pulled to a halt in front of the man at the curbside bench. The driver’s door opened and out stepped Mr. Habit. Jeremy blinked and glanced at Mr. Habit standing next to him. Empty space greeted his gaze.

  Mr. Habit walked confidently around the front of the town car after shutting the driver’s door. He approached the man on the bench,

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Thorson. My name is Mr. Habit, and I have an opportunity for you.”

  Jeremy found himself sitting on the bench in front of Mr. Habit, his cheeks creaking from the tears drying on his cheeks on his cheeks. He rubbed at his burning eyes as the events of the memory tore at his soul.

  “I remember this just fine, Mr. Habit. Do we have to do this again?”

  “Stick to the script, Jeremy. It’s important.”

  Jeremy sighed but nodded his acquiescence. He took a shuddering breath to steady the memory of emotions raging through him. Jeremy responded as he remembered.

  “I’m not in the mood for Jehovah’s Witness, Mormon, or Scientological nonsense right now. I’ve had a rough day and just want to go home. Please take your fancy car and leave me alone.”

  “Understandable, dear boy. I would be doing you a disservice if I failed to deliver my pitch. May I continue?”

  Jeremy clenched his fists in his lap and resisted the urge to attack the sharply dressed religious nut butler before him. He tried to keep in mind that most people who accosted the grieving at hospitals genuinely tried to help as they saw it. He relaxed his balled fists and responded with a beaten-down voice shaking with depression.

  “Sure, fuck it. Give me your spiel, then please leave.”

  Mr. Habit smiled gratefully at Jeremy, nodded, then pulled a unicorn gremlin out of his jacket pocket and threw it in his face.

  “What the fuck!?”

  Jeremy shouted in rage and toppled back against the bench as the gremlicorn attacked his face with scratching claws and hisses of pitiless derision at existence. Jeremy grabbed the thing by the back legs, stood from the bench, and swung it at the bench he had been sitting on. As its mishappen, rainbow-tinted green head smashed against the concrete of the bench, the creature’s body exploded into a cloud of foul-smelling glitter that swirled in the breeze of passing traffic.

  Jeremy stood panting in the pungent cloud of glitter and coughed against the rancid reek. Mr. Habit kept gently smiling at him.

  “What the fuck was that!?”

  “You’re repeating yourself, Mr. Thorson.”

  The blood from the scratches on Jeremy’s cheeks dripped onto his shirt. He wiped at his face with shaking hands, smearing the blood into a macabre football face painting across his visage.

  “No shit! I think I’m having a psychotic break.”

  “You are not. I assure you that was quite real. Or rather, it was borrowed from another reality.”

  Jeremy eyed the suited man before him and asked the obvious question,

  “When was I drugged? Was it the orange juice from the vending machine? It did taste funny, but I thought that was just hospital food stankness.”

  “No drugs, breaks in your psyche, or prank shows unfortunately captained by a celebrity trying to profit off a mediocre career. That was a demonstration that the opportunity I spoke of was genuine. I find shattering the ice more effective than chipping it with less effective tools.”

  Jeremy threw his hands up in the air and shouted at Mr. Habit,

  “By attacking me?”

  “Yes, barely, but yes.”

  The calm rebuttal of Jeremy’s indignation did more to calm him than a bucket of ice water laced with Vicodin. Jeremy thought about the goals of someone capable of attacking a stranger with previously unimagined creatures.

  “If I walk away, will I be attacked again?”

  “No. You’ll never get to hear about any of this again.”

  Jeremy stared at the butler for a few moments before replying,

  “Fuck it. This is helping distract the hell out of me right now. What’s this opportunity?”

  Mr. Habit smiled with pleasure.

  “I am the…coordinator for the retirement home for the grandparents of destiny. I need a caretaker to take over some of the duties, and I pay quite well.”

  “No thanks, I have a career and am doing just fine.”

  “I wasn’t talking about money, Mr. Thorson. There is that, too, but if you can perform the job duties adequately and gain promotion from your entry-level position, that is the opportunity I speak of. I can arrange for you to contribute positively towards your mother’s fate.”

  Jeremy’s bleeding face flushed red at the words.

  “We’re fucking done. Goodbye.”

  He started to walk away when Mr. Habit’s following words caused him to slow and listen.

  “I assure you, I am quite serious. Her diagnosis is grim, but I can assure you this may give her fate a better chance at being more comfortable. The survival rates of humans with her conditions after treatment drop to less than fifty percent for the next five years of life after treatment starts. This could help her chances.”

  Jeremy chewed at his cheek in thought and indecision.

  “Give me more. I’ll need details. Work hours, retirement benefits, health coverage, location.”

  “I can promise you all those details and more. Just step into my parl- car. Step into the car and all will be revealed. I can even guarantee this new position will not disrupt the rest of your life.”

  Jeremy turned fully to face Mr. Habit. He squinted suspiciously at the butler.

  “Your reassurances are more ominous than they should be.”

  Mr. Habit chuckled as he stepped to the rear passenger door of the Lincoln and opened it for Jeremy.

  “Mr. Thorson, fate is often ominous. How do you know it’s important unless you are aware there is something worth losing?”

  Jeremy shook his head and glanced at the doors of the hospital. A bored reception clerk behind the glass doors was attempting to balance a pencil between his upper lip and nose as a family of three shouted at him. An overweight, balding security guard was hitting on an obviously uncomfortable nurse as she attempted to type something into her rolling computer station near the elevators.

  “I suppose you can’t.”