Prologue:
The Secret
Glenn thought back to everything he’d experienced.
As a doctor of monster medicine, he was always busy. He rarely took the time to reminisce. But the people he knew, especially Sapphee, often wanted to hear stories from back in the day.
These are some of Glenn’s stories.
✦ ✦ ✦
It was spring, and a new manager had been appointed in the graveyard district of Lindworm. Molly Vanitas took over the bones of the first-generation manager and mimicked her original form.
“I’m heeere!”
On this particular day, a woman with a translucent green body burst into the clinic, bringing a rush of citrusy fragrance with her. She barged in without warning. Fortunately, they were on their lunch break. Glenn wondered what she would have done if she’d walked in on a patient.
“L-Lime?”
“Yesss, it’s me! Lime the slime! Feeling thrice as great as always!”
The green slime—Lime—saluted. She was a nurse at the Central Hospital, currently clad in a waterproof uniform. Lime was a former student of Cthulhy’s, and as such had also been a contemporary of Glenn’s at the Academy. He was entirely devoted to his studies back then, denying him much opportunity to interact with senior students, so he was somewhat taken aback by Lime’s impudent attitude now.
Her pigtails bounced when she moved. Well, they weren’t real pigtails. Her hair was formed of the same gel-like tissue as the rest of her body, with tiny bubbles floating inside. Whenever a bubble rose to the surface, it would burst, releasing the citrus scent into the air.
“I have Skadi’s post-op report, yeah? Dr. Cthulhy told me to give you a copy.”
“Oh, I see. Thank you.” Glenn took the documents from her wriggling, outstretched hand. When he tried to shake off a bit of gel stuck to the corner of the paper, it moved of its own accord, navigating back to Lime with a squishing sound. “I’ll take a look.”
“Yeah, yeah!” Lime lifted her pigtails and flashed Glenn a smile.
He glanced over the report. It looked like Skadi was recovering well after her surgery. The chunk of shoggoth that had taken the form of a second, parasitic heart had been completely excised, and he was sure Skadi would be back to normal soon. Meanwhile, the Shoggoth itself had begun a new life as the manager of the graveyard district.
“Ummm…?”
“Yeah?”
“Aren’t you standing a little…close, Miss Lime?”
“It’s fine. This is how friends stand, yeah!”
“F-friends?”
Glenn didn’t know how to react. She’d been his senior at the Academy, but he wasn’t sure they knew each other well enough to be called friends. Then again, Lime was friendly to everyone, so maybe it wasn’t a big deal.
“Mmm.”
On top of that, Lime’s simulated, innocent-looking eyes—also made of gel—were oddly disconcerting. They were shiny, and looked just like the real thing, but Glenn wasn’t sure how to react to their penetrating gaze.
“Oh, um…if you just came to deliver the report, you could have asked the fairies, you know?”
“Are you crazy? I couldn’t miss this opportunity to skip wo—er, no! To deepen my friendship with you, Glenn!”
“Oh, ohh…” He thought he understood now.
At the end of their time at the Academy, Glenn was the only one of Cthulhy’s apprentices granted permission to start his own practice. He’d had the best grades, but that didn’t mean that the other students weren’t excellent. For example, Sapphee had excelled at pharmacology, and there were several students who’d stood out as specialists for various species.
Lime apparently had horrible grades, but she’d apprenticed under Cthulhy for a long time. Glenn was sure she had some unique ability he didn’t know about, but that Cthulhy found valuable.
Lime was humming. “It’s my first time coming to the clinic, but it’s nice, yeah. For some reason, it reminds me of the old days. You remember…the lab we did together at the Academy?”
“The lab…we did together?” Glenn tilted his head.
He didn’t remember that at all. Cthulhy’s pupils conducted independent research in small groups, but Glenn only remembered helping with Sapphee’s. Lime hadn’t been there.
He was about to tell her as much when she piped up.
“Uh, um, yeah, so—”
For some reason, Lime had grown flustered, ripples forming on the surface of her skin. If anything, Glenn thought he should be growing flustered, as he was the one who’d forgotten about their time at the Academy.
“Oh, hi, Lime!” As they both dithered, Sapphee stuck her head into the room. She was wrapped in the veil she wore to go out. “Doctor, do you mind if I leave for lunch? I’m also going to do some shopping.”
“Oh, uh, yeah. Of course, but…shopping?”
“There are some new medications on the market that I’d like to examine. C’mon Lime, time to go. You can’t stay here and bother the doctor all day.”
Sapphee poked Lime with the end of her parasol.
“Oh, uh, yeah.”
Lime didn’t even flinch. Since she was made of slime, it was a valid form of communication—though there was always a risk of the parasol being absorbed.
“Now then, Doctor. I’ll be back.”
“Be careful,” was all Glenn could say.
As Sapphee and Lime left, he began to prepare for his afternoon appointments.
✦ ✦ ✦
“I told you that in secret!”
Sapphee and Lime were at a diner near the clinic. Sapphee was munching on a bacon and egg sandwich as she reprimanded the slime.
“Err…it was just so long ago…” Lime said.
“At the very least, give me a warning next time.”
“I didn’t mean to. It just came out, yeah.”
The surface of Lime’s body quivered. She was crying tears of lime and drinking lime juice, her favorite. Her pigtails bounced, flinging bits of gelatinous flesh in every direction.
Sapphee dodged the flying fragments. “Be careful, Lime.”
“But, but…I’m lonely, yeah? It was the three of us—you, me, and Glenn—in the lab together! How could he forget…?”
“It is unfortunate.”
Sapphee frowned as she watched Lime sob. She probably was genuinely sad, but as an amorphous being, Lime just looked like she was mimicking human emotions.
“So…how much does Glenn remember, yeah?”
“I don’t know. I feel like casually bringing it up just confuses him, so I try to avoid talking about the Academy.”
Sapphee kept her voice down. Lime was the only person she could talk to about this. Only the two of them and and their mentor, Cthulhy, shared the secret from their time at the Academy—a secret that Glenn couldn’t find out.
“It seems Glenn has forgotten some things from his time at the Academy,” Sapphee said. “Especially about you, Lime.”
“Ahhh, it’s so sad, yeah?”
“Hey, stay off the table!”
Lime had released her human form and was oozing everywhere. While slimes could transform freely, like amoeba, they were also sentient and intelligent enough to converse. Even for monsters, their biology was particularly curious. According to Cthulhy, it was possible that they were related to the Shoggoths, like the new graveyard city manager, Molly.
“Anyway, that’s why I wanted to take you out to lunch today,” Sapphee said.
“Huh?”
“I can’t talk to Glenn about our time at the Academy. But maybe if we talk to each other, we won’t feel so lonely.”
“R-really, yeah!” With a springing noise, Lime returned to her human shape. “Can we, Sapphee?”
“I can’t take too long a lunch break…but it’s nice to reminisce about school, sometimes.”
Sapphee thought back to her time in the capital of the monster realm, as a pupil of Cthulhy.
“I didn’t want to restrict myself to the pharmacology traditionally practiced by my family,” she recalled. “I wanted to study more advanced medical science, too. So I ran away from home, went to the Academy, and asked Cthulhy to take me on as an apprentice.”
“You had ambition, yeah?”
“When I got there, you were already studying under her, Lime.”
“That’s right, yeah? Then, after we finished our basic studies and moved up—”
“Right.” Sapphee sighed. “Then Glenn showed up…and all the trouble started.”
Glenn Litbeit was Sapphee’s childhood friend, and the love of her life. But the truth was, she wasn’t remotely pleased when they first ran into each other. Until Glenn showed up, the only students at the Academy were monsters—but his grades had quickly surpassed theirs, and even the students who’d come before.
“It was rough, yeah?” Lime agreed.
The nurse and the pharmacist reminisced about their schoolgirl days, particularly the parts involving a younger Glenn Litbeit.
It had all started when Cthulhy ordered them to establish a laboratory.