The doctor rang the doorbell of the gas station in the early morning hours. “Anyone home? Josh, are you in there?”
Josh wakes cuddled up around his silicone sex butt and lifts his head. “What? Who? Yeah,” Josh yells as he throws on his clothes and looks over, realizing the door is there watching him. “That’s creepy. Should you come downstairs with me?”
The doorkeeper has already woken and is peering out around the door. “Maybe,” he whispers as he watches Josh run down the steps.
“Ok, don’t leave; almost there.” Josh winces as the grip tape on the steps bites into his feet as he rushes to the door to let the doctor in.
The doctor looks the place over. He knows his way around; he visits once a week to get his shipment of comics. It’s just not the same when you get them in the mail. “Where is the patient?” the alien doctor asks, his translucent skin a light sky blue today, so obvious compared to the green of the landscape behind him. He sets his brown leather doctor’s bag on the counter.
“He isn’t here yet, but he will be; let me call him.” Josh rushes to the phone and dials the number the Finder last used.
“Do you have the doctor?” The Finder asks, already knowing the answer; he has been sitting buried in a grass-covered dune for half the night, waiting for the bones of his leg to quietly knit themselves back together.
“Yes, get here right now,” Josh says into the handset. He is looking out the window and is shocked when a piece of a nearby dune jumps up and starts to walk to the door. “Who is this guy, Rambo? A knock-off Schwarzenegger, more like a vampire DeVito,” he says, and the doctor laughs.
The finder walks into the gas station and looks at the doctor. “What the hell are you?” he says, looking the transparent alien over.
The doctor raises his nose. “I am a doctor, and I would ask what you are, but it’s obvious you’re a nosferatu, a nightwalker, a living undead. Or more precisely, a human infected with a mythological blood poison and elixir of life rolled into one.”
The Finder smiles wide, showing his teeth. “Well, well, I guess you have done your homework at least.”
The doctor raises an eyebrow. “Your human doctors are allowed to have a woefully inadequate education due to your limited lifespans.” He opens his bag and pulls out a stethoscope. “My species sets out to learn about every nuanced detail of their chosen race. I chose Homo Sapiens.” He looks around the gas station. “Before you ask, I choose them because they have great forms of entertainment, and I find the four-chambered hearts fascinating.”
There is a pause in the air; it lingers long enough for the doctor to get bored. He fills it with “Hey Josh, did the new issue of Beta-Man arrive yet?”
Josh looks around for the daily delivery of mail from Omaha, but it hasn’t arrived. “Not yet,” he says quickly. He looks at the doctor, then the vampire, then the doctor. He is confused.
“Let’s not play around here; time is ticking.” The vampire removes his jacket and shirt. “Can you cure me or what?” he says as he sets the clothes on the counter next to the doctor’s bag.
“Fascinating,” the doctor says, moving close and examining the wounds that heal and reburn themselves as they move slowly across the vampire’s body, forming strange shapes that look a little like Rorschach paintings. He moves his head inches away before touching the surface. “What is that?” the doctor asks.
“You’re useless.” He grabs his shirt and starts putting it back on. “It’s silver, doctor. It’s silver in my body. You can imagine how that would be a bad thing. So like I said, you’re useless.”
“You might be right. If it’s silver poisoning, I can’t do anything to extract it. Maybe I could remove it from your blood, but that won’t help if it is truly everywhere.” He leans on a shelf, knocking a Twinkie onto the floor. He takes a moment and goes through all the procedures he can think of, then he bites his clear teeth together. “I know someone who can, but he isn’t a real doctor.”
“Can he fix me or not?” the Finder seethes.
“He might be able to if anyone can,” the doctor states with reluctance.
“You are playing a dangerous game, doctor. I don’t like being played with,” the Finder says, looking over at Josh. “Get him whoever he needs.”
The doctor looks at Josh. “Call Dr. Blob and get a small children’s pool ready; you’re going to need it.”
Meanwhile at the bar
Dr. Blob is sitting in the bar of The Ranch Motel; he is using his pseudopods to push off from the bar on one side and then letting the strands of the green slime that is his body swirl out away from him before retracting them lightning quick toward the core of his body. He does this over and over and over, slowly going faster and faster, the bearing on the seat squealing.
The patrons of the bar turn to stare at him in annoyance; the clueless blob without any vision appendages formed is unaware; he just goes faster.
The cat tosses a shot glass that touches the core of Doctor Blob and is sucked into his body; the slight extra mass, not perfectly balanced, makes the blob whizz off and leave a 5-foot-long slime mark on the floor where he quickly pulls himself back together. “That was rude, Cat. I almost broke my record.”
The cat taps the bar impatiently. “It seems the man from the gas station requires your services,” the Cat says through gritted teeth. Happy to have an excuse to make the blob leave; the noise was ruffling his feathers.
Dr. Blob puddles outward, becoming a 4-foot-across pancake. “No, I am on vacation.”
The cat looks at the blobby “Dr. Blob. What would Izzy say if she heard you refusing to help someone?”
Dr. Blob forms back into his ball. “But I am on vacation,” he wibbles.
“You helped her, didn’t you? Don’t you want to help one more person?” The cat’s face scrunches up. ‘Wait, why do I want to help him?’ the cat thinks. He picks up the phone. “And why would I want to help you get Dr. Blob to help the Butcher of Berlin?”
Josh’s hand forms a fist. “Because I asked you to, Cat, and I have never asked you for anything, and now I am calling in a favor.”
The cat draws a shape on the bartop with his sharp fingernail. “You have a point.” He smiles, and Josh can see the teeth in his mind. “And this will make us even?”
“Yes, just get Dr. Blob to come help me help a friend,” Josh says, disgusted by the cat’s antics.
The cat pulls back and looks at himself in the reflection of the bartop. “You’re right.”
“Dr. Blob, go help Izzy, or I will never serve you cake again,” the cat says, scolding him like a schoolteacher.
Dr. Blob wobbles. “Then I want red velvet cake tonight, none of that food coloring I have read about.“
The cat grins, “As you wish.”
Dr. Blob puts on a hat and rolls out of the bar. As he enters reception, a lizard person rushes out the bar door with his cheeks red with anger. “Hat thief,” he yells.
He looks up at the hat. “You’re right, it’s not my hat.” He drops it off his head and rolls out the front doors of reception.
Instead of rolling to a car, he rolls to Izzy and Jacob’s motel room. He beats on the door. “Izzy, I need help,” he says loudly.
Izzy opens the door. “What? Who? Oh, hey, Doctor Blob, what’s up?” Izzy says. She looks at the blob; he appears to be unharmed. She stands there in her bikini, waiting for him to explain himself. After the blob looks at her expectantly, she adds, “We are just getting ready to go swim. Wanna come?”
“No, we need to go help Josh with his scary vampire problem, and I need you there in case he tries to turn me into one too.” Doctor Blob says, “Now let’s go.”
He reaches out and grabs her by the wrist and pulls, and Izzy pulls back. “Let me get a T-shirt at least.”
Dr. Blob waits while Izzy throws on a white t-shirt, then he grabs the nearest car and Dr. Blob gets in and starts it. After a few close calls they are soon pulling into the gas station.
