The afternoon found Doctor Ilse Reynders, 19-time PhD polymath and Site-43's Acroamatic Abatement Chair sitting in the office of her psychologist, Dr. Nhung Ngo. Ilse was very spirited today, as was evident in the wild gestures her hands were making as she spoke.
"I don't know if I was ready. Hell, I don't know if I ever will be. We had been talking for years and maintained a cordial professional relationship while I looked into the giftschreiber during my time in…" Ilse shuddered, thinking about the ADDC. "…there."
Ngo nodded, hands folded above the notepad on her lap.
"I just— I— Godverdomme," her gesticulations came to an end as she cupped her head in her hands. "I feel like I'm making up excuses to not be in this relationship."
Ngo assented with a hum, then spoke up: "Why do you think you are making excuses?"
"I told Jay this shortly after we started dating. I shouldn't form earthly attachments."
"Earthly attachments?"
"You know. Making friends. Connections. Verliefd worden."
"Hmm?"
"Nothing."
Ngo said nothing in return, and instead picked up her pen and wrote something on her notepad.
"What do you think, Dr. Ngo? Is this doomed? Am I doomed?" Ilse sighed, finally uncovering her face. Her glasses were smudged from her hands, so she removed them and quickly wiped them on her modest blue blouse before putting them back on.
"Let's take a step back for a moment here, Dr. Reynders. Despite your warning to Dr. Everwood, you still chose to remain in a relationship with them. In previous sessions, you also told me that they were initially going to move into your house topside, but they offered to instead stay on-Site since it would help you feel as if the relationship was moving slower, which was a concern you were feeling. As for this being 'doomed', if one is to be fatalistic, all relationships are doomed. People die, and there is nothing that can be done about that."
"I don't," she scoffed.
"That is true. However, I think you may find solace in the fact that you know another person who is, shall we put it, 'temporally stuck' as you are." Ngo smiled.
"… James? I mean, yes. I suppose. But he's six. And he always will be."
"Exactly." Ngo grinned. "And you will always be forty-four. He may not have undergone a tragedy like you did, but the boy was born to unfortunate circumstances and forced to serve as a D-Class until he was pulled out."
"That's another thing," Ilse leaned back on the couch, then sighed. "I don't know if I can be a good mother to James."
"You have been reading all the child psychology books I recommended to you. If anyone is equipped to be a mother, it's you."
"I guess," Ilse grumbled. "But what should I do to bond with him? He only seems interested in playing with his Pokémon."
"You'll find something." Ngo continued to smile. "But it has to come from the heart. Kids have a knack for knowing when something isn't sincere."
1 September
"Look at you, keynote speech giver. I'm proud of you!" Ilse folded her arms playfully as she leaned on the frame of her partner's doorway.
"I was only asked to give the keynote speech after Director Alder got sick. And you're acting like it's my first keynote speech. Which it's not, Ilse." Jay was busy packing their suitcase, a task which they were surprisingly deft at that considering the fact they only had one arm. They stuffed their pajamas over their dress shirt, then turned to their girlfriend and spoke barely above a whisper: "Look, I know you don't feel one-hundred percent comfortable with James alone yet, but I think this would be a good opportunity for you to bond with him."
Ilse nodded. "I'll be okay. You said it was just until Thursday, right?"
"Yep."
"I can do this."
"You can."
"Can I?"
"You walked out of time prison unscathed. You can do anything you want to, dear."
Ilse's cheeks flushed slightly, to which Jay smiled and approached her. They put their hand to her cheek and leaned in to kiss her forehead. Just as the two exchanged affection, James walked into the room.
"Ew…" he groaned, covering his eyes with his hands.
"Oh, James. You're just jealous you don't have a girlfriend," Jay teased.
"I am not!" The boy stomped.
"It's okay, honey. I'm just messing with you." They moved towards their adopted child and put their hand on his head, playfully messing up his hair. Ilse looked at the two and smiled wistfully.
"It's okay, baba. Can I go with you to your con… conf… confehraynce?" James' hands quickly moved up to stop his parent's hand from further messing up his hair.
"Conference. Con-fe-rence," Jay corrected him. "Try again, buddy."
"Con… con… con-fe-rence."
"There you go. And no, bud. You can't come with me, sorry!" Jay walked back to their suitcase. "It's going to be all boring adult stuff and me babbling for hours about things that you don't need to be worried about."
"Actually," Ilse interjected. "You get to stay with me and play your Pokémon!"
James looked over to her bashfully, then looked down at the ground. "I like Pokémon."
"I know you do, buddy," Jay sighed, shutting their suitcase. "Which is why I think this works perfectly! You get to stay here with Ilse, play your Pokémon, and she gets to hang out with you!"
"But I want to hang out with you…" he mumbled.
"I want to hang out with you, too, dude!" Jay turned to face him. "But I gotta do my job, you know?"
James pouted.
"I want to hang out with you too, James," Ilse smiled kindly.
"… okay. I'll hang out with mama, even though she doesn't know anything about Pokémon."
"Maybe you can teach her? Ilse is a quick learner!"
"Your baba is right!" she smiled.
"Okay…" the boy pouted again, then turned to his room again.
"You done packing your bag in there, James?" Jay called after him.
"Yes, baba…"
"Good. Since I leave early in the morning, you're staying with mama tonight."
James ran into the room again, a harrowed expression on his face. "But baba, my bed in mama's house has a monster under it!" The boy clung to Jay's leg, burying his face in their side.
"Is this about that SCP file he wrote?" Ilse frowned.
"I think so. And don't worry, buddy, I promise you it's nothing," they patted him on the shoulder, then leaned down to kiss the top of his head. "You're a brave guy. You're not scared of Gengar, so I'm sure you wouldn't be scared of whatever is under your bed at mama's."
Jay looked at Ilse, who looked at James. The three shared a silence, broken only by the Site's air filtration system's static.
"So, James… shall we?" Ilse grinned, holding out her hand.
"Yes, mama!" The boy nodded, then started toward his room to grab his bag.
Jay got up and approached their partner, hugging them tightly. "You're gonna do great."
2 September
Grand Cove: Grand Bend, Lambton County, Ontario, Canada
Ilse walked down the stairs and to her kitchen. Though she did not need to sleep or eat, she still liked doing both of these things ever since she had escaped the ADDC. The demi-woman stretched, turning on the tea kettle and grabbing her green matcha tea bags from the pantry, before hearing a stirring in the living room.
"Mama?" came a voice.
"James? Jeetje, don't scare me like that," she sighed, walking toward the living room.
"Sorry, mama. The monster under my bed scared me again so I slept here."
Spotting a mess of throw pillows, the boy's sheets, and his Mister Rex dinosaur figure, Ilse grumbled, shoulders slumping. "I hope you're prepared to clean this up after breakfast, young man."
"I am! I promise!" He sat upright, nodding vigorously.
"I have checked under your bed, James. There is nothing there. Whatever you're seeing down there, it's in your mind." She turned back toward the kitchen. "Do you want chocolate milk?"
"Yes, mama," the boy replied, rubbing sleep out of his eyes as he approached. "But I know the monster is real…" he mumbled.
Ilse recalled the books Dr. Ngo had recommended her a while back as she opened the fridge in search of chocolate milk for him. She thought for a moment, grabbing the milk pitcher with the nearly-empty milk bag within. James sat at the counter, watching his adoptive mother closely as she grabbed the Dutch cocoa powder and a glass for him.
"I have an idea, James." Ilse turned with her trademark kind grin, placing the glass on the counter in front of him. "Why don't you draw the monster for me? I know you like drawing, and maybe if you draw it for me, I'll know what I'm looking for when I check under your bed."
James lit up.
"So this is what you see under your bed?" Ilse crooked an eyebrow at James' drawing, analyzing it for important clues. It didn't look like anything she had ever seen before, except probably a cat of some kind. She figured it was probably another one of those Pokémon he liked so much, or in this particular case, didn't like so much.
The boy nodded. "He has teeth and claws, and horns, and quills, and a big tail, and big mean eyes!" he exclaimed, pointing at all the features as he loudly proclaimed their existence. "And he's so mean! He won't let me sleep! He make noises and hits my face when I try to look under my bed!" James added.
"I see." Ilse nodded reassuringly. "Now, tell me, James, if you could come up with a different monster to chase this one away, what kind of monster would you like for that to be?" She placed the paper containing the drawing of the feline-like monster on the counter, watching as the boy brought his right index finger to his chin pensively. He looked around the room, avoiding her gaze before finally matching eyes with her.
"Mabostiff."
"Mabostiff? What?"
"It's a Pokémon."
Ilse thought for a moment. It was clear to her that Pokémon meant a lot to her adopted child, even if she only barely understood the concept of what it was from Jay giving her briefings on it and idly watching as James played various iterations of the games in the franchise spanning genres and art styles. She didn't quite understand the appeal, but one of the books she had read that Ngo had recommended to her had suggested that kids and parents try to find common ground.
"What does a Mabostiff who can scare the monster under your bed look like? Can you draw it for me?" She passed James a spare sheet of white copy paper and watched as his eyes lit up again.
After fetching his Switch and turning on his game to show her what the creature looked like digitally, Ilse still suggested the boy draw it on his own.
And draw he did.
"Can you check one more time?" James asked, pulling the covers to his chin as Ilse stood to leave his bedside.
"Of course, schatje, but I don't think that's going to change anything," she grunted, getting down on the ground.
"Thank you mama…" James peered over the side of the bed, head hanging upside down as Ilse made a whole show of scoping out the underside of his bed. She found nothing but an empty bag of Fruit Gushers, which she sighed at, pulling it out.
"And what is this, young man?"
"You keep eating all of them! I wanted one," he pouted, sitting back up on the bed and folding his arms defiantly.
If Jay had been there, she knew they would have laughed. Ilse stuffed the empty bag into her robe's pocket and got up, grunting again. "Yeah, you're right. Sorry. I should have better control over myself."
"Its okay, mama, I forgive you. Did you see the monster?"
"Not a single monster to be found."
"Are you sure?"
"Positive."
"Promise?"
"Promise."
"Pinky promise?"
"James," she said somewhat sternly. The boy sheepishly sunk under the covers. Ilse patted his head gently, turning to leave the room. As she did, she spotted his drawing of Mabostiff sitting atop his desk, illuminated by his Pikachu nightlight. An idea popped into her head, and she course corrected toward the drawing.
"Hey."
"Yes, mama?"
"Why don't we put your drawing of Mabostiff under your bed so it can protect you from the monster tonight?" she grinned.
For the third time that day, Ilse watched James' eyes light up with wonder.
3 September
Grand Cove: Grand Bend, Lambton County, Ontario, Canada
"Mama… wake up!"
James' voice drew Ilse out of the meditative trance she had come to accept as 'sleep' ever since she had rejoined the world. The demi-woman glanced at the alarm clock by her bedside.
3:05 AM
"James… honey, what happened?" she blinked a few times, still a bit out of it. Her gaze finally settled on the boy in front of her, who had climbed atop her bed and was sitting on her lap.
"The monster! He's there! He ripped up my drawing!" he choked out, holding onto his Gengar plushie as if his life depended on it.
"Huh?"
"Go look, mama! You'll see what he did!" James buried his face in her chest, to which Ilse instinctively comforted the boy by patting him on the back and kissing the top of his head.
"Okay. Come with me, okay? Let's be brave together." She moved to get up, to which he shook his head.
"I don't wanna go…"
"Why not?"
"I'm scared."
"You're not scared of… what were they again… what did your baba call them… ghost Pokémon?" Ilse cooed in his ear.
"This isn't a Pokémon, mama! He's real and mean!"
"Okay, James. I understand. Can you stay here for me then? I'm gonna check under your bed." She gently moved the boy off of her so she could get up.
He vigorously nodded, then got under the covers, making himself small as if Jay were there to take up space on the opposite side of the bed. She stood up, pat him on the head, and put on her robe before heading out of her room.
Despite her many years of dealing with things far more hard to believe than this, she was surprised to find that something had indeed torn up James' drawing.
After the initial surprise factor wore off and she managed to get James to fall asleep on her bed, Ilse got to brainstorming. As far as she could tell, this monster only ever appeared to James, and was some sort of horned cat thing. She also had deduced that it was not overly fond of dog drawings, at least not ones illustrated by her child.
The what of what this monster was exactly wasn't her main point of focus during her brainstorming session, but rather the why. She knew most cats and dogs didn't get along. That was one thing that had stayed the same over her 80-year tenure at the ADDC. Maybe this was the spirit of some vengeful anomalous cat?
How could she get rid of that? She could wait until morning and contact Spectrometry and Spectremetry when Mataxas got into her office, but she was probably too busy to deal with whatever this was. At least to Ilse, it seemed like a low-priority nuisance.
She looked at James. She watched his chest rise and fall as he slept. She watched as he held onto his Gengar plushie, curled up around it in a ball. To him, this wasn't a low-priority nuisance. This was a very real, very scary situation for the boy, and she felt bad for not treating it as seriously as she should have. Perhapts contacting Mataxas wouldn't be too bad an idea.
Suddenly, an idea manifested itself in her mind palace.
She did know of at least one sure-fire way of getting rid of an unwanted cat.
Through a series of events involving abusing her power as a Foundation employee, information manipulation, and targeted dispersal of Foundation resources, Ilse had managed to acquire a dog; a Samoyed named Milo, from an over-capacity shelter. This had required her to drive into Grand Bend and lie a ton, both of which she hated doing, but now that her mind was in scientific analysis overdrive, she wasn't thinking of anything but her mission.
"Kom op, knap!" Ilse gestured for the dog, a Samoyed named Milo, to follow her into the house. She quickly opened and shut the door as they both got in.
"Mama?" came James' voice from upstairs.
"Oh, you're awake," she smiled, heading up the stairs. Ilse clicked her tongue and the dog, still on the lead, followed her up.
"Whoa! No way!" he exclaimed. "What's his name? Can we keep him?"
"His name is Milo. And maybe. If he does his job." Ilse watched as Milo approached the boy and sniffed him, then began licking his face.
"He's so fluffy!" James giggled, trying to pet the eagerly wiggling dog that insisted upon licking his face. "He doesn't look like Mabostiff though."
"Come on, James, Milo. Let's see what you can do," she tutted, turning around and walking to James' room. The two followed after her, Milo sniffing the air around him as they proceeded. Immediately upon entering James' room, Milo's ears flattened and he began sniffing around.
"What does that mean?" the boy asked.
"It means he picked up the monster's scent." Ilse's smile was ear to ear. Her theory was appearing to be proven correct.
Milo continued to sniff around a bit before ultimately stopping in front of the bed. He drew back his lips, snarling, growling, and eventually barking. After a few seconds of this, a loud hiss came from underneath. James clung to Ilse's leg, and she adjusted her glasses as she looked on in excitement. Moments later, a shadow drew out from underneath the bed, revealing itself to be a smaller version of the entities that had dragged away the men during construction of Site-43 all those years ago.
The monster hissed at Milo again, but the dog did not back down from barking. James whimpered. This display continued for what felt like an eternity, until eventually, the monster hissed one last time before running off, disappearing into the walls.
James looked around.
Ilse laughed.
Milo stopped barking, resuming sniffing the area. Eventually, he stopped, content with his efforts.
"Braaf, Milo! Good boy!" She patted his head.
"So did he do his job? Is that it? Is the monster gone, mama?"
"It would seem so," Ilse smiled, glad her theory and plan had gone the way they did.
"That means we can keep him! I'm gonna call baba and tell them!" James jumped for joy, letting go of her.
"W-what?" Ilse realized she had completely forgotten about asking for Jay's input on this. The weight of suddenly having become a dog foster hit her, and the fact that she had so eagerly thought to just use this dog and the kind people at the shelter for this. She felt a powerful sense of guilt overwhelm her.
This was going to be hard to explain to both Jay and Ngo.