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Maggie knocked on Mr. Pines’s door and walked in with a tray of food to serve the recovering patient. He had woken up only a half hour after they had stitched him up, a feat that confused anyone who had heard about his situation.
But Maggie had seen the size of the static worm! Almost a hundred times the size of the largest one ever recorded!
“Here’s your food, Mr. Pines.” She handed him the tray and he began to tentatively eat it.
“Blegh, the stories about hospital food are sadly true, I know you humans can make better stuff than this!” He glanced up at the waiting nurse, “Do you want something?”
Maggie knew from the surgery that Mr. Pines could sass anyone, it was still hard to get over how powerful he must be, “Well sir, excuse me asking, this isn’t on the hospital’s behalf if my question upsets you, but what are you? You don't have to answer, but I’m really curious, I’ve never heard of a static worm that big, and it has to have a powerful host to become so large. But I cannot think of such a powerful being,” she paused, “sorry, I’m rambling.”
Mr. Pines spat out some jello in a laugh, he laughed for a full minute without talking a single breath, “Well Maggie, my kind believes in trade, since I’m in debt to you, I’ll tell. I’m Alcor.” He looked amused.
“E-excuse me?”
“I’m Alcor the Dreambender!” In a puff of golden glitter he shed his human disguise and gave a wide grin of sharp shark teeth below black and golden eyes.
Maggie stared at the demon with her mouth agape.
“Uh, hey. Are you okay? Darn it, I forgot how to human again.” He got up, made the bed, then floated over to Maggie, snapped his fingers in front of her face a few times and when she didn’t respond, he stopped floating and landed on the ground, “Great. I broke another one.”
Mr. Pines was checked out, Maggie went home early, and the hospital found a large check on the reception desk.
~-~-~-~
A week later, Maggie had all but forgotten the Alcor incident, but life had decided it was time to screw the young nurse over.
A displacement of air was the only warning she got, “Hey, Maggie!” Alcor popped into Maggie’s apartment with more glitter.
“AAAAHHH!” She dropped her mug of coffee on the ground, the majority of the steaming liquid landing on Maggie’s surprise guest, “What are you doing here!”
“I came to say thanks!” He did some jazz hands and snapped the coffee off of his shirt.
“Oh, um well… You did! So can you go now?”
“I got to pay off my debt still.” He looked around the room, “Wow, you’ve got a nice place!”
“I-I thought you already did? By telling me what you were?”
He looked at Maggie like she was crazy, “You saved my life, a little info isn’t gonna compare to that.”
Maggie turned away from the demon, her face was deadpan as she decided, there’s no way this is happening. There’s no way I’m dealing with this. He’ll go away if I ignore him.
~-~-~-~
He wasn’t going away.
He followed her to work, she had a mental freak-out about people seeing her with Alcor the flipping Dreambender, and almost broke her resolve to ignore him before she realized that only she could see him.
He tried giving her an inside out animal(she couldn’t tell what kind of animal it was) as a gift. Even a nurse with her experience couldn’t help but feeling nauseous at the sight.
One of her neighbors was suspicious because all twenty of her cats stared at her when she walked by, only Maggie knew they were actually staring at the space above her left shoulder where Alcor was floating.
She was getting really ticked off when a random priest came up to her and wanted to exorcise her, claiming that she was being haunted by a demon. Maggie’s head almost popped off as she yelled at the priest, started stress crying and ran away.
Then when she was having trouble with work, he added a comment that solved the problem, saving the patient’s life.
He scared away a stalker when Maggie was walking home from a night out with her girlfriends.
He ate her nightmares.
She was convincing herself not to talk to him again, right before he put Sparkle Rocks down the toilet. Maggie could hear the candy’s crackling in the pipes of the house for hours.
~-~-~-~
Maggie was in the library when Alcor starting acting weird, well… weirder than normal.
First, he kept trying to keep her from the fantasy section of the library, then he kept standing/floating/whatever-he-did in front of a certain bookshelf, obviously not wanting her to go there.
Maggie decided, Alcor hadn’t killed her yet, why not push a few buttons? So she walked over to Alcor, pushed him out of the way, and grabbed a random book from the shelf. Then, without even looking at the title, when to check it out and got in the car to go home, with the demon satisfyingly confused and sputtering, trying to get her to put the book back.
~-~-~-~
Maggie barely held in a laugh when she saw Alcor’s look of utter horror when she sat down to read The Book.
Still not having read the title, she skipped past the title pages right to the first chapter.
It was my first day at my new high school…
Maybe a bit cheesy, but not a bad first line.
I could feel my heart pound as I was told to sit next to a boy in the back of the class who was wearing sunglasses inside despite the cloudy day…
Maggie never complained about a little bit of romance in her books, but it was a bit too fast.
He had fluffy brown hair and wore a dress shirt even though the school didn’t have a dress code, “Hello!” I said and sat down, “What’s your name?”
Maggie found the description a bit familiar, but kept reading.
His voice was smooth as honey, he articulated perfectly like his job was only to talk and sway, “Alcor, and yours?”
What the? Maggie finally closed the book to look at the title:
TwinSouls.
She dropped the book in revolsion, it landed in her lap until she shoved it to the floor, who cares if it’s a library book! It’s TwinSouls! The biggest piece of garbage ever published and loved by half the teenage girl population! Who would even be dumb enough to come up with the terrible idea!
Maggie realized too late that she said that last sentence out loud.
“Tell me about it. I’ve had to deal with the wretched fanfiction for over two-thousand years. Why does it have to be one thing about humans that doesn’t change!” He sighed then got a fond look in his eyes, “Well, that and ice cream, it's been going strong for longer than I can remember.”
“Ice cream is awesome.” She stood up and walked shakily to the kitchen, “Speaking of which,” she pulled out a tub of chocolate swirl, “want some?”
Alcor stared st Maggie, “For real? Weren’t you just shunning me for the past month?”
“Yeah, but my resolve has been cracking,” she ate a spoonful of ice cream, “You want some or not?”
Alcor floated over and tentatively took the second spoon from her hand, “You’re taking this demon thing awfully well, aren’t you remotely worried?”
She ate a spoonful of ice cream, “Nah, you’ve already been protecting me like a dad, if you wanted to kill me you already would’ve.”
Alcor pouted, “I have not been acting like a dad!”
“You totally have.”
“Have not!”
“Have to!”
He sighed and looked to see that Maggie had eaten most of the measly pint tub while he was distracted. He shook his head and took a bite.
“Thanks, Maggie.”
“It’s nothing, the ice cream was on sale.”
“No, not that.”
“For what then?” She stopped reaching for ice cream to stare at Alcor’s face.
“Not kicking me out, I really thought you would after a while, you wouldn’t even talk to me,” He ate probably the largest spoonful of ice cream known to man.
“Hey! Don’t take all the ice cream! But it’s no problem, once I realized you actually meant well, I was fine with you, especially since you never followed me into the bathroom, you’re a real dork like that, Alcor.” She pointed at him with her spoon.
Alcor laughed and left Maggie to the rest of the tub, “Actually, my name is Dipper.”
Dipper found that the next ice cream related food item to enter the house was a bowl of Dippin’ Dots.
(“That’s not a good pun, Maggie!”
“It totally is, Dippin’ Dots! Boop!” She poked him on the nose.
Dipper smiled despite himself.)