Murphy’s Saturday afternoon exorcism
Date: 2025-07-19 16:48
(Murphy’s Saturday afternoon exorcism)
[Sat Jul 19 2025]
Newport Square/span>/spanafternoon, about 82F(27C) degrees, and there are clear skies. The mist is heaviest At Hawthorn and Sidney/span>/spanThe afternoon heat shimmers off the concrete pathways of Newport Square as Arachne and Murphy approach the park’s main entrance. What should be the gentle sound of children playing carries an odd, discordant quality – laughter that stretches too long, the creak of swings moving in rhythm that doesn’t match the breeze.
Near the central fountain, a woman in a rumpled blazer lies unconscious on a bench, her briefcase spilled open beside her. Papers flutter in the still air despite the lack of wind, child’s crayon drawings of twisted figures bleeding through typed reports. The woman’s breathing is shallow, her eyes moving rapidly beneath closed lids.
Around the playground equipment, the shadows seem wrong – too sharp for the diffused afternoon light, and they shift independently of the structures casting them. A swing moves back and forth with no one on it, while the slide appears to ripple like water when viewed from the corner of one’s eye.
The fountain’s water reflects not the clear sky above, but what looks like a child’s bedroom ceiling, complete with glow-in-the-dark stars arranged in no constellation that exists in nature. The mist from the irrigation systems carries the faint scent of chalk dust and something medicinal, like a pediatrician’s office.
“Mm,” Arachne hums in noncommittal acknowledgement of Murphy’s potential attempt at a quip. “I have no particular feelings regarding the state of any other society beyond my own. Your cell has their uses, particularly with mongrels and other problematic personas, at least.” Her sensitive earing is quick to pick up on that odd, discordant sound that rings wrong in her ear, her pacing quickening as it’s followed toward the central fountain. Gray eyes drift over the area, slowly tracking to a woman in a rumpled blazer unconscious on the bench. She ventures over, checking her pulse, then her vitals to ensure she alive before a perfunctory study is made of the crayon-scribbled reports made. “A mother?” she presumes under her breath, lips twisted in a quiet frown before noticing the odd way the waters of the fountain give glimpses of a child’s bedroom.
Struggling with a lack of awareness Murphy notices very little of the scene at first, her attention is dominated by the unconscious woman which prevents her from noticing the finer details. She furrows her brow, mentioning, “I didn’t see her when I first got here.” then she moves closer, lightly resting a hand on the hilt of her sword at her hip as a precautionary measure but she is more wary of the unconscious woman becoming a threat than being aggressive herself.
It’s Arachne checks for vitals and takes on the risk of ambush. The messy haired ‘Captain’ shifts her focus around, noticing the swing moving all on its own, “Damn that is creepy.”
“Dr. Elena Vasquez, Child Psychology.” Inside, mixed with the scattered reports, are appointment cards for a patient listed only as “Subject 7” – but the handwriting appears to be Dr. Vasquez’s own, as if she’s been writing both sides of therapy session notes.
The fountain’s reflection shifts again. Now it shows not a bedroom ceiling but a playground at night, where the equipment casts shadows that move like living things. The merry-go-round in the reflection spins slowly, its painted horses replaced by what look like oversized medical chairs.
A child’s voice, thin and distant, seems to whisper from the direction of the actual playground: “The doctor is dreaming about me dreaming about her.“
Arachne remains vigilant of her surroundings even when she invites the risk of an ambush. “I’m sure, in all your experiences here, you’ve probably experienced worse,” she reasons to Murphy over a shoulder. Her brows lift marginally at the name read on the scattered reports. “Ambrose and Pax will want to know about this,” she reasons of Elena’s relatives in the Order and in the Illusium Court, the young monarch carefully enfolding a few sheafs of paper to slip away into her tote for later.
And then, of course, no story would be incomplete without the cue of a child’s disembodied voice floating on the breeze. It gives an imperceptible chill down the Fairchild-Montrose’s spine, fingers twitching with the instinct to unsheathe a dagger , but she refrains. “Are you Subject Seven listed in these papers?” she queries softly toward the child, following the direction toward the playground. “I don’t want to call you by the name. Do you have a name you were given by your mother? A father?”
Shivers at the child’s voice, grimly commenting Murphy glances to Arachne, “I hate when kids are involved in these.” She takes her hand off of the hilt of her sword to brush some stray hairs from her face and tuck them behind an ear. The subtle gesture drops her guard from physical violence. While Arachne speaks to the voice the Noirette moves towards the fountain, peering into the odd image it reflects.
“Doctor, doctor, what do you see? I see a little girl looking at me. Little girl, little girl, what do you do? I grow up wrong, just like you.“
As Murphy peers into the fountain’s surface, the reflection of the nighttime playground suddenly lurches closer, as if she’s falling toward it. For a moment, her own reflection shows her at age seven – gap-toothed, with scraped knees and defiant eyes that hold the same glare she wears now. The child-Murphy in the water mouths a single word: “Run.“
Behind them, Dr. Vasquez stirs slightly on the bench. Her lips move, forming words in her sleep: “The sessions never happened. I made them up. I made her up. But she’s real now, isn’t she?“
The playground equipment creaks ominously. The swing that was moving on its own has stopped, but now the slide appears to be growing longer, stretching upward like a twisted medical examination table tilted at an impossible angle.
The papers in Arachne’s hands feel warm, and the crayon marks seem to shift slightly when not looked at directly – crude drawings of a doctor and a patient, but their faces keep changing places.
With wide eyes that hint at intial confusion then fear, Murphy stares at herself, recognizing the individual as herself. She takes a step back from the fountain and looks away with a scowl and a deep breath to compose herself. “I don’t get what the Doctor means.” she tells Arachne, then theorizes anyways, “Is she saying the girl is a dream child?”
Arachne draws to an abrupt halt when the playground equipment suddenly twists and morphs sharply into something akin to a twisted medical examination table tilted at an impossible angle. She inhales a breath, sharp and sudden, fingers flicking in to cut their delicate pads and send droplets of welling blood to summon a sleek black marionette shaped like a spiderling girl into existence. “Dream children are not off the table,” she calls back toward Murphy while putting together wards quickly to create a pocket of protection against the magic on instinct. “Tell me you at least came equipped with a neutralizer grenade, Murphy.”
“I’m not a dream child. I’m a dream about being a child. There’s a difference, you know.“
Murphy’s neutralizer grenade would normally disrupt supernatural effects, but as she reaches for it, the device feels strangely warm and lightweight – like a child’s toy. The metal casing has taken on a bright primary color scheme, and when she looks closer, it resembles a Fisher-Price version of military equipment.
Arachne’s blood magic responds, but the marionette that forms is wrong. Instead of her usual precise creation, it appears as a child’s crude drawing come to life – stick-figure limbs and a crayon-scribbled face that keeps changing expression without her control.
Dr. Vasquez sits up suddenly on the bench, her eyes still closed. “The playground is where children learn to grow up,” she says in a voice that wavers between adult professional and frightened child. “But what if growing up is the scariest thing of all?“
The shadows around the playground begin to move more actively now, reaching toward the group like grasping fingers. The mist from the irrigation system grows thicker, carrying with it the sound of a music box playing a lullaby just slightly off-key.
Murphy never had a neutralizer grenade, she’s not a grenade slinging human like many are. “You ever go to one of those escape rooms and just fail to solve any of the clues and never get out till the staff has to let you out?” the woman says out loud, announcing just how incapable she is of putting together the pieces of this. When she notices the shadows of the playground advance, she puts her hand on her sword hilt again, but doesn’t draw it. She just backpeddles away from the playground towards the sleeping Dr Vasquez. “Could we wake her?”
Arachne continues to channel energy into her wards in an attempt to make it strong enough to counteract the distortions of reality from affecting her and Murphy, slowly retreating tactically before bringing herself back to Elena’s prone form draped across the bench from earlier, making sure the Vigil captain remains in range of her protection. “This is very much one of those moments, and I nearly regret leaving the games con for this,” she murmurs in shared sentiment toward her unlikely partner, looking through the papers of that opened briefcase in search of something in the files and paperwork to give a clue on how to bring this disruption to an end quickly and safely.
“We both got scared of growing up wrong.“
Murphy’s approach toward Dr. Vasquez causes the woman’s eyes to snap open, but they’re unfocused, still seeing the dream. “Don’t wake me up,” she pleads in a voice that sounds decades younger. “If I wake up, I have to remember being an adult, and adults hurt children, and I don’t want to hurt her, but I already did by making her exist.“
The playground shadows retreat slightly from Arachne’s wards, but the mist continues to thicken. Through it, the outline of a small figure becomes visible – a seven-year-old girl in a hospital gown, standing perfectly still on the warped slide.
“She’s afraid of me,” the child says, her voice carrying clearly despite the distance. “And I’m afraid of her. We’re the same person, but we can’t both be real.“
Murphy makes a face at Arachne that betrays her confusion then she addresses the Doctor first, “Not all adults hurt children. I mean most don’t right? But I guess your type of work probably isn’t very innocent.” then she looks towards where the child starts to make itself visible, speaking then to that figure in a gentler voice. “Are you saying only one of you can exist?”
“I would wager that Dr. Vasquez is the real identity, and that child is a manifestation of her younger self. It’s not an unusual theory in psychology, or so I’m told,” Arachne muses toward Murphy as she follows her gaze toward the silhouette of the child appearing in the thick of the mists. “Why is it that you both are afraid of growing up wrong? You understand that there is no right or wrong way to grow up, yes? That it’s all an experience, a journey, everyone goes through differently?” she modulates her voice to something akin a mother would take to a frightened child in need of comfort. All the while, she keeps reading those documents from the briefcase, looking for clues.
“I created her because I couldn’t face what I’d become. Every child I couldn’t help, every case I closed without answers. I made up Subject 7 to be the perfect patient – one I could actually save.“
The papers in Arachne’s hands reveal the truth: months of fabricated session notes, all in Dr. Vasquez’s handwriting. Appointment times with no actual appointments. Treatment plans for a child who existed only in her guilt-ridden imagination.
“She made me real by believing in me,” the child says, stepping down from the slide. As she moves closer, the playground equipment begins to shift back to normal proportions. “But now I’m too real. I remember things that never happened. I remember being afraid of growing up to be her.“
The mist begins to thin slightly, and Murphy can see that the child’s hospital gown has “Subject 7” written on a plastic wristband.
“We can both be real,” Dr. Vasquez whispers, finally looking directly at the approaching figure. “But only if I stop being afraid of who I’ve become.“
Finally it all starts to fall into place in Murphy’s head, the gears turn slow, the rust and lack of lubrication nearly makes real noise as she tries to think this through. “Holy shit I get it.” she decides. Maybe she doesn’t get it. Still she takes a shot, “The Doctor here feels guilty for experimenting on other real children, probably without satisfactory results. SO she made up this kid to fake the results so other kids didn’t have to face those experiments.”
The woman furrows her brow, repeating in her head what she just said to make sure it still logics correctly. “So what do we do about that?”
Arachne flicks an edgewise glance toward Murphy when it all finally clicks in place for the woman, expression inscrutable, before looking back down at the papers in her hand. They’re enfolded and set into her bag, before she spreads her hands out toward the child. “Elena,” she chooses to refer to her by the sleeping doctor’s name, as they are one in the same. “I know quite a bit about fearing who you’ve become,” she supposes, her wristwatch beginning to grow warm and hot as she weaves together the faintest hint of illusory magic, distorting the dream-like haze of mist just enough to distract the child with images of a life not so scary, full of excitement and joys in many moments. “You’re a part of the Vasquez family, so you know well as I do the pressure of wanting to grow up right, and make no mistakes, to earn the weight of your name. I have it double as both a Fairchild and Montrose. Of not making the wrong choices, of doing the right thing.”
The child stops walking as Arachne’s illusions shimmer through the mist – glimpses of birthday parties, graduation ceremonies, quiet moments of contentment. Her hospital gown begins to fade, replaced by ordinary clothes.
“I don’t want to disappear,” Subject 7 whispers, but her voice is less afraid now. “But I don’t want to keep her trapped either.“
Dr. Vasquez slowly stands from the bench, her adult composure returning as the dream logic weakens. “I created you because I needed to believe I could help someone. But helping means accepting that sometimes we fail, and that’s okay.“
The playground equipment settles into normal proportions with a final creak. The fountain’s reflection shows only sky again. The mist from the irrigation systems returns to its natural pattern.
“You don’t have to disappear,” Dr. Vasquez says, extending her hand toward the child. “You can be the part of me that still believes in healing. The part that remembers what it felt like to need help.“
Subject 7 takes her hand, and both figures become translucent for a moment before solidifying into just Dr. Vasquez, who looks more at peace than she has in the scattered case files.
“Thank you,” she says to Murphy and Arachne. “I think I can finally get some real sleep now.“
The park returns to normal afternoon stillness, with only the lingering scent of chalk dust to suggest anything unusual ever happened.