What if Doctor Nine was not real?
“But I’m a monster,” Bethy said aloud. Millie’s voice laughed, mocking her.
Then the roadster pulled away from the curb …very slowly …and moved into the center of the boulevard on which they lived. Bethy watched, suddenly terrified. Was Doctor Nine a ghost of her mind? Was he leaving now that she had started to believe that he was only part of whatever made her a monster?
Bethy’s stomach started to churn.
“No!” she said firmly. “No …he’s here for me.”
Another car came down the street and Bethy realized that it would have to either veer around the roadster or pass through it. If it was real, the car would veer. If Doctor Nine lived only in her head the oncoming car would just pass through it, reality passing through fantasy.
“No,” she said again. She felt that her feet were riveted to the floor, held fast by nails of doubt driven through her flesh and bone. All she had to do was wait there, to see the car and how it reacted, or didn’t react. Just five more seconds and then she would know whether she was a godlike monster or a mad little girl.
“Doctor Nine…” she breathed.
The car was almost there. Moses doubted, he tapped the rock.
The cartoon cat on the wall mocked her with its swishing tail.
“No,” she said once more.
And Bethy turned away from the window before the car reached the roadster. Her decision was made. Without proof either way. She picked up her backpack, slung it over one shoulder, and left the bedroom. Left Millie and the blood and the fiction that she had constructed. She left her room and her parents and her Aunt Annie. She left her life.
She never looked back.
In the end she did not need to look to see if the car veered or drove straight through. She walked quietly down the stairs, placing her feet where she knew there were no squeaks and headed to the front door, flitting out into the night.
To the roadster. And to Doctor Nine, and to the other monsters he had collected along the way.
She knew they would be there.
She had no doubts at all.
