I'm sure we all remember beloved Paranatural character Nurse Brittle from his first and perhaps last appearance. 

Also HEY! I am pleased to announce that the Activity Club pin set campaign has wrapped up with an incredible 444 sold! (Not numerical symbolism that I have to be worried about in MY culture; I just get to enjoy the pleasing repetition.) Thank you EVERYBODY who bought one and helped spread the word. The campaign really rallied in its last week, and became a huge financial help for me once it crossed the 400 mark. That’s two months’ rent babyyy. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you guys showing up in this and other ways to support me and Paranatural. You all truly are the people tossing fuel onto this funny story’s fire. Thank you again, from the bottom of my heart, and I hope you all enjoy your pins when they ship out around October! 

That’s all! Thanks for reading! Please also support Paranatural on Patreon and Ko-fi, and thank you so much if you do!

~

[Transcript]

        “Dearie me, but this is exciting!”

        Principal Pleezdoo had greeted Doctor Zarei at the door of her office like a low sun poking up past the horizon—a tiny, ground-bound ball of golden energy.

        “It’s so good to see you back at Bayview Biddle School, all grown up and oh-so beautiful, Miss Mina!” Pleezdoo beamed. “No, I should say Doctor, if I read your VERY impressive resume correctly. Come in, my dear, oh do come in!”

        The principal excitedly ushered Zarei into her office like a toy poodle trained to work beyond its weight class as a sheepdog.

        “You’re too kind,” Zarei droned back at her, sounding somewhat like a Goldilocks rejecting the excesses of her porridge.

        Doctor Zarei had arrived at the teacher’s lounge in a state of combat-ready vigilance. Her march through the middle school’s halls had been a gauntlet for her nerves; at every turn, she’d been anticipating an encounter with the Witch or Richard Spender. She’d steeled herself for both, however, since they were unavoidable. She would have to speak with Richard and Jean about her meeting with Boss Leader... and, before the day was over, she intended to destroy the Witch for good.

        “Tea and cookies?” asked the principal. “I remember you liked cookies.”

        “...A noteworthy quirk for a teen, to be certain. How lovely to learn that my preferences left such a textured impression.” Zarei sat cross-legged in her cushioned chair, studying the candy-bright principal’s office with disdainful recollection. It was decorated just like Pleezdoo’s room back when she’d been Mina’s useless, toothless eighth-grade guidance counselor. “You always were... observant, Miss Pleezdoo.”

        “That sounds like a roundabout ‘yes’ to me!” chirped Principal Pleezdoo, getting to work at a treat table off in a corner. She set a floral-patterned teapot boiling on a small electric heater, and plucked her finest plates and doilies from their dainty dollhouse shelving. “We never lose that sweet tooth, or that sweet, sweet inner child! It just gets all wrapped up in pride and pretense... but we still have to indulge it on occasion, don’t we, Doctor? All those ooey, gooey cravings that we bury...! Oh, and you were SUCH a tender sweetheart back in middle school!”

        Zarei pushed up her glasses. That was one way to describe her eighth-grade self. She’d been haunted back then, a shrinking victim of the Witch’s slow encroachment on her psyche. It had started as a chill, at first, a dread she couldn’t quite explain. Then the nightmares had begun. When they had bled into the waking world—when she had started sleeplessly sleepwalking through the school, not knowing when the real became her terrifying visions—Pleezdoo had been prominent among the many adults who’d failed to end or understand her plight. Zarei could vaguely recall her pacifistic anti-bullying techniques and outdated PSA tapes, her breathing exercises and the time that she had made her do trust falls with Mary Rose Baxter. Mostly, though, she remembered Pleezdoo’s big shiny eyes, that searching look of doubting pity, and the endless well of sympathy that never did a thing to stop her torment.

        Mina had changed, though, and Pleezdoo was wrong—the scared little girl that she had been back then was gone for good. She didn’t need help anymore. She didn’t need an Agent Summers to miraculously save her. She’d face her boogeyman alone, with all the strength and knowledge she had gained as an adult. 

        “Yalevard University!” said Principal Pleezdoo, reading proudly off of Mina’s forged credentials. “And it says here you’re a doctor of...”

        “Fractal hyperphysics,” replied Zarei, “with a minor in rudimentary first aid.”

        Principal Pleezdoo gave Zarei a dewy, amphibian wink.

        “Well, ONE of those should come in handy for a substitute school nurse,” she said.

        “They both will. Children are matter like anything else, and their particles move in predictable patterns.”

        Principal Pleezdoo laughed. Doctor Zarei did not. Principal Pleezdoo stopped laughing.

        “Well, you’ll, er... certainly fit the culture of the Biddle School,” sighed Pleezdoo. 

        She was used to bizarre eccentrics wreaking havoc in her midst, and her therapist had told her she should try to be like water: invisible and yielding, slowly shaping her environment with years of gentle going-with-the-flow. One of these days, kindness and karma would prevail... or maybe Devilora would just curl up in the parking lot and die. This was the outer limit of Posy Pleezdoo’s political imagination; she loved to vote, wished hard for better days, and was always disappointed when petitions she had signed had no perceptible effect.

        “We’ll have to see just how predictable you find the children, though,” Pleezdoo said with a fluttering chuckle. “It’s thanks to their wild shenanigans”—she winced as if she’d said a dirty word—“that old Nurse Brittle threw his back out in the first place.”

        “...Yes, who could have predicted that,” Mina mumbled sarcastically.

        “I certainly couldn’t predict where you were headed, dear,” the principal said, smiling up at her. “Look at you, so confident and competent! You’ve come such a long way... and, er, then straight back again—but goodness me! You’re not the trembling thing whose very best friend was a puppet, that’s for sure!”

         “...Come again?” Mina squinted down at Pleezdoo.

        “Oh, you know. From that funny TV special you were always going on about!” Principal Pleezdoo hummed a few bars of a half-remembered theme song. “It was all the rage with you kids in my guidance counselor days. I tried to track it down, you know, to see what all the fuss was, but I could never seem to catch it when it aired. I’m not sure I even found the channel!”

        “Itsy Bitsy... and Sockpuppy’s... Fun Puppet Playtime,” Zarei said, shaping each word with reluctance. She stared off with eyes unfocused at a saccharine poster of a cat and a mouse getting married.

        “Yes, that’s the one! Gosh, it really did sound too young for you middle schoolers...” Pleezdoo clapped her little hands together, as if praying for forgiveness. “But, you know, it was all you’d draw in art class, and I was DESPERATE for a breakthrough, so I brought in the supplies, and—”

        “And I made my own best friend.”

        “It got you talking to yourself, at least!” Pleezdoo laughed. She stared off with eyes unfocused at a saccharine poster of a cat and a mouse negotiating an amicable divorce. “Heavens, but we truly were flying by the seat of our pants back in the day. It was the Wild West here on East Island, let me tell you! I’m fairly certain children were legally classified as ‘ensouled livestock’ for insurance purposes until around aught-two? Aught-three?” Principal Pleezdoo sank back in her chair with a nervous little sigh. “Public education has, er, certainly made tiptoed strides since then, but our Vice Principal is... something of a holdout...”

        Doctor Zarei’s eyes narrowed. 

        “Is she now?”

        “Hasn’t changed a bit, our Devilora. She’d be Miss DuNacht to you,” the principal sighed, massaging the bridge of her nose. “The old librarian. I’m sure that you remember her. She certainly remembers you.”

        Mina’s glare was catlike, sliver-thin.

        “...Does she now?”

        Principal Pleezdoo nodded. She almost looked apologetic.

        “She asked about you just today.”

        “...Did she now?”

        “Yes, she—”

        The sudden screech of Pleezdoo’s boiling teapot sent her bouncing in the air; Mina flinched, too, despite the courage she was certain she had conjured.

        “Dear oh dear! Goodness me, that girl can scream!” the principal giggled, hopping out of her chair to prepare their refreshments. “You never know if it’s tea time or if that Johnny Jhonny’s pulled the fire alarm again! Hee hee!”

        Doctor Zarei blinked away embarrassment and eased back in her chair. She needed to stay focused. She had just been wound too tight. There was nothing that could truly scare her now. She had already faced all of her worst nightmares... right here, thirteen years ago, within this very school.