Midnight Creature Feature, Chapter Four: Nurse Pruitt Will See You Now

Midnight Creature Feature, Chapter Four: Nurse Pruitt Will See You Now, title card.

Midnight Creature Feature, Chapter Four: Nurse Pruitt Will See You Now

Previously: a shy swamp creature emptied the punch bowl over the Mayor, and an ambulance pulled up outside. Read Chapter Three, or start at Chapter One.

A nurse in a white cap steps down from an old ambulance with a flashing roof light, in thick fog under a full moon.
Night call.

The ambulance doors swing open. Somebody in a starched white cap steps down into the fog, very slowly, the way you’d walk if your knees had been retired some years ago.

An ashen nurse with dark-ringed eyes and rolled hair, holding a clipboard and a giant syringe, shuffles into the hall as guests shrink back.
Nurse Pruitt.

“This,” groans Nurse Pruitt, surveying the punch, the puddles and the werewolf, “is an outbreak.”

Nervous party guests stand in a queue as the grey nurse holds up her oversized syringe and clipboard.
Form an orderly line.

Within minutes the whole Spook-tacular is in a queue. Nobody is quite sure why. It just feels like the kind of thing you do when a nurse looks at you like that.

Dottie stands with hands on hips while the swamp creature, the werewolf and Dracula cower behind her.
Brave monsters.

The werewolf, the vampire and the thing from the pond hide behind a cheerleader. It turns out that even monsters don’t like injections.

Dottie gently touches the grey nurse's arm, and the nurse smiles shyly, holding her clipboard.
“You just want to help.”

Dottie looks at the clipboard: a long list of names, not one ticked. “You know what this party needs? A first-aid station. Somebody’s going to slip on that pond water.”

The grey nurse happily bandages Chet's bare toe at a folding table as he winces in his cowboy hat.
First patient.

Somebody does. It’s Chet. Nurse Pruitt has never been happier.

The nurse does a stiff-legged rock-and-roll dance as the monsters and guests dance around her and the band plays.
Doctor’s orders.

The Moonlighters crank up the rock and roll, and Nurse Pruitt prescribes herself one dance. Then another. Her knees are not happy about it. She doesn’t care.

Seen from behind the band, all four monsters and Dottie turn towards the stage as the wall clock reaches midnight.
Midnight.

Then the hall clock strikes twelve, and every monster in the room turns slowly towards the stage.

Soundtrack (instrumental): Nurse Pruitt Will See You Now

Listen to Nurse Pruitt Will See You Now

Tomorrow, Halloween night: the finale, The Midnight Monster Ball. Follow the whole series in Midnight Creature Feature.

One response

  1. […] Pruitt found her calling, and at the stroke of midnight every monster turned towards the stage. Read Chapter Four, or start at Chapter […]

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