Words All The Way Down

Inspired by the following prompt: [WP] You are a new worker at this retirement home. You are starting to suspect that those old ladies were retired magical girls. You heard their cute pets talk and you see their magic star wands on display. It doesn’t help their cover that the younger magical girls visit their grandmas all the time!

Your footsteps echo down a hall of identical doors with identical nameplates. The only defining features are the nameplates each with their own unique names and their own unique decoration of starts, hearts, and clovers. You’re just patrolling to see if the in-house patients need anything.

As you continue down the hall, you hear overhear an argument between a patient and one of her visitors.

“You can ask any of the other girls here,” yells the voice of the patient in room 6b. “The only reason any of us are still here to talk to you are because our wands are up there on a shelf, and we refuse to touch them.”

“But grandma,” the visitor whines, “who is going to defeat the witches? I have my friends on my side. They won’t let anything bad happen to me.”

“When it comes to being a magical girl, your friends mean less than nothing,” replies the patient.

You want to continue down the hall, but feel drawn in to the argument, as if by a tractor beam. Aren’t magical girls supposed to be all about friendship and love.

“Everyone in this building in this building has had a friend die. Everyone in this building has been put in an impossible situation. Love and friendship be damned. The best thing you can do is lose that wand in the back of the deepest closet you have. If only we could break the things. The only smart magical girls you’ll find are the ones that retired here.” The patient sounds done with talking; her argument had likely taken a lot out of her.

You knock on the door, “Is everything alright in here? Do you need some assistance?”

The patient and visitor turn around with a start. The visitor replies, “No, we’re fine. We’re just about done here anyways. Please come back in an hour and check on grandma again then.”

“Of course,” you say, closing the door behind you.

You continue on, footsteps echoing again, passing more identical doors with unique nameplates. Now that the room you’ve left behind is quiet you can hear wails of despair emanating from another room. Clearly there will be one less visitor to take care of this month and one less potential retiree.