Down the Rabbit Hole
"Ah---ah---AH-CHOO!"
Egon fell out of bed and wound up nearly standing on his head when he hit the floor.
"That does it," Peter said, "I'm not working with you today."
Egon lowered his legs, straightened out his nightgown and turned over onto his stomach as he tried to gather his strength to respond but he was too weak. He felt Ray and Winston each grab an arm and lift him up and help him back into bed.
"You'd better take it easy today," Ray told him, "You were doing that all night. You sound pretty sick."
"I feel like it too," Egon replied as he lay against the pillow.
That right away was a red flag to the other Ghostbusters because Egon rarely admitted to being sick.
"Well," Peter said, "On the bright side, business has been slow this week so maybe we'll get lucky and nobody will call today."
"And if they do," Ray added, "I'm sure the three of us could handle it until you're back on your feet again."
Egon groaned but otherwise didn't move or speak.
"What's going on up here? Where is everybody?" the door opened and Janine stepped in and immediately took notice that something didn't look right, "Egon, what's wrong?"
He didn't open his eyes but weakly got out, "I feel terrible."
"It's probably that new flu that's going around," Winston said, "Half the city's got it."
"Oh you poor thing!" Janine said as she fell down at his side, "Is there anything we can do for you?"
"Yes, please be quiet," Egon replied.
"That's a good idea," Ray said, "We'll get out of here and let you rest."
"If you need anything," Janine said as she turned for the door, "Just let us know."
Egon let out another groan which they took as an agreement and they one by one walked out of the room and Peter closed the door behind them. Once they had gone, Egon pulled up the covers and turned on his side. Right now he felt like what people looked like in alien movies when the invaders took over the earthlings' bodies and implanted eggs and pods in them to incubate a new alien life…then the earthling's body exploded.
"Right now," he said to himself, "That might be more pleasant than this."
As he tried to get to sleep again, he was oblivious to the little green blob that was coming in through the wall. Slimer hadn't seen Egon yet that morning and saw him still in bed. He sputtered to himself and laughed as he charged at the man. Hovering directly over Egon, Slimer poked him repeatedly, calling out, "Wakey wakey! Wakey wakey!"
Turning on his other side, Egon shooed at the spud and said to him, "Go away, Slimer, I'm not in the mood today."
Slimer grumbled to himself and tried to think of something else to get a reaction out of Egon. He grabbed at the edges of his mouth and pulled it out to a size three times of what it normally was and wiggled his tongue while his eyeballs spun around. Nothing. Determined to get some reaction out of Egon, Slimer wrapped his scrawny arms around his protruding gut like a swimmer about to do a cannonball and dove down and landed in the bed with him, his ooze seeping in through the sheets and even Egon's nightgown.
"SLIMER!"
Slimer screamed and flew along the walls as Egon tried to catch him.
"What's going on in here?" Janine asked as she opened the door and came in.
Slimer flew over her head and out the door and down the stairs, leaving just she and Egon in the room.
"Egon, you're a mess!" she said, "Are you alright?"
Sighing with defeat, Egon looked at the green slime on his hands that stretched like chewed up bubble gum when he moved and replied, "I'm alright, but now I need to take a shower."
Half an hour later, Egon emerged from the bathroom, recently showered, in a clean nightgown and carrying a bucket. He put the bucket on the floor by the bed and slipped under the new covers Janine had put on while he washed up. As far as he was concerned, tomorrow couldn't come fast enough. His head was pounding, his stomach was flipping around, he knew he wouldn't be able to keep anything down, he was hot and cold, he hadn't felt this miserable in as long as he could remember. Looking back he couldn't really recall a time when he was sick, not enough to stay in bed all day anyway.
"All the things science has come up with," he grumbled to himself, "And they can't figure out what to do about a virus as common as this one. Eh…" he continued grumbling, "Crumbs."
Ooh he thought to himself, he wished he hadn't said that.
He laid down again and tried to go to sleep. He didn't remember actually falling asleep, but the next thing he knew he heard a far off voice calling his name. Then he realized it was Janine; he opened his eyes and looked up to see what she wanted.
"I went to the drugstore and got some medicine for you," she said as she uncorked a large green bottle and started pouring its contents into a spoon, "The pharmacist said to give you two tablespoons every four hours. I thought it sounded a bit excessive but I guess he knows what he's talking about."
Egon looked over at the bottle. He didn't know what it was and he'd never seen anything that looked like that before; what more he was very wary about taking any medicine he didn't know about. He opened his mouth to speak but Janine took it as a sign to shove the spoon in and spill the contents down his throat. It tasted awful but before he could protest, Janine did it again.
"What is that stuff?" he demanded to know.
"Some new medicine is all I know," she said as she put the lid back on, "The man at the counter said it should get you well in no time."
"That's a tired line in the medical business," Egon told her.
"Well whatever it is, he said it works," Janine said, "Now you try and go to sleep and I'll come up later for your next dosage."
"That's not medicine," Egon commented as Janine headed for the door, "They should market that stuff to the space program as rocket fuel."
"Egon…hey Egon, are you awake?"
Forcing his eyes to open in two narrow slits, he looked up and even without his glasses, recognized Ray standing over him.
"I'm awake now, what do you want?" he asked.
"Janine told us she got you some medicine you're supposed to take," Ray answered.
Four hours had passed already? Well maybe this wouldn't be such a terrible ordeal after all.
He sat up in bed and said as Ray poured another spoonful, "I don't know what good it'll do, all those things are is alcohol and synthetic opiates."
"Still, it's worth a try, isn't it?" Ray asked.
Egon looked from him to the spoon of green liquid. "Kill or cure, I suppose," he answered.
So he took two more spoons of the vile stuff and tried to go back to sleep. It didn't seem to be too long before he became aware of Peter's presence in the room, poking him and saying, "Egon, hey Egon, wake up! It's time to take your medicine."
Again? Egon glanced over to the windows and saw that by the angle of the sun's light, something was definitely not adding up.
"What is this stuff anyway?" Peter asked as he filled up the spoon, "It looks like one of your experiments from back in college."
All the same, he managed to force two spoons of it down Egon's throat and then seemed to disappear from the room. Egon went back to sleep, only to be awoken again by Janine who came to give him another dosage. Maybe it was his fever but something about this whole thing didn't seem to connect, he noted.
After Janine left, he went to sleep and had an unusual dream that Slimer was hovering over him, sticking the lip of a beer bottle in his mouth until the bottle was empty. After which Slimer put the bottle down and left the room, screeching and laughing to himself about something as he normally did.
A while later, Egon was somewhere between awake and asleep and he licked his lips and tasted a remainder of the medicine. Now that he was awake he wanted to find out what he had been given all day and what it was made out of. Sitting up, Egon reached over to the bedside table and grabbed the green bottle. It was then that he made two disturbing discoveries; one, there was no label on the bottle, no name, no directions, not even an ingredients tab, and the second thing he realized was that the bottle was empty.
Empty, how could that be? It was a very large bottle…oh, and then it came to him. It seemed obvious in that moment that nobody who had been up to see him had checked with anybody else to see how much medicine he'd been given that day. So every person who fed him two spoons of it thought they were the first to do so. And that dream he'd had…it hadn't been a dream at all. That's how come the bottle was empty. Egon shook his head; though his mistakes were plenty and not far between, it was hard to get mad at Slimer when he did something wrong because most errors made were when he tried to help.
Only now there was another thought racing around in Egon's mind; he had in just a few short hours been given a whole bottle of medicine that he didn't even know what was in it. What side effects would there be as a result of that? And why had there been no label on the bottle? Surely the doctors and the pharmacists couldn't sell medicine without the customers knowing anything about it. He didn't feel well. And it wasn't because he was sick…all the pain from that seemed to be gone. Now it was replaced with another feeling. His head felt like it was swimming, his eyelids were heavy. Everything was started to swing from side to side and nothing seemed coherent anymore. Egon laid back against the pillow and closed his eyes, hoping it was momentary and would pass.
After a minute passed, he heard something and immediately woke up and put on his glasses. He looked around the room but didn't see anybody, or anything out of place. He couldn't tell what it was he'd heard, but in that instant he'd gotten the strange feeling that he wasn't alone.
"Slimer," he said, "I'm not amused."
But he didn't see Slimer anywhere, and he didn't hear the various, irritating noises the little vapor was prone to making. Egon pushed back the covers and slowly got to his feet. He looked around the room again and still didn't see anything weird. Then he heard a noise behind him, a quick, scuffling noise, like something moving on the ground. He turned around just in time to see the closet door slam shut. What was going on? Egon went over to the closet and turned the knob but it appeared to be stuck. He jerked the knob a few more times and the door opened; and the closet was revealed in its entirety, everything looking the same.
"What's going on here?" he asked himself.
He took one step into the closet, and then another, and though it didn't answer his question; he knew that something was off when he fell through the floor and spiraled downward into complete darkness.