Graeber answers... Reluctantly.

Graeber hesitated. Wondering if he pretended she’d mistaken him for dead. Instead, he murmured something. Then she replied. “Good.”

He heard the door lock, and then Franziksa sighed. “Ich bin sehr müde.”

Franziska laughed tiredly and then asked him a question, his eyes still shut, his breathing still even. “Bist bist auch müde?"

He didn’t respond to anything. He was drifting off.

A few more seconds pass, she whispers. “You are asleep then?”

Graeber hears her shuffling, then something opening—a suitcase, or something—he doesn’t care enough to peek through his heavy eyelids. Beneath the muffled sound of the wounded moaning through the door, he can hear something soft brushing along the edge of his bed, and clothes slipping off.

He lazily opens himself up to gaze at the nurse, and sees that her pale body is caught in the soft glow, casting her silhouette in a seductive way. Outlined in blue, he sees her mounds, hugged by a bra, and the fragile squeeze of her panties on her waist.

She bends over, her eyes glowing a strange purple that entices feelings that were dead. Her hands reach for something that vaguely looks like a suitcase, but it’s too dark to see it.

A dress is retrieved, and she continues to make eye contact with Graeber. This isn’t Franziska, it’s just Alicen, doing a perfect mimic of the nurse. Graeber is so depressed that his arousal shrinks down again.

When he closes his eyes, Alicen approaches. A leathery forked tail whips around behind her. “I can make you forget,” she coos. “Even if it’s just for a few minutes, Herr Graeber.”

“I can’t,” he whispers, staring at the ceiling. Alicen’s form has taken a more natural look. The tail, the horns, her eyes bright and purple. “How can I forget about Lukas? He was… God, he was my only friend.”

Alicen sits down with an audible swallow. This wasn’t her forte, and she couldn’t find the right words to speak immediately. Instead, she considered ways to get what she wanted. Sex. Cum. A vacation of her own. “You have others.”

“Like who?” Graeber snapped at her. “Felix!? I’ve lost all of them. Paul… Ackerman…Hans… Oh, God. Emil… How much I miss Emil…”

She rubbed his thigh with a hand. “Olena probably thinks of you as some kind of friend. Gerhard is still alive, too.”

“Gerhard,” he whispered, the name is foreign, and the face he once saw every day was now a smudge like so many others. “Katarzyna…”

Alicen nodded, but didn’t dare swap her form to match his lover. “Katarzyna, too.”

“Alicen,” Graeber looked up at her. “Is… Emil…”

Gently, she shook her head. Graeber lowered down and closed his eyes. “How did he die?”

“It was fast,” she whispered and then drew a long breath. “He died quickly. Without pain.”

“How do you know?” Graeber said. “You’re not God. You’re not an angel.”

Alicen lowered his gaze and looked around the room. “You’re… being watched,” she explained, not as a warning, but in a way that comforted him. “By something much **** than me. And with much more wholesome intentions. And he knows…”

“He? God?”

“Not just Him. Not quite,” she smiled, cupping his face. “I’ll leave if you want me to, Herr Graeber.”