Do Not Tell Anyone
Since childhood, I have been a person of schedules, precision, and control. I liked it this way. Life, after all, made sense in charts and symptoms, in diagnosis and prognosis. As a general surgeon, more than ever, it was necessary to follow this order.
Then one sweet day, John Doe arrived.
He was slumped against a gurney in the ER, clothes torn, blood dried into patterns that almost looked artistic. Nothing about him screamed “superhero,” except that when I approached him, the man wasn’t there.
One second, he was in the corner of the room; the next, leaning casually against the wall near the nurse’s station.
Was he teleporting?
Or was I losing my mind… in the middle of my shift?
“Sir,” I began, clipboard in hand, “do you know your name?”
“John Doe,” the man said, as if the answer was obvious.
I frowned. “No. Your… actual name.”
“That is my actual name,” John Doe replied, chewing on a granola bar.
The first thing I noticed was how calm he was. The second was how wrong this was. The man was in very bad shape.
“You were hit by a car?” I asked.
“Something like that,” he said.
He blinked.
And disappeared.
I froze.
“I… I just saw you… move. Instantly. Across the room.”
“Yeah. I do that,” he shrugged.
“A few months ago I started shifting… place to place. I can breathe underwater too. Camouflage sometimes.
Been looking into werewolves, aliens… you know.”
He paused, looking at me like this was routine.
“I don’t work for anyone. Don’t trust them either.”
Then, almost as an afterthought:
“So I need you to keep the secret.”
Days passed after that first encounter… I couldn’t eat. Sleep became a cruel suggestion.
Nightmares, every night. Panic attacks in hospital corridors.
I couldn’t call anyone.
I couldn’t stop thinking about werewolves, dragons… even My Little Pony… Strawberry Shortcake, and the Smurfs.
Lycanthropy — was it possible? How many times had I laughed at the concept? I had been sure it was a historically misdiagnosed phenomenon.
I wasn’t so sure anymore.
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John Doe came at odd times.
Always casual. Always distracting.
“I think I’m developing acute paranoia,” I confessed once.
“Nice,” he said. “I had that in 2018. Don’t worry, it goes away.”
“I’m questioning the fundamental structure of existence.”
“Yeah. Don’t do that before bed. Messes with sleep.”
“If what you describe is real, it changes everything.”
“It doesn’t,” he said. “You still have to pay taxes.”
Even when I thought this was the beginning of the end of my sanity, I realized something worse:
I expected his tone.
I expected the dismissiveness.
It became… normal.
Weeks blurred into months. My notes filled entire notebooks, meticulously chronicling John Doe’s abilities, the monsters, the improbable occurrences.
I had stopped writing about patients and started writing about this new reality.
The panic attacks stopped.
One evening, John Doe appeared in the doorway again, leaning against the frame, casual as ever.
“You mentioned something last time… voices underwater,” I said, flipping through a notebook.
“Yeah.”
“Mermaids?”
“Probably.”
“What about giants?” I asked.
“They live in the mountains. In every continent.”
I nodded, writing it down.
“…Can you take me?”
For a moment, I realized what I was asking.
Not as a doctor. Not as a rational man.
As a witness… who wanted more.
John Doe shrugged, as if it were nothing.
And just like that, it happened!
Once, I was a man of schedules and logic.
Now… I finally stopped asking, and started flowing.
I started letting it be.
Even the impossible.
