Or.
The Call
AKA
“-Happy Christmas, baby…-”
Well, since Veronica was gonna go with her family the Doll didn't really had problems with staying alone at home for the holidays.
But guess what. Nicole did. And it doesn't matter that Doll insists this is what she wanted, just leaving her alone like that didn't sit well with Nicole so she's taking her with her and this way neither of them have to be alone tonight.
So I guess we have a Nicole and the Doll Christmas adventure!
And so this wonderful winter journey has once again led us to the place where most roads I take lead at the end of the day.
And that's 2009’s Cult anime series Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei. Show that apparently is clearly is in graved in the Rosetta stone to understand my process, as it is probably the fourth time I mention it here at least.
Specifically the first ending for the third season which shows scenes of most of the cast and how does their lives look like when they go to sleep. And this covers all of the main cast except one of them. A girl named Kafuka appears framed more misterously in the middle of the night at the school the show takes place in most of the time.
Spoiler alert but if you were to read the end of the manga as the series was cancelled before it could get to this point you'd discover that there's actually a reason for the misterous framing of the character in that ending (and some others).
See, for ages I've been wanting to do this sort of collage of moments of the members of the whisperers where we would see them in the mundane and domestic only to then show Nicole on her own at night on a more misterous scenario in comparison to what came before. And it wasn't always the plan to make it a holiday thing but it worked out.
But guess what, this isn't the only framing I’ve been using for this series.
What I like to imagine we've seeing are the many segments of the third Whisperers holiday special.
Like an episode divided in sereval mini episodes of the characters were we have some drama with the flashback in the Iggy segment sandwiched between Vero's more comedic episode, for everyone’s surprise, and Ian’s that I feel would have this sort of raunchy texture to discover him and his sister to be kind of the bad apples in their family.
And then we finally get to Nicole's segment where we see her and the Doll take a Christmas hike.
Which sounds like something of an odd holiday tradition and that's because it is not. It's more of an special event. See Nicole actually wanted to go see the eels with her dad.
They’ve been seen very few times. No one really knows what they are or what they do. They just appear sometimes for whatever reason and disappear. And unlike most others paranormal events, besides the lights they seem to be composed of, for those who can actually see them, they seem to have no physical effects on our world. Expect for one.
“It's uhhh… like wet stone, and grape juice… For me. But it's different for everyone.
They leave behind a slight trace of smell that disappear after seconds. Minutes at the most. That's why they're so hard to trace and study.
Specifically when only a small part of the population is able to see them. Just the ones that can already see ghouls and ghosts.
Everyone can smell them, though it being random smells for everyone doesn't help at all.
“We believe that what we see of them travels through the strings that conform matter… if you believe that sort of stuff…haha”
The eels are not the main focus of Nicole's dad research, but they're an important part of it, so he has sort of became the world’s up most expert in the light eels. Though that's not saying a lot honestly.
Most registered encounters have happened during the winter. So that's one of the reasons why he couldn't leave his research vessel at [Redacted]. And that's not even taking to account the safety ones.
But he might just have cracked a way to predict where and when they will appear. And I say “might” because the last 3 attempts were busted.
But out of pure luck this one could be afforded out of his own pocket as the proposed site just so happened to be 2 or 3 hours away from where one of his women of thrust is located.
So it was weird for her friends when Nicole out of nowhere booked a bus ticket to a small town in the middle of the highway on Christmas Eve. But eureka!
The eels were there. It was a Christmas miracle!
So she calls her dad to the burn phone he used to contact her to give him the good news and then they keep talking for a couple hour while she and the Doll follow the eels through the forest.
Nicole gets to learn some more about her dad’s research, he gets to catch up on her daughter’s life, the adventures she has had with her friends, the cults, Ian, the vampires, actually meet the Doll through the phone, and the dolls gets to pretend she doesn't care even though deep down she's kind of moved by the moment.
Stuff like that. Until the vessel he’s at starts moving away from the zone where they get phone signal. Luckily giving them enough time to say goodbye for now.
-Happy Christmas, baby…-
-Happy Christmas, dad…-
-e… a….. [Beep]
…
…
-Happy Christmas, Doll!-
-SHUT UP!-
…
-ᵐᵉʳʳʸ ᶜʰʳᶦˢᵗᵐᵃˢ…-