Pest

Prompt from DailyPrompt.com

“I’m telling you, ma’am, it’s a boggart.”

“Do you seriously think I don’t know what a boggart is??” The voice on the other end of the phone was increasingly shrill and tight.

I rolled my eyes, bit back a ‘clearly’, and instead intoned “What you are describing is-”

“It isn’t! This is… different! Please come look.”

Uggggh. But this was the sixth time this couple had called. And this was the polite one of the pair. Might as well get some photos to show the office in case this turned into a lawsuit.

“Alright, ma’am. I can make a quick checkup.”

“ThankYouThankYouThankYou.”

***

Pretty typical house. Ex-council, maybe a hundred years old. Exactly where you’d expect to end up with a boggart. But nooo, this was ‘something else’. Lost count of how many times I’ve heard that. People hate to admit they simply failed to follow basic precautions.

Mrs Polite answered the door, desperately ushered me towards the basement, where Mrs Snap turned out to be waiting with a bag of salt and a wooden bat. Well, at least they were following protocol.

“Oh thank fuck I thought you assholes would never listen.”

“Sarah!” Polite scolded, shooting me an apologetic look. “Sorry, it’s the stress…”

“No shit!” Snap - I mean Sarah - grumbled. “This thing is a terror.”

“Mhm. Where did you last see it?”

I crouch to inspect the pipes she’s threatening. Huh. Ok, those are unusual scratch marks, but-

“Here, but… it pops out wherever there’s pipes.”

“Out of the drains, you mean?” Drain boggarts were rare, makes sense they hadn’t heard of-

“No.” Polite shuddered and folded her arms close to her body. “It goes into the metal like it’s water and jumps out of it somewhere else.”

“Anywhere else.” Sarah glowered at the nook.

Wait what? No spook manipulated metal, that was one of the first things you learned.

“…What’s it eating?”

“We don’t know.” Sarah gave a lopsided shrug. “That’s the most terrifying part.”

Oh dear. That was terrifying.

“I, uh… let me call the office.”

Both women exhale and give teary beaming smiles. I force myself to smile back despite the guilt and uneasy and curiosity filling me.

“Don’t worry, I’ll… make sure this gets sorted out.”

Prompt was “An exterminator is called to eradicate a never-seen-before pest.”

[I decided to establish that this is a world where supernatural pests are known and expected to make it more significant that this supernatural critter was completely unknown.]