#formaldehyde

Phantom. Danny. Phantom. Her son. Phantom. Danny.

Her mind split those truths apart like incompatible compounds. She had dissected it—cut it open with practiced confidence, peeling back skin and muscle the same way she always imagined she would if she ever captured Phantom. She sliced, took samples—pieces of it—him she thought belonged to a monster.

The ghost boy.

Danny Phantom.

Only… this wasn’t…

It was Danny. Her Danny. Her son.

“Dammit…” she cursed under her breath as she pressed a thick pad of gauze against what was left of his arm. “Why—why didn’t you tell us?” she hissed through tight teeth, pressing her hands harder to slow the bleeding. “Why did you make us believe Phantom was a threat? That he was hurting us? Hurting you? We could have—“

Danny didn’t respond.

Bone gleamed through shredded muscle—raw and exposed. His left forearm, the one she had sliced off only minutes ago to study, now hung by only a few thin strands of tissue. A mistake she could fix. Maybe. Hopefully.

“Jazz!” Maddie barked, eyes darting to the stainless steel instrument tray. “Give me those forceps! The vascular clamps, right there—now!”

But Jazz didn’t move.

She just stood there, rooted to the spot, eyes huge and black with terror. Her arms hung stiff and useless at her sides, trembling like her bones were trying to escape her skin. She looked like a child again—shocked and helpless and afraid.

If Maddie had even a second to spare, she would have grabbed her, told her to breathe, told her it would be okay. She would have been the mother Jazz needed.

But she couldn’t.

Not while Danny lay broken and bleeding right in front of her. Not while every second counted.

And all Maddie could see was the small opening she’d left in its chest—stitches half done, pulled apart, useless—because she’d been too focused on studying the strange mix of human and ghost inside it—him.

Most ghosts she had ever studied didn’t even have organs. They were all just… swirling ectoplasmic goo with a core sitting roughly where a heart might be.

She should have known better the moment she started cutting. Phantom wasn’t like any other ghost she’d ever seen. It had real organs—living, working, human organs—and it was extraordinary. It thrilled her. It fascinated her.

And now…

Danny’s real human heart was paying for her fascination.

But when she severed his arm, everything changed. Right there on the table—no warning, no transition she could measure—two brilliant rings of ectoplasmic light surged from his middle. One shot upward, the other downward, passing through flesh and bone with a crackling hum of unstable molecules snapping back into a human configuration.

Pearl white hair bled into pitch black. The glow of ectoplasmic green drained into human crimson red. And just like that, Phantom dissolved—leaving her boy beneath her hands.

Danny.

Her scalpel had stripped away the ghost and exposed the son she had been dissecting—no, vivisecting alive.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. Not like this. If she knew, she wouldn’t…

No. She would’ve done this anyway. Wouldn’t she? The truth didn’t matter when curiosity already carved its path. Phantom was extraordinary—unlike anything she had ever seen. And knowing it was Danny beneath that form… it didn’t stop her anyway.

If anything…

It even made the study more fascinating now. More… irresistible.

But it was her son. Her sweet, stubborn, star-bright little boy—her Danny. The child she once swore she’d protect with everything she had… and the same one she had just torn apart with her own hands.

Her gaze flicked across the lab.

How… how was she supposed to put him back together? How could she save him when parts of him were floating in jars across the room—preserved in formaldehyde, labeled like trophies and scattered without a thought?

A single toe she had cut off clean, to map ectoplasmic flow in nerve endings. Three teeth she had pried out one by one, roots intact—she needed to know why ghost dentin could still decay. A piece of his tongue, to decode how he spoke with those dual-resonant frequencies. Sections of intestine, liver, lung lobe, all suspended in stabilizing ecto-gel. A floating green iris—Phantom’s—no, Danny’s right eye, harvested to examine spectral retinal cells. A crystalline shard of shimmering core tissue, still vibrating faintly in its vial, as if it didn’t know it had been taken from it—him.

Each sample was progress. Each sample was a revelation.

Each sample was a piece of Danny.

Her stomach lurched upward into her ribs. Her vision oscillated. But her hands—her scientific hands—didn’t stop. They pressed hard against what was left of his arm, trying desperately to stop the bleeding, trying to do something, anything, to keep him alive.

“This isn’t supposed to be happening… not like—like this,” she whispered, voice shrinking, dissolving into a tremor. Blood soaked through the gauze and pooled warm against her palm.

Danny was her son. Phantom was the enemy. That was the story she always told herself. That was the lie she believed.

She was wrong.

Utterly, painfully wrong.

But she felt his pulse weaken beneath her fingers anyway.

“Don’t you fade on me, sweetie,” Maddie choked out, voice rising with panic. “Danny, please—stay with me. Stay with me so I can—“

So she could fix this? Undo the violence she had created? Prove she was right all along?

Her gloves slipped on blood as she leaned closer, her forehead almost touching his.

“—so I can save my sweet little boy.”

But he had to stay alive. She needed him alive. So she could fix him and could understand him and could keep studying the impossible miracle she’d carved open.

How did this happen? How did her son become both a human and a ghost? Why didn’t he trust her enough to tell her? Why did she have to find out like this—through blood and screams and bones?

Ghosts weren’t supposed to die. Ghosts weren’t supposed to feel anything—not pain, not fear, not sorrow.

So maybe this was Phantom’s trick. Maybe the creature lying here just wanted her to think he was Danny. Maybe he only wore her son’s face to make her stop.

Yes. That made sense. It had to.

Because the alternative—that she had tortured her own child—was too unbearable to survive.

⟢ I originally wanted to write this from Jazz’s POV (y’all know, those vibes from that one art piece where she’s standing at the top of the stairs, watching her parents dissect her little brother in the basement lab? I have no idea who the artist is, butthét was some good angst there). But realistically… Jazz would be catatonic. Dissociated. Her brain would tap out completely rather than let her process that her own mother was cutting her brother apart like a lab specimen. So, I went for Maddie’s POV instead.

⟢ My headcanon for Maddie is that she’s a scientist first (after her children. Or maybe… not)—always fascinated with ghost anatomy and psychology. Phantom would be her ultimate prize. Her golden discovery. And if she ever realized it was actually Danny—a half ghost—oh boy… that fascination would skyrocket. He’d become the anomaly of a lifetime. The one she’d die to study.

⟢ Anyway, I’m really hoping Ectoberweek helps kick my writers’s block because… yeah. I definitely am in need for a motivation boost.

⟢ Oh, right! This is my first time participating to this event! :D