Baby Playdate

Dr. Bec had already pivoted to the table and spread the towel he’d procured across a clear spot, smoothing it flat, when the tiny redheaded fledgling fired a series of questions at him. Not so many, really, but consecutively and such a rate that he was forced to pause and purposefully redirect his attention. Things were…yes, they were easier these days—everything was, from remembering to understanding to thinking to doing—but he still had to take his time processing each step before executing, to sort out the tangle in his mind if he tried to reel in too many lines at once. His hands stopped moving and for several seconds he stared at Little Red Baby, separating and considering each question in turn.

“Room. Yes, this is my room.” He leaned a bit closer, studying her through his blank, round lenses. “And you…you are Little Red Baby. You are small, so you are Little; you are…euh, une rousse, so you are Red; and you are very, very young, so you are Baby.” He shrugged, palms out. “If you have another name, I have forgotten. I do forget things,” he explained, in one of his increasingly frequent moments of self-awareness. As if to demonstrate his point, he turned back to the table, touched the towel with hesitant fingers and stared at his hands for another minute. Towel. He had a towel. Why did he have a towel? He’d already scavenged many little things, all the discarded medical and surgical implements he could find scattered across the Villa in cabinets and drawers—not as many as he’d like, and some of them were so outdated as to be recognized as so by even his careless eye, but enough, he supposed, to work with for the time being. But why the towel? Oh. Wait. Did he spill something? Towels were for wet things, for displaced fluids. What had he spilled?

Fortunately, at that moment there was a sputtering hiss from the far corner of the room. Bec’s beak jerked upward and he hastened to the active fireplace where a large pot of water had boiled over and poured froth to the flaming hearth below. He retrieved a pair of tongs and plunged the end under the roiling surface of the water, stirring and prodding, before he squeezed and lifted up something that glinted like silver. He bore it dripping back to the towel, set it down gently, then returned to the fireplace. He came back with another small instrument, a fine, delicate, bladed tool, and did the same with it, laying it out to dry. “Please do not touch these,” he decided to instruct after a moment, unsure if he’d already warned her, and happier to be doubly sure. “They are as sterile as I can make them, I think. I hope the towel is clean,” he said, half to himself. “I asked for a clean towel. The thrall said it was clean. It should be clean. Do I boil it, too...?”

“Oh, soap,” Dr. Bec said almost breezily as he continued to transfer his tools from the pot to the table, though at a slackened pace. “Soap is good for cleaning, yes. Carbolic soap is best. I didn’t see any around while I was looking—but I was not looking for carbolic soap. Or carbolic acid. But I don’t use carbolic acid for living wounds anymore. The soap is still good. Carbolic soap. It would be nice to have. I should look for it. Good for—for bodies, for washing bodies—living tissue—but I did not…I was not looking…but I…soap…?”

His words trailed off with an unsure, bewildered lilt. He had long since stopped moving between the fireplace and the table, hovering at the halfway point, tongs poised dripping and steaming in hand. He’d had it, right there on the tip of his tongue, at the fore of his brain, and his wandering focus had betrayed him and spirited it just out of reach. Why was he talking about soap? Who had brought up soap to begin with? Did he need soap? He hadn’t been looking for soap. Did…did Little Red Baby want soap?

And in a flash of red—red hair, red phenol—it all came back, fleeting impressions, notions and memories fitting together like irregular pieces of a particularly challenging puzzle. “Soap,” he repeated, sounding somehow relieved and disappointed all at once. “Oh, no, soap is not good enough for sterilization. Carb…carbolic…eh, things, they work on flesh, but for these—” he gestured to the metal implements drying on the table “—since they are objects, I have to kill as much bacteria as possible before I use these. All of the bacteria, if I can. And spores. And…viruses? Yes. These things, ah, they are very small, terrible things.” Yet what were they called? “They cause disease, infection, all of...all of this.” But what was the word? "They…they are…” The tongs clacked together as he twitched his thumb restlessly, channeling some of his mild (though clearly present) frustration as he grasped for the term that eluded him. “Germs. Germs. Micro…microorgans. Organisms. Microorganisms. Germs. So—I must boil these. Because…because they are for surgery, and there would be a great risk of infection and disease, otherwise. Don’t want infected and diseased thralls. Boiling tools in water is the best I can do, here, in this place, twenty minutes in boiling water. Kill the germs. Then I hope they will be clean enough to use. You understand?” He canted his head at Little Red Baby and found himself parroting a phrase he’d heard often enough from his…Master? Not Masher. Old Masthier. He mimicked the patience, the quiet concern. He’d said quite a lot at once, and he knew what it was like to hear quite a lot at once. Being on either side of it was fatiguing, honestly. “Do…do you understand what I’m saying?”

Oh. She was giving him a look. Bec wasn’t sure how to interpret it, but a look it was, and it surely meant…well, something more than what she was saying. Was it good? Bad? Happy? Upset? He fidgeted a bit with his tongs, swiveling the tool in uneasy displacement of his discomfort, then decided to focus on the question instead of fretting over the look. The question was simple; the look much more cryptic.

“Surgery?” he repeated, because it was a good way to force himself to focus—find the most important word in a sentence, say it again, confirm its importance, then move on from there. “Surgery, yes. Well, I hope the thralls do not need surgery. If they do, then something is already very wrong. But it happens.” Of this he was certain. “Injuries, illnesses—these things happen. Thralls are…they…” Another lost word, another fleeting flash of frustration. “They—what do they—they…” Abruptly, he set the tongs on the table and used both fists to execute a jerky, wringing gesture. “Easily,” he added, relaxing, having—he assumed—successfully communicated his point. “And when that happens, I fix them. If that means surgery, that means surgery.”

Now, what had he been doing? Trace it back. Surgery. Tools. Sterilizing. Boiling. He patted down his coat, seeking the tongs he thought he’d been holding a moment ago, and flinched when something crinkled. Bec fished a crumpled sheet of paper from an inner pocket and held it close to his beaked mask, peering curiously. Oh. He’d written this, it was his writing—a list to guide him through the night, a chaotic sprawl of letters that nevertheless held meaning and provided direction. When he remembered to write lists—and of course, remembering was the rub—they were quite useful. This one reminded him to feed (check), search the Villa for medical equipment (mostly check), clean whatever he found (check pending) and ask his Master about additional supplies should they not be found (no check). Bec read the list several times, mouthing the words…then lowered the page, blinking.

Little Red Baby was still there. Still looking.

“Is there something I can do for you?” he asked. He honestly could not remember if she had come to his quarters seeking him, and a hint of an apology colored his question.

Having directed his undivided attention to Little Red Baby, Bec had no trouble following her questions, even if his response rounded a few bends before settling on clear, straight path. “I have my list,” he said, lifting it for her to see, “and it tells me what I need to do if I forget. But I…so I think I’m done with…” He patted the towel where his tools rested to dry, careful not to touch any of the sterilized surfaces. “…this. For now, yes, I am finished working. Not busy.”

He glanced at the list again. He wasn’t really finished, was he? Next was the suggestion that he talk to his Master about missing supplies…but the uncomfortable sensation that squirmed his stomach at the thought of Masher—no more than a thought, with no thoughts further given—convinced him he did not want to do that right now. Instead, he folded the paper and slipped it back in his pocket.

“I’m not busy,” he repeated for good measure, and then, acting on an impulse to further clarify that he was done with his doctorly duties, he began removing the garments he associated with his profession—starting with his hat, which he tossed toward the bed tucked into a nook in the corner of the room (missing by several feet; it struck the wall and flopped sadly to the floor). “You said you came looking for me,” he recalled curiously, pushing back his hood and fiddling with the fastenings of his mantle. She had said that; he heard, he remembered. “You want something from me, then? Something I can do?”

Oh. If it was something that required medical attention, he would need to fetch his hat again…

Wash. Dirty. Clean. Doctor. Fix.

Independently, all of these words held distinct meaning to Bec, as well as great importance. Yes, wash tools when they are dirty to clean them so he can perform his duties as a doctor and fix problems—a logical succession of these terms to build a coherent, reasoned sentence.

But Little Red Baby introduced unexpected variables to this equation. Hair. All of him. Himself.

The moment he linked two particular concepts together—wash himself—he plunged into a startlingly visceral memory. A tub. Warm, scented water. Lavender? Master liked lavender. Fingers kneading his scalp. A voice pouring gentle complaints into his ear in familiar French, lamenting stubborn rat’s nests. “I know we are saddled with the hair we wore in death,” he could hear the voice clearly state, suffused with good humor, “but I’m inclined to believe yours goes beyond mere length and has cursed you with perpetual tangles.”

And then, after a brief lurch of vertigo to sway him off-balance for a precarious moment, he was back, leaning his weight against the table, coat draped in his arms, staring over at Little Red Baby.

The vision…it had been pleasant, if jarring in its remembrance. Pleasant, but sad for another reason he’d forgotten. Bittersweet, he supposed. And if such a vivid memory could be summoned by the mention of bathing—yes, that was it, washing was bathing, bathing was washing—then he scarcely could imagine how he would feel should he experience it all in the here and now. Little Red Baby’s reasoning registered as an afterthought. He understood her point, and frankly she made a good point—he couldn’t remember the last time he’d washed any of his clothes, and they did accumulate bloodstains so—but such a point dulled in comparison to the needle-sting of nostalgia that bore so perplexingly into his heart.

“Yes,” he said at length, and then, with a decisive nod, “oh, yes. It’s a good idea. Washing up. If you help show me where I can do that, I will do that.” He rolled his coat into a compact log and ferried it to the bed, then stooped to retrieve his hat, as well. His gloves and mask he ignored, whether deliberate or through negligence. “Are there scented soaps?” he asked with a hopeful lilt as he returned to Little Red Baby’s side. “Lavender?”

Despite not having the slightest inkling where they must go to find soaps or tubs or washrooms, Bec led the way out of his quarters, moving with purpose through the door and a few meters down the hall. He stopped almost as abruptly and swiveled, waiting for Little Red Baby to follow. “I do not know this place well,” he confessed when she appeared, “or I’d look for soap myself. I know where my room is. I know how to go outside. But everything else—it’s very big, isn’t it?” He motioned up and down the hallway. “Bigger...bigger than the château,” he said musingly, almost puzzled, as the thought occurred to him.

Losing himself a bit in his own tenuous ruminations, he turned again and started maundering away. The beak of his mask tilted and betrayed the the direction of his wandering attention as he slowly took in his surroundings as if seeing them for the first time. He looked around and tried to compare it with his memories of the château—this ephemeral thing that had once been so very real and important to him—but his mind refused to recall its appearance without dredging up roiling flames and billowing smoke. He touched the wall with one hand. Leaned a bit, letting it support his weight. The last wall he’d touched at the château had collapsed in a spray of sparks and splinters; he couldn’t remember a time before it had been set ablaze, what it had looked like, how it had felt. So many decades, over a hundred years, spent in the château—and yet so little of it remained without the support of a sound mind. A fresh twinge of irritation accompanied this realization, tightening his jaw. Why couldn’t he remember? After all the time he’d resided there, why shouldn’t he remember?

“How long have you resided here?” he suddenly asked, addressing Little Red Baby without facing her. Something bitter stole through his words, stemming from a sensation so typically unexplored by Bec that it hardly manifested. “Not very long; you’re young. But long enough to know how to find your way? To remember it all?”

Bec turned to Little Red Baby when she responded, hoping to glean more from her expression than he could from aural cues—and caught her attempt at a smile. Behind tinted glass, he blinked. The smile changed in that blink, and though he couldn’t quite comprehend what had changed and how it had improved, the atmosphere in the hallway appreciably relaxed. She relaxed, he relaxed, that odd tension in his throat relaxed. Much better. Unseen, he mimicked her smile. It meant little to him on its own, hardly more than a flexing of facial muscles, but imitating expressions was something he had long since learned by rote. Sometimes it helped. Sometimes it was meaningless as the nonsensical slurry of gibberish that his uncooperative mind had occasion to render words. Right now, their shared smiles were just that—something shared, something to try and help him connect to the moment.

“Yes, thank you,” he said at length, and then, deciding that wasn’t quite sufficient for an answer, he plunged forward with the intent of elaborating—too precipitate to keep up with himself, and too overzealous for coherence. “Yes, I will take a bath and then you can show me around, or you can show me around and then I can take a bath, or, or I will take around and then I will take a bath, or then you can show me a bath and then you can take a bath, and then I can show me around and and and I can show me a bath and you will take around me, or you can show me a bath around.”

Yes. That would work. He smiled some more beneath his mask, genuinely grateful for her offer. It would be nice to walk these interminable halls without getting lost, for once.

Bec appreciated the time Little Red Baby had taken to show him around, though he knew he would not retain all he saw. Already the paths they’d walked and rooms they passed mingled together and confused chronology, as if his recollections were an assemblage of blurry photographs tossed on a table and scrambled carelessly out of sequence. At least he remembered the rooms themselves—a drawing room here, a gallery there, bedchambers and storerooms and ballrooms and dungeons—but they remained disjointed, a problem only relentless repetition of a route stood a chance to solve. For now, he’d smile, thank, and mostly forget.

He also accepted her offer of assistance, but only as far as showing him where the well was and reminding him precisely what hauling water entailed (it was not something he’d done himself, the sort of chore best left to thralls, but by no means a challenge to his strength). He then politely turned her away from the room, insisting he would handle the rest on his own. “I do not need lavender,” he said as he closed the door on Little Red Baby’s anxious face. He didn’t explain why; he wasn’t sure he had the words. All he had was the dull ache of nostalgia, caught in his chest, a painful, bitter pill coated in something sweet to fool him into thinking it palatable. So many feelings, lately. More than he remembered having. More than he understood. More than he liked.

Awareness he could do without. He didn’t quite comprehend that this was his affliction—bereft of the gentle, protective haze instilled by his old master, thrown into the stark, barren wasteland that was Asher’s regard—and the uncomfortable crawl of emotions beneath his tepid calm was only the beginning. Stripping for his bath prompted more awareness, more discomfort. Dark spots painted his bared skin, tokens from another life. Memories shuddered, chasing a word out of the dark like a disturbed insect: lenticulae. And then another word, as he peeled off his gloves and flexed rot-black fingers: gangrene. His toes matched, he observed, as he stepped into the bath and sank to his shoulders. It meant something. Extremities. Acral necrosis. Fingers, toes, ears, and… He shivered, and not because he had insufficiently heated the bathwater (temperatures meant nothing to a vampire, after all). His blackened fingers reached for his face—and struck the beak of his mask instead. He transferred his touch to the back of his head, feeling through tangles for a particular knot, and undid the strap holding the mask in place, catching it before it plunged into the bath and setting it safely, reverently aside. Then, with a tentative but measured touch, he pressed his finger to the tip of his nose.

The moment he wondered what he was touching—how it might have looked—what would he see, if he could see?—what did others see?—he flinched and dropped his hand with a splash. No. No. Now was not the time. He didn’t like it, this new sensation hanging over his head, dizzying and mortifying, a thousand eyes unblinking. He ducked underwater, waiting for the moment to pass, and when the suffocating spill of water over his senses failed to make him feel any better, he emerged and found the soap he’d set aside earlier (no lavender, of course). The rhythmic motion of scrubbing bubbles through his hair served as temporary respite. Now he wanted nothing more than to bring this ordeal to a rapid end and rejoin Little Red Baby; how strange to desire her company as a distraction from himself, to even need a distraction. In his haste, however, he neglected a step or two in his ablutions…

…and stepped into the hall wearing dripping clothes, avian mask damp and tied lopsided into place, dark hair crusted with drying soap he had failed to rinse clear.

“Hello, I am finished now,” he greeted as happily as he could feign, which, thanks to the looming, merciless emotion that had followed him from the bath to the hall, struck him as a poor effort.

Bec allowed himself to be drawn back into the washroom, albeit at a slightly reluctant trudge. To find himself steered around was not an altogether unfamiliar sensation—why? he wondered—but at the hands of Little Red Baby, he wasn’t certain how to respond to it. He didn’t claim the chair with passive obedience so much as quiet incredulity, his movements stiff and measured. No matter what she did (and even as she explained herself, he didn’t follow, his own attention drifting off-axis), it would hopefully serve as the distraction he sought from…from whatever it was bothering him. He fidgeted with his gloves as Little Red Baby carried over a tray that issued an odd medley of aromas, trying to attach a name to the source of his discomfort, already forgetting it’d be best to ignore it.

Then she mentioned the mask.

Something sank.

No other way to describe it. He processed her suggestion and something dropped from his throat to the pit of his stomach with a nauseating lurch. It was a bit, he was surprised to recognize, like feeling sick. When had he last felt that? Why should he have ever felt that? And something else should have been there to catch what had fallen, to cushion the blow and pick up the mess if it slipped through fumbling fingers. Asher. He needed Asher, didn’t he? He was supposed to be there, yet Bec felt nothing from him. Just his own confusion, unease and the slow, twisting, churning of self-consciousness pinning his balled fists in his lap to grip handfuls of his shirt.

“Mask,” he repeated a bit hopelessly, failing, and yet somehow succeeding, to articulate the heart of the problem. “The mask, my mask? On my face. It’s on my face. Acral necrosis. Rot, rotten. It…it…” Desperately wracking his memory for support, he flashed on Asher. Grabbing his mask. Snatching it off his face. Tossing it carelessly over his shoulder.

So Bec grabbed his mask, snatched it off his face and tossed it carelessly over his shoulder. It landed beyond the full bath, bouncing off the far wall and dropping, scuffed and somewhat bent, to the floor.

He didn’t feel any better for it; worse, if anything. His scarred face fell blank—a new sort of mask to disguise his racing, stuttering thoughts.

Dr. Bec tensed under the towel that Little Red Baby scrambled over his hair, squeezing his eyes shut. The ensuing massage was marginally more pleasant than the rough towel, but he kept his eyes shut against the sight of her leaning over him. He didn’t want to look at anyone or anything at the moment. Easier to process, relax, think.

Where are you from?

He nearly replied “Neuchâtel,” which wouldn’t have been wrong…but neither, he realized, was that quite right. Something—a recollection, a notion, an instinct—tugged at his mind, pulling him back further. “My Master found me outside Valence,” he blurted. “France. In France. A long time ago, near Valence. Then we traveled, many places, all over.” He gestured, as if indicating the expansive map he could see in his mind’s eye. “And then Neuchâtel. I like Neuchâtel. The chateau is close to a nice lake, and when the weather is clear you can see les Alpes…” He trailed off, discomfited by his own reminiscence. It stung, as if he were gathering the shattered shards of memories and trying to piece them together by hand even as they cut at his fingers.

“Where are you from?” he asked after a moment, turning his discomfort outward. “Where have you been? What have you seen? Have you seen France? Italy? Spain? England? Switzerland?”

Bec began to relax in measured gradations as Little Red Baby worked—his shoulders lowering, his fistfuls of shirt unclenching, his posture dipping in the chair. What had felt an alien sensation along his scalp settled into something more comforting in its methodical repetition and with her gentle ministrations. He listened intently to her words, able to award her more of his focus now that he was less distracted by his own troubled thoughts.

He listened. He frowned. “Boring,” he repeated, confirming the word, cementing its meaning, and immediately disagreeing. “This is not boring. You are not boring. You are young, yes?” He opened his eyes and twisted a bit in his seat, glancing Little Red Baby up and down, forgetting his reluctance to meet her gaze at the moment. “Yes. Baby-young. My Master likes to talk to the young ones,” he remembered abruptly, a recollection swaddled in the warmth of nostalgia, so much less bitter than before, thanks to his relaxed state. This clarity was far more pleasant, far less jarring and intrusive. “Young ones…see different things,” he said, recounting what he’d been told as well as he could remember it. “See things differently. Because…they are new? Yes. Yes, they are still…still…”

His comfortable mood faltered as he encountered yet another lexical lapse. “New,” he said, even though it wasn’t what he meant. He was frowning again, but this time he chose not to stress over his failure to express himself. Keep going. Don’t stop. “Old eyes don’t see new things,” he suggested as an alternative, recovering the momentum of his coherence. “Young eyes are always seeing things new to them. Yes, that’s what Master says.” He tilted his head. “So, is that supposed to be boring?”