Page 1 of Prince of Masks
1
The faded scent of yesterday’s perfume on Mother’s wrist is a gentle comfort. A nostalgic fragrance that wraps around me like an embrace.
I lean into it.
Slumped on the chair in Father’s office, my arm splayed for Witchdoctor Dolios to draw blood from my veins, I can only lean so far.
Mother stays close, hovers near the armchair, her hand occasionally reaching out to linger near my cheekbone or hair, but no actual touch comes—because I am still covered, head to toe, in manure.
The fatigue of a sleepless night shows on us all.
Father is part-leaning, part-sitting on the edge of his desk, a sagged weight to his posture as there is to his lashes, too low over his sharp emerald eyes.
Just a reach away from him, Mr Younge stands as stiff as a statue, hands clasped behind his back, but his jaw tightens every so often with yawns that he swallows.
The quiet of the office further subdues us all. The steady, softtick, tick, tickof the grandfather clock; the crackles, the pops of the simmering flames in the hearth; the occasional clatter and clank of the witchdoctor’s tools; and the soft soles of Mother’sslippers padding on the rug as she paces back and forth the mere distance of a metre.
Even the witchdoctor is quieter than usual, his voice a murmur as he orders me around, ‘squeeze your hand’, ‘stop squirming’, ‘form a fist’.
Beneath his white robes, I catch a glimpse of flannel pyjamas, and I decide he must have been summoned the moment Mr Younge departed Elcott Abbey for Bluestone.
Master Novak called home at the faintest pinkish hues of dawn, and that was around five or six in the morning. Mr Younge didn’t arrive until just before nine o’clock, and it took us four hours to get back here.
Now, the soothingtick, tick, tickof the grandfather clock brings the hands to meet at the one.
It might be just passed lunchtime, but I get the sense that everyone in this room with me has been up since the crack of dawn, too early.
Mother hasn’t changed out of her bed clothes. All that covers her nightgown is a cotton robe tied at the waist, and her feet are snug in Chanel slippers.
I guess she plans on heading back to bed the moment I’m dismissed and my health is given the all-clear.
I’ll be doing the exact same thing… if Witchdoctor Dolios ever decides to release me.
I turn my dead, dull gaze to him, crouched at the side of the armchair.
With one hand, he keeps a needle pinned into the branched veins of my arm, and with his other, he attaches a second phial.
The phial is quick to flood with a wave of crimson. My blood, how easily it spills out of me, sloshing against the glass. There’s something soothing about it.
It lulls me.
I could drift off right now in this very chair, just from watching this visual melody.
I fight it, the weight of my lashes, the sag of my shoulders, the yawns that split me.
Bed isn’t my first priority, no matter how sleep deprived I am.
I look down at my hand, relaxed, turned at an odd angle, and so the natural curve of my fingers looks ready to hold a pear. The pear would be contaminated. Anything I touch in this office, fruit or an armchair, will be scrubbed raw once I leave, or even destroyed, because I am still covered in shit.
All the manure streaked along my fingers, darkening the whites of my nails, the scratches along my pale flesh, it’s a grisly sight. The fertiliser is caked into the scraggles of hair brushing over my shoulders, soaked into the threads of my sweater, and I wear the stink strongly enough that, as Witchdoctor Dolios fits the third and final phial to the syringe, he turns his cheek to me and pinches his mouth shut—an obvious attempt to escape the stench.
No doubt about it, even half-asleep, I will need to shower. Not just shower but be scrubbed until I’m bleeding.
Witchdoctor Dolios caps the phial with a firm, metal screw. There’s a faintpopfrom his knee as he pushes up from his crouch by the armchair. His robe flutters as, silent, he turns for the round side-table.
I crane my neck to peer around him.
A chrome briefcase is laid flat and parted.
