Case 018b: A Review [08-23-10]

Alacre Sypphid felt a thread pressed into the his fingertips as pinpricks of stars returned the feeling to his fingers. His open eyes stared up into darkness, dried and swollen against his eyelids. He tried moving them, but they had long ago congealed a protective layer of pus which had hardened into a lens and locked his eyes in place. In his stomach he felt a spread of warmth growing, sponged up by his shriveled intestines. Inspired, he took a shuddering, hesitant breath. The cool air that lay stagnant over him smelled like death and anticeptic.

The high chiming of a small bell and the sound of a key sliding metal pins into place clacked loudly by his feet. The uneasy whine of a hinge followed with a stream of dim light, revealing the metal walls of his tiny enclosure. Something tugged the slab he lay on, pulling his body from the box into the light.

"Evening, Sypphid," a female voice said softly, and leaned over to gaze at him. "How are you feeling tonight?"

Alacre drew in another breath to reply, but the feeling that was creeping up his hands had not reached his tongue, and he blew out a death rattle.

The woman hmm'd sympathetically. "I know that feeling." With a smirk, she shifted her weight out of his view. "Give it a couple of minutes for the blood to start circulating." He heard a match struck; leaves crackled; sweet tobacco smoke wafted into his nostrils. Ceramic clicked against teeth as she puffed at the pipe, leaning back against his body on the sliding table. The sound echoed in the sterilized hall, whose booming silence told Alacre that it went on for miles, deep underground.

"I know it's not my job anymore, but I still like coming down here," She said, exhaling pungent smoke. "Helps me relax."

The smoke trailed across his vision, grey wisps like leylines in the dim light of the catacomb. He wiggled the fingers of the hand not laced with thread. They stung, but wiggled like he wanted. He filled his lungs with air and, as he exhaled, reached out with his mind, trying to tap into a line of magic coursing through the earth; but the tunnel was just as hollow and barren as the air. 

She snorted derisively. Alacre froze, thinking she must have sensed his blind grasping for a leyline, but she didn't seem to notice, or if she did, she made no comment on it. Instead, she mused, "I remember my apprenticeship here. That was back when Foglia was the warden." Her body burned hot against the side of his naked hip. "She didn't let me do much," she muttered, "mostly I sterilized scalpels and rewrote patchwork scrolls until I couldn't see straight." The gentle crackle of tobacco leaves drew in flavored smoke that she savored on her tongue before sighing it from her body. She leaned back into his vision, her eyes wistfully tracing his frame. "That was all before your time, though. I forget how young you are." 

She locked eyes with him, allowing him to focus in higher detail the murky shadows of her face. The orb of her eye was black and glinted hard and gemlike. Her sharp cheekbones and prominent, slightly hooked nose caught shards of light at the edges of the shadows cast by her brow. Her brown hair was pulled back in a tight bun with only a few stubborn strands.

"So, are you ready to talk?" She asked.

Alacre licked his lips and swallowed, but said nothing.

She pursed her lips. "It's an automated system," she said, her face impassive. "It drains blood into the cells every fifteen years. Did you know that's how long it's been?"

He hadn't known.

"Congratulations," She said. "The first fifteen is always the longest." She puffed on her pipe contemplatively. "I didn't have to pull you out, you know. Like I said, I don't even work down here anymore--they have me as mayor now, can you believe it?--but your case, even as cold as it is now, still intrigues me." She leant her forearms on his chest, looking into his face. "Tell you what: you're still so young. I bet you even have friends on the outside who are still alive." A smug line stretched her lips in a small smile. "You tell me the truth, I'll see to it the next fifteen comes up short and you walk out of here a free Kindred." Sweet tobacco smoke punctuated her breath and swirled in his nostrils.

He stared back up at her, his parchment yellow eyes pale against the red glow of his iris in the dim light. Stars lit up his entire body now, stinging naked and cold. He could feel the straps restraining his arms and legs. Her limbs, though as dead as his, felt like living flesh pressed against his chest. He took in a breath, pushing up her arms with his chest, and let it deflate in her face.

"No?" She watched him. "You're just going to let me toss and turn in my deathbed?"

He tugged his lips into a smirk.

"Ah, well." She dug her elbow into his chest as she brought her pipe up to her lips. "Must be one helluva secret," She said around the pipe, taking a drag and blowing it into the air. "I wonder who you think you're protecting?"

Alacre said nothing. His eyes unfocused, staring at something unseen between them.

She gazed down at him and smiled pleasantly. "Hell, even if you are innocent, I like keeping you down here. You're fun to talk to." She patted his sternum fondly and pushed off his chest, turning to walk to the end of the slab at his feet. "You're right, of course; I should figure out the culprit on my own. I'll review your case files again when I have the time, but dictating Mourncrowe keeps me so busy, I hardly even think about it anymore. Next feeding time I might stop by again, if I remember to." She pushed the slab back into the metal pidgeonhole. "Oh, by the way, if you ever get tired of the food and board here, just ring the safety bell--that's the string at your right hand--and we'll be more than happy to send you to sunnier climes."

With a jolt, the headboard clacked against the metal table. The door whined, the light faded, the locks clicked back into place. Alacre Sypphid's body tingled, fully awake and fed, eyes glowing and immobile in the cool air of the tomb. Her tobacco smoke lingered.

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Pnelma's Pen