The more the Girl heard these stories of looking after children, the more she was grateful that she’d managed to escape that nightmare scenario.
Eventually, lunchtime rolled around and she could finally quit being a mock Hunger Artist! But first, she had to take everyone’s orders before grabbing a bite. Fortunately, there were fewer orders this time around, since the majority of the staff brought their own food with them, which came as a relief after dealing with pent-up frustration for so long. When her time to eat finally came, even the act of stuffing nourishment down her gullet in a hurry didn’t cheer up her disposition much when she met the Patient, and arrived in a bad mood.
“Hello! Who am I talking to today?”
“Today my name is Joe.”
“Hello Joe. Here’s your meal.”
The Patient started his unusual method of eating by slurping the water and then sloshing the contents all over the food, softening it up. He repeated the process several times before she remembered that she had something that could make this much easier, and brought out the straw.
“You don’t have to carry water in your mouth anymore! You can use this instead! Put this in your mouth, and it’ll be much easier!”
She held up the straw, and the Patient didn’t look any more impressed than she did. He eyed her warily, so she decided it’d be better if she did a demonstration. She took the straw and slurped the water in her clear glass, the volume vanishing before his eyes. Then she refilled it by putting it back where it came from.
“Now, you try!”
She motioned for him to lower down, but he made no motion to do so. She told him to bend down to no avail. Exasperated, she started climbing up his rocky features, then stuck the instrument in his mouth. The Patient winced at the taste, but then with some effort, got some interesting results he found greatly amusing.
“No, no! Don’t blow bubbles! Suck in the other way! Here, let me show you!”
She put another straw in her mouth and started sucking up water, then for emphasis, she sucked in halfway, then blocked the passage with her finger. The Patient looked surprised as he saw the liquid in the transparent tube remain trapped between the entrance and exit. As she taught the Patient the proper way to use the straw, she thought back to the conversation she had with the Scientist:
“Are you really sure he’d like this? What if he doesn’t like it?”
“Not a problem,” the Scientist responded, bringing more straws out. “These come in all kinds of shapes and sizes. Feel free to experiment until he finds one to his liking.”
The Girl sifted through the numerous straws available. There were more brands than she expected. She bent and prodded them, checking them for durability, flexibility and elasticity. “Does anybody need this many straws?”
“This fits in with my second contradictory truth. Anything that occurs Naturally can be recreated Artificially.”
“What does that have to do with what I asked?”
“Despite the claims of science making great technological strides, there’s not much originality in the field. A lot of inspiration comes from adapting things that already exist into useful tools for widespread use. Horns and sharp tooths were refashioned into blades. Hair and plant fibers can become clothing. High-pitched frequencies can simulate sounds. Lighting through various spectrums can reveal details that would be otherwise lost.”
“Is it worrying that I understand most of what you’re saying?”
“I have never subscribed to the idea that you have to be an expert in all things before presenting your findings. What matters is that you understand the principle. Knowledge of terminology doesn’t hurt, but I’ve always had trouble remembering the exact words. Part of science is to be unafraid to try new and exciting experiments just to see what happens. Don’t worry about the consequences later! The philosophical, sociological and emotional implications are impossible to predict. Go ahead and accept the results, torpedoes be damned!”
She should’ve been annoyed, but found herself drawn in by the Scientist’s words.
“This ties in directly to my third paradoxical truth, It’s that Simple, it’s that Complex. Most theories try to guise up to sound more complicated than they really are, when they can be boiled down to very basic elements. The trick is to find out which words that can properly condensed down.”
Once the patient got the hang of it, he started slurping up the now-liquid food up the pipe. There were still the occasional chunks that didn’t get fully dissolved, which caused him to choke at times, but he persevered, and after much time and effort, was able to clear his plate.
“There! Wasn’t that much better? You got more food inside you than outside! Anything you’d like to drink?”
“Teeth juice.”
This sounded greatly unappetizing to her at first. Teeth ground down into a fine mist then diluted with water to create a pulpy mush? That was until she thought about it for a while.
“Oh, you mean bone marrow?” That stuff inside was usually the tastiest stuff of eating animal foods, and she couldn’t blame them for wanting more of that. “I’ll see what I can whip up.”
“No. Teeth juice”, the Patient repeated.
“Alright...” she nervously replied. She had no idea where to find teeth in this place. It wasn’t like there were unused skulls carelessly tossed around that she could find in a hurry. There were plenty of bones plucked clean just lying in the empty corners. Nothing terribly foreboding there.
She gathered the tangle of skeletons (there were no skulls) as best as she could. They were so disorganized it was hard to tell just how they fit together in the first place. But that didn’t matter. They’d wind up just the same in the stomach. She ground up the bones as best as she could using a large blender that seemed custom-made for this kind of thing. No one came, despite the alarming noise it created, which suited her just fine.
The remains of the bones mixed and merged together, and was drained out the drain into a small glass bowl, helpfully getting rid of evidence that anything improper took place. Even though she didn’t need to, she held the bowl in a fancy way to surprise her guest with sophistication and grace.
Upon entering the room, she bent down and deftly handed the glass over. The Patient took a look at the contents and tossed it, screaming, “No! Teeth juice!!” and pointed at his mouth insistently.
The Girl didn’t know what he meant. He couldn’t mean that he wanted something to grow more teeth, could he? For all indications, his gritted disheveled teeth were all intact. The way he moved his finger, it was as if -
“Oh, you mean Toothpaste,” she said, finally getting it.
“Yes! Teeth juice!”
She brought out a tube of the stuff along with a cup and toothbrush for supplements. As she handed them over, he brushed off the extras and focused on unscrewing the cap and obsessively started sucking right from the source.
“That’s... uh... certainly one way of dealing with it.” Despite the improvements made to his life, the Patient seemed more upset than usual. “You okay?”
“I had a bad dream last night.”
“What a coincidence! I had a bad dream last night too!”
“The first time I had a dream... I thought it was something that actually happened to me.”
“Yeah, dreams have a nasty way of making you believe something is real when it’s not.”
“There’s a reoccurring dream I keep having. In my dream, I’m dressed in colourful garbs and flying in the air.”
“I would prefer flying dreams to the ones I usually get.” Though knowing the Archeologist, he’d probably maneuver an airship to dive headfirst into a volcano if it meant getting closer to a priceless artifact.
“In mine, I’m constantly worried because every time I flap my wings, something awful happens somewhere in the world. With every beat, I cause disasters without meaning to. So I try not to flap so much, but if I don’t flap, I’ll die. But if I flap, thousands of people will die.”
The Girl had no idea how to respond to that.
“I’m stuck between not wanting to cause further harm and wanting to save my life. So I keep gliding, only beating my wings when absolutely necessary, the ground racing closer and closer... and then I wake up.”
“When I came in your room earlier, you were hiding under your bed. Was that because you were scared?”
“No, I like being there.”
Curious, she bent down to see what the underside of the bed was like without the Patient in the way. As far as she could see, the floor was perfectly normal, but the checkered wire mesh of the bedframe was all pulled out, bent and mangled beyond recognition.
She stood up and noticed some more disturbing details about the room that escaped her notice before. The walls were filled with flakes of dried paint not settled properly and there were streaks of red trailing downwards. She inspected the Patient’s hands again. Looking closer, the reason the tips of his gnarled fingers were so red was because there were no fingernails. They’d been snapped off by some extreme force, and it looked self-inflicted. She looked at the walls again, and saw they were actually blood smears. She instantly processed all of this and asked a question for verification.
“When you go under your bed, do you lie on your front or your back?”
The Patient gave his answer, and she muttered, “Climbing the walls...” her voice trailing off as her suspicions were clarified.
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