literature

Dr. Pink

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At the foot of the Deep Mountains there rests a small village of small people. They have lived in immemorial peace and obscurity, in harmony with the land around them. To each family was given a task in caring for the village – some constructed tools, other raised livestock, and still others watched the river. The river was their connection to the rest of the world. Few would travel through the expansive and handsome Deep Mountains to visit them, and the forest surrounding their village offered little but firewood and beauty. Still, it was their home.

Many of those that came in from the industrial cities could not grow used to the solitude of the village. They quickly left once their business was complete. Others stayed and put down roots in the village. They became one with the village and the villagers.

There was one who put down roots, but further up the mountain – a reclusive doctor. He came to the village some time ago in mysterious circumstances and built a home for himself in a desolate spot guarded by perilous rocks. Only a brave man would want to live there thought many. The rest considered this course of action more foolish in nature.

She found the doctor curious. Her family had been tasked with watching the man – he had yet to earn his trust among the villagers – and she had asked her parents if she could be the one to carry out the thankless task. They were concerned about leaving their only daughter alone to wander the Deep Mountains, but fell to her pressure.

Her first visit was uneventful. Oh, there was certainly much excitement in walking the tortuous paths through the Deep Mountains for the first time and seeing all the strange creatures that lived among the mountains, but when she arrived at the Doctor’s home she found him out and about. Well, she thought, if the doctor is not in now, then I may as well be a good guest and wait for him. She found one of the few flattened rocks in what appeared to be a rock garden and lay there in rest. She wondered what the doctor looked like. She had never seen him before after all! In deep fantasy and drifting away from her surroundings, she fell asleep.

She awoke sometime later to the sound of a mild and soft whistling like an evening breeze. That same voice called out to her, asking if she was there to see him. Opening her eyes, she saw the doctor leaning over her. He wore a simple dark coat and trousers, and was entirely wrapped in bandages. Only his eyes, blocked by thick spectacles, were uncovered. A plain brown hat completed his outfit.

“What is it that you want?” he asked. “I am off duty. You should go to the hospital if you are-”

“I’m not sick!” she interjected, her voice resembling the crashing of wooden drums. “I’m here to check up on you.”

“Oh.” The doctor gestured to himself. “Well, you have checked up on me. Kindly depart.” The doctor then entered his abode and shut the door behind him, having nothing further to say to the village girl. However, his curt behavior only incensed her curiosity, and she knew that she would return. He was clearly hiding something, and she had to know what it was.

--

She felt brave enough to return seven days later by her counting. The doctor brushed her off once more, but this time he did not demand that she depart. She asked him not to be so cold, and she was only doing what she was told. “That may be so,” he replied, “but that doesn’t matter to me. I moved out here because I like my privacy. Do you get it? Everyone’s got something they don’t want others to know, even you. Maybe you just don’t know what it is yet.”

In fact, she knew what it was, but didn’t mind sharing hers at all, and said as much to him. She asked if he wanted to know a secret.

“Two people can keep a secret if one of them is dead. No thanks.” The doctor returned to his home as did she. She returned the next day in the morning, catching the doctor off guard. Still, he refused to allow her entry to his home, but he could accept company down the mountain paths back to the village. The creatures there had begun edging closer to his home, but they kept away from the villagers. Only the black and white birds did not avoid the company of the villagers, and freely flew around as they walked down.

She sung to them, and several flew down to her, chirping quizzically. They avoided the doctor and he avoided them. She noticed this and wondered why. Perhaps he was afraid of birds? But then he wouldn’t be able to stand to live in the mountains with them.

“What are the birds like where you are from?” she asked.

“They don’t have quite so many wings or eyes,” he replied.

“I see! How curious. I would like to see them.”

“Hm. Perhaps you would. They sing with a different tongue. You would have to learn it.”

“I don’t mind! I love learning. I’m the only one in my family that does.”

She had hoped that sharing something about herself would invite the doctor to do the same. Her entreaty bounced off the concrete silence that was this reclusive doctor. It seemed to her that the bandages did more than keep the doctor’s wounds – whatever they were – from becoming exposed; they also restrained the doctor himself, and trapped his personality within the confines of his skin, enclosing it from an imagined hostile atmosphere. What could be inside the doctor’s mind? Was it a place of imaginative wonders waiting to be expressed? A festering wound home to vast terrors and monsters? A bottomless ocean that could never fully be explored, certainly not in one lifetime? What secret was he hiding?

She wondered this as they parted ways.

--

She continued to meet the doctor, despite his cool demeanor. It was because she had to. It was because she wanted to. It was because she was volunteered. It was because she chose herself.  It was because she was curious. It was because she was rebellious. It was all of these reasons merged into one as a self-tying and auto-tightening knot, and these reasons made her curious.

She expressed her curiosity. She expressed it and the doctor responded. Responded with hesitation. He continued to reveal nothing about himself, keeping himself tightly under wraps. Just like his skin. Eventually she realized something. Well perhaps she had always known it, but after she had known the doctor for thirty days by her counting, she had to confront him about it.

“I don’t think you have a skin condition at all!” she declared with an accusing finger while walking with him to his clinic in the morning time. The birds gladly sang and flew around her; the birds continued to keep away from the doctor. Yet another barrier between them. She longed to remove it. “I think you’re just shy!”

“Oh?” replied the doctor with his usual cool evening breeze whisper. “What is this hypothesis based on?”

She explained. First, he never stopped in himself at the clinic for a check-up. Second, no bumps, scars, moles or anything raised up like that could be seen thought the bandages. Third, no open wounds could be seen through the bandages either. Fourth, and most important, any sort of skin condition that required a full body bandaging should also require extensive treatment, including hospitalization; yet he had new medical records made upon his arrival.

The doctor blinked. “Well done. Indeed, I have no skin condition or injuries. I would be considered normal – even healthy – by most standards. “

“Then why the bandages?” she asked.

“That is a secret. I’ll tell you when you’re ready to know.”

She fumed. “And when will that be?”

“We’ll both know when that time’s come.”

--

The doctor worked at a small clinic in the center of town. The doctors there did not trust him with their patients, so he mainly did desk work. Occasionally, he would see a patient for something minor, but they avoided him as well.

One day, she came to visit him. It was the only time someone had come to visit him on purpose.

He was behind a desk again, copying some notes.

“Shouldn’t you be in school?” he asked.

“I don’t go to school,” she replied.

“Oh? That’s a shame. Can you read?”

She shook her read.

“Come here then. I’ll teach you.”

And so he did. She learned.

She became even more curious.

--

Of course, her parents found out. She didn’t tell them that the doctor was teaching her to read; it simply never crossed her mind to do so. She supposed the doctor was right then: there was something she didn’t want to parents to know. And that wasn’t the only thing either.

She displayed her talent entirely on accident. Her father and older brother worked together and made tools. The tools were both for the village’s common use and for sale for people to own. They could both read. She had happened to be in the room in them as the postwoman handed them a mail order. Her father set it down as the two of them went back to work. When he looked up again, he saw her with it. In her hands. She was scanning it, tasting the unfamiliar words.

She looked up.

“What does the word ‘Steel’ mean?”

He didn’t answer.

--

The next day, she did not meet the doctor. He idly wondered if she was sick, yet the girl had not been checked into the hospital. Well, not every illness required a hospitalization. He knew that. He idly wondered where she had gone as he went about his day. There would be no hope in asking where she was. No one would trust him enough to give him the address, even if they knew it.

Well, that was fine. He didn’t need trust for what he had come here to do. His entire goal was just to acquire knowledge of these unfamiliar people. This was his hobby, you see. He studied people and machines, especially from places he had never been before. The Deep Mountains were inhospitable and everybody knew that. The creatures living there were vicious and bloodthirsty demons, the types seen only in nightmares.

So why did this village exist in defiance of knowledge?

--

He continued his work. The girl continued not to appear.

At least one month passed like this by his counting before he felt brave enough to enter the village and inquire for her location. The birds continued to evade him, but the creatures had begun moving in again. He did not know how to keep them away. None of the villagers knew either, because the creatures simply stayed away from them. Curious.

It must be nice to have things so easy, he thought.

He knew nothing of where she lived, but the village was arranged in a neat order. The craftsmen lived together and lived where they worked.  The girl had let slip that her father was a blacksmith (not that she knew what that meant at the time, just that she should be proud of it) and there the doctor went. The people continued to avoid him. Let them!

He had one purpose here, and would be glad to leave when it was done.

--

She continued reading. She read the way that a starving person would eat – as if her life depended on it. Her curiosity guided her, and her parents could not circumvent it no matter what they tried. But they could do the next best thing and keep their daughter away from that doctor who was the cause of all this. They were right to be concerned, after all. Who knows that else that strange man would have done with her if they had continued leaving her alone with him? The thought of it was enough to make the girl’s mother shiver.

Somebody else could watch over that suspicious doctor. They had to keep an eye on their daughter and make sure to keep her on the path they and the village had already set for her. The reading was an annoyance, to be sure, but it was something they control. The doctor wasn’t.

So they were quite upset when said doctor decided to pay them a visit.

“And what might you want?” asked the father with a pinch of annoyance.

“I require tools. The creatures are drawing near my home. I wish to build something to either keep them away or trap them.”

“Hmph! If you’re so good at building, why don’t you make your own tools? Well, I suppose I couldn’t expect a simple doctor such as yourself to do that. So I’ll sell you anything you want at double price. I’ll go down to normal price if you promise never to go near my daughter again.”

“Fine by me,” replied the doctor. He didn’t think he’d be here long enough to break that promise. The girl wasn’t a part of his plan, and he was steadily gathering the knowledge he sought. The knowledge of the villagers. The knowledge of the creatures. The knowledge of the mountains and forests. Once he had them, he could leave as abruptly as he had appeared. He did not expect to be missed.

But the girl had heard this exchange as well, and had her own plan. Her own secret.

--

As the red sun set and night imposed itself upon the Deep Mountains, the doctor returned to his humble abode, having completed his containment. A fence would have to do for keeping the creatures out. If they entered any further, he had countermeasures already prepared – constructions from previous projects that he carried with him everywhere he went.

The countermeasures were active when she arrived, sneaking out of her home to see the doctor once more. Even though, this course of action would incense her parents, she had to continue down the path her curiosity was guiding her through. She already knew more about the doctor than anyone else in the village, because she was willing to trust him. And she knew that he trusted her, even though he was loath to show it. That was why he taught her to read.

That was why the doctor’s strange metallic creatures did not harm her after she climbed over his fence. That was why the doctor left his home and allowed her to see him without the bandages for the first time. He was certainly normal looking by the village’s standards, but his skin was a color she had never seen before – a rosy hue of pink. She decided that he must be from a faraway land, and resolved to see it herself.

“Your father said I shouldn’t go near you. Did he not tell you the same?” the doctor asked. As a matter of fact, he had, but she had ignored him. Because she couldn’t stand to leave this mystery half-solved. Or worse, to be solved by someone else. She said as much to him, and he understood. He was also solving a mystery, he said. It is said that the only creatures that live here are demons, and yet there’s a village coexisting with them with people of a character that kept the rest of the world away. When she said she didn’t know what he meant, he said only that most people don’t have uniformly green skin and brown hair like the villagers here do.

“Really? How strange! Do they all look like you then?”

“Not at all! Everybody looks different from each other. Everybody is different from each other and lives in their own way. That’s one of the thing I liked about my old home down the river. I’m going to go back for a while once I’m done investigating here.” He ordered the metallic creatures – the doctor called them ‘robots’, another unfamiliar word – back into his home, seeing that the creatures had not come out tonight. Perhaps they knew that she would return.

Or perhaps they had predicted something else, such as the fires he saw approaching from the bottom of the mountain. He could not be sure, but felt certain that the girl’s father was leading the charge to find and ‘save’ his daughter from the ‘evil’ doctor. He could not allow them to see him as he truly was. She saw the fires as well, and realized it just the same.

“I’m afraid you’ll have to come with me,” said the doctor.

“I was going to follow you even if you told me not to,” replied the girl.

They entered the doctor’s home.

--

“I think I understand the situation now,” said the doctor as they walked through a house unlike any she had ever seen before. They had gone from the familiar home style that everyone on the village used to corridors and chambers of what the doctor called ‘concrete’ blocks. The lighting was entirely different as well, coming from glowing spheres and not floating sparks. “When I entered this forest, it was as our maps and cartographers describe it – lifeless. Full of dying trees and rotting woods. Only fungi – mushrooms and molds, that sort of thing – lived here. However, as I wandered deeper in, I lost my sense of direction and suddenly found myself surrounded by lush forest.”

“So the rest of the world is not like our village then? That’s what I’ve always been told,” she commented. They were entering a room with more of those metallic creatures moving about and operating glowing devices she had never seen before. She would ask him about them later.

“Indeed. It would be even stranger if that were the case! I had to disguise myself so that I could walk amongst you, even though doing so made me a suspicious character. You see, there are stories of people coming into these woods and never coming back out. Stories of people coming in and swearing that they were only lost for a few days at most, but returning to find that months or years had passed. Indeed, I don’t even know how much time I’ve lost just on this investigation. These woods are treacherous, and I knew I couldn’t stay in the village.”

“So that’s why you lived in the Deep Mountains! We’re outside of the forest!”

“Yes! And your ability to enter the mountains means that those like you can also freely enter and exit. I thought I might have had to modify you to allow you to leave, but it seems like you’ll be fine.” He looked at a device that allowed him to see outside his home even though he was inside it, and saw the fires drawing ever closer. She watched as the robots began filing towards them.

“Modify?” she asked.

“I am also a surgeon. I combine people and machines into one being, as I’ve done with myself. Not that you can tell from the outside. Well, except for my eyes.” He gestured to his eyes, which were dull gray in color, unlike her shimmering green eyes. The same that the rest of the villagers had. She had thought that she would have noticed such a thing, but the doctor didn’t draw attention to his eyes the way that he did to the rest of his body.

They saw on the device that the villagers – her family, as well as many of the strongest among them – were just outside the doctor’s home and were fighting off the robots. They were shooting small pellets that she could barely see, and when the villagers were hit by them they fell but quickly stirred and stood back up. The doctor frowned, but was also interested.

“You resist bullets, eh? That’s a neat trick. I hope you don’t mind if I study you to figure out how it works. In this case, we’ll have to escape out the back. Follow me.” The doctor never ran, but walked with utmost haste. The robots followed him, swarming on and around his body. She followed him, just behind, wondering where life would take her next.

She was growing more curious by the second!

--

The villagers were eventually able to subdue the robots once the robots ran out of ammunition. They lacked the strength to tear apart the machines as they were, so they transformed themselves with the power of the land and the forest. The land and the forest that protected them. The land and the forest that sheltered them from scheming outsiders like the doctor. The land and the forest that was the sacred giver of their lives.

The land and the forest that one’s daughter was now forsaking for the sake of her own desires.

“We were right to suspect him,” said one of them. When transformed, they shared one communal mind and spoke as one even though they maintained their separate identities. So when one of them spoke, all of them spoke and received the words given.

“No ordinary human could build such mechanical creatures.”

“Perhaps this is common in the human world?”

“It matters not. She must not be allowed to escape.”

“We are one. We are one with this land. We are one with this forest. We are the branches of a single tree. If one should disconnect, their fate shall only be to wither away into rotted dust.”

“Desires are impure. They create rot and discord. We will root them out.”

“We must reconnect her to the innocence of our forest. The outsiders must not learn of us.”

They marched as one unit into the doctor’s house. This was the first and last mistake they made that night, for the doctor had expected the villagers to eventually pay him such a visit. The doctor was not merely a doctor and a surgeon, but also a studier of folklore. He suspected that he would be dealing with creatures beyond the realm of accepted science, and he made time to study them in secret. He learned of their secret powers and rituals, so he knew about the transformation.

And he knew how to break it. Sharp bursts of radio static at multiple frequencies rang out in the ‘normal’ portion of his home, disorienting the villagers and shattering their concentration. They returned to their normal, weak forms and could not regain their strength. The toll from their struggle against the robots caught up to them, and they all fell into a deep slumber.

One day they would recover, but they would never find her.

--

And so, the doctor and the village girl had more than enough time to descend from the Deep Mountains and return to the human city down the river. She suspected that she might stand out among the humans, but the doctor was telling the truth when he said that all the humans looked different from each other. They had their own kinds of connections, even with all their differences, so she had no trouble joining them and their lives.

She was, after all, a curious little elven girl from a little village not too far away.
Didn't quite hit 4000 words (3907 exactly) but I'm satisfied with this version and don't feel like tacking on more.

What do you think?
© 2013 - 2024 MysticKenji
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LadyBrookeCelebwen's avatar
I really like this. Normally longer prose on here doesn't manage that, but this did. Good job!