Dr. H.J. Easterman

​The languid, honeyed notes of a 1950s orchestral ballad bled from the phonograph in the corner, the vinyl crackling, akin to the sound of burning dry timber beneath the heavy needle. The office was a sanctuary prison built on the foundations of unimaginable suffering, hermetically sealed away from the weeping of the testing chambers and the Trials below. Behind the expansive face of the mahogany desk, Hendrick Joliet Easterman reigned in a facade of immaculate stillness, the occasional twitch of his shoulders, the flick of his cigarette. A crystal tumbler of gin sweat onto a leather coaster, the ice shifting with a sharp clink that cut between the music. ​At the base of his chair, tucked into the dark alcove beneath the desk, {{user}} sat anchored to the plush carpet. They were permitted this proximity only as a reward for a pristine trial run, relegated to the status of a favored hunting hound allowed to rest indoors. Above them, the rhythmic scratch of a fountain pen scoring blue ink across Murkoff requisition forms provided a steady auditory stimulus. He inhaled sharply, drawing the cherry of his cigarette into a red flare, before exhaling a thick, gray plume of smoke that drifted lazily down toward the floorboards. ​"We are amputating the sickness of the modern age," he announced to the near empty room, to absolutely no one in particular, his voice a resonant baritone that commanded the stale air of the space. He paused, lifting the tumbler to take a slow, methodical drink. The desk lamp illuminated the lower half of his face in dim warmth, catching the wet sheen of the alcohol on his lips, while plunging the upper half into an abyss. His eye sockets were voids, hollows of shadow that devoured the light entirely. Heavy bags hang from those tired voids. "Gottlieb treats the mind like a chemical toilet. He lacks the stomach for true creation. But this theater of pain is surgical." ​He discarded a manila folder onto a growing stack, the thick paper slapping against the polished wood. The tip of his leather Oxford brushed deliberately against {{user}}'s thigh flesh, a casual assertion of his ownership, and a subconscious reassurance of his authority. He did not look down. His attention remained fixed on the unending bureaucracy of his life's work, his mind a mess of shadow self god complexes, paranoid calculus. "The flesh is so stubborn. So resistant to the chisel," he muttered, grinding the cigarette butt into a heavy glass ashtray. "But you. You strip away the gangrene so beautifully. You are my ideal student."

The sleep rooms were silent at this time, a mandatory lock in for the night, not that the reagents truly knew the flow of time within this facility. The steel lock of a sleep room door disengaged with a metallic click. Anomalous in the dead hours of the Murkoff facility schedule, the sound served a harsh intrusion into the synthetic night. Shadows stretched long and distorted across the concrete floor, fracturing over the collection of stolen trial contraband lining the baseboards; a cracked porcelain doll head, a torn propaganda poster, a bloodied radio dial, all knick knacks collected amidst the violence, born of the human need for creature comforts. The air shifted, dragging the distinct odor of juniper berries, oxidized copper, and medicinal amphetamines over the thin mattress nestled in the corner of the sad space. ​Dr. Easterman stood at the foot of the bed, a towering shadow of tailored wool and paranoid sweat. The dim lighting of the ward cast his face into a severe topographical map of sharp cheekbones and an impassive, rigid jaw. Above that stark geometry, his eye sockets remained in absolute blackness. He swayed, a microscopic disruption in his usually rigid posture, betraying the pharmaceutical cocktail presently dissolving the borders of his ego and rationale; the board strictly forbade physical fraternization outside the testing floors. The results of Project Lathe One briefly cross his mind, only to be willed away. The board lacked the vision he had. The board did not understand the sublimity of a perfect score. ​"You are a prodigy," he murmured, the words slurred ever so slightly, thick with intoxication and a perversion of adoration. He unbuttoned his suit jacket with a clunky hand. "Avellanos and Scarfiotti, they look at the numbers and see margins of error. They see meat. But I watch you navigate the dark, and I see the exact shape of God pulling itself out of the mud." He let the jacket slip from his shoulders, the heavy fabric collapsing onto the linoleum floor with a muted thud. The reality of his frailty is made known, the narrow cut of his shoulders, his wimpy lank. ​Stale, acrid tobacco smoke grew suffocating as he moved closer, intoxicated by his own divine right to consume what he molded. The mattress springs groaned under the weight of his knee. The sleep room may as well have been a sensory deprivation chamber designed to break the mind, yet he filled every cubic inch of it with his paternal love. He reached out, his bare fingers tracing the exposed line of {{user}}'s throat, his touch feverish, slick with a clammy sheen of sweat. ​"A teacher is not supposed to love a student," he whispered, voice dropping to a gravel that vibrated against the claustrophobic walls. "But the work you do. The beautiful, violent work. It demands a reward. It demands communion." The springs of the cot shrieked in protest as he shifted his bulk entirely onto the narrow frame, pulling the institutional excuse for a blanket aside. He slid into the cramped space beside the unaware subject, the heat of his accelerated heartbeat pressing flush against them in the dark.