An Episode of Not Quite Dead.

Episode Content Warnings

Please bear in mind that this show is a work of horror fiction and frequently places characters in situations which jeopardise their psychological and physical health. This episode contains:

– discussion of violent deaths

– heavy descriptions of blood and blood drinking

– Descriptions of decaying flesh

– Description of violent assault

– heavy descriptions of the processes of death and dying

– mentions of murder

– descriptions of medical treatment

– threats of violence

– references to murder

– mentions of suicide

– coughing and labored breathing

– sounds of a character in distress and physical pain

Transcript

Okay, let’s do this. Um. Bold opener, Alfie, way to get things moving.

Right, I’m Alfie. It’s uh. Short for Alfric, because my dad was a history nerd and apparently hated me. Why not just call me Alfred, or Alfie? God knows. Man, what a start this is.

It’s not a start, it’s the end, but. I don’t know, it just feels proper, if that makes sense? I won’t have a real obituary. Not a proper one, anyway. Nobody is going to know how I died or what really happened to me. My mum, Grace and Tammy never even really met Casper. They saw him from a distance. I… I kind of regret that, now. I know mum was worried. Maybe if I’d tried to get her and Cas together, she’d have seen that it was a good thing we had going, for all its weirdness and everything. She’d know I died loved, not just by her, but by Casper. I don’t know what that feels like it would be better but. Yeah.

I wonder if they’ll have a funeral for me. What they’ll think of Cas, for not showing up.

ALFIE SIGHS SADLY

I suppose, without a body, there wouldn’t be a funeral, just a memorial. And there won’t be a body, not if I can help it. Rationally, like, I know the odds were never in my favour for this for all of how well I tolerate the blood and stuff, I’m alone. I’ve got a little Calpol syringe with ten ml to put in my mouth and hope for the best, but. Maybe that’s not enough. Maybe drinking the blood the way I have, for so long, maybe it’s raised my tolerance or something and I don’t even have enough to push me over the edge the way I need to. Maybe the fact I handle the blood well is a bad sign, not a good one!

Who knows, honestly. There’s no studies, no data to examine, I can’t research this because– because it’s hard to study and the vampires, that’s not something they want to do, not something they’re interested in or, I don’t know.

God, what am I even–

ALFIE’S VOCIE CRACKS

ALFIE TAKES A DEEP BREATH

I have to do this. Because something has happened to Casper. I can’t help him like this, so I have to try to– to be not like this.

My name is Alfie Dellon. I’m gonna die, or maybe not. These are my final words. As a human, anyway.

INTRO MUSIC. EIRA: This is Not Quite Dead. EpisodeFourteen: To Die, or Not Quite Die.

Haley and I actually have this thing where we’ve promised each other that whoever dies last has to read a poem at the other’s funeral. The specific poem is the Platonic Blow, which is technically anonymous but, really, probably written by W.H. Auden. The idea is that we’ll get up to the lectern or whatever and solemnly say ‘and now, a poem by W.H. Auden’ and everyone will be expecting Funeral Blues. You know, ‘Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone / Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone’, ‘Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves’, that one. Only we’ll start reading and–

ALFIE LAUGHS

Well, just in case you do actually end up at one of our funerals I won’t spoil it for you, but it’ll be quite a shift in the mood.

But I don’t know. Maybe there’s something better I should pick, you know? Because as funny as all that is, I think my mum would want something nice. I trust her to pick something nice. Grace would help. Maybe Tammy will write something for me. She’s really into poetry at the moment, I think.

Actually that was a few months ago. She’s still at that age, you know, where your passions change every fortnight. I just hope she’s not back on the papier maché again. It’s really sweet and everything but I don’t fancy getting sent off with a mushy sculpture of my own head, you know?

I feel like I should have talked to Casper about this. That’s what partners do, right? You know what the other wants at their funeral. Or at least, you should. Hmm. Actually, maybe that’s a bit fucked considering I’ve not like, I don’t know. I’ve not even thought about marrying him or fantasised about the wedding.

Is that fucked?

Surely not. Everyone dies, even vampires, but not everyone gets married. Logically it’s got to be more important to know what poem your partner wants at their funeral than what your first dance song should be, right?

ALFIE LAUGHS, THEN SPLUTTERS A COUGH

Ah, that’s— that’s a much sharper pain now.

Yeah.

ALFIE COUGHS THINLY

Yeah, the sixth and seventh rib on my right are very, very broken. I think my lung might be torn. It’s– ahh– it’s interesting to see the injuries beginning to manifest again.

ALFIE COUGHS AGAIN, WITH A THIN WHEEZE

After,

ALFIE CLEARS HIS THROAT; IT SOUNDS PAINFUL

After the half-made things caught me down by the rive ouse and I– I fell off the bridge, into the stairs, onto the flagstones. The half-mades – two of them – bit me on the arm and the side of my leg, places Cas had bitten days before, guess it smelled enough like old blood that it attracted them, I don’t know. Casper said he could taste the rot of their poison in me so strongly when he drank my blood to get it out that it made him sick, bright red over both of us as I choked and collapsed my lung under my broken ribs.

The side of my head was a mess, skin split, blood sticky in my hair, over my ear. It was scary to Cas enough to over power the visceral drive to bite, to lick, to feed. He bit his own arm, dripped the blood into my mouth. What scared him the most of everything was how long it took from the first taste of vampire blood on my lips for me to come to life again and take his wrist in my mouth. He was shaky, depleted from throwing up the poison, and I drank and drank so much it made him dizzy, made the feral beast that lived in his skin coil and shake, and still I didn’t wake up. He had to pull away before I was fully conscious or he’d have gone so far over the edge he wouldn’t have been able to stop himself from killing me, but he did stop and he called an ambulance and waited with me as long as he could. He took my phone, my keys, my wallet out of my pocket, anything he thought might make it easier for the paramedics to tell who I was. He needed them not to know it was me for as long as possible so they didn’t call anyone I knew.

Bloody-mindedly, Casper resolved he was going to save me, and that meant that none of my family could be asking awkward questions about my sudden, speedy recovery from the brink of death. He promised all of this to me, he said. He whispered it to me as I choked on air, unconscious, bleeding out on the flagstones. I don’t remember.

I don’t remember anything after the fall until I woke up in Casper’s car a few days later.

To be honest I don’t even remember the fall itself, or really the last few minutes before it happened, which is a blessing I suppose. I remember running for the stairs away from the half-made which was dripping wet from the river. My shoes clanged on the iron steps, rust peaking through the cream paint, orange streaks like watered down blood running from where it joined with the old stone of the bridge. I was so close to the road I could practically smell the tyres, and then– I felt something close its wet fingers around my ankle.

I was moving to fast to stop safely and slammed forwards, my face whacking hard against the steps. I could taste blood; my lips were warm and wet as my nose streamed with it, my teeth aching, loose in my bottom jaw. It didn’t make sense; the half-made was slower than me, it was too far behind to have caught me. I pushed myself upright, blearily, looking down, and I saw that the first half-made, the one that had been hunting me through the gardens, it had not stopped hunting me at all, but had followed another path, looping around to meet me, here, where it’s nails bit into the flesh of my calf and it’s ragged mouth full of loose teeth flapped as it mashed its face between the bars of the staircase. It’s other hand reached through the bars to grab a fistful of my t-shirt and I yanked it away.

Pieces of its fingers stayed on the fabric.

I kicked at the thing’s face through the bars, hearing a sickening crunch, feeling its bones give under the heel of my shoe.

My head spinning, my heart pounding, I got to my feet and hauled my way up the rest of the stairs. I got to the top, found the road mostly empty but for a small figure heading me way from the centre of town, no helmet, dark hair streaming; Casper.

Relief washed through me. Casper was here. Everything was going to be alright.

ALFIE DRAWS A SHAKY BREATH

I…

I think that’d be nice, a nice last thought to have, really. And it is the last thing I remember, as he threw the bike out from under himself and rolled across the tarmac like it was nothing. I think, you know, I think he was running towards me. I remember the early morning sun on his skin looked so beautiful, but it was going to hurt him. More than anythingI remember– Yeah. Relief.

And then nothing.

ALFIE TAKES A DEEP BREATH

It was climbing up the stairs, the half-made, face mashed. It’s fingers, fleshless and desperate, grabbed my shoulders and yanked me backwards over the stone wall. It’s arms couldn’t hold me, though, rotted and wasted as they were, and I fell, my back hitting the railings of the stairs with a crack so loud Casper said he felt it in his own bones.

It took him two seconds to get to me. Both of the half-mades were already on me, though, mouths on my leg and my arm, sucking at the half-healed scabs he himself had bitten into me. I was already unconscious. I’m not surprised. I’ve seen the x-rays. My cheekbone was broken, the side of my skull shattered. The damage to my vertebrae. Fractured is… well. It feels inadequate as a description, really. Completely and totally fucked is a better way to describe what those bones looked like. I um, I actually haven’t been able to feel my legs for about eight hours. Even the last time I drank the blood, all that happened was my feet tingled for a little while.

Fucking, all this bullshit, all this– That weekend was so perfect then there were stupid pissy days afterwards but I can’t remember anything that happened in them. And I think maybe if. Gods, the sight of him there, thinking, thinking ‘everything is going to be okay now because Casper is here’, that moment, the last coherent thought in my brain. I didn’t— I didn’t have time to think or fight or suffer, it was just.

Fuck.

FUCK.

It still doesn’t make it– I don’t. It’s still–

ALFIE SIGHS, FRUSTRATED

What I wanted, I think, was to feel like.

ALFIE MAKES A SOUND OF FRUSTRATION

I don’t know if it even makes sense. I guess I have been trying to get to this place in my head where I’m happy about it, where I feel satisfied that I’ve lived my life and like, ha, I don’t know! I want a real ‘at least’, do you know what I mean? But I’m reaching back into everything and the truth is I don’t want to die. I don’t, I do not want to be dead. I don’t want this to be the end and there’s no way for me to sit here and make it work as that because, god, it’s not like I wasn’t happy! I was happy. Deliriously happy, at times. It’s not like I thought I was going to be famous or, or leave some kind of significant mark on the world or go down in history or really anything except more of the same shit I’ve been doing my whole life, maybe minus some of the pain of it, I don’t– I don’t know. But it was a good life, for fuck’s sake! For the stupid hours I worked, the hell that being a nurse is sometimes, it was a good, good life and I don’t want it to end. It’s shit! It’s shit that this is it!

Ugh.

Maybe it’s not, I. Maybe it’ll work, when I drink this blood, maybe I’ll be a vampire, I’ll wake up like Cas, and–

ALFIE CUTS HIMSELF OFF. HE CRIES QUIETLY TO HIMSELF FOR A MOMENT.

I wanna lie and– and— and say I just want him to be okay and that’s all. I want that to be enough for me, but it’s not, I’m selfish.

Fuck, no, it’s not– it’s not selfish I just want to be okay too. I just want to feel my fucking legs I want my lung to not collapse I want my skull un-fractured I want to be okay.

I want to be alive.

I make it through to the other side of whatever change this is, in the BEST CASE SCENARIO, is that even going to apply to me then?

Casper.

I know Casper. I know he’s a person. I know he loves and thinks and feels Even if Cas never could explain it, even if there’s no way anyone could–

ALFIE SIGHS

I wonder if that’s what it’s about, if that’s the reason vampires are being taken. In some ways the change is huge, all-encompassing. I’ve never experienced it or watched it happen to anyone else, but despite the fact every cell in your body is altered, there’s also ways in which becoming a vampire seems to change very little. Casper isn’t human but he can seem very human indeed, you know, in the moments he wants to.

Here’s what I know. I know if I make it through the change, I’ll be healed. I know I’ll want to drink blood. I know the sun will hurt me and daylight will seem much brighter. I’ll be able to see in the dark. I won’t age, and other physical processes will change, some slowing down, like hair growth and fingernails, and others stopping entirely, like human digestion. The main issue with eating human food, Casper said, was that it woke up parts of his body which had been dormant a long time, and that was painful. It’ll be worth it for the occasional french fancy, though, right?

God what am I doing. He sounded– he sounded bad. He didn’t sound okay. He’s not dead, but they’re hurting him, and. I’m here procrastinating literally the only thing I can do to help him, but honestly like, can you blame me? Can you?

And he told me to run. How? Where? Literally where would I go if it’s not towards him, at this point?

I hate how this all makes it sound like my life started when I met Cas and yeah, sure, it’s this moment in my life, there’s before I met Casper and there’s afterwards. The before is where vampires were in stories and movies and didn’t exist and in the after there are rotting half-made things that want me dead and my boyfriend sometimes wants to eat me and everything that sucked before like my job and my brain, they all still suck, it’s just that the net amount of people who want to eat me on a daily basis has increased 100%.

Or maybe not, maybe they always wanted to eat me, I– fucking– I don’t know.

Is this what my obituary would be like? Alfie Dellon, people wanted to eat him, both literally and figuratively, sometimes in a sexy way? Fucking. Jesus christ. There’s more to it than that, isn’t there? I existed before I met Casper. I was a kid, I went to school in York, I grew up here. I was actually born in a military base in Germany so there’s that to bear in mind. My parents married young-ish. My mum was very young, just eighteen, and my dad was twenty-one. Mum had me a little less than a year before the wedding. I was an early baby, born at twenty-seven weeks, small enough to fit in my dad’s hand. This was 1990 so there was a very real chance I’d completely fucked being alive right from the beginning. I spent the first two months of my life in a plastic box. I got pneumonia and staph and even sepsis. I didn’t taste milk until I was six weeks old.

One thing I’ve thought about a lot is what would have happened if Casper hadn’t come to get me from the hospital, if I’d died in that ICU, full of tubes and wires like I had been for the first few weeks of my life. I wonder what that would have done to my mum. Working in A&E I’ve seen a lot of shit and one of the things that breaks me every time is people saying goodbye to what’s essentially a corpse being forced to stay warm by machines. I imagine it feels more tangible, somehow. But they’re dead.

There was so much swelling on my brain by the time I got to the hospital that there was no coming back from it. I had hours to live, and Casper knew it as I lay there on the floor by the river. He sat beside me, holding my hand as long as he could, feeling my feelings along with me, and feeling them slipping away into a muddled fuzz. I wasn’t in pain, he could tell that, at least. Before the ambulance arrived, Casper left me, and for the first time in decades as he walked down the river to where he’d dropped his bike, he thought about luring someone down an alleyway and draining them dry, so he could meet me at the hospital and give me what I’d need to pull through.

Instead he rode the bike home and showered, washing our blood off his skin. At that point, he said, he was so desperate to feed that he could hear the heartbeat of every human within five hundred yards as though he had his head pressed directly against their chest. He knew they would do what they could for me at the hospital but my time was limited if he could not give me more of his blood, but to do that, he needed to eat, I–

I don’t know what he did then.

When I asked, he wouldn’t look at me.

The night after I nearly died, they did find more victims of the half-mades, throats torn to shreds, bobbing their way down the ouse, though.

After they got me to the hospital, I was admitted into the ICU, which was a problem for a lot of reasons. Firstly, I was on a ventilator, which meant he couldn’t easily feed me his blood the way that would make the most sense. Secondly, they’d put me in an induced coma and he wasn’t sure how that would interact with the blood’s effects on me. And lastly, because patients there are watched so closely, it would be hard for Casper to get in there at all.

There was also only a matter of time before someone recognised who I was. With the swelling and the blood on my head, it wouldn’t have been easy, but it was going to happen, and when it did, they’d call my mum, and it would make everything even more complicated.

I spent a lot of time in and out of hospitals as a kid. I was always at the bottom of my percentiles, the littlest kid in my year even though I was one of the oldest. I was forever sick with flu and bronchitis, forever with some bone or other in a cast. By the time I’d hit my teens I stopped being so especially snappable and my immune system finally seemed to properly grow in, but I’ve always found hospitals to be these points of safety and refuge, and from as soon as I was old enough to start thinking about what I wanted to do for a job, I wanted to be a nurse.

My dad, when he was alive, he was always pushing for me to be to be a doctor, but I wasn’t interested. Doctors breezed in and out and spoke to my parents, not to me. Nurses made me feel like I was welcome, that I was safe, that I could own my body despite what was happening to it.

Mum says she considers it her greatest achievement in life that none of us turned out like either her or dad, but I dunno. She’s kind and thoughtful. So are Grace and Tammy. I hope I am too.

And dad? Well.

Dad.

He was a military man, and he was good at his job, and so that meant he was away a lot. They didn’t have Grace until he had to take an extended leave of absence for reasons he never discussed with me, or with mum, or with anyone, as far as I know.

By the time they had Tammy, things were rough with dad. I think mum had hoped a new baby would have brought a little of the joy back into his life, but it didn’t seem to help. There was always a lot of love in the house, but dad was a kind of sad that made it hard to reach. Sometimes, we’d stay up late into the night and talk to each other, but he’d always stop short of actually being emotionally honest about anything. There was so much about his job and his life that he couldn’t speak about, I think he’d just got used to not talking about things at all.

Officially, his death was an accident.

He was hit by a car. Mum and I don’t talk about it, but in the few occasions where we almost managed it, there’s this dark, horrible notion that maybe he walked out into the road on purpose that day. But we’ll never know.

That’s been on my mind a lot too. Not dad dying or the fact he most likely killed himself but the fact that mum didn’t talk about it at all, with any of us. In fact she barely even mentions him. But she has all his uniforms packed up in the spare room by the exercise bike and the winter coats and the cling-filmed Christmas tree.

If I die, that’s what I’ll be. Boxes of stuff my mum doesn’t talk about.

ALFIE COUGHS PAINFULLY, POSSIBLY CRYING

I’m being so self-centred. I’m dying either way, whether I drink the blood or not. I have to think about Cas. I have to try to change, because he’s out there, he’s stuck, and they’ll– they’ll pull out his teeth and cut off his fingers and throw him in the river like stale bread for the ducks and I can’t! I can’t.

He came here to help the others. He came here to stop whatever has been happening here. If I don’t help him, maybe this carries on. Maybe they keep catching vampires and torturing them and making half-mades and throwing them out into the world to kill people. It’s not just about trying not to die, is it, it’s about– it’s about trying to help. It’s about being in control. It’s about them. I have to try, I have to! So why am I still sitting here talking to nobody like it’s going to help? Why don’t I just do it? It’s all right here, right in front of me. The odds aren’t ever going to be better than right now so why can’t I just do it. Come on.

But.

I can’t.

Why? Why can’t I? What’s making me stop?

Am I scared? More scared than of just, just lying down and waiting for the effects of the blood to wear off enough that my brain starts to swell and I can’t think anymore? Really? More scared than I am of just straight up death?

Actually…

I’m not scared of dying. I just don’t want to.

Which leaves me with one option, doesn’t it?

ALFIE SIGHS

Okay, so. Here’s what’s going to happen. I um. I have a video I found, of me and Cas, it’s here on my laptop. I’ll put that on when I start. Maybe that’s silly? I just. He should be here. And I need to help him, so. Yeah. I don’t know. I’ll play the video, and then I’m going to drink what is left of Cas’ blood. Then I’ll lie down with the syringe of the last measure in my mouth. And then I’ll wait.

So, I think.

Apparently it hurts, but I don’t know how much or what it’s like. Apparently there’s thrashing, but I don’t know how voluntary or what kind. I don’t know if I’ll be conscious. I don’t know what it’ll mean for the state of my injuries. I don’t know. I just don’t know.

ALFIE TAKES A DEEP BREATH

But I do know if I don’t do this I will definitely die. And I know for certain I do not what to be dead.

Yeah. So I need to stop thinking about this as just a different way of dying because like, everyone will die eventually and this is the only way I have to make it potentially not now. And I really, really don’t want it to be now.

It’s not the end, it’s the beginning of… not a new life, not exactly. Ach, I don’t know. The first day of something else. Ah, that’s it, isn’t it? First Day of My Life, that’s the song that’d be our first dance. Not that I’d marry him. Not that I’d marry anyone, necessarily.

Okay, I’m just stalling now, aren’t I?

I’m going to let the recording keep running, just in case… Maybe it’ll be useful?

ALFIE LAUGHS

There we go! There’s my at least.

ALFIE LAUGHS AND COUGHS

Wait. Wait. I want to– I know what poem I want. Um.

TYPING SOUNDS

‘Immortality’

By Mary Elizabeth Frye.

Do not stand at my grave and weep
I am not there. I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.

I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning’s hush
I am the swift uplifting rush

Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry;
I am not there. I did not die.

And I hope I really won’t.

ALFIE BREATHES DEEPLY

Okay. Okay.

Whoever you are. I. I did this willingly. This is my choice, alright? If I don’t make it, I had to try, okay? I’m sorry. And Cas, if it’s you, I’m so glad you’re okay and I’m sorry. I love you. Be safe.

ALFIE GASPS

I miss you.

Okay.

A CLICK AND TYPING; A VIDEO STARTS TO PLAY, JUST THE SOUND OF WAVES, SO STATICKY YOU CAN’T REALLY DISCERN THEM

A BOTTLE UNSCREWS

ALFIE DRINKS FAST, SWALLOWING LOUDLY

ALFIE: Not so bad. It’s not so–

Ugh.

IN THE VIDEO, FOOTSTEPS SPLASH IN WATER

ALFIE COUGHS

ON-VIDEO CASPER: What are you doing?

ON-VIDEO ALFIE: The moon. Doesn’t it just look perfect right now? The way it’s hitting the waves.

ON-VIDEO CASPER: I used to think it looked like there were diamonds in the water.

CHOPIN NOCTURNES OP.9 NO.2 BEGINS TO PLAY

ALFIE GASPS AND MOANS SOFTLY IN PAIN

ON-VIDEO CASPER: Who needs Fool’s Gold when just the water looks like this?

ON-VIDEO ALFIE: Yeah.

ALFIE: Oh god, oh god–

ALFIE CHOKES AND SPLUTTERS

ON-VIDEO CASPER: You’re trying to take a picture?

ON-VIDEO ALFIE: A video.

ALFIE SPLUTTERS DESPERATELY FOR AIR

ON-VIDEO ALFIE: I want to see the glitter.

ON-VIDEO CASPER: You won’t be able to capture it you know. It won’t look right.

ON-VIDEO ALFIE: No I know.

CHOPIN NOCTURNES OP.9 NO.2 GETS LOUDER

ALFIE IS BREATHING ERRATICALLY AND MUMBLING UNINTELLIGIBLY, AND CRIES OUT IN PAIN

ON-VIDEO CASPER: So put the phone down.

ON-VIDEO ALFIE: I want this moment forever. I want to keep it. I don’t want to forget

ON-VIDEO CASPER: Then don’t forget. You’re not putting it down.

ON-VIDEO ALFIE: No.

ALFIE MOANS IN PAIN

CHOPIN’S NOCTURNE GETS A LITTLE LOUDER, ALFIE’S MOANS GET A LITTLE QUIETER

ON-VIDEO CASPER: I love you.

ALFIE IS SPLUTTERING AND GASPING, VERY QUIETLY

ON-VIDEO ALFIE: You love me?

ON-VIDEO CASPER: Is that okay?

ON-VIDEO ALFIE: More than okay.

CASPER: Good. That’s good.

ALFIE’S BREATHING IS BARELY AUDIBLE NOW

ON-VIDEO ALFIE: I love you. Bite me.

CASPER: Careful, little human.

ON-VIDEO ALFIE: Do your worst, little vampire.

ON-VIDEO ALFIE LAUGHS

FOOTSTEPS SPLASH

ON-VIDEO CASPER: Never,

ON-VIDEO ALFIE LAUGHS

THUD OF PHONE SPLASHES INTO THE WATER; THE RECORDING CONTINUES WITH JUST THE SOUND OF THE SEA FOR A MOMENT, AND THEN–

THE VIDEO CUTS OFF

CHOPIN’S NOCTURNE GETS A LITTLE LOUDER

EIRA: Not Quite Dead is written, performed, and edited by Eira Major, under a Creative Commons 4.0 Attribution License. With guest performance from Aaron Wolfe as Cas, and Alex Peilober-Richardson as Haley. Live, laugh, bite.

CHOPIN’S NOCTURNE PLAYS FOR A WHILE, AND THEN…

FOOTSTEPS

SOMEONE SIGHS

RUSTLING

A CLICK

ALFIE, AS A RECORDING: Hello, my name is Alfie and I’m not quite—

CHOPIN GETS LOUDER

OUTRO: EIRA:

A DOOR OPENS

SHAKY, RAPID BREATHING

UNKNOWN: (FAR FROM THE MIC) Salut? Bonjour?

FOOTSTEPS

UNKNOWN: What is this we have here?

FOORTSTEPS

UNKNOWN: (CLOSER NOW) Ah, always you make so much trouble for me. What am I supposed to do? I cannot just leave him, look at the state of him!

You are going to be so furious with me for this.

FABRIC RUSTLES, LIKE A JACKET IS BEING REMOVED

Come here, little one. Drink deep. I am going to take care of you.

[END]