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The Archivist had a nice face. She could admit that. He had a defined brow and gentle lips and really, the loveliest eyelashes she’d ever seen. His skin wasn’t even all that bad in retrospect. A bit dry around the eyes but clear. The scarring added flavor, if anything. All Jonathan Sims needed was a decent moisturizing and he’d make a wonderful new outfit.
She thought it was going to be easy.
Let it be known, she would never have said those words if she knew what would happen.
“You’re skin’s in TERRIBLE condition Archivist!” she said, ever so cheerful. Her cadence was easy, confident. How naive. “We’re going to have to fix THAT!”
Voice muffled by the gag (a soft silk that wouldn’t chafe), the Archivist squirmed in terror.
“Oh hush! Skincare isn’t anything to be afraid of,” she chastised. “If anything, you should enjoy this! Everyone loves being pampered.”
She bustled about, time to spare, until she found some of the many tubes of lotion she kept around the place for emergencies.
“Now, do you prefer strawberry, or peach?” she asked, twirling back towards him in high spirits.
“DmmHFFMm!” the Archivist protested, yanking desperately on the (again, quite soft) ropes tying him to the chair.
“Oh, sorry! We don’t have that one… I think strawberry will do. It has aloe vera!” she beamed, opening the cap to the strawberry cream. “You really need to take better care of your skin Jon.”
She gripped his chin so he wouldn’t flinch away and, delicately, slathered moisturiser on his entire face. It was of decent quality, and it smelled lovely, and she’d done this before to a woman called Carol, so she didn’t mind the process of rubbing another person’s face for upwards of five minutes ‘till the cream absorbed. She’d probably do her own face later. It was soothing. Faces were nice.
That should have been the end of it. Normally, that would have been the end of it. She would leave him to be fed and watered by some of her puppets and pop in to check on him every day or so to perform skincare. Make sure he stayed properly moisturised.
The next day, singing a little ditty to herself – one of Nikolai’s old numbers, she gathered her exfoliator, cleanser, toner and moisturiser, the only things you really need, in order to visit the Archivist.
To her horror, rather than improved dryness, when she laid eyes on him all she could see was dryness extending to his cheeks and a supremely oily forehead.
“JON! What have you DONE? Oh that’s ATROCIOUS!” she nearly dropped her basket of bottles. “Oh no, this will not do!”
She stalked over to him and grabbed ahold of the back of his chair with one hand. He was remarkably light, so it was a breeze to drag both him and the chair towards a bathroom. The chair legs scraped horribly along tile and she winced.
Once she had him in front of a sink, she got the hot water running. A bit of steam did wonders for the pores.
Nikola was an expert at skincare. She reminded herself of this as she gently exfoliated the Archivist. She took her time with the process, relaxed into the familiar motions. By the time she was patting down his face with a cool towel, she could already see the improvement. His cheeks looked soft and his forehead was clean. He was a little red from the warm water, but that would fade.
“There,” she clapped her hands, pleased with herself. “Much better Jon!”
He only sighed. She’d stuffed a sock in his mouth, so it was the best he could do.
She dragged him back to his dressing room and put him from her mind. Preparations were going swimmingly. Sarah had just finished embroidering Jim, Breekon and Hope weren’t being as useless as they could, and dear Ted almost had enough fingers. Billy had shown up! In person!
It wasn’t until the evening that she had some spare time and thought to remind the Archivist that all was hopeless and that he should be afraid. Merrily, she skipped to his dressing room and—
“Your face,” she said, voice flat. “What have you done.”
Jon stared at her, unimpressed, forehead dry and red.
“I moisturised you,” she reminded him, feeling a little confused. “I moisturised you this morning— Did I forget to do your forehead?”
He kept staring.
She nodded to herself. That had to be it. What a silly mistake Nikola! All this excitement about The Dance was getting to her.
She had lotion on hand, so she applied some and he only protested a little. It was a little disheartening, really, but she supposed it was for the best.
“Now you let that absorb,” she instructed him. “That will fix you up just right!”
She was wrong.
She was so very wrong.
The next morning, the skin above the Archivist’s eyebrows was flaking and around his eyes was twice as dry as it had been when he first arrived.
She didn’t panic. Nikola never panicked. There was nothing to panic about when anything was fine.
She took him to the bathroom, she did his face, and this time applied two layers of moisturiser to his forehead.
That evening, he had a pimple on his chin.
She applied a pimple patch, and all was well.
The next morning, his chin, cheeks and nose were dry, and his forehead was oily again. The pimple had multiplied under the patch, and he had a ring of irritation around it’s edges.
The bastard almost looked smug in her eyes.
“This is fine,” she assured herself, muttering aloud as she dragged the Archivist through the same scratches in the flooring she’d made on day one.
“This is fine,” she repeated, replacing the pimple patch with a hypoallergenic alternative.
“This is fine,” she stared the Archivist directly in the eyes, faces almost touching, trying to order his skin to behave.
She nearly screamed that evening when the redness from the pimple patch had spread up his jaw. But she composed herself. She stayed cool. It was a game! A fun, problem-solving game!
She removed the patch, cleaned the area, applied ice.
“Maybe a face mask,” she suggested. “Yes, that sounds lovely! How about it Jon, tomorrow we do facemasks together!”
The Archivist looked quite defeated at that and she giggled. It was perfect! It would solve every problem!
The next day, after an early morning trip to the supermarket where absolutely no one was afraid of her and she fit right in (it was nice sometimes), she returned victorious with a collection of fun products to try.
True to her word, after performing Jon’s morning cleansing-toning, she pulled up a chair beside him, and placed the deep-moisturising masks on both of them. It had a somewhat cooling effect that felt quite lovely and a soft, clean scent.
“Do you watch YouTube Jon?” she asked, leaning back into her chair and retrieving someone’s phone from her pocket. She knew one of her fingers unlocked it, she guessed left ring finger… correct! “These need to stay on for half an hour before we remove them and moisturise. Let me introduce you to a masterpiece!”
For the next hour and a half, because time’s a thing you hang on the wall, Jon was forced to endure horror after horror and try to keep himself from crying.
Then he was rinsed and moisturised and left alone to be miserable.
The cycle repeated itself for another week, with Nikola experimenting with different creams and cleansers to varying and always temporary degrees of success. She even took to mixing products and called it ‘making potions’. For a while, all was calm.
And then, the storm.
She had been sure she was making improvements. She had almost gotten his skin back to a state of normal. Everything was going so well.
She should have realised that the sudden panic and fear when she approached Jon with the lovely, luxuriant Amande face cream that something was wrong. But it was the best reaction she’d gotten out of him in ages and she couldn’t think past her relish in it.
“AmAHUGKK! AmAHUGKK!” he shouted.
“Yes, it is a nice cream!” Nikola agreed, happy he was excited.
Once the cream was on his face, the Archivist went limp. It was almost cute how compliant he became! It was only when she saw the horror in his eyes that she began to second guess herself.
“Jon…” she tilted her head, observing how half of his forehead had begun turning red and swelling. The Archvist was beginning to panic, chest rising and falling harshly. She tugged the gag out of his mouth.
“I’m…” he gasped, voice barely a rasp. “Allergic.”
“Ffffffuck.”
Nikola bolted out of the room, heading towards the exit. On the way, she passed the hall where she knew some of her troupe were rehearsing. She stuck her head in the door and called, a little desperate, “Anyone have an antihistamine? EpiPen?”
A few useless (though nice) faces turned to her in confusion. The Anglerfish (Billy) offered a cigarette.
She didn’t bother insulting them, just bolted for Breekon and Hope’s van, which she stole. She knew it could go fast.
She made it to Town Pharmacy in a minute by speeding, raced inside, grabbed a two pack EpiPen, dropped money on the ground, and was out in a few seconds. She was back at the museum a minute later, and all in all, the Archivist had only had to go five minutes without air.
Nikola was fairly certain that was reasonable.
She shot him in the leg.
After ten very boring minutes, Jon’s breathing evened out, swelling already reduced significantly.
When he opened his mouth to talk, she realised she’d forgotten to gag him again. She braced herself for the inevitable but Jon only sighed in relief.
“There was an EpiPen… in my bag,” he croaked, angling his head to where a small satchel was hanging on a hook on the wall.
Nikola, who would have been panting with exertion still if she’d had lungs, gave him such an incredulous look it had him fighting to supress a grin.
In the end, she didn’t say another word. She shoved an antihistamine down his throat, taped a sippy-cup of cold water to his bicep and a small bag of ice-cubes to his head and went to bed. She hadn’t need a nap so bad since she had flesh.
She would come to regret that in the morning when Jon had blisters and a rash from the tape.
Now, Nikola felt a whole range of emotions. Joy, excitement, anticipation, whatever emotion was the one for that tingle you get from making someone’s day worse, ballet and even sadness at times. She did not feel defeat. She did not feel hopelessness. She did not feel like throwing in the towel and retiring like Nikolai did after the third six year old played better than him while they toured China.
But she was close.
“Jon,” she muttered, hanging her head in frustration. “What do I do? Why is your skin like this? I just spent two weeks soothing away those pimples and now you get another one. Days treating that rash, and now your skin is cracking. Hours massaging pawpaw cream into your lips. There must be something wrong with you.”
“Amhthowwy,” the Archivist tried to console her.
“No you’re not. You think I’m a failure of a skincare guru.”
“OrmOTa ffhaiwya o-a hinhare hoohoo,” he said.
“I… I’m sorry Jon,” she said eventually, sighing and sounding almost human. “Your skin was fine before. A little dry around the eyes, but nothing really to complain about. All you really needed was to drink more water. What did you even do for skincare before?”
Jon averted his eyes.
“Jon… What would you usually do for skincare?”
The Archivist refused to look at her.
“Is there something you haven’t been telling me?” a dangerous tone entered her voice and Jon snapped to attention, shaking his head in denial. Then, unable to stop himself, he huffed the faintest of laughs.
Furious, she dragged him to the bathroom, untied his hands, ripped off his gag, and gestured at the rows and rows of products she had lined up on the counter.
“Show me,” she demanded. “Show. Me.”
A little hesitant, Jon stood and rubbed at his wrists, legs still bound. It was a little difficult to balance, but he’d been allowed to stand like this as his daily exercise, so he managed fine.
“Are you—”
“Do it,” Nikola didn’t need to shout for Jon to squeal and turn his attention to the sink.
It started off fine. Jon washed his hands thoroughly and dried them off on a towel. He grabbed a tissue, folded it into a small square.
Refusing to so much as glance in her direction, he then reached for the hand sanitiser.
Nikola tilted her head in confusion as he pumped a small blob onto the tissue, then squished the liquid into the fibres. With an abject sense of horror, she watched as he swiped at the oil on his nose and forehead with the hand sanitiser soaked tissue. Then, with rough nails, he popped the pimple that had appeared on his temple and squeezed the skin until it was red and bleeding. He finished off by rinsing his face with plain, cold, tap water then drying his face with a towel.
Then he sat down, done.
He dared look up at her, almost expectant.
His skin did look better.
Nikola screamed.
“I’m sorry,” Jon offered.
It was at this point Nikola blacked out entirely.
When she came to coherency hours later, the bathroom was destroyed. Products splattered the walls and a horrendous mix of chemical and floral scents lay thick in the air. Glass bottles lay shattered amongst their scattered plastic brethren. The sink was ripped from the wall and embedded in the ceiling, dripping water that added to the puddle left by the damaged pipes left behind.
Deep gouges marred the walls and she noted a little distantly that she had insulation under her nails. One of her legs was across the room, sticking out of a cupboard. In shards of the mirror, now dangling precariously at an odd angle, she found a chunk of her forehead.
The Archivist was missing. She might have eaten him.
The door, however, smelt like it had been yellow at some point recently, so he may have been stolen. She couldn’t bring herself to care. Good on him.
Time for that cigarette.