Page 12 of A Most Abhorrent Vessel

I can’t help but roll my eyes at her words. “It sounds so childish when you put it like that.”

“Infatuations are not childish, Orlando. They are the fabric of existence. But what does your infatuation have to do with your hand?”

“My hand seems to be skinned.”

“Skinned?” she half-whispers, clearly confused by my explanation.

I take a moment before answering, trying to find a way to be precise. “Do you remember the models at the Hunterian?” I finally say.

“Of course I do. But there were so many, you must be more specific.”

“Well, my hand looks like one of the specimens.” I let the explanation linger between us.

“Oh,” she finally says, followed by an abnormally long pause. “Skinned.”

“Yes. Skinned.”

“And you felt absolutely nothing when meeting Vaslav?” she says, softer this time.

“Nothing at all.”

“That’s not very normal, is it?”

“Not particularly.” I sigh.

“My poor Orlando, you must be terrified.” Her voice is as gentle as it was when I hurt myself playing too enthusiastically when we were little.

“That is precisely the problem, Aphra,” I stop myself, unsure of how to explain it well. “I’m not scared. Concerned, yes. Worried, maybe. But scared? Not at all. I feel no fear, no infatuation. And no kind of stirring. In fact, I suspect my senses might have abandoned me as well.”

“That is—” A long, heavy silence fills the line before she continues. “Well, go test it, then. Hit yourself with something.”

“I’d rather just try hot water.”

I leave the receiver on the telephone desk to test my theory. I let the water run from the tap until I see steam rising. When I’m certain it’s as hot as it gets, I run my fingers under the stream.

“Nothing,” I say when I finally return.

“Are you sure the water was hot enough?”

“Certain.”

I know I should be scared. So I take a moment, really trying to listen, to feel.

I think something might be hiding in the recesses, but it’s too dull and distant to distinguish. Was that faint sensation my very last one or perhaps the beginning of something new?

“And what did the physician say?” Aphra’s voice brings me back.

“Apparently, I’m in perfect health. He did not see my Hunterian hand, of course. That only happened this evening.”

“I don’t think being partially skinned and in perfect health are simultaneously possible states,” she scoffs. It’s quite clear she doesn’t trust my physician’s opinion. “And besides the unfeelingness, do you feel ill?”

“No, which makes it all only more peculiar. I only feel wrong. It started about three days ago, which is why I visited him yesterday. I thought I might have contracted a new kind of exotic fever of sorts.”

“And did you—” she starts just as I say, “Wait.” I remember the little hammer rapping on my non-responsive limbs. “There was something I had not considered important. An anomaly with my reflexes…”

“Please elaborate,” she urges me on.

“Well, they seem to have vanished.”