Tied to the chair by his master's command, the creature rolled his threadbare trousers over his pale shins obediently, his face angular, shadowed and expressionless. A command manipulated the body that no longer belonged to him, and the Vampire Alucard placed his bare feet into a large empty metal basin. He watched his master, the man who owned him, who used him, who demoted him to an inanimate, senseless thing. A thrush-fire tumult flared in his damned eyes, framed by trailing greyed hair, marks of grime, and shades of gaunt hunger. Alucard did not leave the creaking chair. His fingers twitched, but he did not stand.
The brimming pails Abraham carried sloshed, darkening the stones of the cell floor in patches as he walked with a heavy tread. With time, six pails were arranged on the floor beside the sturdy, wooden chair. When he lifted one of these pails and bent towards his vampire, Abraham looked at nothing beyond the basin. The creature expected no mercy, but still watched the unfeeling lines and contours of his master's face, as Abraham bent and poured the searing holy water against his bared legs.
Hissing between clenched fangs, the Vampire Alucard's face contorted, dead features reacting to the first onslaught of pain. This hissing blended into the shrill steaming crackles of the holy water, which cascaded from the pail and billowed like boiling water striking ice when it washed over vampiric flesh. Blood and ash collected at the bottom of the basin, resembling wet grey wool until it was eaten away by a God's vengeful will.
Abraham saw nothing of the pain or discomfort his actions wrought. The thing he was damaging was his own possession, and the thing he was damaging was not human. It lacked true human feelings or sensations. The vampire he had renamed Alucard was a dead thing, a tool, a test subject. Alucard was whatever Abraham made of him.
As the steaming holy water sloshed against Alucard's legs, Abraham leaned over the basin while avoiding the vapors, noting the immediate destruction the water produced against the undead flesh. Alucard's pale skin disappeared like a veil dipped into flame. Efficiently Abraham poured the pails, the hissing between fangs no longer heard as the vampire adapted quickly. Having observed this 'adaptation' a number of times, Abraham held no interest in the phenomenon. The tub was filled midway, to the midpoint of the vampire's shins, and Abraham continued to track the seconds as they chorused at his sides, within the stopwatches that hung from his belt.
Labeled stopwatches clicked quickly for the withering skin. Frozen at fifty-four seconds, one watch marked the moment undead muscle was fully exposed. Bloody water stewed, and Abraham wrapped a cloth around the lower half of his face. The air was humid with rancid, hot deterioration. As though he had not taken this pause, Abraham continued jotting notes, observations; writing blindly, without looking at the page. His mind feasted upon the progressing destruction wrought by the holy water.
The stop watches dangled and clicked from Abraham's belt, moving as his body transferred the motion of his fervent note taking. Submerged in the black, filtering water Abraham diluted from time to time in order to see through, pale red and white of melting muscles and tendons patterned the deteriorating legs of the enslaved vampire.
Abraham palmed his pen to reach for the first of three identical stopwatches. These were labeled for the three muscles he was interested in.
The clicking watches reached fifteen minutes.
Scorched, Alucard's legs trembled at arbitrary moments, but they remained predominantly still. The vampire's brow was scrunched, his jaw fixed, muscles flexing, tendons in his neck stood out.
All of this went unseen by the occupied man.
At twenty-nine minutes and forty-seven seconds, the bones of the vampire's feet came lose. Each bone was exposed, and therefore came apart where tendons, ligaments, where nothing more held them together. Small bubbling pieces of bone sunk to the bottom of the tub with audible taps, and at thirty-four minutes twenty-two seconds, only cauterized stubs hovered over the holy water. Blood dripped occasionally from the stubs, like condensation. The film of crimson on Alucard's ruined legs remained as shallow, open burns. The stubs healed enough to cover the bones and other, more tender tissues, but they would not sprout new limbs into the water. The metal basin steamed, hungry vapors stroking the stubs, so that blood seeped. Blood dripped to pop like hot grease across the surface of the water, before charring. Dissolving. The churning water reflected like shattered obsidian, sleek and glassy with remnant oils, dark as the soot and burning fragments took some time to be wholly eradicated. Eventually, the water would purify itself, and become as clear as it had been before.
Having melted away the undead legs, Abraham left the basin beneath the stumps, to allow the bloody condensation to continue, which kept the surface of the water dark. Alucard unbuttoned and removed his shirt at his master's request. He busied himself by folding the shirt methodically in his lap, stopping only when the man had set the remaining pails of holy water closer to the chair. The vampire's face was turned up towards Abraham's when the man set down the last of the pails. This look was reciprocated by the master; silence held, as blood cracked and sizzled across the black water.
Abraham filled a jar with a sample of the charred stew and quickly diluted it with unblessed water, in order to slow down the process of purification. He set it aside, to revisit the sample later if it was not too badly degraded.
Abraham extended a hard, calloused hand. "Give that to me," he ordered. His voice sounded gritty, yet dense, and it commanded his slave to hand over the folded shirt without question. Immediately, Abraham's arm swung right, and the shirt flew, unraveling, falling to crumple against the grime-coated stones. The mutilated creature stared at the discarded shirt, a garment he could not own, while his master lifted the first pail. In Alucard's slitted demonic eyes, crimson flared with a heightened blaze, burning into the man's face as Abraham moved within the vampire's pupils. The pail rose over the greyed yet predominantly dark head of matted hair. Before Abraham tipped the pail, the vampire bowed his face into his bare chest, shut his eyes, and kept his lips tightly pressed.
Holy water steamed from the dissolving hair, and from the neck, the shoulders, the chest. The majority of the holy water streamed down Alucard's back with a shrill whistle of instantaneous vapor moistening the rank air, molten blood and ash crackling beneath the translucent sheet, which became instantly cloudy. Tainted. Or else, in some ways, fulfilled, carrying the evidence of what it had achieved over the body it devoured. What damage it had inflicted clotted in the edges and crevices of the chair or slipped wetly to the stone floor. Abraham van Hellsing listened to the charged storm of combatting forces, of evil succumbing to blessed might, as the sound of his burning slave crisped the air and cluttered the cell with the conflicted din.
A ragged exhale gave voice to the wretched thing the man worked over, providing a reminder of the creature's consciousness. But nothing slowed Abraham as he emptied another pail over the scorched scalp. He emptied more over the cap of cracked skull that showed through gnawed skin and muscle. The man only permitted fleeting intermissions, during which he etched horrific sums and wove gory imagery into his journal, preserving the effectiveness and efficiency of the blessed water. Recording his God's wrath. Always brief, as he swiftly proceeded. Lifting the last pail, before any amount of healing could begin. Though holy water inhibited regeneration for the undead, the once-Count was prone to disrupting his master's measurements.
In the mind of the burning being, pain could not bleach the dead brain of thought. And yet emotions commanded it, rushing and frothing over layered currents of conscious streams. As the body melted beneath the condemning will of God, He who strove to eradicate His own corrupted creation. Demolishing the touch, the taint of Satan, of Evil; whatever his human servants might call it. The water dispensed undiluted hatred, of being hated, and anger, frustration, resentment, throughout the undead mind. But calm descended, when Alucard acknowledged his scale of suffering, his archive of agony. This pain, was rather minimal. Soothing thoughts such as these, came in waves, between the molten downpours, against which the thoughts evaporated, quickly, when exposed to raw suffering. As feeble as tepid water dashed against glowing coals, and yet, the cushioning thoughts would again condense into currents. And they layered over one another. But at times, the currents of thought became displaced.
Those which came into conflict with one another, flooded. Coagulating the adjacent streams. Building, amassing. Steaming against the hot touch of the water.
But Abraham had finished.
He stood at the center of the dim chamber, from which heavy shadows lent into the walls, and folded beneath Abraham's boots. In orange lamp-light, and the flames at the edges of the chamber, color tinted the remaining shreds of pale skin. Those which were not dyed a much deeper orange or yellow by the diluted blood, which steadily grew black and ate into the soft shreds of tissue, made fragile in the face of the holy power the master wielded for himself.
The dome of white bone was charred in patches, where layers had eroded away. The deepest hollow was at the highest summit, the back of the skull, where Abraham had poured the pails, one after another. Trailing ribbons of black, gnawed hair touched the masses of pink muscle and yellow fat near the shoulders. Pink or irritated red. The fat, made tacky. To which strands stuck fast, temporarily. Twitching pectoral muscles still held by white tendons. Deep red and nearly black blood, what was not burned away, painted the once pale demon.
Where the water had penetrated deepest, gouging the back, Abraham assessed the damage. He stepped slowly around the vampire. First his pen trailed over the details he imprinted in English, capturing the vertical white stripe containing bits of vertebrae like reptilian spines. He passed the white column, to note the "predominantly whitened pink muscle. And yet where shallowest, around shoulders [Front View]: maroon layers of exposed muscle – meat slabs – very fresh, and just as though from a living, or recently living, body. Internal layers, all notably like those of a man's. (as though living) Maroon slab believed to be: Vertical Rectus Abdominis. It is in the correct location."
The illusion of a yellow glow around the demon was only the reformation of the layers of fat catching the tinted lamp-light. It spread like an encroaching fungus. The body mending itself, as stop watches were selected and dropped, to swing about Abraham's leg. Tapping in irregular metallic intervals. He was in front of the monster, waiting for the cartilage of the black, stunted knobs to reform into ears. Taking longer than he had previously recorded, though the additional pails would explain the increased delay, the prolonged inhibition of the vampire's automatic reconstruction of damaged flesh and bone. The face, still tucked away, showed skin reforming over the cheeks, red and black blanketed by the concealing solid white membrane, as though seeking modesty. Thickening rapidly. As soon as the general regeneration was underway, the pace increased tenfold, a hundredfold. And Abraham concentrated on perceiving any possible order by which the healing might be completed. But again, it resisted order and chose rebirth by desperately shifting, growing, reaching, and stretching chaos.
The finished product left Abraham frowning. The Vampire Alucard was whole, with the exception of the stunted legs, which would not grow into the holy water. Abraham knew that the water itself did not prevent this regrowth, only the vampire's natural aversion to the holy influence. The demonic being lifted his head, once restored, and revealed a flat, stolid mask of an automaton. The embers in the gaze, were suppressed. Fuel, run dry. Which was the response Abraham allowed the vampire. No other expression was tolerated for long.
*~*~::..+..::~*~*
Abraham began with the tub, and he watched the progression that revealed muscle, bone, and then nothing more than the stench of burnt and boiled flesh and marrow. The cloth was kept over Abraham's nose and mouth as he scrawled into his journal. The man concentrated on expanding his past observations, listing comparisons among logged times, which he'd begun to commit to memory. He would like to move on to submersing the entire leg, but that would not be part of this day's tests.
There was something the man had found… irresistible. And this took precedence over other whims.
The pails, gathered beside the chair, stood by a shallow trough, upon which the chair and the vampire were placed. The trough would catch some of the runoff, which Abraham would examine later, with help, since the decomposing and frothing remnants he sought deteriorated too quickly for him to work through alone. For the present, he had set time aside to commit himself, fully, to his personal projects on the Vampire Alucard. Projects which for the most part, but not always, coincided with inappropriate behavior or disobedience on the part of the slave. Recently, the vampire had done little besides reveal hints of dissatisfaction or flares of resentment. Little signs, like embers smoking in an extinguished candle, which Hellsing took as cues to initiate new experiments. However, to speak the truth, Abraham would have to confess that the Vampire Alucard had been behaving relatively well, lately. What drove the most recent sessions had nothing to do with Alucard, but rather depended on Abraham's insatiable curiosity, and perhaps private ambitions.
Having procured an excessive allotment of holy water, specifically for these experiments, Abraham pressed on. Prior to his recent fortune, holy water had been reserved for necessities. The lab's instruments needed to be soaked in holy water, and wounds that might have become contaminated were rinsed thoroughly with it. Only minimal experiments had incorporated the important resource, but now they had no need to use it sparingly.
Today, the Vampire Alucard noticed a large hammer tucked into his master's belt. Watch chains wrapped and unwrapped from its handle. Stop watches of copper, gold, and silver swung with the master's steps, as he walked around his slave. And his slave's eyes followed. The hammer was not an unfamiliar accessory, but it was not relatively common. The scourge, the scalpels, and the saws, tools for bleeding and cutting, rather than bludgeoning or bashing, usually found some use in these torturous moments. But they remained hanging from the walls. Against layered, dark stone, where they suggested their potential use, to be taken down at any time, but for this occasion, they only lingered on the perimeter of likelihood.
Alone, Abraham could not easily work the ropes and pulleys that might have allowed him to angle the chair or the slave's body directly, to perhaps hang the beast at an angle to dunk the back of his skull into the holy water. Because of his own limitations and his desire to keep this work private, to make it his and only his, unshared, Abraham resumed his prior method. Of dousing the captive thing he commanded with bucket after bucket of rending holy water.
Tucking his face into his chest, the vampire endured the first downpour as it washed over his head. Skin clung as wet ash where it had not been carried farther down the blackened and orange tinged, once pale, body. But after the second pail, Abraham was satisfied with the exposed skull, blind to the ruined face below it, where the cheeks held pockets of the burning water so that the flesh soon ran like cooling wax, dripping infrequently from cool lips. Dripping from the nose, the sharp chin, raising paths down the raw and crusted vulnerable vampiric throat. And Abraham took the hammer from his belt. Swinging watches ticked in unison as they flowed forward and jostled, clicking into one another, timing the motions of the master. Abraham would complete the necessary damage quite crudely. He would be concerned with finer details later. For now, he only sought a way to expose Alucard's undead brain.
The brain and nerves in undead bodies were vulnerabilities that must be exploited; damage could, at times, be as crippling in vampires as it was in a human being. Abraham pondered the effects wrought by his blows as the hammer broke into the third hardened layer of the skull. The initial hard layer had been eroded by the holy water, the softer middle layer had presented little resistance, and the third layer was all that stood in his way. More water was used, hoping to thin or soften it. But as the hammer let out a spark against Alucard's damaged skull, Abraham could only proceed with patience, and accept, as always, that his slave was not at all typical. That was one reason why these experiments were so fascinating, why he was so tempted to keep the demon here for indefinite periods of time. But Alucard had other uses, other purposes needed to be seen to.
When given the chance, Abraham thoroughly enjoyed his work. And the exercise, as he now poured with sweat, and the wonders it brought into his mind, were healthful. This was a guiltless indulgence.
Shell-like fragments were picked off of the torn battered and bloody, or else untorn veiny membrane coating the brain. Abraham used wet and crimsoned gloved fingers, before he could tear himself aside to seek his hanging tools and his work table, retrieving tweezers and a pair of surgical scissors. He pinched and cut a 'window' through the membrane, within the imperfect and jagged opening of the skull, as the undead mending, though slowed, still pulsed within the conscious organ. Chiseling extended the opening; the silver slowed the bone regrowth; cutting exposed a gelatinous crimson mass, which when tugged, slipping, aside, placed on a dish for later, the wrinkled mass beneath was at last unveiled, laid bare to the widened and hungry eyes above. Some skull fragments were lodged in the Vampire Alucard's brain, but this was only tedious work, like clearing glass from a wound. A wound on a body one did not care for; it did not take long. Unblessed water washed away blood and minute shards of bone, showing the eager cobalt gaze that dark, unnaturally dark and brown and grey, heavily veined with black and purple and crimson rope-like blood vessels, as though the organ were bound and tethered to the living corpse which housed it. Abraham removed his gloves to rinse his hands in a pail, rubbing them to make sure they were not contaminated, before taking a new pair of gloves; he applied the cotton-wax plugs, fitting them snugly into the canals of his susceptible, living ears.
The exposed muscle in the vampire's shoulders twitched continually, anticipating what could be observed, predicted, imagined to its revolting end. What his master's aim had been. Blunt aversion to the forecast horror had the undead sentient and feeling being hoping that some alternative might redirect this experiment, lead away from the prospective goal, but as the creature cruelly and spitefully renamed Alucard, his name defiled so crudely, heard the pail leave the stones, he tensed, fangs clenched, the bleeding stumps he no longer saw hanging above the tub of burning black holy water pressed hard into the chair. The constricting muscles fed the tub additional, sizzling and snapping red droplets before the bared body was subjected, defenselessly, to the master's piercing curiosity.
At first the brain boiled, like burnt caramel, within the pooled holy water, after the initial carving crash of the dousing stream. The vampire's cracking voice was still audible, but not painful to Abraham's ears, and the creature was properly immobile, despite the temporary discomfort his master requested he endure obediently, with a soft, coaxing murmur. Unconscious of his words, his verbal encouragement, Abraham choked on them when a blue flare gasped from the surface of the burning liquid. The master started back, then closed in, immersed in his wonder.
What had taken the man by surprise and now captured his every conscious thought, was the sudden ignition, blue and writhing purple flame, at times tipped with white, skittering over the bits of organ that continued to melt and fold, coursing over the fluid paths that conducted the fire like currents of electricity. The light danced in Abraham's enraptured eyes, flaring in the pupils, contributing to the coloring of the irises.
He did not forget to jot notes, he simply did not want to write. Nothing could avert his attention away from this beautiful mystery dancing before him; not until the rest of the suffering, wretched creature he had tortured to feed his own interests registered to his previously occupied senses. Abraham retreated instinctually, alarmed only due to his previous fixation on the flaming rivers and the fiery pool. As the skull was reduced to a bowl of florescent fluid, the water had continued to sink, and, meeting tissue of varying resistances, tunneled and snaked. Before the watchful master and amidst the ticking seconds and cracking charges of the holy destruction of the brain, blood streamed endlessly from the vampire's nose. From the flooded body, blood surged up the throat and filled his mouth, spilling as well onto his raw chest and less damaged thighs where patches of pale-yellow skin remained, though these patches were shrinking as their edges charred into dusting, black ash. The once molten crimson, now reddish and dead blue-grey eyes boiled until they burst – the display was a bit more unpleasant than what Abraham was accustomed to. Or else, the contrast between this horror and the blue flames was so strong, that this additional gore was more distasteful than it would have otherwise been. Abraham could not decide on a concrete explanation for his feelings, but for the irrevocable present, he clenched his jaw, withheld his heated bile, and commanded himself to watch the rapid decomposition of the monster's human-like face. Blue liquid trickled out at times, along with the blood. Interestingly, the blue burned itself out, thinning into nothing like an extinguishing wick, as it dripped or emerged in thread-like streams. Evaporating, or dusting away as white powder. This revived some of the beauty and wonder, which veiled the scene and eased the unrest that had been roused in Abraham's mind.
Despite how matters appeared, Abraham knew fully well he had not just unintentionally killed his immensely valuable vampire. The Vampire Alucard's brain had been destroyed hundreds upon hundreds of times, and it had seemed to regenerate itself from newly introduced blood, or preexisting blood from the undead body. Or even from darkness itself, woven from stolen shadows.
But there was some unspecific, and therefore confounding, eeriness that made Abraham uneasy for a time, chewing over this unfamiliar, bitter uncertainty. The overall perplexing and extraordinary phenomenon was entirely inundating, but the man would appreciate it in full, with time. Yes, Abraham collected his thoughts, reordered his feelings, and adjusted his black leather gloves as the bleeding torrents thinned to trickles. And then stopped. As the beast did not crumble into dust and other residual ancient fragments, no loss was to be expected. But the image that was left to be assessed by Abraham, gave him pause. The bent, limp body, slumped in the chair. Stumps bleeding crimson condensations into the popping tub of holy water. The skull, blackened, with greys and whites barely apparent. But the black was a crust that seemed to clear itself away, in bits and pieces. Slowly the mending suggested itself. But it was not yet obvious.
Abraham, crouched low and peering up, could view the hollow sockets, and also the white and pinks and greyed charred tissue that held the jaw together. Without lips to hide it, the tongue was perceptible behind the exposed rows of dyed and lengthened fangs, slung like a charcoal hammock between the teeth and the throat. Yes, Abraham was always surprised by the unexpected sturdiness of the vampiric tongue. He supposed any organ involved in eating should be the most enhanced, in comparison to human anatomy. The durability of the fangs supported this, as they gained centimeters, seemingly, due to the streams of water that had carved swiftly between them, driving deep crevices into the bone of the lower jaw.
Abraham wanted to peer into the skull, to see whether any minute reservoir of blue fluid or goo might be found. He was hoping to find some residual material, but as he placed a gloved hand on a predominantly mended, though slightly sticky, shoulder – there was nothing but charcoal black matter inside. Abraham would have reached in to test its consistency, whether it was dry and gritty or wet or tacky, but his body naturally reacted to some shift in his environment, and he stepped back without thinking or considering why, noticing, after a delay, that something had pressed against the midsection of his ribs. Abraham watched with blank detachment as the fangs snapped at the space he had previously occupied.
Abraham extended a black gloved hand towards the same general space, and withdrew it sharply as the head struck forward. With an expression of heightened annoyance, Abraham tore off his soiled gloves, dunked his hands into a pail of clean holy water, and, without drying them, reached for his ears.
Upon removing the plugs, the low, guttural growls, groans, and hisses were heard. He was astounded by this extreme behavior. So used to more mild examples of misconduct from his tattered slave, Abraham stared in bewilderment as the faceless, disgusting decayed and corpse-like accumulation of muscle and flesh emitted these animalistic sounds, and yet, there was something more to the sound that transcended mere beastial capacity. There was either a hollowness or a multiplied manifestation of being, a simultaneous occurrence and cessation, noise and silence, breathing and stillness, which the man could not dissect into comprehendible components.
Abraham, watching the monster whose bones were gradually whitening, placed the hammer on the floor in order to free his belt. He held the watches still, as he dangled a part of the leather with the buckle in the vampire's direction, keeping it just outside the reach of the wrecked creature's lunge. As the teeth snapped at air, and then came together, parting at intervals, as the demon resumed a deeper, more aggressive growl, Abraham gave his order, "Slave. You must not, on any account… bite my belt. I prohibit you from damaging or resisting it in any way."
And the belt passed within the demon's range. The head lunged at the proffered target, the mouth taking in the buckle and a measure of the leather, and the fangs descended. But they did not penetrate. The mouth froze, stained, daggered teeth hovering, caught above or below the leather. And Abraham was able to shove the buckle into the back of the displeased creature's throat, and then remove the belt. Nothing, there was no damage; except, perhaps, a scrape on the buckle. Lifting and turning the buckle to examine it more closely, Abraham frowned at this mark, a brief cold insecurity rushing over his skin, roughening, lifting hairs on end. But he found it likely that his own ungraceful extraction had caused the blemish, having clipped the buckle against a fang. Or perhaps there was some hardened, burnt material in the throat which he had not yet seen. Then Abraham recalled the charred tongue, and either the tongue's roughness or contact with a fang became his favored explanations.
After removing the stop watches and arranging them on his table, Abraham coiled the belt before dropping it into a pail of holy water, looking for bubbles or black wisps, but he saw nothing as seconds passed. So there had been no contamination, no raw blood, only the scorched material.
The creature's master left his belt in the water to be further sterilized, as he again watched the peculiar state of his vampire. Alucard had regressed back into a lifeless state, falling silent and motionless. Without eyes, he appeared dead. But gradually, the body reformed.
White skin spread, like lichens over a tombstone.