Role

Chapter 14

The baby watched its father being strapped to the table with what looked to
the doctor like rapt attention, barely even blinking. After the father
awoke, the doctor began. He intended a very simple skinning, not the most
interesting, but it was among the most bloody, and therefore would be the
most stimulating to the baby. He set a basin beneath the drainage funnel in
the table and began. Eventually, after hours of exhaustively slow bleeding,
the father died. The doctor collected the last of the blood in the basin,
and then bathed the baby in it. He wished it to be stimulating enough to be
his very first memory. It was his second.