Raine looked back to me sitting quietly. “It’s easy,” she said. “I can talk you through it.” Of course Raine Forrest knew how it worked. She likely researched it and recommended it to Brollish.
On the side of the contraption was a panel that Raine opened up. It was hollow on the inside except for a pair of black goggles, a silvery bathing cap and a plastic jar filled with white salve “You just strip down the Little darling,” she said, “and put the cap and goggles on to protect them.”
“Which first?”
Raine smiled; a witch explaining her spell. “Cap first. Then Goggles. This latch on the back makes it so they can’t take it off.” She flipped open the top of the tube. “Then you just plug it in, feed them through the top, close the lid and press this button.” She pointed to a big red circle. “Voila. All adult hair…everything not under the cap or protected by the goggles goes bye bye.”
The nurse grabbed the jar and started looking for a label. “What’s this? Petroleum Jelly? I know how to take a Little’s temperature.” They weren’t barely pretending this wasn’t meant for me. Typical.
“That’s for after,” Raine said. “This is an old model, so the process stings a little bit. This stuff soothes the skin. Helps them get to sleep, too.”
“Sleep?”
“Yeah. The process takes a lot out of them, poor Little things.” Another glance at me. “Don’t worry. The tube is sound proof.” Raine walked over to me and bent over to make eye contact. “Hello, Clark. It’s very nice to see you. I’m super glad you came to school today.”
I said nothing.
She stood back up and picked the lone diaper up off the desk. She held it out from her, like she was farsighted and couldn’t quite make out the multi colored monkeys on the landing zone. I knew what she really was doing. She was sizing me up, putting angling it so that from her view it was between my legs. A tiger sizing up its wounded goat. Damn it all, I prayed she was wrong.
“See you later, Clark.”
She walked out, leaving me alone with the lesser of two Amazons. I sat there in the chair, silently trying to figure out where I went wrong with my life. The nurse finally let me be and pretended to do work on her computer; likely looking up extra instructions on how to use the giant bug zapper torture device I was to be put in.
Typical.
