Everyone wears a mask, first ingredient.

“My love, my sweet, sweet love. Come to me, hold me close. I miss your touch.” The body’s trembling legs started shambling forwards, its possessor locked into a tragic scowl. “It took so long to find you, they have you secreted away, the monsters. Touch me my saviour, my love, and touch one of the humans. Cure it. Cure it, and let me wear it, my sweet doctor.” The corpse’s leg bones, more gelatine now than structure, folded on impact with the ground. The mask’s host flopped to the ground in that unique way that a dissolving corpse does, arms and neck lolling weakly.

The doctor closed his journal, dropping it gingerly into his bag. “Have we met? I… I get the feeling I would remember you.” This black ooze, however, was interesting. He produced from his bag a flask made of a material which superficially resembled glass. Reaching down, he gingerly took hold of the top of the head, angling the host’s neck down and holding the flask beneath it to catch the secretions. He had never encountered something so elegantly destructive before. Certainly such an exotic reagent could be used to further refine his cure.

“You don’t remember me, my love? You don’t remember touching me, holding me, gathering my… fluids? We’ve done this before, my love. Don’t you remember? It was the first. The first ingredient of your cure.” The doctor froze, though whether this was to ensure none of the secretions missed the flask, or due to his mind hurtling through itself looking for a past it could not find, he couldn’t tell. The flask contained the black secretions, didn’t corrode. He wasn’t sure how he knew it wouldn’t.

“If what you say is true, then, this flask, I made it, did I? I’ve studied you? Then certainly…” He let the head drop, hitting the ground with a sickening crunch. Standing, he quickly strode to his desk. Gingerly, he set the flask down, then next to it, his bag. Out again, came his journal. He pulled it open to the first, earliest pages, looking for his records, looking to see if what this… thing said was true