Chapter 11 - Flowers of Antimony
“It sounds like a sacrifice to me. That’s a little extreme, Rosie. Even for us.”
Need to catch up? Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Chapter 5 - Chapter 6 - Chapter 7 - Chapter 8 - Chapter 9 - Chapter 10
Please note that there are subjects and themes in this book that some readers might prefer to approach with forewarning, or not at all. These include relationship trauma, self-harm, suicide, death/dying, swearing, and sexual content.
Whether it was the livid pink color the uterus had taken on overnight, or the conspicuously warmer temperatures their instruments were registering, Rosalie and Leon both agreed that the homunculus experiment was progressing. To both mark the occasion and get a little space from the unsettling developments, they decided to get out of the house.
Unfortunately, their options were limited. There was little to do in Holyoke apart from the mad science in their basement.
Several years earlier they’d settled in the small town believing it was only a pit stop. An ideal temporary home and place for them to get their business started before moving to Denver. However, as often happens, a single year bled into two, then three, and someone decided to trade their organs for recipes, and then someone else took it as a personal affront, and everything was put on hold.
When they stepped outside, Rosalie turned her face up to the cloud-spattered sky. It was still too early to really smell Spring growth, but there was a delicious warmth on the breeze, and the soggy weather had a purifying effect on everything. It was only a 40-minute hike from one end of town to the other, and they weren’t going nearly that far, so they walked.
Toward the center of town was Hammond’s, a deli that specialized in egg sandwiches and not much else. It was the closest thing that they had to a café in Holyoke in that it served coffee, and it had a place to sit down.
Though both the deli and the nearest gas station served the caffeine they were craving, it was a toss-up over which one was worse than the other. The deli did have one advantage - real half and half. And so that was where Rosalie and Leon went. They sat at one of two tables made available, but not terribly accessible, shoved between a drink case and a novelty ice cream cooler. While Rosalie paid for the coffee, Leon did his best to wipe down the table they’d selected. It was sticky with long-dried and unidentifiable liquids.
Once squeezed into their respective chairs, they nursed their scalding drinks. Rosalie pulled out her notebook and flipped through the recent additions. Leon’s gaze drifted to a dusty poster on the far wall and he sighed.
“Per usual, the formula is easy. The process is what’s hard to pin down,” he mumbled.
“We’ll get it. Don’t worry,” Rosalie cheered. “Just keep it in the back of your head. We’ve got the translation, ‘give life itself to save it,’ and if we can puzzle our way through that, then we can whip up the philosopher’s stone and start testing it out on house plants. Simple.”
Leon grunted and Rosalie wondered at the source of his melancholy.
“It sounds like a sacrifice to me. That’s a little extreme, Rosie. Even for us.”
“It might not mean a sacrifice of the lethal nature. There are other kinds of sacrifices, you know,” Rosalie pondered.
There was another pause in their conversation while they both sipped at their coffee and locked gazes. Rosalie almost cracked a smile. When she was in college and they’d met under the pretenses of research, lab work, or extra credit, these philosophical and hypothetical games had been the foundation of their relationship.
“Like?” Leon prompted.
“I dunno. I think we have to define our subject again. Like last time. What is life?”
Leon slowly spun his Styrofoam coffee cup on the table in front of him, like he was turning a dial. It apparently helped him to think. His responses came faster. “Life is…life force. Energy. A beating heart. It’s also what we do in the world. Life is consciousness.”
They both fell silent, each holding up those definitions to the puzzle.
“Mmmm. And life is our experience,” Rosalie added. “It’s what we feel. You know…happiness, love, and despair.”
Leon rested his chin on one fist. “Giving up a literal life falls into the easy and way too obvious category, but it’s still applicable. But then, emotions, huh. They’re like secrets. Like promises. You can’t touch any of them. We can only observe their mark on the world and on ourselves.”
“We can try both? I mean, the formula itself is not only easy enough to replicate, but it doesn’t seem to be one-use. If we fail at sacrificing a literal life, we try the emotions,” Rosalie suggested.
“I wish you could hear yourself right now,” Leon chuckled. “You sound like me.”
Rosalie flashed him a grimace. “You’re right. I’ll tone it down. One of you is more than enough for this project.”
Leon nodded his agreement in perfect sincerity.
On the way back to their house they stopped at Rosalie’s apartment so that she could water her plants and grab fresh clothes and her toothbrush. They didn’t talk about her ending the lease on the place, or moving all of her things back to their house. Instead, they compared notes on the new reagent containers that Colorado Lab Supply was making available, and whether the plastic jars were really acceptable for storing solvents.
Half an hour later the matter was still undecided, and the debate faded away under more pressing concerns. They’d returned to the basement, and Rosalie took Leon’s laptop to begin preparations for whipping up a philosopher’s stone. She opened the spreadsheet which inventoried every single reagent in Leon’s possession, as well as where it was located on the shelves, while referencing the recipe they’d agreed on.
Sphagnum inundatum? Check.
Damselfly wings? Check.
Mediterranean ocean water?
Rosalie moved from laptop to glass cabinets, took the appropriate jars from their homes and brought them over to the lab table.
Rosalie paused as she pulled a jar of cloudy liquid from among other similar jars, varying only slightly in their degrees of cloudiness. “Leon, is this left over from our honeymoon in Italy?”
He was sterilizing the crucible they were about to use but stopped to look over at Rosalie and grin. “Yes. That’s the water we almost went to jail for.”
“You mean the water I almost went to jail for. You didn’t speak the language, so you weren’t digging the hole any deeper when airline security raised objections to this thing sloshing around in my carry on.”
Leon chuckled, turning back to the equipment. “It’s just a good thing that, one: we had the forethought to ship a bunch of it back here, and two: you gave that sob story about your great uncle who wanted to touch the waters of the Mediterranean once more before he died.”
Rosalie grinned at the memory and went to retrieve the last reagent. The recipe called for a stone. After reading several times through the procedure, Rosalie understood that it was the stone that would be submerged in the rest of the reagents, and which would emerge from the primordial soup, in theory, as the philosopher’s stone. She scanned the shelves with crystals and minerals. They were so cluttered that it was like looking at an unbroken and glittering miniature landscape.
Calcite. Citrine. Chrysoprase. No… Rosalie thought, skipping a few shelves.
Red Jasper. Rose Quartz. Ruby. Sapphire. Selenite. Seraphinite - Yes. That one…
Rosalie pulled a small, shimmering green stone from the case and took her place beside Leon. He saw her selection and gently spun the stone on the table. “You know, Seraphinite is a trade name. Technically this little clinochlorite should be three shelves up,” Leon sighed. “After these tests I should really fix it.”
There was a distracted quality to his voice that caught Rosalie like a hand on her wrist. “Hey. Are you alright today? For this?” she asked gently.
Leon lifted his gaze very slowly. Rosalie wondered if he’d heard her correctly, but then he cleared his throat, gesturing with an elbow to a nearby bottle of water.
“Yes. I should’ve been drinking more water this morning, but I’m catching up now. I’ll be fine.”
Rosalie offered him a small smile but found it difficult to begin the next step of measuring out the ingredients. Leon was staring at her. She could see him considering something.
“Rosie?”
She ignored his inquiry, and instead asked again. “Are you really okay?”
“Yes. I just said so,” he replied with a twinge of irritation before clearing his throat once more. “I have a question for you. If the stone offers immortality…would you take it?”
The question caught her off guard, like a push from behind. She answered reflexively.
“Would you?”
Leon took a deep breath before saying, “I don’t fear death, Rosie. But I don’t want to die.”
“Kind of like going to the doctor. Only if you absolutely have to, right?”
“Right,” Leon confirmed. It didn’t look as if he’d found her analogy humorous.
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