Chapter 14 - Flowers of Antimony
There was another option.
Need to catch up? Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Chapter 5 - Chapter 6 - Chapter 7 - Chapter 8 - Chapter 9 - Chapter 10 - Chapter 11 - Chapter 12 - Chapter 13
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.
“Please don’t,” Leon whispered.
Without waiting for a response, he called her bluff and depressed the plunger on the syringe. It seemed to take at least ten seconds for the liquid to disappear into his body, and Rosalie knew she could’ve reached him from where she stood in less time than that. And yet she didn’t. Shock held her just out of reach until it was too late. Leon clenched his teeth and sat down hard on the couch, a quiet growl of pain punctuating the damning act.
“Ahhhh- it burns,” he hissed as Rosalie moved numbly to him, dropped to her knees in front of him and tried to hold him up, pushing on his shoulders. He was doubling over and crossing his arms in front of his chest, the breath tearing in and out of him as he did his best to try to manage the pain, or the impending heart attack. Ultimately, Leon’s struggle was brief.
In one moment Leon had pitched forward, off the couch and onto the floor, nearly taking her with him, and in the next as Rosalie stuttered his name, all of the tension left his body.
Leon lay on his side, arms crossed in a mockery of peaceful repose, his grimace of pain fading and softening.
An inane thought took Rosalie’s attention as she stared helplessly at her husband’s body. She knew that potassium chloride was a common ingredient to stock in their line of work, but a hypodermic needle was not. Had he been that ill over the past year that he’d needed one to take something intravenously?
It didn’t matter, of course. Not now. But the question remained and she thought to ask Leon - shake him awake and demand to know if he had gotten used to the task. Rosalie looked around the quiet basement, feeling alone in a way that scared her.
The stone. I should get the stone, bring him back to life, and then eat something. I’m starving, she thought with a maddening wave of irrationality. If the stone doesn’t work, I’ll have to call the police. I’ll have to call the police, talk to a coroner, and get dinner all alone. I’ll have to pack up our belongings, and sell the house, or otherwise, burn it to the ground. That’s also an option.
“You bastard,” she whispered to Leon, shoving his limp arm and watching his outlines blur through a veil of tears.
There it is, she thought. There’s something normal. Your husband just killed himself. You should be sad.
Rosalie choked back a sob and resisted the urge to fall on his body. As quickly as she’d given herself permission to be upset, a new thought swept in and insisted that she was being ridiculous.
Just bring him back to life, you damn idiot.
The condemnation got Rosalie to her feet, and over to the lab table where she grabbed the seraphinite where it sat patiently, next to the jar of damselfly wings. Then she saw another piece of it by the crucible.
They’d left both stones out, and Rosalie couldn’t remember which one had been from the first trial, and which from the second. They were both irregularly shaped and of the same size. Both had been slightly marred by her use of the knife to scrape away small granules of stone.
Rosalie closed her eyes and shuddered, feeling minor annoyance evolve into anger. Not that mixing up the stones would have any repercussions in the long run. If she made the wrong choice, she’d just do the process over again with the other stone. It was the idea that she’d have to potentially attempt the resurrection twice that was the problem. What if the first time failed, and in that moment decided that maybe she didn’t want to bring him back after all?
The entirety of the situation set her blood to boiling.
The messy lab table, the two stones, Leon’s corpse, and the note not a foot from his body that she didn’t dare read for fear she’d grow so wrathful that she’d not even make one attempt to use the stone, and just walk out instead, to see what could be found in the early Spring darkness.
Rosalie rejected one of the stones at random and slammed it down onto the lab table before walking back over to Leon. In her hypersensitive state, she could feel the crunch of the carpet’s pile beneath her feet. She felt the sting of tears reigned in. And underneath each observation and sensation was a rising urge to howl. Rosalie dropped to her knees once again and let the anger roll through her body. She rocked back and forth, praying for her throat to open so that she could stop hating Leon long enough to bring him back to life.
Rosalie squeezed the stone in her hand and bared her teeth at the slowly cooling body of her husband. At first, unbidden, thoughts of their year apart were all that she could conjure. Even as she was overcome with all of the old, familiar hurt, she wondered what emotion she could give up now to save Leon and her sanity.
Knowing that he’d chosen old recipes over the security of their lives together had cut deep. One point to jealousy. The resentment over his decision spiked the cocktail of misery she’d choked down again and again after his return from India.
Heartbreak had left its mark, too. Like frostbite on her lips, it made apologies impossible. Sorrow had frozen her fingertips for months, and kept her from answering his calls, or making any of her own.
And then there was the rage. The seething morass that bubbled up behind her eyes and turned the whole world white, emptying it of anything resembling kindness, or love.
And love. That demon.
It’d become an entity separate from herself when it’d once been as familiar as her own face. The monster stalked her at all hours, guarding all paths she might’ve taken forward. It prevented her from moving out of town or abandoning their God-forsaken craft. Love had kept only one door open, so that when the time was right, she had no choice but to step through and play the fool once again.
The only thing that Rosalie knew for sure was that she’d never abandon the rage that kept her warm when the jealousy poisoned her, when the heartbreak chilled her, and when love hunted her. Rosalie would never give up her anger. Everything else was on the altar.
“I sacrifice…” Rosalie whispered, and her breath caught in her throat. There was another option. She could wait. Days, weeks, months. All she needed was a chest freezer.
But if she waited, it would only allow what small motivation that had gotten her this far to evaporate. No. Wake Leon up. Get it over with. If she didn’t at least try, then his death would truly be meaningless.
“I sacrifice…sorrow,” Rosalie finally said. She pressed the stone to the center of his chest. With her choice made, Rosalie fantasized that one day she might have the courage to exorcise love, and find some peace.
At first, nothing happened. Rosalie almost hoped she’d chosen the wrong stone so that she could change her mind and troll the large appliances aisle at Home Depot. But she’d chosen the right stone after all. And Leon’s eyes opened.
Rosalie saw no recognition in them, and what struck her most was a vague sense of worry. This was no good. If Leon didn’t remember her, or himself, then how would he pay for this?
“Leon? Are you alright?” she asked. Slowly, Leon uncrossed his arms and pushed himself into a sitting position on the basement floor. His left hand landed on the discarded syringe and he jerked back from it in alarm. After surveying the note on the floor, and twisting to look at the couch behind him, he eventually leveled his gaze on Rosalie.
“I’m alright?” he said.
“I don’t know, are you?” Rosalie replied, growing annoyed and shifting her weight so she could pull her knees up to her chest.
“I think so. Why’d you give up sorrow? You said you’d give up love,” Leon questioned her.
“Wait, how do you know that I did that?”
Leon didn’t answer her.
“Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad you didn’t abandon love, but why sorrow?”
Rosalie shook her head in confusion and decided to speak the words slowly, and carefully, as to be sure that he understood. “Leon. How do you know what I sacrificed?”
“I don’t remember,” he confessed, lifting his hands to rub his face. Rosalie believed him. There was no craft beneath his words, only an innocence that pricked at her eyes, bringing more tears.
Losing emotions was a tricky thing, as Rosalie was beginning to realize. She was certainly angry, and barely restraining herself from mounting a verbal attack on Leon. But since she hadn’t sacrificed love, it too was there, urging her to embrace him. And the sadness that should have been born out of that dichotomy was utterly missing. Her brain kept searching for a replacement emotion and coming up in turns with appropriate, but not quite accurate, substitutes.
Confusion ruled her brain at first, and Rosalie wondered if this was still reality, or if the cumulative effects of their disregard for scientific ethics combined with their descent into fantastical alchemical fuckery hadn’t ripped open a space between parallel worlds. And now here was Rosalie, a different Rosalie, with a different Leon, and nothing would ever be right again. A fatal jump across time that left her forever stranded from a world where they were okay.
A light was coming back to Leon’s eyes, and it broke her from the spell.
“How do you feel?” Rosalie asked.
“Fine. At first my chest, my heart, it still hurt. But it feels better now. Are you - I…I’m sorry I forced your hand in this, Rosie,” Leon stammered.
Rosalie could only bring herself to heave a deep sigh in response, as her tortured brain looked for a substitute to the sorrow that would have normally flooded her neurons. It came up short again. Pulled under by a wave of hysteria, Rosalie giggled and buried her face in her knees.
An apology? This is too much. Oh God, Rosalie thought, her giggles dissolving into whole-hearted laughter.
“Rosie, I’m sorry,” Leon said again, and it tickled her so much that she threw her head back and laughed harder, teetering between amusement over his apology, and hilarity over her hysterical response. And then, the gale of laughter died as quickly as it’d begun. Whatever sadness her body and mind had been struggling to produce was now overcome by anger again.
“Don’t you apologize to me, Leon. Not now. Maybe not ever,” Rosalie bristled. With the rekindling of her fury, she suddenly wanted the talisman that would almost certainly guarantee to keep its flames fed. Rosalie snatch up the unread note.
“Well, can I thank you?” Leon asked meekly. Again, the sadness in his voice roused the ghost of sadness in Rosalie, and on the wheel-of-emotion the replacement that popped up was pity. Rosalie got to her feet and looked down at her husband. She’d never felt pity for him before, and something in her reveled now at this newfound perspective. How could she have been so blind to how pathetic he was?
“Don’t thank me either. I sacrificed sorrow so that one day, when you do die, I will not mourn you.”
Rosalie turned and walked to the basement stairs. Sadness, persistent as it was, tried to worm its way through her veins again. Whoosh went the wheel-of-emotion, and doubt took the place of pity. She paused at the bottom of the stairs.
“I..I don’t know. I need to think. I need some time. I’ll call you,” she said, glancing quickly at Leon still slumped on the floor against the couch.
He nodded, the pale echo of a smile at the corners of his eyes as Rosalie left with the philosopher’s stone clutched in one hand, and his note in the other.
Thank you for reading Flowers of Antimony! If you’re feeling wildly supportive, you can get the e-book novella from Barnes & Noble.
