Osiris

“Is he really dead?” Emory passes me a scalpel, a silver bone in the light of the great celestial pearl. They begin suturing the large gash down the middle of the spring torso, removing the tubing and clamps as they work their way down the body. Naked in the moonlight, its every feature is discernible, the strokes of Pygmalion evident in every gliding ripple of muscle and smooth curvature of flesh. Its lips even still bear the crimson holly of youth, those meltwater irises rivaling the stars in their glistening alertness. And so, Alfred Douglas remains Ganymede even in death.

“Charon has his fee. For now,” I murmur, pressing tentative fingers to the limp wrist. In a flicker of the overhead light, I feel my heart share the same dormancy as that of the corpse as a few moments pass in the resulting shade in which I can no longer tell where my hand ends and the body begins. The wrist betrays a silent orchestra, its maestro heart not yet beating but the great symphony soon to start. Checking the monitor in affirmation, I find my arm already tensing in anticipation, a sensation startlingly comparable to the convulsion compelled in my hand when the fiery spring of adrenaline first set loose upon my veins. Like a serpent, it slithers through me with its caustic venom, exhilarating me with the same poison I felt when I had first received news of an available specimen.

“I suppose our discretion regarding the nature of the boy’s death must be upheld,” Emory inquires, finishing the last of the stitches and emptying the drains. Prudently, they keep any drops of synthetic blood from spilling onto the linoleum, knowing the millions of dollars contained in each milliliter.

“Corporate policy maintains any divulgence to be a violation of Mr. Douglas’s contract. If the press gets any word of it, we lose the body and the experiment.” Opening the window, I look out to the hills beyond the clinic, winter’s bridal train decorating every surface in sight in a barrage of frozen fractals. Emory joins me, aromatic tendrils of pine failing to flush out the scent of formaldehyde that clings to both of us. For too long, our work has been confined to mere dreams and speculations carved from the ores of our minds, forced to pathetically scratch onto parchment what we should etch into the stars. I place a hand on their shoulder and our smiles meet.“Fortuna’s favor has too long evaded us, my friend, to leave any room for chance. Heaven only knows when the next intersection of investor interest and fresh, supple flesh shall be.”

“‘Fortuna’s favor?’” Emory smirks. “I will never understand you. Come, the boy’s father is waiting in the lobby.”

I spare a final look at the cadaver on the observation table, desperate for any twitching fingers or fluttering eyes. Of course, a reaction so soon is impossible, I remind myself, quitting the childish hope as we exit the small operation room.

Out in the lobby, sugary scents of hot pastries and warm coffee tease my nostrils, yet I find myself still back in the surgical theater, searching those endless eyes for any eternal secret captured in them with the advent of Azrael. I wonder if pain was present when the accident occurred, if the brain’s assessment of the body’s predicament could have been so great as to relieve the mind of consciousness instantly. Or did the limbs suffer as the gears kept moving, the iron teeth of the machine not subject to any ethical persuasions or moral principles. If so, the gala of Phobos, Oizys, and Penthos within the mind must have been excruciating, the last image perceived by the retinas the ever-mowing mouth of wires, gaskets, and crackling sparks as production carried forward in the factory.

Pacing the waiting area is Mr. Douglas, a pathetically small man with a pathetically evident perspiration problem, even in the chilling atmosphere of the hall. What’s left of his hair is neatly slicked back in a cool, collected wave and his sartorial embellishments, a five-digit three-piece suit of a dreadful charcoal shade with a hideous lavender tie, betray the fop in him. The clicking of his polished wingtips against the tile is enough to make me wish I was the one lying stiff and lifeless on the cold metal slab. The thought of actually having to speak with him drives Tartaric sensations through me, red-hot nails racking my mind as I ponder the best way to greet him. Emory, always the better conversationalist, beats me to it with a swift, professional handshake.

“Mr. Douglas, I am pleased to inform you that the procedure went swimmingly.” They flash their perfect porcelain caps and gesture in the direction of the operating room. “We expect to find your son in ravishing condition when the preparations take their full effect.”

“And when will that be?” Douglas spits back with an expeditious glance to his Rolex, dabbing at the sides of his forehead with a silk handkerchief. “I've been waiting in this damned lobby for nearly eight hours now. It’s freezing and I would like to know when I can collect my son and leave.”

“Naturally, sir,” Emory offers the same conciliatory smile as we begin leading him to the observation window. “By our calculations, the Osiris technique should fully reanimate him momentarily.”

“Of course, the disassembled condition of the body prolonged the time necessary to initiate the procedure,” I add, Emory’s eyes flashing daggers at me as a scowl carves deeper into Douglas’s countenance. Always the pity in being correct, I suppose. “Though, it does deepen the poetic beauty of it all, sir.”

“How’s that?”

“Your son’s initial condition rendered him like the namesake of the method, the great Egyptian god, Osiris. Cut up by his own brother, Set, Osiris was reassembled by his wife, Isis, restoring him to life to bear his successor, Horus. He became the king of the dead, bringing order to the afterlife and ushering in a new golden age of prosperity with the usurpation of his treacherous brother.”

Douglas says nothing for a few moments, staring intensely into the glass of the viewing window and smoothing down his hair impossibly further before turning his stolid countenance to me.

“An accidental slip into industrial gears is a far stretch from murder, good doctor. Unless you have other speculations.” The glower of his grey eyes house their own Cimerian shade, burning me with the fires of Phlegethon in their focus. He turns back to the window, now his personal cheval glass as he takes out a comb. “No scars of the assembly process will be visible, correct? He will look and act as he did before the vagary of fate stole his young potential away?”

“Undoubtedly,” Emory utters, a reassuring hand to his shoulder. “Alfred will have the same winsome mien he possessed before the unquestionable tragedy of the accident. In regards to the full extent to which his behavior might be affected-”

“It must be conceded that the board rejected your appeal for omission of the acids.” I interject, unnerved by Emory’s sycophantism. “While we recognize your concern for your son’s appearance, it is our professional opinion and ethical obligation to ensure that, once revived, your son’s sense of morality is preserved, despite the disfiguring effects such chemicals could have on the body’s exterior. Do you understand, Mr. Douglas? Mr. Douglas?”

His lips remain transfixed like the rest of his countenance, Narcissus gazing into his own reflection as though it conveyed the eternal secrets hidden in the eyes of the basilisk. Following his stare, we join him in his paralysis, the roles of the living and the dead reversed as we witness muscles once ground and rigid in the throes of death extend and walk to the open window on the other side of the theater. Silhouetted by the light of Selene’s chariot riding across the heavens, the figure stands tall and erect, Herculean contours prominent as the body’s long sable locks sway slightly in a wintry breeze. That noble nose and regal jawline, utter perfection illuminated by the diamonds of Nyx’s indigo cloak. Now, I can feel the ambrosia of the gods on my mortal lips, my hands to close around and conquer the sparkling heart of Apollo as the symphony of the universe on Orpheus’s chords streams through my ears.

Lost in the grandeur of the moment, we fail to notice Douglas silently slipping into the room, approaching the living corpse from behind. Breaking his hesitance, he caresses a toned shoulder for a few moments, the syllables of his son’s name dripping down from his lips undeniably as the body breaks from the window. The handsome head turns, its hair writhing in a sudden gale setting loose from the window, those endless eyes electric as they follow the filial hand tracing its way puerily to Douglas’s shoulder. The first beads of emotion breaking on his face, the older body runs his hands across that of the younger as though it were gold. They share a smile, both absolutely beautiful in the moonlight, for a moment. The beauty fades like drunken love as the revived hand closes around the throat of its father, atoning for our theft against death in returning what we stole.

The next few moments pass in a blur of grays, reds, and purples, the metallic canticle of chains wrapping around the corpse as security pries its iron thumbs from the man’s throat, its fingers burning into his skin scarlet marks soon to turn violet with bruising, the heavenly spectators in the night sky unmerciful as they watch their mortal instruments at play. A desert of eternity squeezed into a grain of seconds suddenly thrusts me back into the theater rendered gladiatorial arena as Emory sits across from me on the operating table, staring at a puddle of vomit pressed from Douglas’s mouth.

“Back to the drawing board, then?” I venture, anxious to remove that ghastly expression from their face.

Their head remains motionless, betraying no signs of life as I gather and scan our notes meticulously. Several times, I offer the sheets to them, hopeful that they will pick up the pencil and join me, but to no avail, the second corpse to rest in the room.

“It’s pointless, you know,” they utter at last, almost unintelligible as their quivering lips fight their agape mold.

“As though such an attitude ever got us anywhere,” I counter, moving to the X-rays plastered starkly on the beige walls, admiring each artful curve of bone as I look for any possible aberrations in the skull. “The scientific method tells us to try, try again and so we shall. Just a few adjusted variables and success will be ours in future trials.”

Emory’s eyes break from the soiled tile, the tears of Priam at the burning of Troy in their eyes, as they look up at me in utter wonder.

“N-n-next t-time? There won’t be a ‘next time.’ ”

“Of course, there will,” I clap a hand on their shoulder, my weakest attempt at reassurance. “There’s always a next time.”

Fetching a small, familiar vial from the cabinet, I extract a small silver pill and hold it out to Emory. “Take this. It’ll make you feel better.”

Reluctantly, they comply, easing my own nerves as I watch them swallow it fully.

“You forget yourself,” they rebuke, their words almost muddled and melancholy with the threat of weeping. “After that….thing.... almost killed him, how could we ever convince a rational soul to allow us to try it again? Not to mention they had to terminate the project, the damned thing going berserk like that. Blasted corporate policy.” They pull their knees closer to their face, the vulnerability streaked across them unbearable to look at. “Good corporate policy.”

Realizing the climax of the true experiment with such anxious behavior, I retrieve my real notes, my fingers itching to record such thrilling findings as Emory’s mask begins to fall. Supercilious and gilded, I knew it would decay eventually.

“We waited once for a body. We shall simply await another, should that be a year or ten more,” I prompt, spellbound with divine curiosity as I await the bite into Eden’s apples. “We won’t have a college dorm room to share them in again, but we still have the same research and technical skill. Frankly, your panic is ridiculous, my feeble friend, for all that’s left to do is just to find a new specimen and alter our variables. If you’re worried about investors-”

“I’m not!” they gasp, the words spilling like barb wire from their mouth as their cheeks spasm back as though in great pain. Muttering something wildly, they return to staring at Mr. Douglas’s stomach contents, my nostrils hardly minding the rancid odor as I sense the fruit of my efforts in this laborious relationship tantalizing my outstretched hand.

“What was that?” I retort, my feet magnetically drawing closer to Emory. “What did you just say?”

“They were already changed,” their hands wiping running sapphires from their newly wet cheeks.

“What were?” I feel that same intoxicating bliss coursing wildly through my veins, searing like magma but maddeningly delightful, unearthly ecstasy. How Pluto must have felt, gazing up at the beguiling Proserpina, his pleasure hardly holding a candle to my own.

“The variables,” Emory shudders, their forehead perspiring. “I-I-I….changed them. The acids that we were meant to give the boy, the ones to regulate his cognitive function and self-control….I never administered them.”

“Really?” I ask, my hypothesis intriguingly nullified as they finally admit guilt to me this time. “Why?”

Bewilderment creeping foully across their features, their own corrosive eyes slice into me, futilely searching for any sympathy, or, dare I say, empathy.

“You’re not upset?”

“Far from it. Now, go on, go on! Why didn’t you administer the acids?” I grimace slightly as the two halves of my pencil clatter onto the floor, my hand stuck with splintered remains.

“Douglas paid me not to. He said he didn’t want any marks to be left on the boy’s body. He offered five hundred grand. I would have one million coupled with what the press gave me to release details of Douglas’s death and pictures of the body.”

“Greed, then, was it?” I worry my excitement will obscure my handwriting but then remember my predicament with the flexing of my pricked fingers. “Avarice forced you to counter your own morality and rational judgement?”

“ As Wilde said, ‘I can resist everything except temptation.’ ” Emory chokes out, carving a maudlin grin. Beginning to sway as though to some hidden siren’s song, they grab weakly onto the organ scale, tugging loose their tie. They glance desperately at the window. A canine panting begins and their dilated pupils become glittering shards of obsidian in desperate appeal to me, Achilles falling with the arrow in his heel. Right on time. “Wh-why are you asking me all this? What about the ex-ex-experiment?”

At this, I cannot help but let an omniscient chuckle escape me. Picking up their sprawled mass from the floor, light as a marionette, I sit them back on the table, fixing their tie and dabbing away the cold sweat from their hairline as their eyes flutter rapidly, dying butterflies. Annoyed, I realize I must clean up the vomit from the floor before they awake this time.

“You are the experiment, Emory.” That look of sheer confused terror scratched into them humors me further as I bend down to mop up Mr. Douglas’s mess. “You always have been. Feeling queasy? That should be the memory erasure medication kicking in. Don’t fret, it’s perfectly harmless. Of course, you won’t remember that, or the rest of this night.”

A tortured string of garbled nonsense slowly crawls from their mouth. I understand it perfectly.

“This was never about a dead body. What good is one if death removes all that was interesting, all that was unexpected? Everyone knows how to reanimate a corpse nowadays, anyway. I could care less why a body rots. No, I want to know why the mind does, why the spirit buckles under the crushing pressure of its own morality. You must understand the good work that we are doing. Solving the whims and iniquities of human behavior, we can truly glimpse beyond the veil, tear it back and comprehend the wonders of infinity! I’m not one to discredit your efforts, my faithful partner. You’ve been more helpful than ever these past ten year, each century of attempts more and more revealing. And, what pleasure it is to watch you hem and haw over helping whatever haughty buffoon with a dead relative we find for you! You always surprise me.”

Watching their glazed eyes grow every pearly, I realize I have only seconds left, wasting my time jabbering on to my subject before I restart the trial. Assuming the innocence of Euryalus, I smooth down my vestments, my good spirits freshly invigorated with the sudden ringing of the phone. Dashing over to it, the pain of my pierced hand is overcome by the rapture listening to the receiver brings me.

“Emory, old sport,” I sigh contently, “it looks like we’ve been approved for another go at it, several thousand more, in fact. Jubilating, I know!”

Remembering the last piece of news, human caprice (the omnipresent enigma) compels me to make it the last thing Emory hears before they wake up next, their mind’s slate cleansed with fire. My footsteps against the hard floor forming a hypnotic rhythm, the tar of my shadow falls thickly and heavily over their paralyzed figure, the last pinnacles of conscious light slipping back over Aurora’s horizon. In jest, I almost think to whisper funeral rites in their ear. “I just got news from the infirmary wing regarding our dearly beloved Mr. Douglas. You’ll never guess who our latest corpse shall be. I can’t wait for you to meet his wife, but be prudent. She would like her husband to be handsomely immaculate for his resurrection.”