Art By Stephan Martiniere (Sources: Here and Here).

For the Terribleminds challenge “The Titles Have Been Chosen“. Pleased as I am that mine, “Always Have An Exit Strategy”, was one of the finalists, I didn’t want to just pick my own title. Maybe that’s just me.

“Cordelia! Where is that sulfur I asked for?”

Without the proper preservative, the professor’s experiments would not last into the reanimation stage. He looked down again at the first, he hoped, of many successful human subjects. The burst heart, damaged liver, and ragged kidneys had needed to be replaced, but the brain had been intact. He was not quite at the point of programming brains or toying with memories. However, Cordelia’s efforts in that regard had been promising so far. When the door to the laboratory opened, he smiled and turned to face her, beginning to loosen his heavy rubber gloves.

“There you are. How did it go?”

“The mortuary was empty, as usual.” Cordelia didn’t make eye contact with him. Her long, dark hair slid from behind her ear and obscured her face. The professor blinked, studying her. Usually she enjoyed sneaking into laboratories and mortuaries to get what they needed. But her body language was more nervous, even trepidatious. He moved away from his tray of tools.

“Cordelia? Are you all right?”

“Professor… I think I need to leave.”

The professor blinked. “What happened? What’s going on?”

Cordelia still didn’t look up. “When I was in the mortuary I saw a victim who looked like he’d been eaten by small animals.”

“That happens all the time.”

“How many of them have bites with acid burns?”

The professor furrowed his brows. “Weren’t you going to try and catch that mouse after it ate through its cage?”

“I did find it. I broke its neck and threw it in a hearthfire.”

“What? I could have used it! I could have rebuilt it!”

She shook her head. “No, Professor. I can’t let you do this anymore.”

“I don’t understand. Are you unhappy here? Have you forgotten the dreams we had when we attended university together? The notes passed during lectures given by narrow-minded fools? The long nights by the river, whispering of a better tomorrow?”

“They were foolish dreams, Professor. And I was a foolish girl.”

One of his gloves came off with an angry snap. “No. This behavior is foolish. We are so close, Cordelia.” He gestured behind him, at the corpse on the slab. “Everything is in place! We just need the preservatives, the excitable elements, the initial electrical spark, and…”

“We’ve stolen so much already, Professor. How much damage have we done? How much more will we do?”

“All science comes from sacrifice, Cordelia. It takes strength of will and clarity of vision to see past the tedium and roadblocks right in front of us, and stay focused on the ultimate goal. Think of it: a world where death is a mere inconvenience rather than the end. We’ll build a world of immortals, where the time you always felt you should have had can be purchased and gifted.”

“The price is more than money. We’ve taken these chemicals, these organs, from people that need them. In giving life back to one, we take it away from many. Science should make life for everyone better; it should not give us the choice of who lives and who dies.”

“Medical doctors make those choices every day. Are you going to stand there and tell me that they somehow have that right when we do not?”

“That’s triage. This is different.”

“It’s absolutely different! Imagine having the great minds of our age preserved and continuing to think and produce for ages to come!”

“Please. Just… just let me go.”

He removed his other glove and set them aside. “Cordelia, listen to me…”

“No.” Cordelia finally looked up, fixing the professor with her bright blue eyes. “No, you listen. I’m tired of this dreary laboratory. I’m tired of cleaning up all of your messes. I’m tired of simply being handed a dirty dish or container and being expected to clean it, without so much as a thank you. I’m tired of being used by you, for…” She shook all over. “For everything.”

He blinked at her. He struggled to find something to say, some way to keep her from leaving him.

“How about this… we start again. I get rid of all of this, and we start over. We share in the chores. We work together. And you… you don’t bring me dead things anymore. How about that?”

To his shock, she smiled a little.

“No. No, there’s one more dead thing I will give you.”

He hadn’t seen the revolver until that moment. He raised his hands, a gesture he’d always found odd in others. What, would the gesture magically ward off his scalpel, or his knife, or in this case, Cordelia’s bullet?

“Cordelia…”

“I thought about simply leaving. Just going away with no note, no way for you to find me. But I know you would find me. And what you do… what we’ve been doing… it has to stop. There has to be an end.”

“I won’t follow this research any further, Cordelia. From this day forward. I promise.”

She smiled more. A bright smile, with teeth and dimples, the one that had captured his heart.

“Yes… I know.”

The revolver roared in the space of the laboratory.

He was cold throughout his body. That, he did not expect. His eyes dropped, and he saw the ragged hold in his lab coat, the red spreading out from it. He looked up again at Cordelia, as she stood in the doorway, strong and certain, smoking revolver in her hand.

He wanted to tell her he was sorry. He wanted to say he would stop treating her as he had, that he would not take her for granted. He wanted to ask her what he could do to make things right between them.

Bloody froth was all that came from his mouth.

His body dropped to its knees, disconnected from his brain and its command for him to remain standing. He hit the grimy lab floor a moment later. The door slammed shut, and he was left there, with the dead things.

This week, Chuck admonished us to choose our opening line, so I did.

It’s always midnight somewhere.

When you got one of the black business cards with these words embossed upon it, it was an invitation. It meant one of Madame Genevive’s girls thought you were really something special. Lots of girls in town had pimps; those that worked for Madame Genevive were a cut above as it was. Finding one of them “walking the beat” as they called it could be a rarity; getting an invitation to the center of Genevive’s operation was another matter entirely.

James looked again at the address on the back of the card. The storefront was an antique book store, stuffed wall to wall with tomes new and old. Baskets out front were available for browsing, signs saying there were discounted and even available for lending or those without books to take if they so desired as long as a note was left. Walking in, he found a beautiful girl behind the desk, her hair restrained by a pair of chopsticks, green eyes behind dark-rimmed glasses focused on a novel in her hands. He showed her the card. A small smile touched her ruby-red lips, and she cast her eyes to an antiquated grandfather clock in a corner of the store, within sight of the desk but hidden from the front door.

He walked to it, studying it for a long moment. The hands of the clock were unprotected by glass. He reached up, gently, and turned the hands until the clock struck midnight. It chimed, rumbled, slid back from the shelves, and swung aside. Stepping past the shelves, James found a spiral staircase leading down, low lights pulsing beneath him, the smell of incense and, faintly, sweat. Swallowing, he took the steps one at a time. The clock returned to its position behind him.

The lights in the underground room were kept dimmed, and the pulsing came from the dance floor, where a few couples gyrated together to the thumping beat. Some girls occupied poles, others laps, as men on the couches and recliners watched them move. A girl by the stairs smiled, told him the rates, and took his hand to place a small stamp on his knuckle. James examined it with a small smile – getting here had taken no small amount of effort.

The elaborate security meant officers of the law almost never made it down here unless it was personal business. He could see two city council members and a judge among the denizens in the shadows, drinking in the undulating curves before them. He tried to keep himself focused on the task at hand. It took a few minutes of wandering the floor and gently refusing the attentions of some very lovely girls before he found who he was looking for.

The man was well-built, his physique the mix of plastic surgery and body building that indicated the level of both his income and his vanity, and he was pulling the hips of a girl to him, slapping her ass on every downbeat. She continued to grind him, but her eyes betrayed an annoyance that James caught easily even in the low lights. She saw him watching, and the annoyance faded, replaced by curiosity. Does he like to watch? seemed to be the thought crossing her mind. James placed a finger to his lips, and flicked his eyes to the rooms towards the back.

The girl turned to straddle her eager companion. She whispered in his ear, and then took him by the hand to lead him towards an available room. James fell into step behind them, reaching under his jacket. When she opened the door to allow her john to enter, James slipped the thimble carefully into her hand, wrapped in a few large bills. He caught a glimpse of her look, then stood back from the door and found a place to sit.

Presently, the girl screamed. The woman from upstairs came running down. James ordered a drink from a shaken waitress, not even bothering to turn as the unfortunate man was carried out of the room. The conversation was hushed, uncertain, excited: Did they know who this man was? Wasn’t he the son of the local Don? Would there be retribution?

James smiled. The toxin was subtle. A little elevated heart rate was all it took to activate it, and as the poison stimulated the adrenal glands and other parts of the body, the heart just kept speeding up until it simply burned out. Anybody using plastic surgery to achieve that look was not above using a little blue bill for potency, and everybody knew those things had side effects…

The girl returned, wearing a short, frilly robe over her naked body. James met her gaze over the rim of his glass.

“He’s been coming here for months,” she whispered. “And every time it’s been…”

“Rough?”

She shook her head. “Rough, I can handle. He was just so… He was a dick about it.”

“Not surprising.”

“Did you know him?”

“Only from his reputation.”

She licked her lips, nervously. “Will the Don’s men be coming here?”

James set aside his glass, leaned towards the girl, and took her hand. “Who do you think hired me?”

Her painted lips, finally, began to smile. “I knew someone would come for him eventually. But I’m glad it was someone so handsome.”

“I have a few hours here before my next assignment. How would you like to fill that time?”

Her smile brightened. Her eyelids fluttered. And her robe hit the floor without a sound.

In the pitch darkness of the stormy waters, he swam. Only the occasional burst of lightning far away illuminated the blackness. He was so deep, he could barely hear the thunder.

Somewhere his mind was insisting that this was wrong. Waters this dark and deep should have felt unnatural in their pressure and the demands on his lungs, but he felt comfortable here. Warm and lovely, the waters gave him an ethereal feeling, like he could float in their invisible currents with no effort and be perfectly safe. He had no idea how long he’d been down here; time lost all meaning in the depths.

Phantasms weaved in and out of his vision, gliding silently through the waters. He thought he could make out the shapes of dolphins, or perhaps sharks, but nothing was attacking him. He heard soft clicks, so his mind told him it was dolphins. He moved slowly, not wanting to spook them, and as his arms turned his body, he found his eye drawn to his wrist. A small circle of plastic wrapped around it, and even in the dark, he could make out his name printed upon it.

The feeling of wrongness in his mind grew as he stared at the bracelet. Beyond the thunder he began to hear another recurring sound. High-pitched, electronic, plaintive – his mind told him what it was, and he struggled to believe it. Everything felt slow and dark, smothered by the water. His arms barely moved when he commanded them to push, simply floating beside him like two lumps of lead. The overwhelming feeling of containment enveloped him, and he struggled past it towards the flashes of light and the soft, repeating beeps.

He closed his eyes, telling himself that his mind was right, that something was keeping him here, that this was nothing but a dream. He pushed that envelope that threatened to consume him, fighting ever upward, and even as the pain increased throughout his body, he pushed water away and kicked and strained as if his life depended on it.

His eyes slowly opened. The lights beating down on him blinded him for a moment. As the world came into focus, he looked around him. He was in the hospital, a doctor with the look of an undertaker near his life monitors – the high-pitched, plaintive beeps that had summoned him from the waters. His wife, holding his hand, sat nearby, her chin dipped downwards as she snoozed. Another doctor entered, much brighter than the first, and was saying something about the accident and the surgeries and the drugs. He didn’t care. He looked down at his wrist, remembered the sounds of the dolphins, and gave his wife’s hand a squeeze. She opened her eyes, focused on him, and rose slowly, lips trembling as she squeezed his hand back and whispered his name.