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This will probably be the last of the new bits I’ll post from the (now cancelled) Underland Press edition of A Very Fast Descent into Hell. There are lots more; anybody like what they’re reading? Let me know, drop me a line. I’ll be deciding what to do with this mutant puppy soon…
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What about “water,” Phelan wondered. What about the concept of birth as an emergence from the “waters of life?” It seemed at first mildly ludicrous, but he stayed with it, following the thread. Think, Phelan: he had confirmed that bringing the test subject to a plateau just beyond physical death was an essential part of the elixir’s reactive properties, correct? Correct. Drowning was one of the least harmful ways to cease bodily functions, yes? Yes. What if he… Jesus, what if he drowned the subject in a strain of the elixir? The test-subject’s body would be suffused with the stuff, he would be killing two birds with one stone! You’re a genius, Phelan! Then he calmed down. He looked at his hand, made a fist, unclenched it. It would take years to pump enough of his blood for an equitable amount for the elixir, enough to drown—and entirely submerge—a test subject.
Then again… Phelan had a big gun in his rack.
“Can you replicate this?” he asked Ryder, holding up a vial.
“YOU HAVE SUCCEEDED?” Ryder gasped, reaching for the glass tube.
“No,” Phelan said. “At least, I don’t know, not yet. What I need is to have this reproduced precisely on a molecular level, and at a substantial volume. Two hundred gallons, at least. And it cannot be processed via any artificial means. Can you do it?”
Ryder studied the vial for a moment. “Is it… alive?”
“In a way. It’s my blood. With an extra kick.”
Ryder handed the vial back. “Then the answer is no.”
“No? I thought you could do anything!”
“Many things, priest. But not when it comes to you. The puzzle of your body and blood still eludes me. Why do you think I sought you out? You are the one.”
“Then what good are you?!”
Ryder seemed stunned by the words, as if Phelan had slapped him. “I do not understand,” Ryder began. “Why can’t it be reproduced artificially?”
“Because IT WON’T WORK. Damn it!” Ryder was capable of snapping Phelan’s patience at the worst of times. “It won’t work. I’ve tried it. It has to be my blood, drawn from my body, not chemically duplicated in an industrial vat.”
“Then I cannot help you,” Ryder said. “The mystery of your blood is yours to solve, yours alone.”
“Excellent,” Phelan sighed. “Thank you. Please leave.”
“I will go, but I will be—”
“—back, yes, yes, PLEASE GO.”
Alone, Phelan considered the vial, the mystery. This is my body, this is my blood. Damn you, he whispered. Damn you. It might have been beautiful. Phelan imagined a reborn man emerging from black water.
He hurled the vial across the lab.
So much for drowning. So much for the water of life.
Ω
