Dr Fontaneda clipped carefully at the Hebe and Narcissus arrayed in pots on the shelf under the window to his laboratory. Throughout his labours, the scientist had always allowed time to tend to his plants, his only source of relaxation.
Content he had completed his horticulture, Fontaneda turned back to his laboratory work. All was now so nearly complete. For years, he had searched for the elusive key, and now he was just one final step from his goal.
His obsession had started nearly fifty years earlier, at the family home in the south of France. He was an only child, adored, perhaps even spoilt. But just shy of his eleventh birthday, first his mother, and then his father, fell sick. Over the next few days, they grew weaker and weaker, and both died on the same day. Their loss had a profound effect on the young boy. With no other relatives, he agreed to the sale of the farm to a neighbour, and trekked to Paris to study medicine. His aim was nothing less than the utter defeat of death.
He graduated with a good degree, but no real friends, and joined the army, serving with distinction during the dark days when the Prussians roamed across the country. Afterwards, he had pursued his studies in the French Colonies, including a year as the prison physician at the notorious Devils Island. Access to cadavers, and exotic plant substances, had moved him forwards enormously, but he could only donate personal time to his quest.
One day, as he was shaving, his eyes took in the greying hair that had once been brown and curly, and the increasing number of wrinkles around his eyes, and decided he had dawdled too long, and he should focus intently on his task. Time, it was clear, was not on his side. So he had retired on a good pension and taken a house not far from where he had grown up. There, he threw himself whole-heartedly into his lifes work.
And now he could feel victory in his grasp. One final test, and then he could be certain. He approached a row of wooden cages at the back of the room, and extracted a pink-eyed white rabbit. Carefully, he placed the rabbit in a glass box, somewhat like an aquarium, then busied himself filling a glass hypodermic from a small vial. He injected the rabbit, which squirmed beneath his hand from discomfort. He then placed a tightly fitting lid on the box, and began operating a small hand pump, that gradually sucked air from the box.
The rabbit, struggling to breathe as the air pressure dropped, panicked. It scratched and threw itself violently against the side, but was gradually still. Fontaneda paused. He knew the air pressure had only dropped a little, but that consequential activity of the rabbit had only hastened its asphyxiation. He peered carefully at the rodent for a few minutes, until he was certain it was dead. Then he released the valve and lifted the lid, and pulled the limp corpse out. Fontaneda blew gently on the rabbits' nostrils. A leg twitched. He blew harder, and could feel the lungs starting to pulse in and out.
He had done it!
Excitement gripped him, and he reached to the drawer of his desk, drawing from it a small bottle of brandy. The briefest of celebrations, before he returned to the vial and the hypodermic. He loaded it fully, and then administered the dose into his left arm. Immediately, he fell to the floor, dropping the syringe. Fire burned through his veins, before his system shut down and he passed out.
--
Days and weeks passed. Fontaneda noticed with some disappointment that his hair continued to thin. His wrinkles increased, especially in the worry lines on his forehead. In disgust, he turned the rabbit loose in the garden, and watched it scamper away through the undergrowth. Annoyed and frustrated he stalked inside to get a drink, but the brandy bottle, grasped aggresively and without care, slipped from his hand and smashed on the terracotta tiles of the floor. Fontaneda swore, than grabbed at his chest as a searing, agonising pain shot through and down his arm. He fell to his knees as the pain subsided. Then his eyes widened in surprise and shock. His hand reached around his chest, searching but not finding.
He had no pulse. His heart had stopped beating.
Fontaneda was overjoyed, and clambered to his feet. Laughing uncontrollably, he danced his way around the kitchen. He had done it. He was immortal!
--
The first sign that all was not as he might imagine, came the following morning. He awoke, and climbed out of bed, only to notice that the whole left side of his body appeared terribly bruised. It was a livid purple, whereas his right side was very pale. Quickly, he realised the blood, no longer being actively pumped around his body, was pooling under the influence of gravity. He spent the rest of the day worrying about the effects of this, as the blood filled his legs and made his shoes uncomfortably tight. That night, several toenails departed as he removed his socks.
On the second day, he found clumps of hair on his pillow. He hadn't eaten anything at all the previous day, and suddenly became very aware that he lacked any appetite at all. His curiosity over this was brutally shoved aside when he succumbed to a bowel movement that afternoon, which left him feeling quite faint.
As the sun dropped, Fontaneda sat brooding in his laboratory. An untouched glass of brandy sat on his desk, surrounded by medical texts. Fontaneda suspected what as happening, but couldn't, wouldn't be sure. His attention was distracted by a light scratching noise coming from outside the door to the garden. It was faint, with no real effort behind it. Curious, Fontaneda walked over to the door and opened it.
He left out a brief cry of horror.
There on the step was the remains of a white rabbit. It had been attacked, and partially eaten, probably by a fox. Most of the head, upper spine and a forepaw remained. It was the forepaw that was scratching at the door. The scientists eyes locked briefly with the ruined pink eye of the rabbit, before it slowly, uncertainly, blinked.
Fontaneda slammed the door shut, and held his hands to his ears to block out the damnable scratching. The image however would not leave him. Neither would its' implications.
Slowly, surely, he was decomposing.
Yet another in this weeks series of pre-Halloween spooky tales.
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