Chapter The 1st
The short, nebbishy, middle-aged man held forth his hands, which contained three stoppered vials. Each vial contained a bright pink, iridescent fluid. “Take one, please” he asked, “but do not open it.”
Each of the young men took a vial, and the older man turned back to check off three small boxes in a meticulously articulated schedule. As he finished the final tick, a demure cough and wheeze came from behind him. He turned back around.
Before him stood three young men. Trobbins, barely as tall as we was round, had maggot-colored skin that glowed nearly as brightly as the vial in his rubbery hands, contrasting with dark beady eyes and a piggish face. Ozman, in the middle, as impossibly tall as he was impossibly rail-thin, had enormous, fishy eyes; their blue irises seemed to shine in contrast to his kodiak-toned flesh as they stared resolutely to the side of his motionless, angular head. The eyes were staring at McHamish.
McHamish was a tall, broad shouldered, square-jawed, and healthy young man with fair hair and deep, mischievous brown eyes. His rakish brow, cunning smirk, and confident cheekbones all concealed an intellect even denser than that of his fellows. McHamish’s cerebral shortcomings rarely missed an opportunity to manifest, but they were never so evident as they were at this moment, his broad hands and work-worn fingers trembling ever-so-slightly over the cork and unstoppered vial, an evanescent mist just barely leaking from its lips.
After sparing a guilty look toward the older man before him, McHamish restoppered the vial. The short nebbish stepped forward, retrieved the vial from McHamish, and replaced it on his desk. “Thank you, McHamish; you may go.”
In a fine baritone, the young adonis answered, “Sorry, Doctor Citron.”
The old nebbish raised a finger in objection. “I am not a doctor,” he said. Again. “I really cannot stress that enough, McHamish. Good evening.”
McHamish shrugged, left the room, and walked off into a life of adventure, a host of parties, a string of torrid affairs, and all those many joys that accompany the beautiful and stupid. Trobbins and Ozman glared after his departure, deathly envious that they possessed only one of the qualifications for McHamish’s charmed life.
Citron, his position as not-terminally-degreed firmly established, had kept his finger up this whole time, deftly altering its usage from interruption to sustention. He waited, staring off into nothing, nearly a full minute after the young hero’s departure.
Trobbins and Ozman had never heard a sincerely blood-curdling scream, and indeed neither possessed the imagination or vocabulary to truly envision such an anatomical phenomenon. However, if ever any scream they had ever heard came close to earning the description of “blood-curdling,” it was most definitely the one they now heard echoing from a disquietingly insubstantial distance.
The scream continued. Citron’s finger remained in place. Citron’s wide eyes, partly obscured by his professorial spectacles, hopped back and forth between those of Trobbins and Ozman. Trobbins’ piggy beads and Ozman’s fishy orbs were both fixated on Citron’s face, silently praying for an as yet not forthcoming explanation.
The scream continued. Citron’s bushy eyebrows climbed subtly up his face as he managed to catch the growing-vacant stares of his remaining henchmen. With each millimeter of ascent, the eyebrows seemed to ask, “You see, as always, the benefits of obedience, yes?”
At length, after a space of time in which no one was clear-headed enough to mind their watch, the screaming ceased. Slowly, Citron lowered his finger. If only there had been a more astute, more observant fellow in the room, such a person might have observed that Citron had not inhaled since first he spied the unstoppered vial. Here at last, the non-doctor took a great breath. “Now,” he began, “which one of you is brave enough to venture a guess as to what Rule Number One is, regarding these vials?”
Silence. Trobbins’ piggy beads sought and found Ozman’s fishy orbs, but found neither a plea for nor an offer of rescue. After just a little longer, the rounder and shorter gentleman raised a flabby arm in the air. Citron nodded at him, and like a primary school student, Trobbins stuttered in his characteristic tenor, “D… don’t open the… the vials?”
“Very close!” Citron beamed. Trobbins’ porcine face broke into a wide smile, replete with bovine teeth, which he shared with Ozman’s as yet inscrutable stare. “Rule Number One is,” continued Citron, “Do not open the vials, except when I tell you to.”
Trobbins’ now slackened jaw grew wider, and he nodded in comprehension. Ozman, by contrast, seemed to be contracting into himself: an impressive task for a man who towered over most doorways and yet was often inconvenienced by a stiff breeze. “When?” he asked, with a taciturn resonance often found in men his height, but rarely in men his weight.
Citron pointed his effulgent finger at the skeletal giant. “Very good, Ozman! When. Unfortunately, the When was to be supplied by McHamish, who has regrettably been rendered incommunicable, at least vocally. So I am afraid some additional research is now necessary. However, in the meantime, you are each charged to maintain these vials in extremely safekeeping while I locate a new third man to serve our purpose. Thanks to McHamish’s generously volunteering to demonstrate the effects of this formula, I shan’t bore you with a tedious explanation of its properties. You have only to step outside and help McHamish to his quarters in the basement, and you shall have all the information you require.”
“But sir…” Trobbins trembled, “where… where can we keep… this stuff?”
“Oh, shove it in a sock drawer,” Citron offered, “should be perfectly safe. Just don’t open it, and keep it the hell away from me. Now kindly help McHamish into the basement, and the rest of the evening is your own. Goodnight.”
Citron turned to his desk and ledger, and began the arduous task of ticking off certain boxes, unticking others, then figuring and introducing new boxes. All said, it was this at which he excelled, and the practice made him long for his former life as a legal clerk. Those were heady, well-organized days.
Trobbins and Ozman offered each other a shrug, then exited. A short moment later, Citron was treated to a pair of screams that, despite their breadth of sustain and depth of character, remained pale shadows of the one McHamish had provided. It was just as well: Citron hated screams. Musing on this, he wondered why he ever left the legal business. Whimpers were the noise of choice at Hawkins and Delby, Barristers and Solicitors, and indeed they grew there as a cabbages in a Welsh garden. Citron loved whimpers.
As if sensing his nostalgia (and for all Citron knew, that is exactly what had occurred), a small bell on his desk sounded. The short former-clerk considered ignoring it, perhaps to later offer the excuse that he had been assisting in McHamish’s relocation, but he knew this was a fool’s dream. Citron was a terrible liar, and it was entirely possible that the bell’s operator already knew his exact whereabouts, and the circumstances which had elicited the trio of screams. Not wishing to add his own to the night’s entertainment, Citron closed his ledger and bustled down a dark and (until now) unnoticed corridor.
After a full minute of brisk walking in fuller black, his navigation aided only by memory and echoes, Citron came to a stop. He stammered at first, but willed himself to sound less foolish than Trobbins. “My lady?” he finally managed to croak.
A warm, velvety sound echoed softly from somewhere, accompanied by the unmistakable odor of formaldehyde. The seemingly disembodied voice could have been right in front of his face, or possibly thousands of leagues below, in an oubliette just at his feet. Wherever the voice originated, it sounded entirely at ease. “We have lost a man.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the nebbish answered, silently congratulating himself on keeping his voice from cracking. “McHamish is… he made a mistake.”
“He disobeyed you,” the voice countered, not unkindly. “He disobeyed me.” Less kindly. “He was a lovely boy, but not to be missed. Search his old lodgings tonight, and you shall find an excellent replacement. Not quite as lovely, but neither as stupid.” There was a palpable pause. “Not… as stupid.”
“M-my lady…” Citron squeaked. He cursed himself and cleared his throat. “My lady, it is well past midnight.”
Utter silence answered him. He considered pressing the issue, he honestly did. He sincerely considered walking out, climbing the creaky spiral of wooden slats that led to his cramped closet of a bedroom, and simply going to sleep. Who was he to be ignored? He was clearly necessary. He was clearly not so easy to replace as McHamish.
Yes.
Clearly.
Citron took a breath. “I shall head out at once, ma’am.”
“Of course you will,” the velvety echoes answered, at once comforting and condescending. Wisely, the old nebbish chose not to comment on her tone.
Citron was wise enough, he decided, plodding back down the void-colored hallway. After all, he was still alive, and that was more than he could say for any number of other poor lunatics in this city. In fact, some unfortunate spirits could be considered in states far worse than death, McHamish among them. That Citron had managed to evade such a destiny did seem a testament to his wisdom. True, he wasn’t sure what wisdom lay in middle-managing the undoing of the human race, but then if he was as replaceable as McHamish, then someone somewhere was going to destroy society. Citron decided it might as well be him.
Necessity, he assured himself, was the mother of rationalization.
As he stepped out for the night, Citron passed the grated trap door that led into the basement. Trobbins and Ozman were sitting on either side of it. Trobbins’ pebble-sized eyes and Ozman’s diminutive mouth all agape as wide as they could be, the pair was evidently staring at nothing. Citron kept walking.
“Care for a drink, gentlemen?” the nebbish offered, not bothering to hesitate or turn back. He knew their answer.
Ozman, his skin nearly as pale and his voice nearly as tremulous as Trobbins, merely stammered, “McHamish…”
“Yes” Citron agreed as he vanished out the door, “he was our hero. I suppose I’ll have to pick up another one.”