The Alchemist

Written for the prompt: I’d done something no one else had done before. Dedicated to Etrigan Demon.

I’d done it!

I’d done something no one else had done before, you see! I’d found the alchemical formula to turn lead into gold!

Oh, don’t get me wrong. I know that most—yourself included—believe alchemy as false a science and as dead an art as phrenology or palm-reading. But I tell you, Rochester, I’d done it! I’d done it!

Oh, have some more tea, won’t you? It’s quite good.

Yes . . . it started with the lead pipe, you see, and my experimentation with transmuting it to gold, as I said. I was having dashed luck, slaving night and day over that blasted pipe, when one evening, after I’d been awake for more hours than I care to remember, my landlord came knocking at my door. And even in the pits of despondency and exhaustion, well I recognized that arrogant, booming knock. But instead of pretending I wasn’t in, as usual, owing to that despondency and exhaustion, I opened the door a crack and peered out into his beady, dark eyes.

“Er . . . good evening, Signore Bazzini . . . may I help you?”

The great boor snorted, shoving at the door so hard that I fell backwards, pin-wheeling my arms to catch myself. Meanwhile, Signore Bazzini strolled into my flat, a singular sight in his flashy bourgeoisie attempt at finery, his eyes touching on everything—and I do mean everything—and assigning to it a price.

“You’re late. Again. For the third month in a row,” the Signore said without preamble, approaching the large table whereon sat the tools of my trade. He reached out with one ham-fist and poked one sausage finger at a tiny beaker full of precious lysergic acid diethylamide. I had to restrain myself from leaping upon him for his presumptuousness. As it was, I hurried to my work table and moved the beaker away from him. I held my breath as drew even with him, so as not to inhale the miasma of old cigar smoke, and cheap cologne in which he surely bathed.

“I, er, understand that I’m late with the rent, Signore, but you know that I will pay. Soon.” I made my manner as groveling and obsequious as I could, for that had saved me in the past from his tirades and incessant money-grubbing.

But perhaps I had done so too often, for Signore Bazzini, still perusing my tools with his acquisitive dark eyes, merely snorted.

“But the rent isn’t due soon. It’s due on the fifth of every month. It’s now the eighteenth,” he said, running his hand over the lead pipe, his wide, thin mouth—like a toad’s—making a moue. For the pipe was still wet and tacky with my latest concoction. Said concoction had done little more to the pope than make it unpleasantly sticky. “Perhaps if you worked a real job, like a real man, instead of playing magician, you would have my rent on time, eh?”

“I am no magician, sir,” I said coldly, snatching back my pipe and drawing myself up proudly. “I am an alchemist.”

“You’re a deadbeat, is what,” the Signore spat with disdainful amusement. “A mincing, spoiled poseur, whose family pays him a pittance to take his delusions and his fussy little bottles, and live as far from them as a few quid a month will take him!”

My jaw dropped and I clutched at the pipe as it nearly fell to the floor.

Signore Bazzini snorted once more, looking me over. “Instead of taking care of your responsibilities, you spend my rent money on chemicals that stink up the neighborhood and make my other tenants complain to me. Night and day you play at making magic when you have real and pressing concerns that you ignore. But you can’t ignore them, anymore. The real world is at your door, and it demands your attention.”

I winced. The Signore had not said anything my family hadn’t said ten thousands of times before, and yet to hear it from this petty, low-class landlord was more than I could bear, Rochester. It set my ears to ringing as if I’d been boxed about them.

“I’m doing very important work, Signore,” I grumbled, drumming my fingers absently on the pipe and looking away from his dark gaze—so like my late father’s in its disapproving, disappointed tenor. And, as if I was arguing with my late father, I let my mouth race ahead of my brain. “Very important work, that someone such as yourself would hinder without fully understanding. Assuming you’re capable of understanding at all the magnitude of my work.”

Signore Bazzini looked rather gobsmacked for a few moments—I could see it from the corner of my eyes—then he merely looked disgusted and put-out.

“Right, then. I’ve had enough of you. I want you out tomorrow,” he said, his voice hard and final. I could only, for a few seconds, gape up at him in a most ungentlemanly fashion.

Then a wave of anxiety and rage swept over me, the likes of which I hadn’t felt since that last dispute with my late father—the one that’d resulted in my banishment and disinheritance.

I had lived with nothing, Rochester. For so long, I lived on nothing but what little monies Mother could send me in secret. Why, I had lived in that Spartan rat-hole for years, as you well know, and for years I had put up with Signore Bazzini’s derision, insinuations, and outright mockery. But I had always been relatively, if not exactly, on time with the rent. I was quiet, not troublesome, and kept to myself. And my rooms, while not pin-neat, were still in order, for the most part.

I dare say I was a model tenant. Yet this summary eviction was to be my reward.

“You—you can’t do that!” I stammered, flummoxed and panicked, my hands clutching at the pipe tight enough to have throttled it, were it alive. “You can’t just—”

“Don’t presume to tell me what I can and cannot do in my own building, you pretentious little maggot.” The Signore gave me another measuring look that found me clearly wanting. Then he put his hands on his hips and smirked. “Since I’m feeling generous—though I don’t know why—I’ll give you till the end of the week. If your rubbish isn’t out by Sunday evening, come Monday morning, it’ll be put out for the bin-men.”

“But—but—” I felt hot, shameful tears welling up in my eyes. There was no way I could remove my life’s work by Sunday. Not in a way that wouldn’t destroy most of my equipment and confuse most of my meticulous notes. “It’s already Thursday!”

Signore Bazzini shrugged, turning toward the open door. “Then you’d best get cracking, hadn’t you?” He sauntered away, laughing his boorish laugh and jingling his many keys on their silver ring.

In that moment, I felt no anxiety anymore, only a pure, cold rage that cleared my panicked, garbled mind. I literally saw red. Everything was tinged in crimson and startlingly sharp. All I could hear was that infernal ringing, and the frenzied beating of my own heart as I stepped forward after the Signore.

“Oh, Signore Bazzini! Wait!” I called in a voice that sounded calm, yet foreign to me. As that of a stranger, yet coming from my own mouth. “There’s something I must say!”

Signore Bazzini paused with a dramatic sigh. “There’s nothing you can say that will change my mind. Nothing you have to say that I want to hear,” he said in a voice dripping with utter dismissal, but he started to turn toward me again, as if he would, in fact, listen. Then he caught sight of me and his eyes widened in surprise and, yes, fear. But it was too late. I was already swinging the sticky lead pipe down in a singing arc, at his head. He started to raise his arms but, as I said, it was far too late.

CRUNCH.

I tell you, Rochester, never had I heard such a sound in my life! Never again do I wish to! The Signore fell to the floor heavily, but without a sound. His eyes were closed and one side of his skull was terribly misshapen. From that side, a pool of blood began to issue, and spread quickly and steadily.

Disgusted and horrified, I dropped the lead pipe on the floor with a low groan and backed away from the Signore’s still body. The pipe rolled, with a soft grating sound, across the floor . . . stopping when it collided with Signore Bazzini’s foot . . . nothing but a large cylinder of grey metal.

Metal with which I’d injured, perhaps killed a man. A man I’d despised, but nonetheless. . . .

I’d taken a human life, Rochester. There, I stood, in the lowest moment of a life full of low moments, looming over the body of my landlord, my hands—all of me!—shaking. I felt . . . awful. Numb. Detached and disassociated.

And, somewhere beneath all of that . . . exhilarated.

I had killed a man, it was true. But in doing so, for the first time in my life, I’d been proactive. I’d taken my own life in my hands, rather than letting myself drift wherever the tides would take me. I’d changed the course of my entire life in one fell blow.

I was, at last, alive, Rochester. At the cost of another’s life, yes, but that cost hadn’t been so much, had it? Signore Bazzini wasn’t a family man, nor was he particularly beloved by friends or peers. No one would miss him, and some might even benefit from his absence.

I certainly would. For at last, I would be left alone to do my great work. With this newfound peace and exhilaration, I knew—just knew—that I could and would accomplish great things.

I knew all this, and yet, still a soft voice in the back of my mind insisted: You’ve killed a man . . . there will be consequences. You have changed, and not for the better. There’s no going back, now.

But . . . but I couldn’t be bothered with that—then, or now. For as it’d rolled across the floor, that dull bit of lead, I’d seen it: a flash—a golden flash along the side of the cylinder near the top edge of it.

It was hidden from me, now, but a gentle nudge with the tip of my shoe—careful not to touch the Signore’s inert body—caused it to roll back toward me a few inches. More than enough for me to see it again.

The slightly dented part of the pipe—the part with which I’d hit the Signore, and which still bore traces of bloody scalp—had turned to . . . gold. . . .

My mind was a-whirl.

For it couldn’t be, could it?

All this time, and the missing piece of the puzzle had been right under my nose . . . so simple, yet so improbable?

Bending—still shaking—I retrieved the sticky pipe and eyed the golden spot, only a few inches in diameter. Then I turned my gaze to the puddle of blood still spreading from the Signore’s wound. I stared at it and stared at it before finally dipping one sticky edge of the top of the cylinder into the small, crimson pool. Immediately, there was a golden flash that spread across the top edge of the dull metal, and began to spread down toward where my hand clutched.

As I did not desire a golden right hand, I let go of the pipe and it fell into the blood with a splatter. And that golden flash flared once more, consuming the lead pipe in mellow, golden gleaming. . . .

So, you see, Rochester? I’d done it! I’d found the missing element! The correct chemical compound! It was blood, don’t you see?!

Signore Bazzini’s blood was the missing ingredient—the catalyst! And if I hadn’t taken his life, thus taking my life into my own hands, I’d never have discovered it!

I tell you, Rochester, it’s the truth. How else would I have ever afforded this fine townhouse, or the ability to outfit one full floor of it with the finest laboratory outside of university? Why and how else would I purchase so much discarded lead and keep it my home?

How else to explain the disappearance of Giacomo Bazzini?

But I see from the look on your face that you still don’t believe me. And you’re nodding off, to boot—have some more tea, won’t you?

Why, yes. Lapsang Souchong. Though, I can’t imagine why it tastes strange to you. Bitter, you say? That’s odd . . . at any rate, where was I? Ah! Yes, the missing ingredient—you see, I had to test it a few times to make certain, but I was right! Everything I touched with a mixture of my compound and the Signore’s blood turned to gold! Pure gold!

I was rich, Rochester! Not that riches were my ultimate goal, but money certainly allows me the leisure to pursue my alchemical studies and experiments. And there was plenty of it—so long as there was lead to be found or bought, and blood to be added to the compound.

Though I must confess, I’ve gone quite low on the latter.

So now, the time has come to find out. . . .

Well, why, dear Rochester, it’s time to find out whether the compound works with merely the blood of the Bazzini line, or with any human blood at all. . . .

Any, at all.

By the way, how’s the tea, now, Rochester. . . ?

Excellent! Do drink up.

END