[ James Harfelt ] && [ Henry McPherson ]
[ deceased ] -------------------------------
I open my eyes, blink once, and then blink again.
The last thing I can remember is an explosion, and the sound of breaking glass.
So what...?
I make to stand up and notice suddenly that I'm not touching the floor.
This would be unusual in of itself, but what makes the whole situation completely extraordinary is the fact that I am now face to broken face with my own body.
I take a moment to look myself over, cringing at the wide-open eyes and bloodied forehead.
My body is trapped underneath a large pile of debris; mostly it's chunks of stone from the collapsed ceiling.
I wonder what it was that killed me, in the end.
Was it the head injury?
Or the fact that my entire lower body was crushed by fallen masonry, perhaps.
Maybe I bled out.
I hope that my demise was relatively painless, but perhaps that's too much to hope for.
A laboratory explosion, though- that's just plain embarrassing.
I wonder what caused it, and try to recall exactly what it was that I was working on at the time.
I think I was trying to create energy through mass- and, well, it worked.
It's too bad that I died in the process.
I suddenly wonder what Henry would do if he saw me now.
Well, not me, whatever it is that I am now, but my body.
Probably laugh.
Darkness begins to crowd the edges of my vision, and slowly- ever so slowly- I slip into it.
Falling asleep at a funeral is not that unusual, especially if you had nothing to do with the deceased.
Waking up at a funeral is a bit stranger.
Especially if the funeral is your own.
With a jerk I sit up on the pew, blinking hard to clear my eyes.
There are people all around me, most of them dressed in black.
It would appear that I missed the service- this looks like a funeral- but whose-
And then I stop myself.
I'm dead. Yes, I remember now.
So, this funeral... is... mine?
I blink, and there's a sensation of being pulled roughly forwards.
Then the blink is over, and the church is empty.
This is starting to get ridiculous, and yet it is completely fascinating.
I would never have imagined that being dead could be so interesting.
It seems that time doesn't apply in this limbo state between life and death.
I hear a creak behind me and turn to see that the church is not as empty as I thought.
There's still one person here.
One person, dressed in a black suit and carrying three notebooks.
Henry.
What is he doing at my funeral?
We've been rivals for years, ever since he beat my score on the entrance examinations and took my place at the Academy of Science.
And yet, for someone who's hated me for years, he looks surprisingly sad.
Walking to the front of the church, he sets the notebooks on top of the coffin- my coffin, I realize with sudden horror.
And then he starts to speak.
"James," he says, quietly, then looks up and blinks hard like he's about to start crying.
What is this, a second-rate romance novel?
"I'm so sorry that you're dead," Henry continues. "It's all my fault."
He can't be serious.
"If I hadn't gotten into the Academy instead of you, you might be where I am now."
This is pathetic.
"I found these notebooks in your laboratory," my rival continues.
"They were the only ones to survive the fire."
As I approach the coffin, I see exactly which notebooks they are.
If I wasn't already a semitransparent plasmorphimism- a phantom- I would have picked them up and hidden them far away.
These are my alchemy notebooks.
If anyone but Henry had found these, I wouldn't have been given a funeral like this.
My corpse would have been dismembered and then burned, as per order of the king.
His majesty's daughter, the princess Julianne, had been kidnapped and experimented on by an alchemist some twelve years past.
Thus, his majesty was less than forgiving of those who practiced the mix of science and magic.
In fact, if the explosion hadn't killed me, I would surely have been executed for my crimes against the kingdom.
I tried to speak, tried to tell Henry to take the notebooks and burn them, but of course no words came out.
Instead, a breeze rippled through the church, blowing the top notebook from the stack.
It hit the coffin spine-down and fluttered open, revealing the pages inside.
I closed my mouth, and the breeze died away.
The notebook lay open, revealing a page headed with the words The Revival of the Dead.
It was something I had tried once, long ago, with disastrous results.
I had used a cat, a pigeon, and a small fish.
The fish exploded.
The pigeon turned into a hideous zombie-like creature that I was forced to burn.
The cat became a wraith and I haven't seen it since.
(There have been several unexplained murders down by the river, though, and I worry that they're my fault.)
But Henry seemed to think that this was some sort of sign from God.
Or the devil, judging by the look of horror on his face.
"James," he breathed, picking up the notebook as though he feared it might burst into flames.
"You turned to alchemy? I don't understand..."
And then he seemed to draw some meaning from it.
"Without you, I don't have a rival. We both know that you're the only person in the city- maybe even the world- who's as brilliant as I am."
That's an understatement; I'm smarter than Henry, but I was brushed aside because he got better scores on the entrance examinations.
"And without you, I have nothing to do. Nobody to compete against."
Alright, where is he going with this?
He's been my rival for years, yes, but only because people liked to sort Henry and I into neat little categories.
Henry was educated at the Academy of Science and worked for the kingdom. He got the hero role.
I failed to best him on the entrance examinations. People assumed that I would be twisted and bitter, so they cast me as the villain.
"But maybe, with these notebooks... maybe I can bring you back."
What.
"Yes- yes. I can get a second chance."
What?
"It's crazy... and dangerous. But I need you, James. We're two sides of the same coin. Without you, I'm nothing. Just another scientist."
WHAT?
▬▬❨
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