SHORT STORIES: Alabaster Bile

It burned on its way up. The sensation of hot, acrid bile etched a bright red diagram of its route into his mind as it travelled through his oesophagus. As it reached the back of his throat he gagged. A series of long, drawn out, spluttering retches forced the substance to roll down his tongue. The substance dropped into the Petri dish he’d set on the counter before him. It landed with a splat that was lighter than one would expect of what seemed to be such a dense liquid. After carefully spitting the last drops out into the dish with the rest of the specimen, he moved his stool out and leaned down to examine it. The bile appeared foamy, yet viscous. It was alabaster white.

Research Journal Entry #24
Success. My first genuine attempt to purge myself of negative emotion proved fruitful, and in significantly less time than I had anticipated. No more than three months ago, I had nothing. Now, I have a formula for condensing raw, intangible emotion and expelling it from the body. I must admit, I never truly expected any success at all. This whole venture was, I believe, just something to distract myself with; something with which I had hoped to instil at least the semblance of hope in myself. It has proven, however, to be a great deal more, and I find myself struggling to come to terms with the significance of this. Frankly, though, I am relieved beyond measure to know that I may have a chance to be free of the demons that have been scratching at the interior of my skull for so long.

In regards to the concrete results, I have identified some unforeseen benefits to the treatment since the process was completed approximately four hours ago. Firstly, I notice that certain cognitive functions somehow seem improved, as if the cogs of my mind have been unjammed. Not in any life-altering way, but certainly to a conspicuously beneficial degree. Solutions to meagre, insignificant problems in day-to-day life are leaping to my mind, quite suddenly. There are no blockades or diversions to hinder my thoughts. Also, an even less expected – and much more bizarre – benefit has presented itself. Perhaps it’s my imagination, but I can’t help but notice that I appear younger, even more attractive. I have decided to ignore this for the time being, as it is entirely possible that my improved mental state has generated markedly improved self-perception. Even so, I can’t help but feel that the change seems too significant to be a simple alteration of perspective.

Lastly, some notes on the less satisfying results. The intended effect of the serum was not quite as potent as I had hoped it would be. While the despair is certainly reduced, it was not entirely eradicated. Even the sadness that remains is almost too much to bare. Still, the fact that my demons have, at the very least, finally been muffled gives me enough hope to carry on. To feel any hope at all is staggering, almost alien. It’s as though a sun has been born in my chest. Its warm light sustains me.

Furthermore, I have been having trouble recalling some details of the memories I had associated with the despair; details I had previously felt, in my more histrionic moments, were carved into the walls of my chest and reflected in my soul. I believe that, in focusing on one memory (specifically, Frieda’s betrayal) from which to reap the emotion, I have inadvertently damaged it. While I do not lament the image of her with another man being removed from my mind, I do believe I should be more careful about how specifically I focus on the traumatic memories from which I intend to strip the sorrow and anger. I would not want for any of my memories to be entirely erased; I don’t want to forget who I am.

More tests to be carried out soon,
Dr. Ernest Dalman

Pushing his office chair away from the bare, white desk with his blue leather-bound journal on his lap, Ernest sighed. The process was more demanding than he had expected, and yielded less significant results. He glanced to his left, where eight phials of a cloudy, cream coloured liquid sat in their rack with the Petri dish in front of them, towards the edge of the counter. Leaning in to inspect the bile he had harvested, he pondered the possibility of never feeling sadness, or anger, or hate, or fear, for the rest of his life. The prospect, in itself, caused a curious eddy of fear to rise in the depths of his gut, though he wasn’t sure why. Biting the inside of his lip, he turned away from such thoughts and inspected his specimen more thoroughly. The foaminess had subsided, leaving only a pool of thick, nauseating liquid with a phlegm-like appearance. Ernest noted the slight tinge of pale green that had begun to form around the edge of the specimen. More interestingly, he thought, it appeared to be more raised around the edge than it was towards the centre. Indelicately tearing a page from the back of his journal, Ernest made a note of the discolouration and inconsistent level, securing the roughly torn page underneath the dish. Sluggishly rising from his chair, he extinguished the desk lamp that illuminated his work station, and strode to the makeshift bedroom he had set up in the corner of the large abandoned warehouse, passing the numerous disused shipping containers that were still stacked along his route.

Upon reaching the container in which he’d set down a mattress, Ernest untied the sash of the brown, threadbare dressing gown he had taken to wearing around the warehouse, in lieu of more conventional day-to-day clothing. He settled down on the mattress in the corner, and turned on the camping light that sat next to it. He gazed at the two framed pictures he had lined against the adjacent wall of the container. His mind focused on the details of the largest picture. The creases that were beginning to form in the corner of his deep brown eyes, behind the thick lenses of his circular, wire-frame glasses. The healthy shine of his long, curly hair. And Frieda. Frieda in her baby blue blouse, nose scrunched and lips curved into a gleeful smile, gazing at Ernest. Spellbound by the image, he ran his hand over his chin and tugged the thick, wiry beard that had grown there, and scratched at the straw-like thicket of greying, rough shorn hair on his head. The picture as a whole was painful, but the details – those small reminders of what joy was, what it looked like and how it manifested in his features – served to motivate him in his endeavour to rediscover contentment. The other picture, however, that he could enjoy more completely. His son, Daniel, at five years of age, mischievous grin painted vividly on his small round face. In the grainy photograph, there were crayons scattered around what had been their old wooden dining table, with evidence of recently ingested spaghetti staining his striped red and blue pyjamas. He still had the use of his arms and legs at that point. He had put them to mischievous use.

With a forlorn, shuddering sigh escaping his lips, Ernest forced himself to look away from the photos. He was weary, and there was a great deal more to do in order to cure himself, so that he might be able to continue the life he had before. He pulled the cord on the camping light, and resigned himself to sleep.

Upon rousing from his disturbed sleep, Ernest donned his robe once more and returned to his workstation, at the other end of vast walls of rusting, red and blue containers. On approach to his desk, he eyed the eight phials of serum and pondered on whether it would be enough to purge him completely, and whether he had the resources to synthesise more. His contemplation was interrupted upon eyeing the contents of his Petri dish. Gone was the white liquid, replaced by a green, semi-gelatinous lump in the centre of dish. In a state of alarm, Ernest spun on his heels and his eyes scanned the area, as if behind him would be some previously unseen spectator who could explain what had happened. Finding no one, he dropped to his knees to examine the specimen more closely. It appeared to be squirming from the centre, at an almost imperceptibly slow pace, as if it were harbouring a foetus, struggling to escape its womb. As his heart began to thunder, numerous possible courses of action set to flurrying in his mind. ‘Destroy it? Dissect it? Quarantine it?’ Suddenly the flurry of thought was halted and a calm settled over him. He would do nothing. Not yet. Rummaging through the assortment of plastic containers in which he kept his supplies, he retrieved eight more Petri dishes, lining them up against his desk. With shaking hands, he picked up a phial from the rack and affixed it to the automated syringe. Inhaling deeply in order to steady himself, Ernest levelled the needle against his forearm, next to the mark that remained from his first injection the previous day and with gritted teeth, pressed it into his skin. He squeezed the trigger.

As he slid the syringe out of his arm and set it delicately on the counter, Ernest wheeled his chair back to the desk, where the Petri dishes awaited their specimens. His eyelids closed, removing him from the decay of the warehouse interior and concealing him within his own mind. With the serum travelling through his blood stream, Ernest began to sift through his darkest memories; the ones that so fiercely tormented him. Initially, there was a struggle to break past the mental barriers and suppress the instinctive recoil from the emotional agony, but Ernest did not relent. As his mind had once assailed him, he would now assail it in kind.

A series of images flitted past in his mind’s eye. His wife’s eyes, so full of contempt. His son, confined to an electric wheelchair. The pitiful expression of his investors and superiors as his funding was severed, and his project shut down. They raced through him so tumultuously, and so vividly, that he could feel every sensation he had felt at the time they transpired. The intensity was physically painful.

‘No. Fuck. Christ, no. Oh, God. Fuck, no!’

Ernest spat out words with no order or meaning, unable to restrain himself, as if barking profanities would push away the grief and regret. He gagged throatily, taken aback at the rapidity of the reaction in comparison to the previous day. With the entirety of his digestive tract ablaze with agony, Ernest wheezed and coughed the bile into the first Petri dish and – without hesitation – fetched a second phial from the rack, repeating the process. More images were dragged to the surface of his mind, their emotive potency exploding in his consciousness. Frieda climbing into her lover’s car. Daniel asking with such implacable placidity for his life to be put to an end. The jarring tremors that shot through his arm as the knife impacted on the chest of Frieda’s lover. Weeping into his still bloody hands at the wheel of his parked car in a country lane he didn’t know the name of, whimpering and cursing.

With even more violence and urgency, the bile erupted from his throat and spewed into the dish, with numerous flecks dotting the surface of the desk. Gasping for air in painful, ragged breaths, Ernest clasped a third phial. His vision was blurred and his hands shook furiously as he clumsily set up the syringe once more, foregoing any form of sterilisation. Now, instead of the prominent memories of rage and heartache, Ernest found himself looking into the smaller events; embarrassing social encounters; lamentable courses of action; mistakes of all kinds that drove tiny needles of shame into his spine. Over and over again, Ernest purged himself, pushing his mind and body to the edge of breaking, until his mind had been scoured. As he spit the eighth specimen into its dish with erratic, wheezing pants, the world around him disintegrated, fading away into nothing.

Research Journal Entry #29
The new batch is finished. I’m hesitant to undergo the process just yet. I’m still recovering from last time. Just looking at the new phials is giving me cramps. Eventually, of course, I’ll have to stop my whining and get it over with. Not yet, though. Need to get my head straight first.

For weeks I’ve felt as though there has been a vice being tightened around my temples. Going about the process of synthesising the serum has been arduous, hence the brevity of recent journal entries; there was no room in my mind for any thought beyond the task at hand. Now, though, I’m beginning to regain some semblance of clarity, although ‘clarity’ may not be the ideal word. A sense of unease permeates the entirety of me and leaves me feeling like a city that has been evacuated. The vibrancy that once was is suddenly absent; the love and the violence have fled, though evidence of the same – and the entirety of the spectrum they inhabit – still lingers. Now, I find myself exploring areas that I had never thought to approach. So many things are starting to make sense, and yet in doing so, they leave things I had once understood to be simple and even fundamental truths, mired in uncertainty. Questions are forming in my mind, on topics that I had previously believed could not be queried. Some of them I would have balked at, if anyone else had raised them. Without the fear and guilt, though, I am beginning to see logic and rationality where I once would have seen evil and callousness, without even attempting to consider that perspective. Essentially, the ground beneath my feet is shifting and I am exhilarated.

More procedures to follow, once I have had time to convalesce.
Dr. Ernest Dalman

A harsh buzz shattered Ernest’s concentration. For a moment, he simply listened, his pen hovering above the page of his journal. A fly had evidently infiltrated his domain. Laying the pen down, he scanned the area for the interloper, but the acoustics of the building and the fly’s diminutive proportions were working against him. Fortune, however, smiled on Ernest, as the fly settled itself on his open journal. Ernest observed the fly’s movements up and down the page. It travelled up and down and left and right and back each way again, without any discernible purpose, pausing occasionally to wipe its legs against each other, or over its large, faceted eyes.
Slowly, Ernest rotated to face the hapless insect and carefully extended one arm, with his hand cupped, over the spot the fly now stood.

As hastily as he could manage, Ernest slammed his hand down over the creature and smiled as he heard its panicked buzzing under his domed fingers. As deftly as he had ensnared it, Ernest closed his fingers around the fly. Enough pressure to keep it restrained, but not so much as to damage it. He lifted it to his face and watched its legs thrash against the air in the hopes of finding something to push against. Ernest’s mouth hung open, eyes locked in fascination. It took a while for him to realise why he was so entranced. An amused smirk spread on his lips as he began to understand that he had never truly seen what a fly was, until now. Before now, flies were noisy black dots with wings. They flew around, made noise, provoked ire and disdain with their actions and were swatted or chased away. That was all there was to understand about a fly, until now. Now he saw its desire to live, the messages sent to and from its brain and its legs and wings and eyes and all its other components. Now, Ernest saw a creature that had been born, whose body had produced cells to allow it to grow and whose cells required sustenance in order to survive. A living being, with the same fundamental needs and physiological mechanics as him. Delicately, Ernest pulled off each leg and set them down in a neat row on the table. The fly protested with rising urgency until, with a tender twist, Ernest pulled its body apart and inspected its inner workings with cold fascination.

The mutilated remains – the legs, the head, the body, the wings – were placed under a microscope and observed, for no other reason than the spectacle. Ernest sat with childlike captivation, a fleeting smile playing on his face as he played with his unwilling cadaver and thought on the lesson this simple creature had taught him.

Research Journal Entry #38
Five days since last entry. A great deal to relay. There is nothing in me anymore. I have been completely purged. I lost consciousness after a sequence of purges. When I awoke, I found that the world makes sense. Lay on the floor and thought. Simply thought, about many things. Realised that it was illogical not to end Daniel’s life. He is dissatisfied and is only a burden to myself and his mother. Also, regarding Frieda, there is no need to attempt any form of reconciliation. This would only result in lost time, with nothing to show for it. Romantic relationships have no material value, to dispense with them allows for more productive pastimes. Concerning these pastimes, I have discovered that I now understand the necessity of eliminating problematic groups in society. Like Daniel, all disabled people are ultimately a burden and should be subject to euthanasia. National resources may then be applied to more vital areas. It seems only prudent.

There are other groups I have identified as problematic and I have devised a means to help in the advancement of society regarding the removal of unproductive sections of the population. I owe these schemes to a mouse that I discovered in the warehouse, searching for food. For some time I had struggled to discern the nature of the ‘by-product’ that was excreted during the procedures. I felt it had some function or purpose, but was unsure of what it could be until I fed a congealed sample to the mouse. As it turns out, all the negativity expunged from me had somehow been materialised and stored in the substance. The mouse went berserk for a time, before quickly withering and expiring. The possible application to my designs for society are obvious. I call it ‘The Solution’. I believe, however, I will first need to attain the means to mass-produce the serum. The serum will need to be applied to a group of individuals amenable to my design, then The Solution can be harvested from them and directed towards those that need to be eliminated. Slowly, the circle of trusted individuals will grow and be raised above the compassion and sentimentality that could cause them to intervene on the gradual demise of those that we subject to the solution. The process will be slow and arduous, but the foundation is already being laid. Whether I live to see the final product is irrelevant; utopia will be achieved and I will be remembered as its architect.

Dr. Ernest Dalman

Ernest rose from his chair, leaving the journal open on his desk. It had been several hours since he had last checked on his prisoner. He still hadn’t discovered the man’s name, or any other detail of his identity. He had simply been selected for his proximity and the fact that he had a suit that was approximately Ernest’s size. For days, the hostage had been subjected to a rigorous course of the serum, which had rendered him either unconscious or unintelligible for most of his captivity. The necessity of granting a place in the new world to an unknown was regrettable, but Ernest had reasoned to himself that he simply needed an underling to assist in the first stages of his design and could be disposed of later, should the man prove unsuited to his vision.

Ernest gave the prisoner a light slap, to which the prisoner did not respond. Deducing that he would likely be incapacitated for a few more hours, Ernest tightened the bonds that secured the man before donning his suit. He checked his appearance in the cracked mirror he had secured from a nearby skip. Some time ago, he had broken his own nose several times in an effort to reshape it. Now, seeing his reflection, Ernest was satisfied that his new nose, along with his freshly sculpted beard and neatly shorn hair, would serve as an effective new identity. Adjusting his tie, he strode from his work station, ready to reshape the world.

Want to see your work on Cultured Vultures? Find out more about our short story submissions and get involved!