I am born, like every day, at around 5 AM, and I claw my way screaming and choking through amniotic soup, scraping wildly with my puny arms at the membrane, until my assistant Eva cracks the egg and pulls me out. Eva is a godsend. I don’t know what I’d do without her.
First, I eat. Eva lets me suckle for a minute, then soon I’m ready for solids, crushed fruit or porridge; by about half past I’ve a full set of teeth and graduate to the eggs and bacon. I used to avoid that sort of thing, but given my condition, there doesn’t seem much point.
I run the depth of the garden and wonder up at the whiteness of the sky and the tickle of the wind. I press my face into privet leaves, wrench worms from the earth and hold them wriggling in my palm. It starts raining so I run inside, pull book after book from the shelf all full of dragons and dinosaurs and police cars and tigers. The world is amazing and limitless. Then I bump my head and it hurts so much and I cry but Eva wraps her arms around me, and I hold her hand, nestle my head into her stomach and pepper her neck with kisses, because nothing can happen to me when she is here.
Soon I’ve developed a sufficient intellectual capacity to figure out that something is wrong. The memories start to filter through, half-formed; not quite my own. I demand that Eva tells me the truth and she does. I blame her, tell her I hate her, hide under the stairs and dig my nails into my arms and say why did this have to happen to me?
By ten I’ve matured, pulled myself together, developed a sense of perspective. I go to my local coffee place—Tony’s, on Bermondsey Street—for a skinny cappuccino. I have a great rapport with Tony, who I’ve known for years and is a local fixture. It’s important to support independent businesses. He asks me how I keep looking so young. I laugh, but I catch my reflection in the window and can’t help agreeing that I look good, straight-jawed and broad-chested, hair sprouting lushly. As I step out, I wink at a girl; she ignores me and walks faster, but I laugh it off, my steps light with anticipation at what I will make of the day.
When I get home it’s into a whirlwind of calls. Investors, clients, our heads of research. An interview with a journalist from Bloomberg. I tell her that I’m as passionate about our work as I ever was, and our core mission—to stall and ultimately prevent death—is still what gets me out of bed, so to speak, in the morning. What could be more important? She uses the ‘n’ word—necromancy—and I reiterate our strong stance on prohibited magic, our close cooperation with regulators. Does my condition—I don’t call it a ‘curse’—change my perspective? Not at all. I’ve accepted it, focus on the upside.
I take a conference call with my management board. Their reports bore me to tears, and I cut them short, lambast their lack of ambition. Yes, we’ve helped a few millionaires live longer, and generated eye-watering returns, but that was never the goal. We’ve gotten too comfortable. I’m lining up an announcement: we will make all of our intellectual property, magical and scientific, available in the public domain. We will turbocharge innovation in this sector. The suits are stunned, and I enjoy leaving them flat-footed.
I go to lunch brimming with energy; we have a regular table at Hamachi by Mitsuko, a tiny place upstairs from a dry cleaner’s by St Paul’s that does the best sushi I have tasted, inside or outside of Japan. I take Eva. We both dress up a little – I throw on a jacket, she a black dress – and order a 1995 Pol Roger followed by a 1989 Sauvignon Blanc from Domaine La Faucheuse in the Loire Valley, with toro tartare, crab ceviche and sea bass. Her eyes twinkle and the conversation flows—politics, music, art, magic—and I savor the taste of the wine and the food and the swell of her body under the dress, her foot rubbing up against mine. She tells me how impressed she is at how I overcome my condition, day after day, and I tell her that of course I couldn’t do it without her. We order another bottle of champagne that we bundle into a black cab home, stagger to the bedroom, and make love with the curtains thrown open.
I take a short nap. It’s been a busy morning.
I wake up and Eva is gone. My knees crack and my back groans as I pull on my underwear. There are hairs on the pillow, already falling out. My gut is slack, chin-skin folding. The sky has clouded over. I scramble for my watch—a Hublot Chronograph—and see with relief that it is only half two.
My decisions of the morning suddenly fill me with anxiety. Releasing our IP will ruin us. What was I thinking? I have to threaten three underlings with immediate dismissal until I manage to get through to my chief operating officer, who agrees to my changed decision, but reminds me that a public announcement has already been made and knocked thirty points off our share price. I slam my fist into a concrete wall and scream in pain. I might have fractured something, but it doesn’t matter now.
At three it’s family time. I have two children from my first marriage, both grown up. My eldest lives in New York, has a family of his own. I ring him and as usual he doesn’t answer. I call my younger daughter, ask if she wants to meet up. She can’t, not now. Please, I beg, there’s not much time left. She tells me I say that every day, why don’t I ever call in the morning? I explain—I’m a busy man, of course—but she has her head full of all this lefty nonsense, and starts telling me how wrong it is that I am helping to extend the lives of a lucky few, when so many people can’t afford basic healthcare, and that winds me up; where do you think you came from, I ask, I’m doing this for you, that’s how the world works, and then she’s gone.
I find Eva downstairs, hunched over and straining, face red from effort. I mumble apologies and flap around uselessly, but in a few minutes it is over and she has passed the egg. I pick it up from the cushion, wipe it down, wrap it in a towel. I couldn’t be there for the births of my older children—although what will hatch from the egg is not a child as such. Eva and I take it to its incubator together.
It is almost dark. An inexplicable pain flares in my spine, spreading. I panic. We have to stop this, I say. I’ve only just gotten started, there is so much more to be done. I need more time. There must be another way. I want to talk to them. Yes, them. The necromancers. We have more than a few on the books. Eva reminds me of how I got into this situation. I don’t care. Have them working on this. Of course, she says, we’ll sort it out after dinner.
We eat at eight. Eva cooks. A simple meal; minestrone followed by sausage and mashed potato. Each forkful is a reminder of a past that seems unimaginably distant but only hours away. I am tired; my appetite is gone. There is chocolate mousse. Eva feeds me spoonfuls. I had something to do after dinner, but I can’t remember now.
The moon blares in white judgement through the window. I could have done so much with the day; walked through ancient forests, caught up with old friends, family, studied philosophy, religion. Instead, I indulged petty vanities, worried about stock values. I took a nap.
The pain is getting worse. A lady helps me up from the table. My daughter? No. No, Eva. That’s it. And tears dribble over my lip as I remember what now must happen, as she lies me in my bed, places the egg next to me on its cushion. It is already trembling with tomorrow’s life.
“Tomorrow, don’t let me waste my time,” I plead, voice straining, mouth dry.
She smiles.
“Do you think there is some other way to live?”
And suddenly I see her, not flesh but a force wrenched from the deepest abyss, shining in perfect darkness, her smile a saintly void. I know her, now, but too late.
She pulls her hand away, I am alone, and I close my eyes.
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Matt Hornsby lives in Ireland. He has published work in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Metaphorosis, Uncharted and other venues. | |