Gary Braver - Elixir

Chris clicked off the TV, then stumbled into the bathroom and threw up. When he returned to the living room, his eyes fell on a framed photograph of Sam and Rose and Chris in box seats at a Washington Senators game. Chris must have been thirteen.

Suddenly Chris felt grief press up from the pit of his soul like a geyser. He grasped the photo and slipped to his knees to let it come. And it did. He collapsed onto the photo and dissolved into deep wracking sobs-the kind that came with no inhibitions, that rose up in black fury. Chris wept for his father. For his mother. For Wendy and Adam and himself. For the loss of it all. He wept until his eyes stung and his chest was no more than an aching hollow cavity.

"What do you say we give this thing a run for the money?"

Chris's breath stopped short. For an instant he felt totally sober.

No need to act surprised. It's been there all the time, a few layers beneath the skin of things. Like some strange organism with a life of its own, every so often sending up signs of life. Little fetal kicks and rolls, getting stronger by the day. What finally took a jab at old Dexter Quinn.

Chris pulled himself up. His legs felt wobbly like a newborn colt's. But he felt a sudden sense of purpose. Dexter was desperate, he told himself. He had had a bad heart and knew he would die soon. That was a one-shot thing. But not me. Got flagons of the stuff-last a hundred lifetimes.

Chris started to giggle but burped up a bubble of acid.

You're twisting things, buddy boy, another voice cut in. Pulling out of the hat every rabbity reason for taking a leap off a cliff in the dark, hope against hope that you'll end up in the land of milk and honey. The problem is you're fucking drunk. That's right: Gassed, blotto, smashed and filled with guilt and grief up the yin-yang. You're like the guy who convinces himself he's got this special alcohol-resistant radar unit inside his skull that will lead him home in the rainstorm no matter what, but who slams into a tree only to spend the rest of his life in a coma, curled up like a shrimp.

But another voice whispered, "Hey, slugger, what do you say we give this thing a run for the money, Huh?"

Don't want to end up like Dad, now, do we? he asked himself.

Uh-uh, no way!

But what if you miscalculate?

Impossible! He had worked out the dosages long ago.

And what if it doesn 't work?

Iwati never lied. "…on the soul of Jesus."

What about Wendy and Adam? What do you tell your wife?

That could be worked out, he reasoned. She could take it too.

And what if it works and forty years from now your kid wonders why you both look the same age?

Chris was in no mood for speculations. Forty years from now: He'd worry about that when they got there. This was carpe the diem while you still had some diem and brain cells left to guide your hand.

You're crazy drunk and reasoning through a point-eight blood alcohol level. You saw what happened to -

Suddenly his mind hit a void.

He balanced himself against the fireplace and stared into the dying embers, concentrating with all he had to remember the name of that old rhesus monkey. He could see the animal's face. He could see him jumping around the cage like a juvenile. How could this be? He had worked with the animal daily for months.

Jesus! Two syllables. Two bloody goddamn syllables. Think.

Simba. Rumba. Rambo. Jumbo. God Almighty! Help me remember that monkey's name.

It's the beer, he told himself. You're just drunk.

Bullshit! You know what's going on. Just an inch behind your hairline whole clusters of neurons are turning into gumballs. That's right, you're beginning your little bump down Alzy's Lane. Sure, it's bright up at this end, but watch the dark close around you as the rest of your brain sludges up so all that's left of Dr. Christopher Bacon is something connected to a catheter.

He shook his head and the fugue gratefully ceased. Silence.

He stared into the dying hearth for a long moment.

Then a little bright node sphinctered open at the core of Chris's consciousness, and moving on some crazy autopilot he followed it out of the bathroom and through the living room, stopping once to remove the small black pouch from the desk drawer, then proceeding down the hall to the cellar door which he opened, and then he flicked the light switch and quietly walked down the stairs, feeling the musty chill of the cellar air and the hard concrete floor that led toward the thick oak door with the large steel lock whose combination Chris couldn't recite but which his fingers knew, spinning through the right-left turns until the tumblers made that gratifying click that let the door swing open so he could grasp the pull chain of the overhead light which lit up what to the untrained eye was a wall of wine bottles behind which sat two trunks that opened with the keys around his neck.

For a long spell he stared at the rows of clear glass ampules-212, each capable of sustaining a 170-pound man for three years.

Two ampules were missing.

That couldn't be. Maybe he had miscounted when he packed them. God knows that was possible given the condition of his mind. But at the moment he could not have cared less.

He opened the pouch and removed the alcohol pads and syringe.

"Hey, slugger, what do you say?"

His mind dipped as he thought of Wendy upstairs asleep, Adam beside her. But he snipped off those thoughts.

For old time's sake, huh? You, me, and one-point-eight ccs.

Home run, Chris thought, and shot up.

He felt nothing.

Even if there were initial effects, his senses had to compete with seventy-two ounces of beer. Besides, the lab animals did not display any effects until the fourth day. So he staggered up to bed and slept a dreamless sleep until eight the next morning when he woke to a fifty-megaton hangover.

Wendy was downstairs with the baby. He could smell coffee and toast. With his head thudding painfully, he got up and took a shower and passed the day trying to detect any effects from the drug. There were none.

None but the anxiety that gripped him like claws mid-morning when he realized what he had done. There was no turning back. The substance was in his system seeking a stabilizing level which he would have to maintain or risk deterioration. After two short weeks of treatment, withdrawn mice showed aging signs beyond their time. After three weeks, their steps shortened and they died prematurely.

The stuff had immediate genetic effect. He was already dependent. Worse, he would have to tell Wendy because soon he would manifest effects that he could not predict.

Over the next few days he had momentary panic attacks. Yet, on some level, he felt a perverse relief that all other options had been eliminated. He never let on to Wendy and filled his time with chores. Meanwhile, Jenny had come up with the names of three dead people from the Midwest whose social security numbers Ted was having transferred to bogus licenses and other IDs.

On the sixth day, Chris started to wonder if Elixir was working because he still couldn't detect a reaction. On the seventh day it hit like a storm.

He was alone in the attic fixing a leak, when he felt a strange buzzing sensation in his head, as if a hornet were trapped in his skull. Rapidly the hum seemed to light up the frontal lobe of his brain with a strange alertness.

He steadied himself against a beam to gauge the effects. His heart pounded and his arms tingled. Rapidly a sensation of lightness filled his body as if he had undergone a transfusion of helium.

He took off his glasses, feeling a craving for air. As he moved to a vent window, a giddy sensation rippled through his genitals and loins. Suddenly he wanted to move, to go outside and run, leap, jump-anything to release the energy percolating throughout his system. He pushed open the vent and sucked in the cold mountain air.