Tevun-Krus #34 - GothPunk

The Immortality Machine - A Short Story by @krazydiamond

The Immortality Machine

Papa couldn't save Mother from death.

Though he certainly tried every avenue known and unknown to man. For months he'd poured over the great works of Edison and Tesla, the two men as much magicians as scientists, sifting for pieces to weave into his own creation. For weeks until the end, he locked himself away in the lab through the long hours of the night, the sallow glow of the lanterns seeping under the door. He tinkered and toiled until Mother drew her last bloody bubbling breath through her gray lips. I know, but I was there at the end, gripping my mother's cooling hand in a white knuckled embrace, willing her to take one more breath to spite the Devil. It was no use. The sickness slowly, agonizingly liquefied her internal organs. I kept vigil to the end, wiping the blood from her lips, feeding her broth until her stomach ate away at itself. A horrifying death to witness as much to experience.

My father never appeared.

It was my mother's stalwart maid Tansy who delivered the news. By then I dragged myself to the wash room to sterilize myself. I knew the moment my father emerged from his labs by the hoarse cries. He fell to my mother's side, unable to touch her. To see his beloved's ravaged face may have been too much for him. He was unresponsive when I make it back to the room, my skin scrubbed raw to quash any possible contamination. Father looked fragile in his rumpled white coat and smudges glasses. His eyes were bruised, his face gaunt, the skin taut from weeks of improper sleeping and eating.

My mother lay dead from the Consumption that swept the country side and my father was a ghost of a man haunting her bedside. I was certain I lost them both the same day, but my father jolted at my touch on his arm, coming to life like Shelley's monster. He turned and swept me up in a crushing hold.

Sorrow's hold was tighter still, squeezing my heart until I was sure it was pop from the pressure. It was all I could do not to crumble into a sobbing mess in my father's arms but in that moment, I felt her there was us. Mother's presence surrounded Papa and me, as if she held us in her arms. I swore her fingers stroked across my cheek in a final farewell.

Or a 'see you soon' gesture.

My body convulsed in a violent cough. I tasted copper and felt the mist on my lips. I didn't need to wipe it away to see what it was. My father's horrified expression confirmed what I already knew.

The Consumption had me now.

My father's hands cupped my face, the fire in his eyes dancing on the edge of madness.

"I won't let this happen, my little dove," he stated, "I will not cede you both to the grave."

It was the last I saw of my father's for weeks.

**

This included Mother's funeral. I did not mind the solitary preparation, it kept my mind off other things. Like my slowly melting internal organs. It took mother six months to succumb, not fully bedridden until the final three weeks when her organs were too damaged to continue proper functions. It was the typical time line for a Consumption victim, a mystery how they lasted so long, as mysterious as the origin of the disease itself. Many blamed the scientists, the curious Curies, playing with powers beyond mortal comprehension, or my father's idols, Tesla and Edison.

Men and women playing god, the peers clucked in their parlors, sooner or later one of them had to overstep their bounds and incite the wrath of higher beings. That is what many believed the Consumption truly was; divine punishment. They boycotted electricity in favor of gas lamps and shied away from other advancements. My father called them a bunch of backward facing idiots.