The Elementalist

1. A Bath is Not Just a Bath

A Bath is Not Just a BathIn present-day Chandra City, Apexia…

‘IMPERIAL PALACE FACES BOMB THREATS IN DARMOIL’

‘LOCAL PILOTS LOSING BUSINESS TO AIRSHIP CONGLOMERATE’

‘FLIMSY STUNT PILOT MEETS GRIM END’

It was 8:37 in the morning, and Voi Román was soaking alone in her clawfoot tub—avoiding her meds—with an early edition of The Chandra Tribune propped open. An autumn breeze drifted through the awning window, gently dispersing the jasmine-scented steam rising from the tub. The telephone clanged repetitively from a faraway place, though she paid this little mind.

Instead, she folded the newspaper and set it on a nearby stool, flexed her fingers and toes, then slipped deeper into the bathwater with an earnest sigh, keeping her head aloft. She shuddered as she closed her newsprint-assaulted eyes—momentarily forgetting AeroTaxi’s financial woes, the Tribune, and the troublesome world the paper reported.

The scalding bathwater embraced Voi, purging the sweet floral scent from the urche extract she consumed to manage her emelesia: a rare genetic condition which would soon see Voi slip into an irreversible state of madness.

For now, she would enjoy her sanity.

Recalling the reason for taking such a hot bath only minutes later, Voi opened her eyes. She snatched up her sponge then furiously began scrubbing the fragrant traces of the d**g from her skin, turning it a feverish red. Of course, the pungent scent would only resurface again, seeping through her pores after physical activity.

It was an endlessly vicious cycle, suppressing the evidence of her condition: scour, rinse, repeat.

Exhausted, Voi stopped and panted. She let go of the sponge, sighed, then sunk deeper into the water. She closed her eyes, becoming aware of her surroundings. There was something in the wind that made her feel very much alive as it wandered into this sanctuary, kissing her exposed, raw skin like a tender yet tentative lover. Perhaps the wind was afraid to touch the surrounding water, Voi mused—a kind of taboo amongst the elements.

She furrowed her brow: why was it that certain elements remained in a gaseous state at room temperature while others saw fit to settle as liquids? Science explained the mechanics of this—at which temperatures the elements shifted forms and such—but the very origins, the essential ‘why?’ at the heart of the matter, remained a mystery to Voi.

Perhaps there was a secret code in the aether which determined these things, making arbitrary decisions such as, You—yes you, delicate flower over there—I command you to sprout. Oh, but I’m sorry, the others around you must all die! ‘Tis the season for such things, you know, for winter is approaching. But you, lucky you… I think you shall live. Mercy be upon you, Chosen Flower.

Voi scowled at the disparaging thought then shook her head. Why, she’d seen this very phenomenon that morning, right outside her townhome—a single dandelion left alone in a sea of hopelessness! Her heart had ached for the small life form. After all, who would comfort the lonesome Chosen Flower? To pick it would have been to doom it, so she’d settled for leaving it in the yard.

It was cruel, allowing such things to occur, and she had to wonder who held power over these ironic twists of fate. Was it the inanimate aether, the forces of nature… a god?

Thoroughly stumped, Voi sighed.

There. Her mind was clear again. Only the wind whispered to her conscience, granting her peace.

What was known, Voi further reasoned—altogether forgetting the notion of peace—was that the ecstatic, d**g-like effect which she awaited each morning only kicked in after her medication wore off. As it was now, languidly though certainly enough. In response to this indescribable feeling, Voi gave a low, wicked chuckle. The high would soon arrive, and no one would be there to stop it.

She certainly wouldn’t stop it.

As the darkness of her eyelids sufficiently veiled the truth of her reality, Voi took a deep breath as f*******n sensations claimed precedence over her waning interest in the real world and its problems. Her skin tingled with sharper, keener sensations.

“Come, sweet ecstasy,” she said as she slipped underwater. The emelesiac’s life is far too short.

* * *

Suddenly waking from a dark, enveloping high to a garbled world of bubbles and silvery light, Voi leaped out of the water—gasping, splashing, choking, coughing. Her throat burned from breathing.

Searching for stability, she grasped the edge of the tub and was prepared to pull herself out, but then she stopped, cringing at a deafening barrage of noises: the metallic ding of the trolley bell, the gassy put-put of automobiles, the airy whooshing of the curtains… But for some reason, it was the purring engine which stood out most to Voi—like the Chosen Flower had that morning. The rumbling vibrations awakened a terror in her, sending her into panic.

As Voi began to crawl out of the tub, she looked down and froze. Intrigued by what she found, she squinted then leaned closer. The floor tiles were just as they’d always been, but the blackness of the squares and the whiteness of the—onetwothreefourfivesixsevenei—octagons never before looked so alive. So striking was the contrast that it felt as though she hadn’t truly noticed the difference before!

Distracted by the revelation, Voi only peripherally noticed how gusty the bathroom had grown—how the window sheers were whipped about by a fitful, tumultuous wind. Instead, she focused on her robe, which hung from a set of hangers on a nearby wall. She’d always recalled the robe being a dull sky blue, but today, the sky had never been bluer.

Voi blinked, and then she laughed. Why? Because suddenly, inexplicably, everything in the world had come to life. With the remnants of her last dose of urche dissolving, why, anything seemed possible! Her surroundings were brighter and substantially more vibrant, her senses more attuned to the physical world…

But was this phenomenon reality or merely a figment of Voi’s imagination?

Still staring at the robe, Voi slowly tilted her head when the garment appeared to pulsate against the wall. The geometries of the floor tiles also seemed to swell in their natural forms, only to contract again…

Voi shook herself violently and cursed herself, slapping her face repeatedly. “Stop it! Stop it, Voi! You’re off your meds; this isn’t real. You can’t—no, you have to resist the… resist the…” She covered her face with her hands as she sobbed—quietly, lest the neighbors hear her irrational declarations. Desperate now, Voi gripped the edge of the tub as she pinched her eyes shut, forcing herself to stop crying. She counted to ten then looked at the clock on the wall.

9:12, it read.

Voi stared wide-eyed at the thing, wondering how much of the past half hour or so had been spent submerged beneath the water. How did she lose track of time? She’d hung the clock on the wall for a reason: fourteen hours without a dose of urche was typically safe; anything more was too risky. It seemed her symptoms were progressively taking less time to manifest themselves.

In other words, her condition was getting worse.

Now there wasn’t enough time for her meds to take effect. She had to take them no later than fifteen minutes before Mr. Jones’ arrival at nine in the morning, and Mr. Jones was usually a punctual man; most Windi people were. Recalling the noise that had shaken Voi from her trance, she c****d her head and listened carefully; a vehicle was parked just outside, its rumble foreign to her ears.

Mr. Jones was never late. Who else could it be?

Someone slammed a door outside.

Voi’s body convulsed at the abrupt sound, her hands instinctively covering her ears. She closed her eyes and rocked herself, breathing in an elongated manner. Heeee-hoooo… Heeee-hoooo… Hee— She stopped then lowered her hands. Nothing but the wind could be heard. However, even this—the one thing that offered any comfort to Voi—came to a cessation the moment she stopped breathing. When she exhaled, a slight breeze seemed to respond from the window, causing the sheers to flutter.

Voi furrowed her brow, confused.

Regaining awareness of her nakedness, she kept a wary eye on the window while squeezing some of the water from her thick hair. Then she climbed out of the tub and reached for her robe, listening for footsteps at street level as she pulled on the garment then flung out her wet mane from beneath the collar. She stood there for a moment, listening to the ticking of the clock. She drew a trembling hand to her stomach, hoping to smother the sickening feeling that swarmed in her gut.

Perhaps she’d been fooling herself, hoping she didn’t really need the urche. She thought maybe she could control what she became without the medication because it wasn’t her. Not entirely. It was an alternate persona. Her Other Self. That self she was afraid to know though with whom she was, admittedly, intrigued.

There was something primal about her Other Self… She feared it couldn’t be tamed.

Voi took a deep breath before approaching the window, pushing the awning panel out as far as its hinges would allow. Not having squeezed enough water from her hair—it was thicker than she liked, a trait inherited from her Borellian mother—a wet trail trickled along her spine, dampening her robe as it crawled to her feet. Voi stuck her head outside anyway, watching a puff of air escape from her lips. Down below, she spotted a man standing beside a black sedan. There was a passenger inside, though she couldn’t see his face.

As for the visible man, however, he stood idly on the curb, shielding his eyes from the rising sun while gazing up at Voi. The swarthy newcomer drew his eyebrows together suspiciously, then, in an attempt to recompose himself, flashed Voi an impromptu smile. He took off his fedora and proceeded to wave it in a cordial, unnecessary manner—clearly mistaking his presence for a welcome one.

A new social worker, perhaps? It had to be. Rarely did anyone else ever come to visit. But perhaps she was only being paranoid. After all, paranoia was a symptom of emelesia.

“Good morning, Miss Román!” the man shouted as if coming upon her in that very window was a pleasant happenstance. The resulting echo startled Voi. She gasped with a shudder as she pulled herself inside, slamming her head on the window frame.

“Ow!” she cried, rubbing the affected spot. She started hyperventilating. How did this stranger know her name? Trying to calm down, she took deep breaths. When that wasn’t enough, she tried holding her breath. Even with her heartbeat drumming between her ears, she could still hear the man walking across the street, crunching leaves as he approached the entrance to her house.

Panicking, Voi scurried into the bedroom then went to the vanity to check herself in the mirror and froze. Normally, her irises were a clear grey, but currently, they were overwhelmed by black oily pupils—practically the size of the irises themselves! She dared to stare at her Other Self, blindly searching the vanity’s drawers for her lipstick with a trembling hand. When she found the item, she popped the cover then applied the rosy cosmetic to her lips.

Perhaps this was a futile gesture, as Voi’s light olive complexion was even paler than normal. She’d also run out of rouge and was too rattled to rub lipstick onto her cheeks without making a mess of it. Besides, the attempt on her lips was already questionable. Still, Voi was confident that a woman’s puckers could distract a man in all the right ways… so long as she didn’t boast a threatening air.

Voi pressed her lips together with a startling smack, making her flinch. She put the lipstick away then found herself a hair tie—winding her dark, wavy mane into a sloppy, soggy bun. She finished the dreadful look with a long exhalation into the mirror before pursing her lips thoughtfully. She tried out some innocent facial expressions, batting the lashes of her ‘big doe eyes,’ as her friend Paul called them.

At last, the doorbell rang.

Voi clutched the vanity and pinched her eyes shut, coming to terms with what she would face.

The terrifying reality of emelesia was that it had no cure; either you had the condition, or you didn’t. There was no middle ground, no happy medium—simply the lucky one-in-twelve. In fact, Voi’s physician, Dr. Moore, had predicted that by her twenty-fifth birthday, the low-concentration form of urche extract he was administering to her now would have lost its effectiveness at warding against psychosis. Only a higher grade of institution-administered urche would be able to curb any symptoms at that point.

Well, Voi had reached the age of twenty-five almost a full year ago. Her descent into madness was only a matter of time. Resolving to meet her fate bravely, she took a deep breath then took off for the stairs.

The visitor apparently felt no need to hurry, as he didn’t make additional attempts at soliciting Voi’s presence. After all, he’d already seen she was home; she had to answer to avoid further guilt. She set foot on the lower level, touching a bare sole to the runner. The corners of her mouth curled with juvenile delight as she nestled her toes into wool—a wonderfully sensuous feeling off her meds. Remembering herself, Voi looked at the door then took her first steps towards it, pausing just short of the doorknob. She lowered her hand then stared ahead, nibbling on a quivering lip. The bitter taste of lipstick offered no consolation as she waited for the man to ring again. When he didn’t, she reached back out to the door…

She hesitated, pressing her palm against the wood.

The man’s presence, she sensed, was a looming one, as sturdy and stubborn as a boulder. Without urche, Voi could feel his stalwart energy radiate through the cells of the door, further lengthening her hesitation. On second thought, she retracted her hand—for once Voi opened that door, she was certain the agent would look into her eyes, her cat-like pupils, and see what a fiend she was. For if daemons were real and a woman could be possessed, Voi imagined that such a person would look exactly the way she did.

Convinced she was beyond redemption, the man would ask to count her pills, if he had so much as half a brain—dammit, she’d forgotten to flush them down the toilet! Never mind. Acting paranoid wouldn’t help her situation. What Voi had to do now was convince the social worker that she was one of the one-in-twelve.

With all the bravery she could muster, Voi took a breath, fixed her posture, then purposefully undid the lock, though she intentionally left the chain attached. Finally, she reached for the knob, gave it a twist, then cracked the door—stealing a glimpse of the well-dressed man who was ironically arching an eyebrow at her…