literature

The Postmodern Prometheus, Part 1

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Ian Gore was used to walking into rooms with dead bodies in them; he'd been a coroner until very recently, after all. What bothered him was that this was a hotel room.

As deaths went, he thought, at least it had been clean: the body was lying on the double bed with an overturned plate on the duvet beside it and the TV remote within easy reach.

Ian's current employer, Dr. Tessa Stein, did not share this analysis.
'Oh, hell!' She exclaimed, following her subordinate into the room. 'I told him not to order room service-- and look where it got him. Ian, what happened?'
Ian spent several minutes examining the corpse, and then thought to check the overturned plate. He lifted it to reveal several tiny, golden-brown fishcakes. Sniffing at one, he took a bite.
'Prawn,' he realised. 'Our donor was allergic to shellfish-- I guess we forgot to tell this guy not to eat any.' Finishing it and picking up another one, he continued, 'if it's any consolation, these are pretty tasty. As last meals go, really not too bad.'
Tessa swore under her breath. 'You're sure he's dead?'

Ian lifted one of the body's arms and let it flump back down onto the luxurious bed. 'Very.'
More swearing as Tessa sat down on the edge of the bed. 'Now what are we supposed to do? We were supposed to present him to the committee tomorrow night!'
Ian sat down beside her, leaving the body where it was. 'We could always just... re-animate another body?'

Silence hung over the room for several seconds. Tessa was deep in thought; Ian knew from experience not to interrupt her when she was trying to focus like this; and the dead body, still dead (and for the second time in its life), wasn't feeling very talkative.

'Did Mercury order any tartare sauce with his prawn cakes?' Ian asked eventually. 'They're a little dry, is all-- nice, but dry.'
'Ian,' Tessa snapped, 'shut up. Look for the damn sauce if you must-- just do it in silence. Some of us are trying to think.'
'One of us is,' Ian replied. 'I think he's done with thinking altogether. Again.' He jabbed his thumb at Mercury, their first successfully re-animated body.
'Shut up!' Tessa repeated. 'Look, it took me two months of preparation to bring Mercury back, and that was when we had all our tools and equipment up on the moors. You really think we can do it all over again in two days with none of that?'
Ian weighed up their options as he munched on Mercury's prawn cakes. 'I think we don't have much of a choice,' he decided.

Tessa sighed. 'You're right.' She snatched up one of the last few prawn cakes and stuffed it into her mouth. 'Looks like we'll need to go... shopping.'
'For a new body?' Ian asked, alarmed. 'We got consent forms for Mercury, at least technically! He underwent monthly medical examinations to ensure everything would be working properly when you brought him back-- okay, sure, maybe he wasn't sure what exactly it was all for, but we're not going to be able to find anyone willing to "leave their body to science" within the next twenty-four hours!'
'I meant for supplies,' Tessa said, raising a hand in an attempt to calm Ian. We'll need some way of kick-starting their bodily functions once more, of course, along with... probably a new suit. Mercury's was tailored, and as such won't fit-- and I'm not sending my creation out to meet the world in jeans and a T-shirt. But... actually yeah, we will need another body. Hm.'

Ian stood up and crossed to the window, making sure the curtains were fully closed. 'I don't like where this is going,' he murmured. 'I don't like it at all.'
'You took the job knowing full well what it would entail!' Tessa snapped. 'And the kind of fame and fortune it would bring, if it worked-- which it will, of course. It did last time. Now think, dammit! I hired you for more than just your good looks and your family's gumbo recipe.'
'Or my frontal lisp,' Ian said.
Tessa said nothing.
'You hired me for my lisp?!' Ian exclaimed, whirling around to face her.
'It's all part of the image,' she said, raising her hands defensively. 'You had more of an assistant vibe to you than the other candidates.
Struggling to focus, Ian checked the door was locked. 'You should probably stand up,' he said. 'We'd best tuck Mercury in; make it look like he's not actually dead again.'
'Of course; of course,' Tessa said, standing up and smoothing down the bedsheets with her small, pale hands. 'So-- our primary needs right now are a dead body and a suit.'
'And a name,' Ian said. 'Sticking with the theme, might I suggest Venus?'
'No you may not,' Tessa said. 'You have your choice of May, Deacon or Taylor.'
'You-- You didn't name Mercury here for the planet?'
Tessa sniffed. 'No.'
'In that case-- May? It would make sense to go for a woman this time.'
'I'm gonna have to veto that,' Tessa decided. 'Call it an image thing-- I want the first re-animated body to be a great big beefcake of a man. Blonde hair, tan, the works.'
'And he was,' Ian argued, nodding to her first re-animated body.
'We can't use Mercury! He's dead!'
'We need a dead body with a suit,' Ian snapped. 'Dead body, suit.' He gestured to the fresh corpse, tucked neatly into bed: Mercury (as they'd taken to calling him) had been a champion bodybuilder in life, and had kept up his physique right up until he suffocated in his sleep.

'We need one we haven't already brought back!' Tessa stated once again, standing up and balling her hands into fists. 'Trials suggested re-re-animation already hits the point of diminishing returns-- and hits it hard, too. Our only option is a fresh body.'
'So how are we gonna get it measured for a suit?' Ian asked. 'It's not like we can just-- bring a corpse into a tailor's. They'd probably notice how it was decomposing and bar us for life.'
'We could measure it ourselves,' Tessa said. 'Then go out and buy a suit that fits.'
'It'd never work,' Ian said. 'A proper tailored fit requires a proper tailor.'
'So we... find someone bigger than you,' Tessa started, 'and we-- we pad out your clothes to bring you up to their proportions!'
'Your brilliant plan is to send me to a high-end clothing store wearing a fat suit and hope the tailor doesn't notice?'

Tessa pressed her forehead against the wall; Ian stepped forward and placed a hand on her shoulder. From up close, the wallpaper wasn't quite white, and to the untrained eye seemed to have some sort of vague pattern to it-- thus making it more or less the same as any hotel wallpaper, he thought.
'We'll find a solution,' Ian said. 'Just-- one step at a time. Focus on putting together a list of what we'll need once we have the new body.'
'Right,' Tessa murmured. 'I'll probably be able to pick up everything we need from somewhere. Although I may need to get creative for the glassware.'
'Good,' Ian said. 'And for the body-- actually, I think we can kill two birds with one stone there, too. It was obvious, really; I'm surprised we didn't think of it sooner.'
Tessa's pale face crumpled into a frown. 'You mean--'
'I mean if we're going to do this, we're going to do this the old-fashioned way.'
Tessa smiled broadly. 'Grave robbing. Perfect.'

--

It took Ian several minutes to ensure Mercury looked sufficiently alive, tucked into bed with the room's TV remote an inch or two from his hand and his head tilted slightly down, as though he had fallen asleep deciding what to watch. To complete the illusion, he reached up and skimmed through several channels himself, settling on one that looked suitably dull.

He left the hotel with Tessa, and they hurried through the rain towards his car-- which was itself old enough to drive, and five months away from being able to drink. Ian often claimed most of it was still technically new, even though they'd stopped making spare parts in 2004. A string of questionable mechanics had fitted part after part such that nothing was quite attached how it should be, and he still wasn't quite sure how it had passed its last MOT, but he'd bought it a new coat of paint to celebrate-- except it somehow hadn't taken properly, giving the entire car the appearance of having a particularly bad skin condition. It had five doors, some of which worked.

Opening the door on his third try and sitting down, he eventually took pity on Tessa's struggles and leaned across, rattling the lock until she could get in along with him.
'I really wish I could drive,' she said, sitting down and struggling to adjust the seat. It had been just fine when last she'd used it, but seemed to have moved several notches of its own accord since then-- as it was known to do whenever Ian braked hard, or drove with the windows down.
'I wish I could afford something that wasn't this mess,' Ian replied, wrestling with his seatbelt momentarily and making sure the pedals were still where they should be. They'd never gone walkabout yet, but he found with this car it always paid to be certain.

Deciding there was no sense putting it off for any longer, Ian tried to start the car. It rattled and moaned like it was haunted (a possibility he hadn't yet conclusively disproved), and then fell silent.
Swearing, he tried again; still nothing.
'Shall I get out and push?' Tessa asked.
'No,' Ian decided. 'I think I know what I'm doing wrong.' he unplugged the radio and threw it into the back seat: this was perhaps the least broken part of the car, but as a consequence it seemed to break anything it was plugged into.

Ian turned the key again. Still nothing.

'Try moving your seat back a little,' he said, turning to Tessa.
'Excuse me?'
'Just-- trust me,' he said. 'Louise is very particular about these things.'
'Louise?' Tessa asked, raising a blonde eyebrow. 'I never realised you named this thing. Did you honestly name it after your home state?'
'You named our dead body after a singer,' Ian countered. 'It was bad enough when I thought you'd named him for the planet-- I mean, that little lump of rock?'
'Just focus on getting this thing working,' Tessa said, glaring at him.

Ian reached up and turned the light off, unplugged the GPS, and then adjusted the mirror, the sun visors, and carefully spun the steering wheel until his wheels were facing exactly forwards.

He tried again: it rattled in a slightly more contented manner this time, like a housecat after catching and eating a particularly tricky bird, but still refused to actually start.
'I'll get out and push,' Tessa said.
'No,' Ian said, knowing she might not be able to get back in if she did. 'This calls for some Baton Rouge ingenuity.'
'You said you were born in New Orleans,' Tessa said, frowning at him as he wrestled with the door to escape, eventually winding down the window and opening it from outside.
'And I was,' he said, trying the boot.

After kicking it several times, he got it open, and found the Baton Rouge buried under a box of old medical textbooks: it was the car's original exhaust, long since detached by an unexpected speed bump, which he'd kept for sentimental reasons and spray painted red. Walking around to the front, he motioned for Tessa to keep turning the key, raised the Baton Rouge over his head, and gave the Louise's mottled bonnet a good hard thwack.

By the time his ears stopped ringing, the car had started.

Ian slammed the door and set off before his car decided otherwise, weaving through the late evening and praying he didn't hit any traffic. Every time he hit a red light, he'd inch slowly but surely forwards, making sure he never actually stopped, much to the irritation of anyone who got stuck in front of him; eventually, they hit a surprisingly clear stretch, and Tessa spotted a chemist that was still open.
'Stop here,' she said. 'I think there was a DIY store next to that chemist-- I should be able to get everything else I need from there.'
'One problem,' Ian realised. 'If I stop this thing...'
'Then it might decide to stay stopped,' she said. 'Just-- slow down, then, and I'll hope for the best.'

He slowed to a crawl as Tessa wrestled with the door: after a few seconds of struggling, she turned to Ian, holding the broken handle.
'Wind the window down!' Ian snapped, taking the handle from her and throwing it into the back seat, beside the radio. 'Use the outside one!'

There was another crack, and she handed him the window crank.

'Oh, he said, 'that one does that sometimes. There should be a pair of pliers in the glove box-- use those to get the window open, then use the outside handle.' He sped up as the taxi behind him honked furiously, turned into a side street, and waited: after several minutes of wrestling with the pliers and swearing quietly, Tessa stumbled out of the car and rolled to a halt beside it.
'Circle around!' She called, dusting herself off as Ian sped away through the rain. 'I'll meet you back here when I've got everything we'll need!'

--

The satnav was one of at least 3 things in Ian's car that genuinely was new, along with one of the seat covers and the pair of pliers he kept in the glove box. It claimed it would take them half an hour to get to Highgate Cemetery.

It told them this in French. And it lied.

One hour later when Ian did eventually find it, he was beginning to grow unnerved by London. It didn't seem to end. Back home, an hour would take him from his home in Northview to the hospital in York where he usually worked; here, it took him from London to...

Still London. Except not quite as tall, and with more green bits.

Highgate Cemetery was one of these green bits; not the largest, but it made up for its relatively small size by being far creepier than anywhere Ian had ever seen before. The term "haunted" seemed too small for it, especially at this time of night, and this late in the year: everything was old bricks and iron spikes and trees that looked to have spent centuries learning to loom in a very specific way that allowed them to dominate the footpath alongside the fence without actually providing any shelter from the rain.

It had long since closed its gates for the night, leaving Ian with no choice but to break in and break out, hauling a body the whole way.
'Any suggestions?' he asked, turning to Tessa, who was still holding an armful of supplies from the chemist.
'No,' she said simply, struggling to wipe the rain from her glasses without dropping anything.
'We can't exactly break the wall down,' he said. 'No way am I going to ram raid a graveyard.'
'Then we can either pick the lock on the gate or climb the wall,' she said. 'Climbing up and over doesn't sound like the best idea in this weather, given that we'll need some way to get the body back out afterwards.'
'So that leaves us with the option of breaking in,' Tessa decided. 'Lucky for you, I planned ahead.' Setting down her supplies from the chemist in the passenger side footwell, she turned in the chair as best she could, grabbing at the back seat, and pulled out a pair of bolt cutters and half a dozen other assorted tools.
'Which body are we gonna steal, anyway?' Ian asked. 'I think Karl Marx is buried here.'
'No way,' Tessa said. 'Marx would probably object to the re-animation of dead bodies on principle. They'd allow the bourgeois to hire corpses for manual labour, driving the proletariat out of employment and potentially ending the class war with their outright extinction.'

Ian stared at her for several seconds.

'Eyes on the road,' Tessa snapped. 'Unless you want the next body I re-animate to be yours.'
'I've got my seatbelt on!' Ian protested.
'And you trust it? You trust this car to not kill you in a dozen different ways if you hit something?'
'Okay,' he said. 'Fair point. But... that's your reason for not re-animating Karl Marx? Re-animation of dead bodies hypothetically goes against Marxist ideals?'
'That and he died in the 1800s, so he's probably pretty decomposed by now,' she added. 'Wouldn't give me enough to work with-- and even if he's looking okay, whatever he was buried in probably isn't, sending us right back to the suit problem.'
Ian remained silent.
'Yes, I've looked into commercial applications of re-animating bodies,' Tessa said quietly. 'I know, I know, I originally sold myself as an idealist-- but I need to make ends meet somehow.'
Ian nodded, finally finding somewhere to park the car: he stopped it and hoped for the best, then struggled to get the doors open as Tessa gathered up everything they'd need to steal a dead body.

All things considered, Ian thought, they had an easy enough time getting into the cemetery; he kept watch as Tessa dealt with the lock, and as such didn't see exactly what she did, but within a few minutes she nudged him, opened it a crack, and slipped through; he followed her, carrying a large bin liner full of tools along with him.

As haunted as Highgate Cemetery had looked from the outside, it was nothing compared to actually being in there, in the pitch darkness as icy rain hammered down on everything in sight (which was truth be told everything within about two feet of Ian's face). Thankfully, they soon found a part that only felt moderately haunted, and from there tracked down the recent burials. Picking out one at random, Tessa crouched down beside it and pulled out her phone.
'Dammit,' she hissed. 'Ian, can you get a signal here?'
Ian checked. 'Yeah,' he said. 'Why?'
'Look up Luigi Bellicose,' Tessa murmured. 'Find out when he died, and how.'

'Luigi Bellicose,' Ian murmured, typing the name in one-handed. 'Died two months ago-- car accident.'
'No good,' Tessa said, crawling along to the next grave. 'Christian Shelter?'
'Six months,' Ian said. 'Cancer.
'Too far gone,' Tessa decided. 'Chandler Lon the Second?'
'Two months... same cause of death as Mercury. I think we might have our body.'
'Hold on,' Tessa said, squinting at the headstone. 'Nope-- he was ninety-seven. Too old for our purposes.'
Ian swore. 'I'll put him down as a "maybe".'
The next two were women; Tessa stopped at the one after them, her boots squelching in the thick mud. 'Alan Hart?'
'No results,' Ian said. The rain seemed to pick up: he tried to wipe his phone's rain-spattered screen with his sleeve, but only succeeded in getting more water on it. 'And I think we're out of bodies, too.'
'Wait,' Tessa said. 'There's one more-- Karl Offerman. Anything?'

'Signal's died,' Ian said. 'Hold on.'
He paced back along the row of graves, waving his phone about as though trying to ward off a particularly slow mosquito. After a few seconds, the page loaded: Karl Offerman had passed away last month at the age of fifty due to liver cancer. He repeated all this to Tessa, and a smile began to spread across her sodden features. 'Start digging,' she said. 'He's perfect.'
'He is?' Ian asked, handing her a shovel.
'Recently deceased, plus he's young compared to the others here, plus he'll definitely last until after the committee meeting tomorrow.'

The rain picked up as they dug down to Offerman's coffin (a phrase Ian found was surprisingly fun to say), and the barren trees around them whipped and lashed at the black, starless sky. Their grim task was lit occasionally by flashes of distant lightning; Ian had to admit, if ever there was a night to rob a grave and re-animate its former occupant, this was it.

Ian's shovel struck something solid, and within a few minutes they'd unearthed the lid of a plain yet finely made coffin. Ian spent several minutes fumbling with it: glancing up, he saw Tessa staring down with a bemused expression on her slim face.
'Well it's not like I've had to open one of these before,' Ian said.
'Ian?' Tess asked.
'I mean,' he continued, I prefer to deal exclusively with dead bodies before they're actually buried!'
'Ian?'
'Are these things even designed to open?'
'Ian!' She snapped, losing patience with his rant.
'I just-- is there a catch, or something?'
Rolling her eyes and growling under her breath, Tessa hopped down into the grave after him, elbowed him aside, and effortlessly pulled the coffin open. Ian turned to her, wide-eyed.
'You were standing on the lid,' she said.
Ian cleared his throat. 'Oh. Right. Anyway-- shall we get this guy out?'
Tessa nodded: reaching down and sticking her hands into Offerman's armpits, she hauled him out of his coffin. 'Those zombie films make it look so easy,' she grunted. 'Honestly, if things can break out of their coffins and claw through several feet of dirt while decomposing, humanity kinda has it coming.'

All things considered, Ian thought, Offerman was in pretty good shape: at any rate, nothing appeared to have fallen off and his suit was still intact. The smell He could have done without, but other than that the body was in more or less perfect condition, aside from being very dead.
'You're the expert here, Ian,' Tessa said. 'Is he useable?'
'Yeah,' Ian said. 'Assuming your formula can compensate for the whole liver cancer thing.'
Tessa shrugged. 'It'll last long enough.' She scrambled out of the hole, and beckoned for Ian to pass the body up.

Setting Offerman's body down beside his grave, they closed his coffin and began burying it once more, making sure it looked as neat as possible. Hoisting it up between them as though they were competitors in a five-legged race, Ian and Tessa stumbled and slipped back through the cemetery, finding the gate again; Tessa instructed Ian to try and fit Offerman's body into his car while she re-locked the gate to better conceal their actions.

Ian immediately found himself struggling. Rigor mortis has long since set in, and if he'd had a hammer and some nails handy he could have used Offerman's corpse as a particularly grisly shelf. As such, he was still trying to wedge it into the front seat of his car when Tessa returned.
'Oh,' she murmured. 'I probably should've thought of that-- hold on, I can fix something up from the supplies I bought from the chemist.'
Reaching under Offerman's legs, she began rooting through the carrier bag. Ian busied himself trying to get one of the back doors open.
'So what's our plan long-term for Offerman?' He asked.
'May,' Tessa said. 'And long-term, we need to get him another liver.'
'Well, good luck with that.' Giving up on opening the door from the outside, Ian got into the car and began rattling the inside handle. 'I mean, I'm no expert-- if I ever saw a transplant patient it meant something had gone badly wrong-- but I'm gonna go out on a limb and say the NHS gives patients who aren't already dead priority on the waiting list.'
'There are other ways,' she continued: Ian heard her shaking something vigorously. 'Does your car have a cigarette lighter?'
'You know I don't smoke.'
'But does Louise have a lighter? I need to heat this mixture up.'
'Yeah,' Ian said. 'It does. But it's been jammed into the socket since the Olympics.'
'That's not too bad,' Tessa murmured. 'I mean, that's only... what, three years? I might be able to work it free.'
'The Athens Olympics,' Ian clarified. 'In two thousand and four.'
'Hm,' Tessa said. 'Oh, hold on-- I think I bought a lighter or two from the DIY store.'
'How are we going to get May a new liver?' Ian asked, finally getting the door open. 'Stop passing motorists and steal theirs, like the highwaymen of old?'
Tessa turned to him, frowning.
'Stand and de-liver,' he said.

A cheap plastic lighter bounced off his forehead and rattled into the footwell.

'Well,' Tessa said, 'all that is of secondary concern, for the moment. We still need a lot of power to get May's body jump-started once I've applied the formula. Assuming I can produce it at all, of course. There-- that should do it.'
Ian turned to see May sitting slumped in the passenger seat. 'How did you do that?'
'A little old-fashioned know-how,' Tessa said. 'Very old-fashioned, in fact-- anyway, we don't have anything we need, but we have everything we can get. Take us back to the hotel.'

Ian turned the key: the engine rattled and clunked in a way that seemed almost mocking. He swore and slapped the dashboard, and then went through the routine of unplugging and adjusting everything once more.

Still nothing.

Getting back out, he took the Baton Rouge from the boot and gave the bonnet another solid whack. He returned to the driver's seat to find it still wouldn't start.
'Yeah,' he said. 'We're not going anywhere. Any ideas?'
'Call your boyfriend?' Tessa suggested. 'Have him come out here and jump-start us-- on second thoughts, have him give us a lift.'
'Fritz's top surgery is tomorrow morning,' Ian said. 'So that's out of the question-- otherwise he'd be there for the big reveal tomorrow, and probably here with us now, in the exact same predicament.'
'If we'd gone ahead with my original plan for Mercury--' Tessa started.
'No,' Ian snapped. 'Out of the question.'
'It would've made things so much easier if Mercury had died as per my original schedule!'
'You do realise that's murder, right? We waited for Mercury to die of natural causes so we can't be held accountable. He left his body to us-- it's all above board!'
'You're sure?'
Ian glanced at the dead body in his passenger seat: he was about to turn the air conditioning on to try and deal with the smell when he realised what had happened the last time he'd done that. After two weeks of trying to get the seat clean, he'd given up and bought a cover for it. 'Okay,' he said. 'That's a fair point.'

'Top surgery?' Tessa asked, after several seconds of awkward silence.
'He's having his breasts removed,' Ian said; Fritz was pretty open about his transition, and had mentioned it offhand to Tessa when they'd met the previous month, three weeks before Mercury died for the first time.
'I didn't realise he's transgender.'
'It was how we met,' Ian explained. 'He was in A&E after cracking a rib in a botched attempt to bind his chest-- I was called in to offer him some advice. We exchanged phone numbers, and...' He shrugged. 'Shared life experience is a wonderful thing, even if he does live at the other end of the country.'

'So,' Tessa sighed. 'That leaves us here, with nothing really tall enough to use as a lightning rod to re-animate May with-- and nothing we can use to cook up some more reagent, either. Any ideas?'
'Just one,' Ian said. 'But you're not gonna like it.'

--

'So, mate,' a gruff voice called behind Ian. 'Where you headed?'
'Wollstonecraft Hotel,' Ian said.
'Gotcha.'

He turned back around to see Tessa giving him a death glare. 'What?'
'You know what,' she said. 'I thought you'd called roadside recovery to jump-start Louise-- or at least that you'd called a taxi to jump-start her.'
'You're really okay with driving that thing back to the hotel?'
'Okay, sure,' she said. 'But did you have to bring that thing with you?'

Ian glanced down at the floor: in among the bags of supplies from the chemist and the DIY store was the Baton Rouge.
'I couldn't get the boot open again,' he mumbled.
'Feels weird,' the driver said, 'hearin' someone with an accent like yours say "boot" instead of "trunk".'
'I went through medical school over here,' Ian shrugged. 'Although I studied law back in Louisiana-- I mean, sooner or later you pick up a few words. But fries are still fries.'
The driver chuckled. 'What brings you all the way out here at this time of night, anyway?'
'Pub crawl,' Ian said. Tessa shot him another glare. 'It's for our friend here's stag do.'
'Huh,' the driver said. 'I would've thought he was a little old for that kind of thing.'
'There's-- life in the old man yet,' Tessa said. 'Or at least there will be by morning, hopefully.'
'Quite a way from the Wollstonecraft, if you don't mind my saying so.'
'Yes, well,' Tessa said. 'Nobody told father dearest that pub crawls don't usually involve buses.'

They drove on for several minutes in awkward silence, the rain hammering against the roof, the obsidian sky rumbling distantly as the storm grew stronger and stronger. They were heading directly into it, Ian realised; with a little luck they wouldn't have too much trouble getting May electrocuted somehow.
The driver swore loudly as someone cut him off, and made a number of rude gestures. He glanced into his rear view mirror, and his dark eyes narrowed. 'God, what's that smell?'
'I guess dad stepped in something,' Ian said.
'Hang on a minute,' the driver said. 'He's your dad? But he's...?'
'Yes, I'm fully aware of the fact that he's white,' Ian said. 'He's my stepdad.'
'Oh,' the driver said, nodding as his eyes returned to the road. 'Oh, yeah, that makes sense. Hey, you're from Louisiana, right? Anywhere near New Orleans?'
'Yeah,' Ian said. 'Why? You've family around there?'
'Yeah, half my family is Creole,' he nodded. 'My cousins still live out that way, but the rest of us moved here when I was a kid.'
Ian nodded. 'Any idea who they're descended from?'
The driver shook his head. 'They were originally African, but beyond that nobody really knows anything.'
'Same here,' Ian said. 'How far is the Wollstonecraft?'
'Give it fifteen minutes. Is that dirt on your papa's suit?'

Ian and Tessa shared a guilty look. 'I-- guess,' Tessa said. 'He had a hard time keeping it together for the last leg of the crawl. Took the whole thing sort of... literally.'
'He gonna be okay?'
'He's just tired,' Ian said. 'Dead tired. He has a big day tomorrow.'
'Oh, his wedding, right?'
'Right,' Tessa said.
'Hey, if he's drunk, and you were on a pub crawl-- how come you're both sober?'
'Designated driver,' Ian said, raising a hand.
'AA,' Tessa said. 'As in... Alcoholics anonymous, not the one we should've called.'

May's head lolled to the side as they took a particularly sharp corner, driving into an alleyway so tight the cab driver had to fold his mirrors in just to fit. He slumped forwards as the cab shot forwards on the far side, cutting off the only car in sight as it sped away into the sodden darkness.
'You sure he's alright?' The driver asked.
'Yeah,' Ian said. 'Definitely-- he's fine, really. This is how he handles his drink.'
'By going completely limp? Flopping around all over my cab, like he's a fish you just caught? Hey, what's in all those bags, anyway? And who brings an exhaust pipe on a pub crawl?'
Tessa's eyes widened with fear like a spider that had just seem a newspaper coming towards it. Ian briefly wondered whether Spiders had eyelids, and then realised he should probably cover for Tessa.

'They-- they were already in my car,' he said. 'Tessa had to do some shopping beforehand.'
'And the exhaust?'
'A reminder to come back to it tomorrow,' Ian said.
'You sure you want that thing back?'
Ian considered this for several seconds. 'Well,' he decided, 'it's not like I can afford another car. I don't get paid nearly enough for that these days.'
Tessa glared at him, and was about to say something when the cab stopped suddenly, throwing its passengers around: Ian and Tessa were okay, but May slumped forwards and stayed that way.
'Easy there, dad!' Tessa said, struggling to get May upright. 'Ian, give me a hand?'
They struggled to manhandle May upright again, but it was like trying to get a balloon full of jelly to stand to attention; in the end they leaned him against the window and gave up, hoping the driver wouldn't notice anything amiss.

After a few minutes of awkward silence, they reached central London once more. The storm of the century thundered outside as though it was trying to streak each and every building with more than 5 floors, striking everything in sight. Ian hoped the hotel wasn't far, but the route they were taking now was completely different to the one he'd taken to Highgate Cemetery originally.

Realising how much this ride had already cost them and how long the journey there had taken, he decided this was definitely a good thing.

Returning to the city centre meant one thing, even at this time of night, despite the storm: traffic.
'We should've taken a bus,' Ian realised. 'It would've been so much cheaper.'
'Even if we could find one,' Tessa said, 'I'm not taking him on it. Not in his-- present condition.'
'He might hurl on someone's shoes, if he's had that much to drink,' the driver agreed. 'Actually, that reminds me: if he hurls in my cab, I'm charging you extra.'
'That's fair,' Ian said. 'Although I don't think there's any risk of that.'
'So hold on-- why did your dad take his daughter on his stag do? That's not the done thing, right?'
'Oh, I'm bisexual,' Tessa said, truthfully. 'I guess he thought I'd appreciate it.'
'And did you?'
'It... Hasn't exactly been a fun night,' she said.

May slumped sideways as they turned another corner, his mouth sliding down the glass window and his legs slipping out from under him.
'Easy there!' Tessa exclaimed, glaring at Ian and silently asking him to help. He took May's legs and Tessa took his arms, and they more or less got him upright again. He slumped forwards, his forehead almost touching his knees: Ian pushed him back, and his head swayed onto Tessa's shoulder. She struggled not to grimace, and Ian frowned at her. She could re-animate dead bodies-- why would touching one be such an issue for her?

Actually, he realised, re-animating them quite specifically involved not spending much time around bodies that were still dead.

'So,' the driver said, sounding decidedly unconvinced. 'What's your new stepmother like?'
'She's-- okay, I guess,' Ian said. 'I guess we don't really know her.'
Tessa snorted. 'You could say that again. Hey, how far to the Wollstonecraft from here?'
'Just round the next corner-- we're almost there, mate.'

As it turned out, this wasn't entirely true. Technically they did only turn one more corner, but they drove for at least half a mile after that, stopping and starting every few seconds; ended up got stuck behind more buses than seemed entirely necessary for this time of night, and with several more buses behind them.

Thankfully, they escaped their bus sandwich before too long, and parked in front of the hotel; Ian and Tessa manhandled May out of the back and propped him against the wall, and Ian set to work emptying everything from the cab's floor into the street while Tessa emptied her bank account to pay for the ride.

As the cab sped off into the night, only to be surrounded once more by a herd of double decker buses, Ian and Tessa realised they were now faced with another challenge: sneaking into a hotel with a car exhaust, three large bags of supplies from the DIY store, another bag of assorted odds and ends from the chemist... and a dead body.

--

Ian stood outside the Wollstonecraft Hotel, feeling the rain soak through his clothes to his skin. He held the Baton Rouge in one hand, with two bags on hanging from each end, looking for all the world like a weight lifter on a budget. Tessa was struggling to drape May's not-yet-alive-again body over his free shoulder in a sort of fireman's carry. Both of them were wishing they'd thought to do this the other way around, but the bags from the DIY store were beginning to split and they were committed now, whether they liked it or not.

Crouching down, Ian allowed Tessa to drape May over him, and then stood back up, making sure everything was secure.
'You're sure you want to be the distraction?' Ian asked, standing up straight once more.
'Actually--' Tessa hesitated. 'My face is going to be all over the news once we've presented our find. Maybe you should distract them while I slip past and make a break for the lifts.'
'Too late,' Ian said. 'I'm carrying all this crap now, so you'd best get going and do your part.'
'This is a terrible plan!'
'Still better than yours,' Ian snapped. 'You don't even have a plan.'
'Still better than this,' Tessa said. 'It'll never work.'
'Not if you keep talking about it like that it won't,' Ian said. 'Now go, before one of these bags splits-- remember, keep it loud!'

Tessa nodded, carefully mussed her short, dark hair, and removed one of her shoes. 'I feel like I need a jacket,' she said. 'Can I borrow yours?'
'No,' Ian said.
She nodded, and remained silent for several seconds. 'What about May's?'
'It's had dead people in it!'
'Hm,' Tessa said. 'There's a point. You think we can run May's clothes through the hotel laundry before tomorrow night?'
'I work at a coroner's,' Ian said. 'I know exactly how hard it is to get the smell of death out of clothes-- there's a reason I keep a change in my locker, and even then the change usually ends up smelling of death anyway, so I have to keep a backup change in my car-- except now my car is in Highgate for the foreseeable future, so it's a moot point. Anyway, take off your own damn jacket and drape it over your shoulders if you have to-- just go!'
'Okay, fine,' Tessa snapped, taking off her jacket and draping it loosely over her shoulders. She stuck her shoe into one of the bags, and turned around 'Now, if you'll excuse me?'

She stormed into the hotel foyer, dripping everywhere and muttering to herself about an imagined boyfriend. 'C-can I use your phone?' she asked, loud enough to draw everyone's attention. 'That-- that cheat! I need to ring his mother, make sure she knows all about what he did tonight. And-- and ask her if I can get a lift home. I don't know this area, and no way in hell am I sleeping at his place, knowing what he did there.'

All eyes were already on her. Ian took his chance, darting across the room to the lifts--

And realised he didn't have either of his hands free to reach for the button. And if he asked anyone to get it for him, they'd inevitably wonder what he was doing holding a dead body, a car exhaust, and four bags of shopping.

Slowly, carefully, Ian lowered the Baton Rouge and stuck his finger out as best he could without dropping it. His hand shook as he reached for the button, and he realised that two of the other lifts were on their way down; he had less than a minute to press the button and get in. Tessa continued spinning a tall tale behind him as he jabbed at the button, calling the life successfully: he waited, silently willing it to hurry up and come down.

Ian took a step back and realised that all three of the lifts were now on their way down to the lobby, and that two of them had a head start on his. But his didn't need to stop along the way, with any luck-- he hoped against hope that it would narrowly outpace the others.

The one on the left stopped, gaining his lift, the one in the middle, precious few extra seconds: he suppressed the urge to cheer as he stepped back to watch all three.

Moments later, the one on the right reached the first floor-- Ian's blood ran cold for a second, but then he realised it was staying there. Cheering inwardly, he glanced over his shoulder to ensure he hadn't been spotted: sure enough, everyone was listening in on Tessa's fake phone call about an invented boyfriend. Hearing the lift ding to signal its arrival, Ian rushed forwards as the doors opened--

And ran straight into a pair of young women with a pushchair between them.

The bag of supplies from the chemist flew from the Baton Rouge as he struggled to keep his balance: suddenly imbalanced, the two bags on the other end pulled it back down, dragging him along with them, and fell to the floor. The remaining bag slid free, joining its companions on the floor.

Suddenly imbalanced, Ian staggered sideways into the lift door, knocking May's head against it: as he struggled to compensate for this, May slipped from his shoulder and landed on top of the pushchair. Defeated, Ian let the Baton Rouge clatter to the ground.

Ian turned around to realise everyone in the lobby was staring at him-- even Tessa, who was struggling not to break character, her eyes watering as she fought to contain her laughter.

He cleared his throat, turning back towards the young women. 'Excuse me,' he said, dragging May's corpse onto the floor and gesturing for them to move past him. Turning around, he ashamedly picked up the two bags from the DIY store and the Baton Rouge and started for the lift.

The doors closed on May's head: the lift bonged in protest as it opened again, and Ian glanced over his shoulder to see a sea of shocked faces behind him.
'It's-- a mannequin,' he said, half-heartedly. 'Part of my... next art project!'
'That thing really stinks,' one of the women with the pushchair muttered. 'Where did you even get that thing, anyway?'
'I gotta admit,' the other aid, 'it looks really realistic.'
Ian hesitated. 'Thank you,' he said. 'You wouldn't believe how-- how long that took me.'

Retreating at last into the lift, he pressed the button for his floor: after an age, the doors slid shut, finally blocking out the scattering of shocked faces in the lobby.

Ian reached the room he'd until recently shared with Mercury, only to realise Tessa had their only keycard.

--

'You're sure this will work?' Ian asked. Tessa had finally arrived and let him into Mercury's room: his corpse was still lying peacefully in the bed, although it was beginning to smell.
'Certain,' Tessa said, screwing together another set of pipes and wrapping them in duct tape. 'Now hold that bowl over the smoke alarm until I can tape it in place.'
'This is never gonna work,' Ian said.
'Shush,' Tessa snapped. 'You got everything up here eventually-- I can handle this part. I've all my reagents, and everything I need to prepare them.'
'I mean the bowl,' Ian said. 'You'll never trick the smoke alarm that easily-- not if you're setting things on fire to heat your setup.'
'That's for plan B,' Tessa said. 'Assuming plan A won't work.' She stepped up onto the bed and ran a strip of duct tape across the bowl, sticking it in place. 'Now, run over to my room and grab the hair dryer and the kettle.'
Ian stood there wide-eyed. 'You're serious, aren't you?'
'Yes,' she snapped. 'Now go!'

Ian scurried out of the room and along the corridor, searching for Tessa's room: she was in 818, whereas Ian (and Mercury) had been in 831. His clothes were still covered in mud and dirt, and his prolonged contact with May had left him doused in the unfortunately familiar small of death.

He found the room and hurried inside: the kettle was sitting empty on the bedside table, surrounded by discarded teabags and stained cups and empty sugar sachets. Ian stuffed the plug into his trouser pocket and looped the cord around his arm, then searched for the hair dryer. He found it in the bathroom, slipped the plug into his other pocket, and wrapped his other arm in the cord, draping the hairdryer itself artfully over his shoulder. He was beginning to look like some sort of high-tech mummy, but he had everything Tessa had asked him to get.

As Ian approached the door, carefully stepping around a large hatbox half-buried under smaller bags, the room's phone rang: he scrambled to pick it up, just in case it was Tessa with further instructions, and managed to drop the kettle, spilling its contents all over the bed: deciding to simply leave it and hope Tessa wouldn't notice, he put the phone to his ear.
'Hello?'
'You're-- you're not Tessa,' a voice said.
'Oh!' Ian realised. 'Alder, right? Tessa's girlfriend?'
'Partner,' Alder said. 'Gender is something that happens to other people, as far as I'm concerned. Anyway, why are you in my girlfriend's room?'
'She sent me to get the kettle and the hair dryer,' Ian said.
There was a long pause. 'Okay,' Alder said, 'let's pretend that answer makes sense and move on. Where can I reach Tessa?'
'Room 831,' Ian said, beginning to pick everything back up. 'Although she might have trouble coming to the phone right now.'
'She's doing science, isn't she?' Alder sighed. 'Making sure Mercury is okay, I bet.'
'Not exactly,' Ian said. 'I'll let her fill you in, though-- I need to get this stuff to her.'
'Right, right,' Alder said. 'I'll see you tomorrow, I guess? I mean, I'm coming down in the morning to help Tessa set up for the big reveal.'
'Right,' Ian nodded. 'I'll-- see you then.'

Alder put the phone down, and Ian spent several seconds trying to get everything balanced once more. He realised the hair dryer would fit into one of his trouser pockets, but both were full of plugs, and he was left holding it-- except he had to hold the kettle as well, leaving him without any hands free to slide the keycard in and out of the door.

After several attempts and a great deal of untangling himself from cables, Ian managed to get the kettle in his left hand, the hair dryer in his right, and the keycard clamped firmly and safely between his teeth.

He realised then that technically speaking, he could easily have stuck it in the door, then picked everything up, then dealt with it.

Cursing his past self, Ian stuck the keycard into the door on his third try, elbowed the handle down, stuck his foot into the frame to hold the door open, and pulled the card out with his teeth. He stepped out into the corridor--

And right into Tessa.
'Having fun?' She asked.
'Haah hough--' Ian spat out the keycard. 'I thought you were busy with the-- other thing,' he said, standing up.
'I finished everything I could without those two heat sources,' she said, taking the hair dryer from him: Ian span around as the cord unravelled from around his waist. 'Anyway, pick up my keycard, clean it off, and give me a hand setting the rest of it up.'

Ian followed Tessa back through the hotel, opening the door to his room to discover it had been transformed into something resembling a three-dimensional maze, comprised of enough pipes and tubes to lose an extended family of hamsters. Most were made of plastic, and supported the room's hair dryer and kettle, both of which seemed to be covered in duct tape.
'I need to make sure they stay pointed at the right thing,' Tessa said, by way of explanation, 'and that the kettle stays full and boiling-- hence why it's hooked up to the tap.'
Ian noticed a tube seemed to be running from the top of the kettle and out of sight into the en suite bathroom, and nodded. 'Where d'you want the others setting up?'
'Just leave it to me,' Tessa said. 'Open the window, would you? It's boiling in here, with all the steam and the hot air.'

It took Ian three solid minutes to reach the window, moving one step at a time and being careful not to bump any of Tessa's elaborate setup. Reaching the window at last, he threw it open, turned around, and looked for somewhere to sit: the bed was covered in dead bodies, however, and the chair had a hair dryer duct taped to its back, heating a glass tube full of something white and opaque.
'It's a little utilitarian,' Tessa explained, as he continued back towards the door, 'but it's basically a scaled-down version of my setup back in Northview. Heats, cools, and does everything else-- to a point.'
'It cools?' Ian asked.
Tessa nodded. 'Mind the mini-fridge, would you? I'm running a couple reagents through it.'
Looking down, Ian realised a clear plastic tube passed into one end of the mini-fridge, which was being held open by the beaker from the en suite bathroom, and out the other. 'Huh,' he said, stepping carefully over it. 'Clever, I guess.'

Tessa froze. 'Clever?' She snapped, turning around. 'I have replicated hundreds of pounds of equipment and reagents with a budget of next to nothing and the contents of a DIY store and a chemist. Clever?' She took a step forwards that would probably have seemed more furious had she not carefully stepped over and around several plastic tubes. 'Clever? This is an act of pure genius-- the likes of which nobody has ever accomplished before, and with a little luck nobody will have to replicate. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to produce everything I need with this setup? And that's assuming it works at all. If it doesn't, then I'll try again, of course-- as long as we have this body, I can keep going until I get something that works.'
'How will we know whether it works?' Ian asked, reaching the door at last.
'Well, I feel like May not being dead any more will be the most obvious sign,' Tessa said.
Ian hesitated for a moment, and then nodded. 'Yeah, okay,' he said. 'Fair point. But don't we need to jump start him?'
'We'll find a way to do that,' Tessa shrugged. 'The weather is right for it, at least.'
'True,' Ian said. 'You need me to do anything, aside from stay out of the way?'
'Hold this,' she said, handing him what appeared to be a drainpipe. 'I've nothing else to prop it up on-- actually, sit down. This might take a while; I'd be best off balancing it on your shoulder.'

Sitting down cross-legged on the floor, Ian allowed Tessa to balance the pipe on his shoulder and duct tape it in place.
'There's one good thing about this setup,' he said. 'You don't have to stand on a chair to reach any of it.'
'Ian?' Tessa asked, smiling a smile that seemed to be unique to people who are both very angry and very short. 'Shut up.'
'Although it's not like you have a chair to stand on,' he continued.
'You are now a clamp stand,' Tessa said. 'Clamp stands do not talk. Now, hold still-- I need to tape something to your other shoulder.'
'I guess we've enough here to build a chair out of pipes, if you need it,' Ian said.
'Ian, do you want me to tape up your mouth? I'm already holding the tape.'
'I'll be quiet,' Ian said.

Truth be told he didn't joke about Tessa's height (or lack thereof; at four foot eleven in heels, which she almost never wore, height was far from her strong point) all that often; he made a point of doing so every now and then, more out of morbid curiosity than anything else. This was the first time in a month that he'd done it, however-- being threatened with death, re-animation and more death was the kind of thing that really stuck with you.

He sat quietly for half an hour, skimming through his phone: he texted Fritz to wish him good luck with his surgery and then, realising May's obituary was still open, read through it as best he could, with the noise of two boiling kettles and two hair driers distracting him.

It wasn't very interesting.

Faced with little else to do, Ian read it through twice more before setting his mind to the business of giving May enough of a jolt to re-animate her. Perhaps if he cannibalised some of the medical equipment Tessa had brought with her, in order to make sure Mercury was in good health when they presented him to the committee--

'Okay,' Tessa said, interrupting his train of thought. 'First batch is ready for the final stages. Ian, I need you to untape yourself and hand me a bottle of vodka from the minibar and the glass beaker I've been using to prop it open.'
Perplexed, Ian pulled the tape from his shoulders. 'Now is hardly the time to be drinking.'
'I need more direct heat than the hair driers or the kettles can provide for this final step-- I'm going to burn the vodka, not drink it.' She paused for a moment. 'Well,' she said, 'I won't need to burn the whole thing, and there's no sense in letting the rest of it go to waste.'

Ian reached the minibar, removed the pipe running through it, and handed Tessa everything she'd asked for. He watched as she sloshed a little vodka into the beaker, set it alight with one of the cheap plastic lighters she'd bought, and set down a glass bulb of something that looked like the offspring of a glowstick and a pint of milk on top of it.
'Give it two or three minutes, and it'll be ready,' she said.

--

Tessa returned to her room once the solution was ready and grabbed her equipment, under Ian's suggestion: he, meanwhile, set about carefully crossing the room and dragging May across to the door without breaking or spilling anything.

Reaching the door at last, he peeked out into the corridor to ensure it was empty, hoisted May up into a fireman's carry--

And nearly jumped out of his skin as the phone rang. Dumping May beside the door, he struggled back across the room, and picked it up.
'Hello?' He asked.
'You again.' Alder.
'In my defense,' Ian said, 'it's my room this time. Tessa is in hers.'
'Right,' Alder said. 'Right, how foolish of me.'
Without another word, they put the phone down.

As Ian sidestepped and ducked his way towards the door, Tessa opened it, knocking May's head into the wall.
'Why did you leave him there?' She asked, glaring at Ian. 'And why are you all the way over there?'
'Alder keeps trying to ring you,' Ian said. 'Except they keep ringing me instead.'
Tessa shrugged. 'Anyway,' she said, 'we'd best head up to the roof. The lift doesn't go that far, but I'm willing to bet the stairs do.'
Ian nodded: reaching the door, he picked up May again and carried him into the corridor, knocking his head on the doorframe in the process. Tessa glared at him.
'What?' he asked. 'He's tall! I can't help it.'
'Just-- try not to ding up his body too much,' Tessa sighed. 'My solution can only repair so much damage to it.'
'Duly noted,' Ian said.
'So don't let it end up like your car,' Tessa smiled.
'Louise has never once been in an accident,' Ian said, indignant. 'She has been hit by other cars before, I admit, but both times it was ruled as intentional.'
Tessa opened her mouth to reply, but hesitated, staring at him in confusion. 'Never mind,' she decided. 'Anyway, the roof?'
'The roof,' Ian nodded.

Getting up there was easy enough, albeit tiring: they only had three floors to climb, but climbing three flights of stairs whilst carrying a dead body proved to be harder than Ian expected.

Tessa was first up the stairs, and propped the door to the roof open with a length of copper pipe; Ian carried May through, this time being careful not to hit the corpse's head on the doorframe. He stepped out onto to the rooftop to find it was effectively one big puddle. There was a lightning rod, but it was well out of reach, attached to the side of the building and protruding up several feet from the edge of the rain-slick rooftop.
'We need a new lightning rod,' Tessa realised. 'I should've taken that into consideration.'
'No use worrying about that now,' Ian said, setting May down beside the door: after a moment's hesitation, he placed the tiny bottle of vodka from the minibar in his lifeless hand.
'Any idea what we can use for a new rod?' Tessa asked, pacing back and forth across the roof: her dark hair was already plastered to her head, and her clothes were mostly water.
'Just one,' Ian said. 'We'll need to cannibalise most of your setup downstairs if we're to--'

Lightning struck the building, and thunder screamed overhead.

'Go!' Tessa roared over the storm. Grab all the pipes and the spare roll of duct tape on the bed!'

Ian sprinted downstairs, glad to be momentarily out of the rain, and set about dismantling Tessa's makeshift lab, tearing out anything and everything made of metal like a giant wingless magpie. He was about to leave, his arms full of pipes and duct tape, when he realised there was one thing he'd missed.

Doubling back through the mess of cannibalised equipment and grabbing the Baton Rouge, Ian hurried back to the rooftop.
It took Ian and Tessa the best part of ten minutes to build a lightning rod-- although technically speaking, it wasn't a lightning rod at all. The purpose of such a device, Tessa explained, was to make sure lightning struck it instead of anything else, and was then harmlessly grounded. What they wanted was for lightning to strike their rod and quite literally give May the shock of his life.

Attaching May to the rod itself proved difficult, largely because they'd run out of duct tape building it, using the last two strips to secure the Baton Rouge to the very top (much to Tessa's chagrin): in the end, they settled for looping his arms beneath two of the support struts and tying them to the third using one of Ian's shoelaces. It was a haphazard setup, but it was more or less in line with everything else they'd used over the past several hours.
'Give me a few minutes to check over May's vitals, and we'll be ready to go,' Tessa said, smiling. She'd smiled like this right before animating Mercury: he'd been strapped to a large table and hooked up to the national grid, leeching off a nearby overhead power line, and tucked away in the basement of his former owner's sizeable home on the outskirts of Northview.

Back then, it had been unnerving; up here, with the gales and the downpour and the lightning, it was nothing short of terrifying.

Tessa spent several minutes checking over the lightning rod and all its duct taped connections as she prepared to put it up. Her phone rang, and she leapt clean out of her skin, scrambling for it.
'Can you get that?' She asked, handing it to Ian. 'I can't really stop working on this.'
Ian answered it, stepping back into the stairwell and out of the rain.
'Tessa Stein's phone-- Ian speaking?'
'You again!' Alder snapped. 'Why does this keep happening to me? All I want to do is wish my girlfriend good luck for tomorrow-- but I keep getting you instead. Her room? You answer. Your room-- actually it makes sense that you'd answer that one. I really don't know what I expected. But now you're on her mobile? Seriously?'
'She's busy setting up a lightning rod,' Ian said. 'Want me to pass anything on to her?'
'Yeah, sure,' Alder said. 'And ask her to call me later on. That way, I definitely won't get you again.'
'Will do,' Ian said. 'So, wish her good luck, ask her to call again later. Got it. Bye!'
'So I hope,' Alder sighed, and put the phone down.

Stepping back out onto the roof, Ian found Tessa was almost ready.
'Can you give me a hand hauling this rod upright? Oh, and if you say anything about little blue pills, I'm cutting your pay.'
'Sure,' Ian said, joining her by the rod. 'Alder says good luck, and to call them-- that way, they definitely won't end up speaking to me. What's with the name, anyway?'
'They're a botanist,' Tessa shrugged. 'They tried "Yew" for a while, but it got too confusing, so... Alder was their next choice, and they've stuck with it for a couple years now.
'Anyway-- ready to pull this thing upright?'
Ian nodded. 'Ready.'

Tessa counted them in, and they pulled and pushed and strained for several seconds. The lightning rod slowly but surely levered upright, eventually thudding and rattling into place on its tripod legs. Tessa hurriedly manhandled May up and into a standing position, made sure nothing was about to fall off, and then hurried to the safety and shelter of the doorway.
'What now?' Ian asked.
'Now we--' Tessa started.

Her words were drowned out as a tremendous bolt of lightning struck the Baton Rouge, flaring purple-edged white as it coursed down the pipes and into May's body, turning the rain to steam: Ian's yelped in shock as he blinked furiously and saw--

And saw that May's suit and hair had caught fire. The freshly re-animated body screamed as he tore free of his makeshift bindings, the lightning rod collapsing around him: Tessa started across the roof, but May was quicker, sprinting off as he screamed and batted at the fire. He ran clean into the waist-high wall on the roof's edge and toppled forwards over it, tumbling out of sight as he swatted at his blazing arms.

Tessa and Ian followed numbly and peered over the edge of the roof: Tessa was too short to see anything, but Ian was just barely able to see the fireball that was May plummet out of sight like a tiny, screaming shooting star.

There was a distant thud, followed by several seconds of silence.
'Well,' Ian said eventually. 'Look on the bright side-- technically speaking, it worked.'
I figured seeing as my last story and my next one were both pretty serious, I'd write something funny for a change.

So, here's a novella about re-animating a dead body on a low budget and a tight deadline. Enjoy!
© 2015 - 2024 venort
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