The Science of Death (First Draft, Part 1)

[Xathan]

[ooc]I've been reading a great deal of Lovecraft lately. This particular story, which is being told in parts, is an "update" of a Lovecraft tale; attempting to tell a similar story by keeping the thematic elements of the original intact and hoping to add enough of my own unique spins to keep it interesting to read. I hope you enjoy! Any comments, questions, etc are appreciated, and this is fairly first draft - suggestions for improvement are very, very welcome/needed. Also, you'll note it's rather short; that's intentional, I think if I keep things short I'll hopefully update frequently and therefore keep writing. Feedback can be left in the thread, no need for separate threads. :)[/ooc]

1) Introduction.
It pains me to write of the horror that was visited upon my beloved Maria, and the horror that lurks because of her - because of our - research. It pains me because the horror was so acute that it has tainted all memories of her, and because of them I must avoid her. I would not do so at all if circumstance had not forced my hand. But circumstances are bound to the desires of no man, and now I must write to reveal the horror we created and that has lead to herultimate fate, if only to show why I oppose the proposed usage of our formula for the interment of the dead, and why I dare not approach her.
Before I condemn our work and her continuation of it, I wish to dispel certain rumors. First and foremost; there was never a relationship beyond colleagues and friends between us, as much as I may have wished otherwise. We were close as two co-workers could ever be, but my romantic advances were politely rebuffed early on in our work; first for fear of reprisal from human resources, then due to concerns that any romantic entanglements - especially with a colleague - would tarnish her already damaged reputation, and finally through an admittance that her true love was first and always would be our macabre science. I feel I must note this as I begin to indite our work because I do not wish to come across as a vengeful, jilted lover, and though I did desire her it was always more for her intellect and wit and a certain dark attraction than the base physical - though I must admit that these attractions will likely color my narrative and are important to take into account as I recount the horrors that ensued, if for no other reason than it will hopefully make my indictment all the more damning for how loath I am to inflict such dark accusations on someone who I once desired above all other.

The second are accusations equating what was once our and is now her sole work with dread incantations and cycles of mythos and supposed dark magics and all manners of supernatural. Though we both read the dread Necronomicon, our work was not some crass and mystic wizardry or attempts to summon some supernatural powers. The accusations of necromancy are ones that we at first found amusing and later found insulting. If there is some instance of labeling our science with arcane terminology - if there is some perfectly human desire to equate it to the morbid and the grotesque traditions of old - then call it thanology, because it truly was the science of death. Would that we had believed in those unhallowed tomes and their dire warnings! Perhaps the looming fear of some alien presence would have given us pause where concerns of morality and even a fear of damnation did not.

But the time for digressions has passed, and I admit that my avoidance of addressing the topic at hand, even in prose, is due to a reluctance to directly speak of the horrors I have witnessed - and admit to having helped bring to terrible reality. So I will avoid doing so for a bit longer and instead address the nature of our acquaintance.

We started our association my junior year at University through the usual means of collegiate meetings these days: a message through social media. We had several shared interests, including a love of the poorly made and funded science fiction and horror movies of the 80's. Here I give lie to my earlier claim that it was her intellect, not her beauty, that drew me to her, since I must admit I initially contacted her when lonely and seeking romantic companionship. However, such thoughts were forgotten over the course of our long discussions of our respective fields - biology for myself, and chemistry on her part - and while my initial attraction remained, the stereotypical timidity of the academic asserted itself in me and I avoided bringing up the subject of romance beyond some awkward flirting out of a fear of losing her companionship on an intellectual level. Despite the specter of my unspoken crush lingering in the back of my mind, we developed a fast friendship and in short order met in person in the campus library, spending long hours discussing all manners of theoretical science.

Despite us both having been in attendance for an equal period of time, she was only just eighteen, having finally earned her legal adulthood the summer prior. Her youth, a side effect of her undeniable genius that had catapulted her into university at such a young age, had kept her from making many friends so far and kept her out of much of the usual drunken escapades most college students can boast of, where I had the excuse of a fear of inheriting my father's alcoholism that kept me from the same. That coupled with the facts that both of us had little interest in most popular culture had made us accidental recluses, making only acquaintances and then only with our roommates and a few classmates and professors. As such, the only distraction we had from each other were our studies, and much time was spent discussing those and assisting each other in areas where we had difficulty.

During this time we discussed our personal, pre-college lives very little, a trend which continued until our eventual separation in the face of unnatural revelations, and it shames me to admit that even after a decade of association I can tell you very little about her life prior to her collegiate years. However, with her theories I am intimately familiar. At first thinking she was merely having some fun, given her revelation did occur on one Halloween, I gradually began to realize she was of the utmost sincerity; and to my current shame I was not disturbed but intrigued. She held that those arcane tombs so often sneered at did contain a grain of truth - that in their reagents and incantations were chemicals and frequencies with properties modern science had thus far missed or remained wholly unaware. The supernaturalists of old did not merely blindly cling to superstitions, but in those dread texts locked within the college library were actual working formula that were rooted in scientific principal - and she had proof of her theory. It was the latter part that almost drove me to laugh, laughter that she would have played off as part of her joke, laughter that would have haltered the whole accursed venture there, before the House with the Old Oak, before the Ides of May, before our venture to her Ancestral Crypts, before our sojourn into the library and what we found, before the ultimate nightmare in those foul woods.

But if I had been so lucky and rude, this document would be exceedingly dull and brief. I leaned in, enthralled with interest, and asked her to show me. I may as well have asked her to damn me - in fact, I believe I did.

[Xathan]

Already re-read it and fixed several typos. Hopefully I'll catch more.