Chapter one:
The young man leaned up from the dishwasher, saying “It’s almost done, just another few minutes.”
“That’s great. I just despise washing dishes. I suppose that’s ironic, though, since my work involves aquatic organisms.”
“Would you mind my asking just what your work is?” the young man queried, a look of interest crossing his face as he turned towards the scientist.
“I’m a biologist. I study the knife fish, particularly electrophorus Electricus. Like I said, it really is ironic.”
“Well, I think that irony is over, because the thing’s fixed now.” replied the young man.
“How much do I owe you, Dare?” she asked.
“`Umm…about forty dollars. An incorporated dealer would charge about seventy. But I’m cheap. You have to be to make it as an odd-jobber.” said the young man.
The woman handed him the cash, and then he departed, a look of complete satisfaction on his face.
The young scientist sat down to her meal two hours later, and opened her mail as she sipped her glass of wine that she drank before the course. Taxes, letters from biology students, bills…then one she didn’t recognize. It was in a crimson envelope, with no return address. She opened it, and found one page inside, a typewritten message, which stated in bold block letters: “Life will shock you.” She shrugged, thinking it must be a prank from a student. It sounded like a Chinese proverb or something, a sort of superstition that she was skeptical of. Yes, that was it. They were teasing her, her students. Might it be from Frank, or Maxby? Probably, she thought, t. Oh, those college juniors; they were so full of it. She went on sifting through the mountain of mail until the clock chimed seven, and then lit her candle and ate the casserole she had spent part of the afternoon making, as it was a Saturday, with no classes to teach, no pesky freshmen to reprimand. It wasn’t that she didn’t like her students; far from it; just sometimes they liked to be rambunctious, like the boys text messaging the girls. She told them that was sixth grade stuff. It was. But then, some things never changed.
She laid out her clothes for the next day, and then graded term papers for two hours.
After that, she fell gratefully into her bed. The next morning she would work on her research of the eels and do housework for awhile.
The next morning, she awoke, stretched, and turned on the clock radio to the classical music she always listened to while waking up her brain. Music energized her, better than drinking coffee or even a cappuccino. Music awoke her soul; she could feel the intensity of the notes ringing in her blood, connecting energy to her brain. If she believed in power, it was the power of human thought and the power of the intensity of a human’s artistic side. The intensity of the sound never failed to amaze her and yet comfort her with its existence. To hear music was to breathe and think in the same wave as the musician, and gave her the same feeling of security and stability that sitting over her work with the eels, checking chemical compositions in her basement laboratory gave her. It gave her something to roll passion into, to bury herself in.
She could live for the music and chemical compositions in those moments, and savor the tones and complexities and marvel at the intricacies later on; even days afterwards. She drove herself from her bed, into the shower, to awaken her critically thinking brain. Cold water was the best way she knew to engrain reality and strictness into her schedule. As always, the water gave a cold bite, and then slowly felt warmer. She loved extremes. Not emotional extremes, but wide varieties of activities and sensations. They were the color of her life. After her shower, she dressed in sweats and began to cook breakfast. When she was walking to the cabinet, she noticed water standing in the sink. It was dark with food residue. That was odd, she thought, hadn’t she emptied it the last time she’d washed dishes manually? She reached down, undoing the plug, and saw the water ripple, and then a wave of pain jolted up her arm, seeing sparks crackling on the water’s surface, cascading through her body. She would have cried out, but she was too dazed, too paralyzed to do so. She sank down on the floor, her dazed brain grasping the fleeting half-thoughts of terror. Then the world faded to black.
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