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*
first month
*
There was a thin layer of dust over the main room, more of a film than anything else. The long, empty tables were covered with plastic.
Vincent's belongings were all in place. Nobody had been in the house since Eugene left.
Vincent was in the nameless room, the room full of secrets, the one with the freezer and the incinerator. He opened the incinerator door. He crouched before the unit, touching a thin silver film on the bottom. When he scraped it with his fingernails it didn't quite come off.
He thought about Jerome standing one step down on the podium.
The inside of the incinerator was black with carbon. Eugene's wheelchair stood sentry by the freezer. The secret room was dark and heavy with dust.
The fragments of Eugene's body were safe in the freezer. A year's worth there for Vincent to wrap himself in.
*
second month
*
He'd never before noticed how big the house really was. There was his room, Eugene's room, the room with the freezer and incinerator, the main room, the bathroom, and then there was the upstairs. He didn't spend much time upstairs. He just kept it clean.
The place was easy to keep clean. Nothing produced dust but him.
He stood in the center of the main room. He ran his fingertips over the triangle of soft morning light on the long table. His fingers came up clean. He left no mark.
Like a ghost. Vincent looked at Eugene's wheelchair, standing by the furnace.
*
third month
*
Once he'd gone up he was nearly useless to them, of course. They wouldn't allow him to go up again. His only incentive to stay was the paycheck.
But this was Gattaca, so he stayed. He analyzed the data they had collected. Reams of data, oceans of data, more data than would be analyzed in his lifetime.
His heart fluttered.
More data than would be analyzed in anyone's lifetime.
He wondered about Irene. She'd been gone when he came back; maybe transferred to another department, maybe--more. He remembered the frantic passion in the last few uncertain days. He remembered the wrenching shame when she found him out. He remembered the knowing, pitying look in Eugene's eyes.
He remembered the soft look in his eyes when he surrendered his name to Vincent.
He stroked his chest over his heart, soothing the pain of the palpitations before returning to his work.
*
fourth month
*
The new boss had a habit of giving him skeptical, doubting, evaluating looks. Vincent was convinced that Nelson could smell fear like a dog.
For the first time in his life, Vincent's future was a void. He was merely biding time until he was fired; until Eugene's samples ran out; until he was arrested; until his heart stopped, at last.
His heart fluttered and he did not touch his chest. He showed no weakness.
Hollow feeling. Freefall.
*
fifth month
*
He had a haunting sense of repetition as he ran at the treadmill, Jerome's heartbeat beeping steadily against his laboring chest. His own heart was pounding out of synch, beating too fast, working too hard. His heart was running down. It was overdue, but--
--but--pain--his heart skipped a beat and began to flutter like hummingbird wings in his chest. He couldn't breathe--
He doubled over and did not clutch at his chest. He clutched at his leg and pressed his knee to his racing heart as the treadmill dumped him off the end. "Cramp," he gasped, taking off the monitor. He rubbed his leg, bouncing his knee against his chest.
His heart calmed down. He took an enormous breath and tried not to pass out. "I'm fine," he said.
"You've been working too hard," Nelson said. "You should go home and rest." His eyes glittered.
So that was how it ended. Not with a bang but with a whimper.
*
sixth month
*
He'd been unemployed for two weeks now. He was catching up on his reading.
Eugene had left a lot of books around the house; stacks and stacks stowed away in cabinets. Eclectic tastes, too. There was a great deal to keep him interested.
When he found the first margin notes, he put the book down and got a glass of wine. Red wine. Good for his heart.
It hurt to see Eugene's handwriting. He didn't know why, but it did.
He took a book out to the park and watched the pretty girls.
*
seventh month
*
He was running out of books. He could have visited the library, of course, but he much preferred paper books.
He and Eugene had more in common than he'd ever realized, judging from the books and the notes in the margins. The guy was smart--he'd known that, of course, but it hadn't really registered until now.
There were pages interleaved in the math books filled with elegant proofs. There were metaphor analyses in the poetry chapbooks and entire essays on causality in the histories.
Most of Eugene's books were in his room. He'd only been in there a few times for a few minutes, but the stacks were hard to miss. He was desperately curious to know what Eugene had kept privately, but at the same time, strangely reluctant. In the end, he stood at Eugene's door for forty minutes before going inside.
He thought perhaps he expected Eugene's ghost to show up and reprimand him.
Instead, he found Eugene's journals, covered in dust.
Fragments of Eugene--dust on the incinerator, dust on the books. How many forgotten blond hairs and flakes of precious skin were broken down into this dust?
Vincent opened the journals.
*
eighth month
*
He was lying on Eugene's bed re-reading the journals when the flutter hit. He curled up on his side, panting and rubbing at his chest. His heart felt like a bird trapped in his rib cage.
It subsided after a few painful seconds and he continued reading.
Eugene's journal was unique. Rather than the typical recordings of activities and thought about people, he made observations. About everything. He spent two pages describing a half-decomposed leaf.
He spent three pages describing Vincent's hair pre-Jerome. He spent five pages describing Vincent's legs in the surgical cage. He spent four pages describing the difference in pre-accident and post-accident masturbation.
Eugene had been watching him. Watching Vincent. Cataloguing the way he moved and the expressions on his face, writing down the things that he said. Masturbating while thinking of him.
It was all right there in the journals.
He would have felt strange, but why bother? He didn't have the time to waste. And Eugene was dead.
Vincent fell asleep on Eugene's bed, clutching his journal, breathing dust.
*
ninth month
*
He realized suddenly that it had been two months since he had spoken to another human being. The stores were all automated and he had no-one to visit.
He had taken to curling up with one of Eugene's suit jackets while he read Eugene's journals. The scent and feel of the wool complemented Eugene's words.
"I looked the future in the eye today," the journal read. "Gattaca is building a domed city on the Moon. I saw four helicopters air-lifting an enormous black dome to the Gattaca building, and for one moment it rested overhead.
"For one moment as I looked up, the dome blocked out the sun, black as the pupil of God's eye.
"Gattaca is the future. Bright Vincent, hitching his trailer to their train. He'll visit the stars one day. Myself, I wouldn't mind living on the Moon, but I doubt they have wheelchair ties on the shuttles."
He closed the journal and rolled onto his back on Eugene's bed, rubbing his breastbone. His fingers left marks on his skin, grimy from the journals; he'd dusted them, but they never came entirely clean.
Eugene's dust.
He needed to look into black market medicine. His heart was betraying him.
*
tenth month
*
The black market was unfruitful.
He thought about growing digitalis in a window box, but the seed purchase would be flagged as highly suspicious, and he couldn't take that risk. Instead he exercised, watched his diet. Drank water. Read Eugene's journals.
Counted his samples over and over and over. He was running out. Running out of precious blood, the only thing he needed. The freezer was crowded with hair and piss and skin that he didn't need, not now that he wasn't working for Gattaca. Blood was the most precious fluid of all.
Two month's worth of blood.
Vincent closed the freezer and his fingers left condensation prints on the door. The prints faded, softly and slowly, into the air.
*
eleventh month
*
He let the water run over him, fingering his dick idly, wondering who to think about when he jerked off. Irene...faithful fantasy Irene. Maria from the house next door when he was a kid. Alice from security.
He thought about Eugene's voice and his heart thumped and fluttered, and he realized this was too dangerous. One more thing to add to his list of activities he could no longer do.
He could only outpace a failing heart for so long. And he'd had a good run, hadn't he? A very good run, though--crawling now.
He thought about the launches. They were taking colonists to the new Moon city now.
*
twelfth month
*
He was out of samples.
He needed pinprick ID to access the Jerome account, and the Vincent account was still flagged as a rogue invalid. He could leave the house, but he wouldn't be able to make it through a spot check or buy anything.
He rummaged through the freezer, looking into every box and bin for a packet of blood he might have overlooked. Hair and hair and skin and skin--precious pieces of Eugene he couldn't throw away; but no blood. No hard red packets under his scrabbling fingers.
His heart skipped a beat and he pounded at his chest, trying desperately to slap it into obedience through skin, muscle and bone. As he fell to his knees he saw a box in the back of the freezer.
Eight prepared fingertips. If he was careful, he could leave the house eight more times.
He decided to go to the zoo. Then he would stock up on supplies.
He was pretty sure he could make it on eight more fingertips.
*
thirteenth month
*
He ate canned soup and looked at the walls. He never got tired of watching the play of sunlight over the clean lines of the staircase and the long tables.
He looked over at the wheelchair, sitting beside the furnace.
The last fingertip was glued to his finger. He was going to watch the launch this afternoon.
He stood and walked up the stairs.
His heart caught fire on the landing.
He dropped to his knees, his heart fluttering without moving blood. He grimaced, rubbing at his chest. He rested his arm on the second stair down and his forehead on his arm and pounded his chest.
Too late. And it hurt in that awful, panicking way--until it stopped hurting, which was worse.
All he could see was his arm, a pale blur, and the top step, a dark blur, and he thought madly that if he could pull himself up then he could find help, he could find some way to put off the inevitable; but he didn't, he couldn't.
He clutched his hand. The blood-filled fingertip burst soundlessly, oozing into the carpet.
His eyes fluttered against the blackness. He panted, one breath, two--
end.