20 SEPTMBER 1894 - ST. DENIS, LEMOYNE
The sound of wet flesh and the sweetish fetid odor of human decomposition permeated the exam room as the two doctors stood over the swollen corpse. The hot electric lamp overhead cast their sharp shadows against the white linen draped over the body giving the impression of a morbid shadow play. He was unbothered by the frigidness of her skin; in fact it only served to remind one that the body was very much dead, and neither sorrow nor longing should linger over her. Murder already caused problems on its own.
They'd turned the body this way and that and come to the conclusion the dead woman deserved no further bodily violation; the cause of death was clear -- though the manner and motive of it was as mysterious as ever -- and they'd gleaned what they could of identifying features. The report was written and handed over to the law so that they may continue their investigation and hopefully release the decedent to be laid to rest in her final peaceful sleep.
He washed his hands in silence and dimmed the lamps to leave for the night, cracking the window to help with the smell and locking the door behind him. His hand shook. The four days he'd lost to an unintended opium-fueled bender had left him a bit out of sorts, and his mind had been desperately trying to remember the details of which had so utterly been obliterated ever since. Being back at work brought clarity. The scalpel's taste of flesh was a bitter lens that brought reality back into focus. The night spent reading by the fire with Miss Salena had been a welcome salve and distraction, so he bent every thought on it on his walk back to the Grand.
He lit a cigarette on the stoop just as rain set in. He stood there silently in the dark, illuminated only by the brief flare of the ember. He had always been a man of science, but what was science anyway if not the proof man was created in God's image? For if faith teaches man to kneel before great power, science surely teaches man to seize power for himself. One may listen to God's Word translated and interpreted through other men or read it for himself in mathematics and chemistry. What is science but God's test -- no, His instruction manual -- to become Him? Faith and science are as inextricable as Newton's Third Law.
You test me, Sir. Galen thought to himself, his hand shaking slightly as the ache for opium wracked his frame. Even now, not enough to feel the throb of irons every waking moment, not enough to leave a man to his regrets, but to torment him with the ceaseless hunger of ambition? You are cruel indeed, but I understand. I understand. You feel – multiplied by millions -- the same ecstasy that brought that corpse to the office. We are all slaves to vice, aren't we?
He threw the butt of the cigarette in a puddle with a brief hiss and returned to his small room in the Hotel Grand.