Two teaspoons of arsenic, four tablespoons of nightshade, three ounces of day old virgin’s blood. The man, apparently no older than thirty gave the concoction a quick shake, lifted the vile mixture to his lips and drank the liquid with a single gulp.

He patted himself, took his pulse, felt his forehead, and examined his face in a mirror. Nothing.

“Damn it.”

This mixing of ingredients had been going on for some time. Initially, the goal was a pure one, he had had started the process in hopes of finding a reprieve for his sweet Cecelia. At the tender age of twenty-seven, she had been stricken with a rare form of leukemia. The cancer spread quickly through her wispy body, invading healthy cells and organs; causing her to slowly rot from the inside out like the bite of a brown recluse spider.

The surgeons and the countless glurge of doctors were at a loss. Chemotherapy failed, radiation failed, transfusions were hopeless; all standard treatments were futile. Cecelia was dying, something had to be done. That is when he took matters into his own hands, he brought her home with the intention to care for her himself. Soon after he built this makeshift lab in the basement and began mixing the potions, for Cecelia. Initially, his attempts were pretty standard fare, something similar to the chemical cocktails used to treat patients infected with HIV. They were a failure.

Soon he began to experiment with more perverse combinations, blending western and eastern medicines, grinding odd herbs together with a mortar and pestle, progressing to the point where poisons became transfused with prescription medications. The process began to spiral closer to some sort of twisted alchemy and further away from accepted medical science. For someone facing this sort of predicament, the laws of God and man had little command. Each passing day added to the list of failures, he recorded each of the recipes with diligence, sure to mark any abnormal observations finishing each notation with a formula number so as to never repeat a failure. Such dubious replications would be too costly with Cecelia’s life in the balance.

He always tested each formula himself, a matter of quality control. No point in subjecting Cecelia to any more anguish than necessary. Such crude experimentation had taken its toll, over time self induced trials had granted him certain abilities, wreaked havoc on his senses and stole others from him completely. He no longer required sleep, a side effect of formula six hundred and eighty three, now he was able to work tirelessly twenty-four hours a day. Formula two thousand and seventeen took his sense of taste away, a small price to pay for his cause. He had recorded this and much more since his quest began.

He recorded in his journal, formula five thousand nine hundred and ninety four. He listed the ingredients as he mixed them into a frothy mush. Five teaspoons of arsenic, four and three-quarters micrograms of irradiated iodine, two ounces of clover, two tablespoons of hemlock, twenty milligrams of penicillin, a drop of my own blood, two drops from my dear Cecelia. He stirred the potion and held it over the Bunsen burner for a few moments. With an oft used syringe he injected the mixture into his arm.  

He patted himself, took his pulse, felt his forehead, and examined his face in a mirror. Nothing.

“Damn it.”

Then a pain enveloped his chest, the sensation felt awkward as though someone was stabbing him while sucking the air from his lungs. He fell to his knees in a mass of clothing and flesh; he closed his eyes and awaited the inevitable.

Finally.

Formula five thousand nine hundred and ninety four had been a success, after one-hundred and eighty years he would be able to rejoin his sweet Cecelia.