Rubedo

by E.C. Salo

Content Warnings: Stalking, Blood

Smoke curls up into the beam of light coming through the window of what she considers her cell. She’s well aware she shouldn’t be smoking, but pulls another drag down into the depths of her windpipe, into the raw meat of her lungs. 

She has been looking for a way out of her own mind. One might think that explains the chemicals around her—and the forest of glass and metal—but most of them do nothing worthwhile if huffed. That is not the high she is after. She knows alchemy is a relic from a bygone time. By the dim light of a flickering bulb—in this laboratory, cell, workspace, never home—she’s been trying it anyway.  

Her sagging bookshelf has the Hermetica stuffed among it, the Emerald Tablet, the works of Cleopatra, Maria, and none of them have helped. They talk too much of immortality—God, no—but the homunculus didn’t work out, so she’s settled on the creation of gold instead, to keep her occupied. 

For sleepless nights she’s studied the process and its four steps: black to white to yellow to red. Rot, to purification, to illumination, then creation. Union. Rubedo. For that, one needs the sunlight, to direct and tame its divine force, hold something which could not be held. To be God, really. Maybe that’s why none of it ever worked. It’s certainly not working now. She, for all her efforts, is not fucking God. 

There are other things she can catalyze, plenty that she has the power to change herself, but they’re not enough. Her life has gained a new contaminant. Out there, someone is forcing her to contend with what she’s been tamping down her entire life: the ways in which she is powerless.   

Shaking, she puts the cigarette out in the overflowing tray at the edge of the table. Her hand is pale and bone-white. She’s been told she has the hands of an artist, but is incapable of seeing herself this way. Standing up at the window, she peers at the pavement below. 

It’s a bright afternoon, with sparse handfuls of passers-by on the street beneath her. She’s checked just in time—there’s a flash of scarlet. Shoving the pane and craning her neck, she can see more.  

If the woman watching from her cell is the prima materia—the rot, the chaos—then the one making her way down the street was sunlight incarnate, whole and perfect, inescapable.  

Her breath catches as she keeps watching. At times like this she feels she’s become a pair of eyes alone—existing inanimate, inert and taking in without acting upon. The woman in the street is alive in a way that she herself is not. Eventually she can take no more of the dark and makes her way downstairs, out and into the world she preferred hiding above.  

The scarlet is the hem of a skirt, winks of red undertones in hands with skin that saw the sun more often. She follows that color, around a corner, and knows she shouldn’t. Shouldn’t has always been enough to stop her before. All her life she has been good, as defined by those around her. It has never been difficult until this other woman entered her life, something in those jewel-green eyes making everything difficult. So now, keeping her distance and caring about nothing else, she follows.

They wander through the city’s veins. Here is life and entropy, an ancient pulse at a modern pace, which terrify and entice her. Although she grew up above the masses of its inhabitants, it is the only home she, the follower, has ever known. She assumes that for the followed, it is one home out of many. There’s never been an opportunity to ask.  

Hours pass. They go far. The sun overhead sinks. Her quarry disappears into doors and leaves, one building, then another. That skirt catching the slightest breeze, jewelry on wrists and ankles still catching the last of the light. This woman is adorned in gold, already perfect. 

She is breathless from the sight and the walking, and turns to go back.  

🝊

She wakes herself up at her desk with a coughing fit, having dreamt again of the sun, those eyes. The feeling that constricts her chest and bathes her in sweat is alien to her. This time, to try escaping it, she leaves with her cigarettes in hand.  

It’s half-guess and half-intuition, but she goes to a bridge where she finds her target dancing on a bit of cardboard, with an old speaker and duffel bag left open for the cash of passers-by. Others are watching, so she keeps to the back of the sparse crowd. 

Her upbringing whispers to her of evils to avoid, both in the body dancing and in herself for watching. They’re both transgressing. Like for like. As above, so below—even when her pounding heart and light head make it hard to tell up from down.

Dancing and watching, twirling in confidence and stiff with fear, their eyes meet.  

She’d been dreaming of the two of them in a massive crucible, or the two of them small enough to sit entwined in a normal one. The all-encompassing heat had been like what she felt now, intense and gone just as quickly. 

In the dream they’d melted together, liquid gold and running mud, and they were clean and made filthy. The heat made them something new, blended their cells together into one being that stepped out and into a better life for them both. 

She is at least sane enough to know that eye contact is not an invitation to say any of this. So she looks away.  

🝊

The sun sets, the dance ends. She is the last one standing, smoking like mad, her head emptied of everything but the form of the woman in front of her. 

“Those will kill you.” 

A bullet couldn’t have rattled her harder out of her reverie. That voice was never so close, let alone directed at her. The cigarette falls from her mouth, and the other woman smiles. It’s better and worse than in her dreams and thoughts, it’s rapture, and it’s horrible. 

“I’ve seen you around.” Head tilted curiously. “You live close by?” 

She’s out of words, wondering if this is what purification feels like. Something is burning through her, and she can’t tell what it’s taking or leaving behind. After an awkward minute, she shrugs. She doesn’t realize how badly she’s trembling. 

“You’ve been here all day.” 

“Just—watching,” she stammers, coming closer. Close enough for the smell, sweat and floral body spray and something unique. There is a distiller among the equipment in her cell, and she thinks briefly of using it to bottle that smell, to always have it.     

“Right.” 

“You’re beautiful.” 

“—Thanks. You too.” 

She’s never been called beautiful in her life and can’t digest the compliment. It nauseates her, almost coming up and out. Maybe the yellowing, being bathed in this woman’s light, is supposed to hurt. Illumination might just be accepting that someone has this power over her. She says nothing.  

The silence stretches and grows awkward, both of them shifting uncomfortably on their feet. “So, what’s your name?” 

She lies. 

“Did you enjoy the show?”

“I think so.”

Those eyes examine her, cautious now. “—Can I help you, then? What do you want?”

She can only come up with one answer but her words fail her. When she grabs the other woman’s arm, a pale claw around the skin, it’s far too tight. 

The response is instant—flailing, kicking, fabric flying and tugging until it rips—but no one else is around. They can melt together, alone. Blows rain down on her, but she holds on. 

“Just take the money—” 

A wild laugh escapes her, hearing that, because she has no use for gold now. 

Another plea, “whatever you want, take it and leave me alone—”

What she wants is to hurt her, to hold her, to run, and to absolutely never let go. What tears from her throat is, “no.”

In this mess, a little switchblade appears like magic and suddenly her side is alight with pain. She falls and her light hesitates, steps back, but runs away. Against the metal railing of the bridge, alone, she collapses to sit in agony and relief. 

Every breath radiates pain, but that’s fine. She reaches under her coat, swipes a hand over her hot, wet skin and brings it to her face smeared with red. There, at last, is rubedo. The end, the fulfillment, warm and bright even by the lesser light of the moon. 

🜁🜄🜂🜃

E.C. Salo (they/them) is a Latine author based on the east coast of the United States, as well as a lifelong horror fan forever chasing the highs brought to them by certain Stephen King books or their fiftieth rewatch of Hannibal. They write primarily in contemporary lit, horror, erotica, and sometimes terrible mixes of all three. When not clacking away at a keyboard, they like digital painting and design. They’re currently at work on a to-be-self-published novel.