Biochemist v. Biologist

The rain continues. The ground softens. The creek rises.

The Bellmaker's deck of cards and the Archivist's List of the Dead - both damp and warped from the rain - lie protected in the hole in the oak above her head, beside the ketsune statuette, eight feet above the Biochemist's head. She wears the Biographer's green bucket hat. His wax jacket's draped over her shivering body.

As she waits she sees figures in the field to the north. They trudge the earth, through the train, boots heavy and swollen with mud. Two figures, adults, sex indeterminate. They walk to the abominable shack, open the door, and disappear inside. Soon smoke rises from the shack's tin chimney.

From the road a slouched man in jeans and yellow rain boots approaches, face hidden behind the overhand of a black umbrella.

He lifts the umbrella when he arrives at the oak. The Biochemist blinks on seeing the Biologist, professor emeritus. He immediately reaches into the musty tweed jacket under his overcoat and pulls an off-white handkerchief. She makes to stand - he helps her up using the clothed hand - and provides shelter under the umbrella. She shakes off the damp.

He frowns, looking to the bodies by the north fence. That smell, he says. Hanging on the air. Almost palpable.

She asks about the faculty.

Your husband, he says, is still missing. I thought he might be here.

She says nothing.

The Bacteriology department lost an associate. You know about astronomy, their loss. Thankfully, they may have found a replacement: a man from Oxford. The geneticists have their discovery, currently under peer-review, which - as I'm sure you've heard - should make news for the university. Apart from this, nothing new: the chemists are chemists, the physicists aloof, and the geoscientists knocked three humanitiarians unconscious in the last faculty hockey game.

Why did you come? she asks.

I didn't think I had a choice.

I shot my husband.

These things happen.

I buried him by the creek under stones.

I see.

Did everyone know? Of his affiar?

No, no one. Well, some. A handful. Two dozen. So yes - everyone.

They chose their guns and take the field, standing ten paces apart.

They raise their guns. Their guns go off.