Page 15 - Fables volume 2

butter pretzels upon which was subsisting? He cast about his tiny
workroom looking for a cause. It was winter, and he kept the
windows, already painted black, tightly closed against snow and chill
winds: could it be the ventilation? He found a way to get air into the
shop without drastically lowering its temperature, and went back to
work. The segments of the hard, banded shell were in place, the
vicious sickle-shaped third claw curved outward at precisely the right
angle. The eyes, replaced by black marbles, were ready to be given
expression by the lids, and the mouth, with its dozens of teeth,
needed but a final adjustment to be in place.
But Tannenbaum’s symptoms did not abate with increased oxygen
flow. Again he began a systematic search of his workspace for what
was making him sick. This time he found it. He had purchased new
bottles of arsenic, carbon tetrachloride, methylene chloride,
perchloroethylene, trichloroethylene and formaldehyde, wanting to
avoid any possibility of contamination or lessening of efficacy in
these preservative fluids. They were all properly stoppered—as
highly-toxic volatile liquids needed to be. Behind them, on the same
shelf but out of view, were the older, partially-empty containers. And
three of them were not sealed tightly enough. Over time their
escaped vapors had filled the atmosphere he was breathing, day and
night.
In a panic he consulted a volume dedicated to the diagnosis and
treatment of chemical exposure and poisoning, cross-checking his
symptoms against the compounds he knew he had inhaled for almost
a month. The diagnosis: irreversible brain damage, followed by
dementia and death. The horror of his situation suddenly struck his
addled mind as ludicrous. He laughed uncontrollably for several
minutes, mentally unable to reconcile his immediate fate with the
imminent completion of his magnum opus. He would not survive to
enjoy the acclaim that was sure to greet his rampant armadillo. Its
fate would be out of his hands: after going from estate sale to curio
shop to online auction, it might finally be spotted and acquired by an
aficionado of taxidermy, one of the big East Coast collectors. But
they would have no idea of whose work it was; some unsung genius,
they would suppose. And he, Fausto Tannenbaum, would remain
obscure, forgotten.
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