Frankenstein Theory (21 page)

I slipped the suture unto itself to form a knot and gave it a tug. With a snip of scissors, I unfettered myself from the gut and turned to Elizabeth. “How does it look, my love?”

Elizabeth winced. “Not your best work, I’m afraid.”

“
My guess is that it’ll lend me a certain personality or a bit of credence among the ruffians of the street.”

“
Just what a doctor needs, eh, Victor?” Elizabeth snapped. “To be respected by criminals and drunkards alike.” She shook her head. “What has become of you, my husband?”

I grabbed Elizabeth’s arm and pulled her in tight. “Don’t be like that, darling wife.”

She slapped at my shoulders and pulled away. “Your inebriated stench is unbearable. Clean yourself up or don’t bother coming to bed.”

With that, Elizabeth turned and marched upwards. When she reached the door, she turned and glanced down. “I hope you are not lying to me, Victor. My heart couldn’t possibly tolerate such behavior from the man who shares my bed.”

She quickly swung the massive door open and vanished into the passageway. I turned back to the mirror to apply a protective salve over the wound. The fog was beginning to lift, allowing me to see the damage with more clarity.

“
Dear God,” I whispered as I looked into the mirror to view the newly repaired rift in my flesh.

Repaired
would be a bit of an exaggeration. The wound looked more
nightmare
than
scar
. With the drunken fog lifted from my mind, I wanted to tear out the stitching and begin anew.

Images of the naked woman exploded against my consciousness. For a fleeting moment, I wished I’d have asked Igor to bring the body to my laboratory.

To what end, though?

“
Exploration,” I whispered pure menace from my lips.

I slapped the mirror away; it hit the floor and shattered into a hundred fragments, each desperate to reflect some variation of truth.

I stood on unsure legs and stumbled my way to the stairs. My foot came down, slipped, and I dropped to the floor, still drunk enough not to bother pulling myself up.

The world spun into a dizzying madness until I could take no more. My heart slowed and my mind wandered into an all-too-familiar dreamscape.

University.

xXx

“
Class,” Waldman’s voice boomed from out of the surrounding darkness. I was back in school…the classroom a broken and crumbling shell of its former glory. “Our task for today is to locate the human soul. To this point, we have been led to believe this mysterious fragment of human existence nothing more than an intangible, esoteric construct born of man’s desperate need for immortality. After careful consideration and exploration, we have uncovered the truth. Mr. Clerval, will you please approach the surgical table?”

Applause arose from the shadows. A faded and weary Henry stood and stumbled down the steps as if his legs and arms were not his own. He reached the center of the circular room and turned to face me. He stood, naked and shivering, his chest and stomach opened and hollowed out. Not a single organ remained in the man’s torso…and yet he lived as if intact.

Henry opened his eyelids to reveal hollowed-out orbits. His lips parted to display gums bereft of teeth.

Yet he found it within him to smile.

“
Mr. Clerval, please take up the scalpel and remove the soul from that cadaver.”

Henry nodded and turned to face the corpse. I sneaked to the floor so I could get a glimpse of his work.

He attacked the heart with an overzealous gusto. The scalpel bit into the arteries and veins that gave the organ life. An arc of scarlet sprayed from the table and splashed down over the shadow-obscured audience. After a few careful slices, Henry dug his hand into the chest cavity and scooped out the still-beating heart.

“
Turn the organ over, Mr. Clerval,” the disconnected voice demanded. Henry complied.

I shimmied up close and personal to get an unobscured view of the disembodied ventricles.

The underside of the heart revealed a truth the majority weren’t willing to accept.

The surgical theater audience gasped in unison as a single eyelid opened on the backside of the heart. The eye was brilliant white with a gleaming gold iris. The orb glanced about the room and blinked.

“
Behold, class; the human soul. You’ve heard speak of the mystical ‘third eye’? One and the same.” The disembodied voice rang out. “We have recently translated a particular passage from the oldest known text to have ever been discovered that reads, ‘The eye of the world gazes from within to guide matters of the heart and mind. Use the power of that eye wisely, and great things will befall you. Use the power of the third eye poorly, and your soul will be monstrous to all who look upon you.’”

The cadaver shuddered and sprung into a seated position. Henry wielded the scalpel like a weapon and slashed at the cadaver’s face. Chunks of flesh dropped and turned to dust on the way to the floor. After a long while of hacking, Henry stepped back to take in his work.

He’d carved a new face from human clay, and that face was…

“
Elizabeth,” I whispered.

“
Frankenstein,” Waldman called out.

I snapped my head in the direction of the master’s voice. “Yes, sir?”

“
Assist Mr. Clerval at the table.”

“
I don’t understand, sir. Assist him with what?”

I looked back to the center of the room to see the surgical table without a cadaver. Henry stood at the table’s side, awaiting my approach with patience. He delicately patted the surface, expecting me to obey upon command.

I followed the instructions and hopped onto the table, ready for whatever awaited me.

Henry turned, raised his weapon, and brought it down, repeatedly, across my face. I sat, motionless, feeling absolutely nothing, as the blade ruined my countenance. Bloody chunks dropped into my awaiting hands. My humanity faded with every slice.

“
Show him his truth, Mr. Clerval,” Waldman commanded.

Henry grabbed a hand mirror from the surgeon’s cart and held it up so that I could take in my visage.

“
Johann?” I whispered as my fingers carefully probed the already-healing flesh and traced a ribbon of red down my neck and out of sight.

My face had been reconfigured. I’d gone from Victor to Johann in a few strokes of the blade. Fear took hold of my limbs and digits. My nails dug into what remained of my face. “Return my countenance. I’ve had enough with these monstrosities.”

Without warning, the lights in the surgical room faded into absolute darkness and the temperature dropped dramatically. An out-of-tune piano played a children’s song I recalled from my youth. I tried to sing along, but my lips refused to budge.

“
The soul,” Waldman continued. “Frankenstein, how could a monster such as
yourself
possess the heart of God?”

A white-hot beam cut through the blackness to spotlight my torso and head. With a roar, I punched a fist through my chest and wormed fingers in deep enough to wrap them around my own heart. I extracted the organ and let it beat once….twice. I turned it so that I could glare into my own soul. The eyelid of my heart opened to reveal a shriveled, rotting orb. The eye blinked, and a brownish ooze spilled from the socket.

I screamed against the horror; hoping for what, I had no idea. I only knew that the skewed facade of humanity had to end, before it swept away the fragment of sanity that remained. Again I screamed, this time with a fury my vocal apparatus could not sustain.

The world shook beneath my feet. The cadaver tumbled from the surgical table and exploded to dust as it hit the marble floor. The voices from the class lowed like cattle heading to the slaughterhouse. The walls cracked. Plaster dropped from the ceiling.

“
Victor!” an angelic voice from the heavens called. I assumed it God. It was all I could do to not prostrate to the ground and pray as if I’d believed in the veracity of religion all along.

“
Victor!” Again my name fell from above.

This time, however, Waldman’s voice shouted a raging reply. “Frankenstein!”

I awoke to the sound of my own shrieking voice. I must have been screaming for some time, as the folds of my larynx ached from abuse. I was drenched in sweat and very much alone. I’d expected Elizabeth to be leaning over me, shaking me gently to arouse me from the hellish nightmare, but she was nowhere to be found.

After some time had passed, and the hot sweat had cooled to an unpleasant chill, Elizabeth rushed into the room.

“
Victor!” she shouted as she dropped to the bed. Her delicate fingers brushed aside a wet lock of hair from my forehead. “I heard you screaming and came as fast as possible. Are you ill?”

“
Where were you, Elizabeth?” It was the only logical reply I could manage.

She faltered.

“
Why were you not sleeping by my side?” I prodded.

Her gaze darted about the room, in search of some piece of logic most likely nowhere to be found. “I couldn’t sleep and found myself wandering about the castle.” She placed a warm palm against my unsullied cheek. “Will you be all right, my dear?”

I pulled her hand away and stared at the fingertips I’d known for so long. Every curve, every wrinkle, every inch of every digit was as familiar to me as my own.

And yet…a feeling most unfamiliar washed over me as I ran a finger across the back of her hand. She must have sensed something was amiss. Without warning, she yanked her hand from me and wrung it with an almost venomous abandon. She glared into some void to which I was not privy.

“
Wife? What is happening to you?”

The skin of her face flushed, and her eyes flashed wide and bright. “I don’t understand, Victor. Shouldn’t we be addressing what brought about your night terrors?”

“
I’m a grown man, Elizabeth. I don’t have night terrors. My nocturnal shouting was the result of a bad dream, and nothing more.” I swung my legs out of the bed and reached for a robe to fend off the chilly air of night. “I would much rather discuss…”

Elizabeth’s face twisted with concern. She shot a hand to my face and said, “Victor, you’re bleeding.”

I immediately felt the trickle of warmth slowly make its way down my cheek. Before I could prevent it, I heard the
tip tip
of drops on my robe. The slow rhythm sped to an almost continuous flow. I cupped my hand under my chin to catch rain of blood.

Without further ado, I rushed out of the bedroom and made my way to the laboratory. The second I entered my sanctum sanctorum, I felt the stress and concern of presumed transgression ease away.

I retrieved a small hand mirror from my desk…to replace the shattered shaving mirror from my earlier outburst. A flood of emotion rose from my chest; heat and pulse, sweat and concern. What was happening to me?

“
There you are,” I whispered at my reflection. The fissure above my eye had eased open to allow the rivulet of blood to pour out. I patted at the wound with a cloth to soak up as much fluid as possible. With the cloth pressed to the open gash, I gathered everything necessary to re-stitch the wound.

“
Ever more hideous, Doctor Frankenstein,” I said to myself as the needle eased into and out of flesh. I tugged at the suture to cinch the wound. The skin buckled and puckered. My heart sank as I watched the continued collapse of my very own vanity.

Hallowed be thy name.

The bleeding eased and I tied off the stitch. A quick cleanup, and I was ready to return to the land of dreaming.

To my surprise, Johann’s makeshift sleeping quarters was empty.

Instead of ascending the stairs to run the risk of another confrontation with Elizabeth, I climbed into the nearby bed and quickly drifted into a blissful nothingness.

T W E N T Y - F O U R

Sunlight poured down from the skylight in the laboratory. My dry eyes blinked against the unwelcome glare. I’d expected to see Elizabeth staring down at me from the entry landing, but she was nowhere to be found.

I sat up slowly, my head throbbing from the new stitches. Pain radiated from my forehead, down my neck, and across my chest. Had I not been previously tasked with addressing the symphony today, I would have eagerly nursed the first bottle of spirits I could find.

Want gave into need; I stood and nearly dropped as the room spun about my head. A few quick breaths and the laboratory slowed to a stop, but not before what little I had in my stomach decided to jettison from my mouth and splash down on my sleeping clothes to join the dried blood and sweat. Moment by moment, my life was getting ever more challenging to explain.

Step after agonizing step, I ascended the stairs, careful to not allow gravity to return me to the stone floor below. Thankfully, the laboratory opted not to spin out of control…thus allowing me to keep what little dignity I retained. On the landing, I sucked in a deep breath and pulled the door open.