Frankenstein Theory (26 page)

Again I pointed around the room.

“
You asked for bodies. These,” he gestured across the room, “are bodies.” Igor grabbed a handful of cloth and uncovered one of the corpses—a female, fully naked and quite well endowed. “I assume these will suffice? If not, it’ll be a while before I can gather more, as I believe I’ve stripped Geneva of every corpse ‘bove ground it had. The coroners are gong to be in frightening short supply over the next few days.”

I nodded and then shook my head and tapped my finger on the side of my head.

“
Oh.” Realization slowly touched down on Igor’s thought process. “Right. Brain. It’s coming. You said it needed to be fresh, so I figured it would be best to wait until you were ready and then find a…” Igor grinned wide and winked. “Donor.”

I uncovered the bodies, one by one, like a man possessed. Igor picked up on my intent and followed suit. With every corpse laid bare, I took a quick inventory and then grabbed a grease pencil from my desk.

On a male corpse, I placed and X across his torso.

An X on a woman’s hips.

I scoured every piece of cold flesh and marked those bits I considered candidates for my latest experiment.

“
What is it that you plan to do, Doctor?”

I turned to Igor, pointed at the bodies before me, and interlaced my fingers together…hoping he’d understand the gesture.

Igor shifted the goggles to his forehead and leaned toward me, eyes bulging. “You can’t mean that, Doctor.”

I nodded.

“
It’s not possible.”

Again I nodded.

“
You are a right devil, Victor Frankenstein. Pull this off, and you’ll be a god.”

I patted the male corpse whose torso was marked with an X and pointed back to the surgical table. Igor understood and helped me shift the rather large dead man from the floor.

I marked the body for proper removal of limbs. In no time I had saw in hand and was making short shrift of separating the right arm from the body.

The limb slopped to the floor. I had no care for my usual tidiness. My only concern was creation. Life from death; existence ripped from the void.

Like a man possessed, I tore through the cadavers, removing the pieces I needed to create that which would stand against Johann. A monstrous assassin made to order.

As Igor shifted the human puzzle to the surgical table, I set about to sew the connective tissue and flesh together. Muscle to muscle. Cartilage to cartilage. Nerve, vein, and tendon. The arduous task could easily be the end of my sanity. It would, in the end, be worth every maddening moment.

By the end of the night, I’d managed to attach both arms to the torso, before exhaustion absconded with ability.

“
Let’s get you to bed, Doctor.” Igor spoke gently, one hand on my lower back, the other wrapped around my arm.

I allowed the man to guide me up the stairs and into my study. He eased me into my desk chair and sat, himself, in the wing-back on the opposite side of the desk.

“
Why, Doctor?” Igor asked. “What will this prove?”

I opened my mouth to answer, only to remember the cloth. I pulled out a bottle of rum, poured a generous serving, opened wide, and titled the glass to my lips. The liquid brought fire to the flesh of my mouth. The liquor had a secondary effect of unsticking the muslin from the wound that was my tongue.

After a moment of swishing the rum about in my mouth, I opened wide and removed the strips of cloth one by one. Each dropped, sloppily, to my desk.

Once free from the gag, my partial tongue pressed against my teeth to send a shock of pain to flood my system.

I spoke slowly, cautiously; my voice a distorted, barely coherent mess. “It will destroy Johann.”

Igor nodded. “Doctor, you don’t need another creature for that. I will gladly do your bidding any day. It’s what you pay me for.”

“
No.” I slammed my wretched hand onto the desk. “There will be a certain poetry in his death.” My voice was growing raw, my tongue tired from compensating for the loss of flesh.

“
Sleep.” I spoke softly. “We continue the creation in the morning.”

xXx

A muffled sound pulled me from my slumber. A door creaking and closing in the distance. I sat upright, only to have my head throb and the room spin. Sweat stung my eyes as I batted them against the irritation.

I pushed myself from the chair, my shirt stuck to the brocade fabric, skin slick with sweat. Fever had its molten hot fingers jammed into the base of my brain as the heat of Hell licked at my flesh. I stood and dropped immediately back into the chair. My legs had given out.

“
What is happening?” I mumbled to the surrounding darkness.

A pair of glowing white eyes glanced my way from the black distance.

The eyes did nothing but stare…not even blink. There was a certain familiarity with the fluorescing orbs.

“
Frankenstein.” A rasping voice called to me.

“
Who are you?”

The disembodied voice paused.

“
I am everyone and no one. In Elizabeth’s heart, I am everything. In your eyes, I have become an abomination.”

“
In reality?” I asked.

“
I am you,” the voice replied.

“
You are nothing.”

“
Then
we
are nothing.”

“
What do you want?” I asked the infinite void.

“
I don’t understand the question,” the voice replied.

The world fell to silence and the fires of Hell rose even higher into the night. Before me, a glorious man stood, awash in brilliant flame. Fire rose from patchwork stitching across his body.

“
It’s you,” I said softly.

The creature nodded slightly and drew in a great breath. As he expelled the super-heated air, his right arm dropped off, hit the floor, and exploded into a cloud of ash.

“
I am unmade by your bidding.” The left arm turned to blackened dust even before it had a chance to seek freedom. “Undone by your hate.”

“
You are my creation to do as I say.”

“
You are a slave to arrogance, Frankenstein.”

Fire lapped at the legs of the creature until its flesh sizzled and the fat beneath bubbled and popped.

“
Victor Frankenstein,” the creature spoke in a distant monotone. “The only path to retribution is at thy hand alone.” He opened his mouth one final time and spat a fan of flames to spill over me. The heat was unbearable. I slapped at my skin in a vain attempt to extinguish the flames.

My body convulsed.

“
Victor,” another voice beckoned from the great beyond.

My eyes blinked open to reveal Igor standing over me, shaking me from the shoulders.

“
You were having a nightmare, Victor.”

I leaned forward, placing elbows to knees, and filled my lungs with fresh, cool air. A wash of sweat stung my eyes.

“
I’m going about this all wrong, Igor.”

“
I don’t understand, Doctor.”

Another deep breath. “I have to take care of Johann myself.” The words stumbled off my mangled tongue. My voice was slowly losing its clarity of tone and diction.

Igor dropped to his knees and looked up, his tragic gaze meeting mine. “I cannot allow you to do that, Doctor. If he is to be killed, then I should be the man to take his life. There is no need for you to take yet another dark turn.”

“
Do not presume to know what I need and need not do, Mr. Fishka,” I spat at the man, my voice fueled by rage. “I made the man, I will unmake him. He has taken to bed with my wife…I am honor-bound to…”

Igor cut across me. “You do not know for sure if Elizabeth has been unfaithful.”

My hand, bound in its very own Iron Maiden, snatched at the cloth of Igor’s shirt and pulled him in close. “Nor do I know if she’s been fai…ful.” The word failed me—both in the very creation of the sound and the emotional attachment to the meaning. I gathered my wits. “Neither assumption am I willing to give greater or lesser credence. Knowing this, she has been both faithful and unfaithful. I cannot continue my life and remain ignorant of the greater truth, Mr. Fishka. With that knowledge, you should understand why it is I that must undertake the task.”

Igor nodded and added, “At least let me be of some assistance.”

“
Agreed.” I shot my unwounded hand out to Igor; his grip and shake were strong…assuring.

“
What do we do, Doctor Frankenstein?”

“
We find them, and we watch over them. The second they tread upon lustful ground together, the abomination dies.”

The word struck me deeply. That which I had created, some super-human manifestation of the ideal man, had set about to wreck my life from within. I would, at every turn and cost, unmake him.

I pulled the bottom right drawer from its nesting hole and dropped a single pistol onto the table. Igor grinned wide and made to snatch up the weapon. I slammed my framed hand over the pistol and shook my head. The mechanism whirred and clicked to stretch my fingers further toward their endgame. A shock of pain raced up my arm. “As much as I count on you, Mr. Fishka, this is something I must do alone. If, for some reason, I do not take care of the problem…I will count upon you to finish the work.

Again Igor nodded. “I would be honored, Victor.”

I spat, “This isn’t about honor. This is about truth, about righting a most foul wrong, excising a malignant tumor I unleashed upon this city.”

“
At least allow me to accompany you, Doctor.”

I paused, considering the options, and then nodded. “Yes, Igor. I believe that would be for the best. You can serve as my lookout.”

“
Very good, sir. What are we waiting for?” asked Igor.

xXx

It took us no time to find a carriage to transport us to the home of the orchestra. The housing was modest, almost spartan. I couldn’t imagine
my
Elizabeth supping and sleeping in such base quarters. A woman used to opulence and power serving time as an angel to the very devil given life by arrogance and ego.

All my doing.

Igor stared at me, his eyes narrowed to slits. “Doctor, have you considered what your actions might do to Elizabeth?”

My wretched hand swung out to clock Igor in the face. “Considered, Igor? Considered?” The man lay sprawling at my feet, his eyes wide. “I have considered every possible permutation of Elizabeth’s attachment to Johann. The laughter, the romance…the coupling. I cannot live knowing she and he are one.”

Igor slowly stepped backward, his arms raised to either side of his head. Innocence and fear danced over his eyes, cheeks, and mouth…all brought on by me. “Doctor, I promise you will exact your revenge. I must beg of you, allow me to pull that trigger. The act of killing has already taken enough of a toll on you, Victor. Diving deeper into those maddening waters is not something you truly want or need. If you step foot in that home alone, you will have no alternative plan. At least with me, you stand a chance of surviving this unscathed, should anything go wrong.”

I knelt beside Igor and drew in close to his face to whisper, “Look closely upon my wretched countenance. Unscathed is no longer an option. I am scarred within and without, so there is little you can do to protect my visage or my soul. I am ruined, damned. The very moment I brought life from death I was changed, forever twisted and reshaped in a malevolent image. I thought I was working for some greater good, when in truth it was all for my own glorification. I wanted to be a god; I became a god. The unfortunate truth that I have so painfully discovered is that man has not the constitution to carry such a weight. This burden has malformed me, Igor. The loss of Elizabeth has stripped my soul of meaning; without her, I am nothing.”

Igor looked to me, his eyes filled with a sincerity I was currently incapable of returning. “Doctor Frankenstein, no matter what has become of Johann and Elizabeth, you are still a god. You have cheated death and proved so many so wrong. The Frankenstein Theory is sound, something no other scientist could have either imagined or achieved. Elizabeth or no, the world of medicine needs you.”

Before I could piece together a worthy reply, the sound of voices issued from the nearest window.

“
Elizabeth,” I whispered.

Her laugh was lifted into the air to spill over me. The sweet noise spun my heart on its axis. Before I could devise a plan of action, the sound of music arose. Piano…as could only have been played by Johann.

A deep growl belched from my throat to catch Igor off-guard.

“
Hey!” A voice from the street took us both by surprise. I turned to see a constable standing in the amber glow of a streetlamp.