by Nicole Mello
He was always so alive; every second of his life, he was animated, moving, working, thinking, creating. He was something to behold. His face lit up whenever he saw someone he loved, or a book he enjoyed, or even something as simple a billboard he found interesting. He was easygoing, simple to please. Henry was truly the only one of his kind. There will never be another man like him, and that is entirely my fault. Now, I did not kill him; don’t look at me like that. I never would have hurt Henry myself. But it is, indirectly, my fault that he’s dead, and just to say those words — that Henry is dead — hardly even seems real to me. Could he be gone? Could the very embodiment of life really be dead? I still can’t wrap my head around it.
I told you that Henry was by my side from the moment we entered each other’s lives. Until the age of eighteen, he held the position of my best friend, my closest confidant; Henry, in essence, was my life. Outside of my family and my studies, it was only Henry. Henry, who loved to read fantasy stories, and act them out. Henry, who wrote poetry every day, who would come to my apartment, and, regardless of what I was doing, read his poetry to me. It was incredible, by the way. He was truly gifted. Henry, who had so much to live for, and so much to give to the world, and so much to do in his life.
At the age of eighteen, our dynamic changed. The role which Henry occupied in my life shifted. I remember the day vividly, perhaps more vividly than the night of the fire. Henry and I were studying for our first-semester final exams during our senior year of high school. We shared a couple of classes, one of which was advanced-placement English literature. Obviously, Henry was doing very well in this class. Also, obviously, I was doing worse than he was, and he was helping me to study. We had a rather old-fashioned teacher, who insisted we take a final exam in addition to the advanced-placement exam, so I was already frustrated.
Henry and I were always very comfortable together. In this instance, we were studying on my bed, sprawled on our stomachs, our books side-by-side. Henry crossed into my space, leaning over my folded arms to point something out in my notebook, and I happened to look up at him at the same time he looked up at me.
Don’t think I’m obscenely forward, or that there was no indication of a possible relationship between the two of us. There was always a glimmer of something there; I didn’t want to hope, and I was horrible with words, so I was never, ever going to tell him. And, as I told you, I was always a worrier, and I frequently overreacted. I was terrified of losing Henry, and I worried about what would happen if I said anything, anything at all, to him about my feelings. Actions were more my forte, and words were Henry’s. When he was so close, in that moment, and I noticed him glance down at my mouth — I saw an opportunity, and I seized it.
We were only eighteen. I know, when you are eighteen, it seems as though you’re an adult, that you know and understand everything. I thought I knew and understood everything, but I didn’t. There was no way for me to have known how completely and utterly Henry was going to claim my life, and I his, though in a completely different way. Had I known, would I have run away in fear? I like to think that I wouldn’t have, for my own sake. Maybe I should have, for his. Maybe it would have been selfish not to. But I suppose I’ll never really know, so there’s no point to dwelling too much on this point over anything else.
Like I said, I saw my opportunity, and I took it. I leaned in — very slowly, because I wanted to give him the chance to move away, if that’s what he wanted — and our noses touched, very lightly. He inhaled, shakily, and shifted enough that he could tilt his head to the side. I pressed forward before he did; I think he was afraid of scaring me off. I don’t blame him for that at all, I had always been very skittish with contact. He was probably recalling the time that a girl had tried to kiss me in the cafeteria on a dare, and I ran away, straight into a pull door. He laughed at that for days.
Anyways, I was the one who initiated the kiss. I wanted to have him so desperately, and, in that moment, possessing him consumed me. It was my first kiss; if it wasn’t his, he never said anything about it to me. It was, obviously, our first kiss. I didn’t really know how to kiss, apart from what I saw in television and in the movies. Henry seemed much better at it than I was. I kissed him very lightly, very carefully. He shifted on the bed so that he could better reach me. I may have initiated the kiss, but Henry was the one who took it and ran with it. What I started as a very soft, hesitant bit of pressure, just the barest press of my lips to his, he transformed into something much, much more.
Whatever passions I held for Henry, Henry seemed to hold in equal measure for me, based off of his response. He reached up to lay his hand alongside my face, his thumb stroking over my cheekbone. He pulled back from me, but not far; I could still feel his breath fanning over my lips. I thought I might manage to keep him if I just tried hard enough. He could be mine.
“Victor,” he breathed to me. My eyes scanned his face, memorizing what he looked like from this close. He had a freckle in the iris of his right eye. “I didn’t know-”
I couldn’t wait anymore, I honestly couldn’t. His reaction was enough basis for me, but his words brought fresh validation, and I kissed him again, our second kiss, the second of many. He was very eager, as was I. He pushed at my shoulders until I was on my back, and the back of my head knocked into my textbook, still open on the mattress. He lay half on top of me, his hands bracketing my body, supporting his weight as he held himself up. He would only break the kiss to breathe, and, even then, he would just move back in, as though we had never stopped. He finally had enough of supporting his own weight, and he climbed fully on top of me, lining our bodies up as best as he could with our foot of height difference. I wanted to keep him there for the rest of our lives; I wanted to keep him all to myself, have him never leave my side, have him there until we died. I thought I could have that, could have him.
His knees settled on either side of my waist, and he used his new leverage to track kisses down my face, down my jaw, down my neck, down my chest. I finally stopped him, threading my fingers through his long hair and pulling him back up until his face was even with mine. I adored him, the love of my life, my world, all mine.
“We could’ve been doing this for so long,” Henry laughed breathlessly. "Oh my God, Victor. Why didn't you do this sooner?"
“Why didn’t you?” I said back. He laughed again, pressing his face into my neck. The right words were there, on the tip of my tongue, but I didn’t say them, not yet; I didn’t want to scare him. I wish I had said them. I wish I could have had him longer. I wish he had known how long I had loved him, how much I loved him. Now… Now, he’s gone, and I don’t get to tell him. I don’t get to tell him how much I wanted him, what he was to me.
We were eighteen. We lost our virginity to each other. Not that night, but soon afterwards, closer to Christmas. I remember it. But that’s just for us. I’m sorry, but that’s just for me and him, I can’t tell you, it can’t go in whatever report you’ll write or whatever you’re going to do with these tapes. I’m sorry. He deserves better than that.
I’ll do whatever I can for him now, and he deserves… deserved so much better than me.
Chapter Seven
Shortly before I graduated from college, tragedy struck my family for the first time in a long, long time. My mother was diagnosed with eosinophilic meningitis. I don’t expect you to know what that is; I didn’t know before it was identified in her. We learned later that she contracted the illness through contaminated lettuce she had in a salad she made for herself for dinner during one of the longer days at the shelter, because she hadn’t wanted to leave, even just to get herself something else to eat. Three other people from the shelter that day were diagnosed with the same disease, for the same reason. In my mother, it developed to the point of a neurologic sequela, and that was it. We lost my mother in a matter of days.
Do you know what it’s like, to lose someone so quickly? I was eighteen, Eliza was seventeen, Glo was twenty-four. Will was only ten. She was diagnos
ed, and she died within the week. There was nothing we could do to stop it. My lively mother, who had always been the light of not only our lives, but the lives of so many of the homeless and helpless of Brooklyn, was gone, just like that. The light had been extinguished. It was jarring. How do you deal with something like that? Your parents are supposed to be there until they’re old and grey, until you’re old and grey. My mother was supposed to meet her grandchildren, she was supposed to retire. She was supposed to live for a long, long time. When I lost her, everything I thought I knew changed; the entire world shifted, dropped itself on its head.
Besides all that, it was the twenty-first century. How could they not have saved my mother? How could there not be something to keep her alive, to cure her? Why wasn’t the food cleaned properly? Why didn’t my mother leave for dinner that night? It was times like these that I wished I could have believed in some sort of god, because then I could believe that this was how it was meant to be, that my mother was meant to be lost at this exact moment. Then I could believe she was in some sort of Heaven; not here, but still somewhere, still existing in some capacity, in a paradise perfectly suited to her. I couldn’t believe that, though. I knew there was nothing else, but I couldn’t understand quite it. Who can understand losing a parent when they’re young? And my poor brother, poor Will. He was only ten. How was he supposed to process that?
This was a trying time for us all. I loved her so deeply, and, in response to her death, I suppose I withdrew into myself. I entered a different mindset entirely; more focused, certainly. Perhaps one might say a darker mindset, which I could agree with. I threw myself wholeheartedly into my explorations of the human body. Never before had the distinction between life and death been so intriguing to me. I dedicated myself, body and soul, to learning all that I could about the two, and the veil between them. Soon, my self-education turned to teaching myself how to remove that veil, and attempting to move between this world — the world of the living — and the one of the dead, if there was such a thing. If a living person was kept alive simply by a heartbeat and an operating brain, with a few functioning organs thrown in, surely a dead person just needs those to be reactivated. Surely, I thought, that’s all I needed to do. It had to be.
My explorations of science, of electricity, and of the human body soon turned to something else altogether. I began studying, in essence, how to reanimate a body. My attention quickly turned from that to something greater: I wanted to create life. What started as a desire to return my mother to me morphed into something… uglier. I wanted to create new life. I started to become the very God that I didn’t believe in.
It was then that I decided I no longer wanted to be a doctor. My interests didn’t turn in that direction anymore; my inclinations were headed down a far different path. Though, if you think about it, a doctor’s job is to preserve life, and was I not doing the same? I was protecting life. I’m not trying to defend myself, just to explain myself. In the end, I have no defense for what I’ve done.
After my graduation from high school, I started to pull away from my loved ones. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I do now. At a time when my family needed me most — I was, apparently, a rock to them, a position which I still don’t understand — I abandoned them, and withdrew into myself. I’m ashamed now for what I did, but I can’t change the past. I pulled away from them. I began to ignore Glo, who I had always been so close to. Will… Will was only a child, and he loved his mother, and he loved me. He didn’t understand. I wasn’t grieving correctly. I wasn’t doing what I needed to do. I was doing what I thought I needed to do. My poor father, he had to comfort everybody, while also dealing with the loss of his beloved wife. He deserved better.
Eliza. I can never apologize enough to Eliza. She became the comfort that my sister and father sought, as well as becoming a mother to Will. She was the rock that I was expected to be. I let them down. I let her down, I let Henry down. He, of course, understood; it was his way. He always understood me. He knew I was grieving, and that I had to process things. He still came to my house everyday, but I would be so deeply engrossed in my studies that I was mostly silent. Out of deference to me, he wouldn’t speak very much. I barely registered his presence, sometimes. I regret how I treated him; he deserved so much better. He was mine to take care of, and I had completely forgotten my responsibilities towards him.
Henry still wrote his poems. He still packed for college. He still came to me, kissed me, slept over at my apartment. He would bring me to my bed, sometimes by force. He would lay down, and he would curl himself around me. I was much taller than him, but I slept in a ball, tucked under his chin. I was afraid. I was upset. He helped, slightly. He would wrap himself around me and he whispered to me until I fell asleep. I barely registered him. I barely registered anything. Nothing meant anything to me, then. I was consumed.
Like I said, Henry still packed for college. I was planning on attending Harvard University, in Massachusetts. Henry applied, and got accepted, but he decided to go to the Pratt Institute, in Brooklyn, and study creative writing. I never asked why he wasn’t coming with me. At the time, I could hardly bring myself to care. I care now, but it’s too late. I left as planned. Eliza ended up going to NYU the next year. She wanted to stay close to home, close to her family. Close to our family.
Anyways, I remember the day before the day that I left for school. Henry came to me; I was waiting in my living room for him. Even though I was in the family room, rather than my bedroom, I was still so involved in my studies. He removed the notebook from my hands, and he tilted my face up towards him. I remember his face in that moment; I remember his exact expression distinctly. It’s one of the very few things that I actually remember from that time. He looked… He looked incredible, like he always did, but what I remember most is that he looked afraid. He looked so, so terrified. I remember staring back at him and wondering why he looked that way. I wanted to fix him. It was my job to fix him, and I couldn’t. He kissed me like it was the end of the world. In a way, it was.
I left the next day. I left for Cambridge and I didn’t look back, because, as it was, I could barely look forward. I thought I knew what I had to do, so I did it. Glo helped me move in, then returned home that night. She embraced me before she left. I wish, now, that she had taken me back with her; back then, however, I was just ready to get started on my further education.
I should have turned back when I still had the chance.
Chapter Eight
As I said previously, I changed my mind about becoming a doctor. My attentions were now focused on much darker passions. At Harvard, I was able to customize my own degree. I took advantage of this opportunity and created my own field of study. What my degree ended up being was my own special blend of classes from the fields of chemical and physical biology, biomedical engineering, neurobiology, and, of course, human developmental and regenerative biology. This allowed me to properly explore and utilize the fields of study that were most pertinent to me at the time, for my newest plot. It was a couple of months into my time at college that I finally began to form a true, solid plan to create life out of death.
During my time at Harvard, my interaction and correspondence with my family mostly took place online. The close relationship that I had once shared with my sister Gloria was gone, or, at the very least, fractured; Will seemed to think less and less of me with each conversation. My father loved me unconditionally, as fathers do, but I could tell our relationship and our dynamic had shifted dramatically. Eliza navigated her senior year with aplomb; I’m proud of her now. I should have told her then.
Henry and I, aside from corresponding online, sent each other letters. It was Henry’s idea, of course; that was just his personality. He also was responsible for the maintenance and upkeep of our continued interactions. I rarely saw him in person. I almost never went to New York, and he was only occasionally able to come all the way to Massachusetts for any extended length of time. We never “broke up,” in any tradition
al sense, if you could have said we were together in the first place, but I sometimes wonder if it would’ve been kinder to him if we had parted ways. He said he loved me, but he deserved better than me. I said I loved him, but I didn’t love him enough. I wanted him more than anything, but I had lost my way.
I wasted time while I was existing without my family. I wish I had time to waste now, but I don’t. I wasted all of that time, and I don’t regret anything more than I regret the time that I could have spent with my family, and with Henry, that I spent instead on this horrible project. I became single-minded in my focus; I had a one-track mind. Everything in me was centered on lifting the veil.
I became introverted, moreso than I ever had been before, and I never actively sought out any potential friends at school. My roommate in my dorm room freshman year moved out after two weeks, for whatever reason, and I was left by myself. If you know anything about people, you know that they are, by instinct, group animals; I could not be solely by myself, and still nobody had shown themselves able to fit into the small, small world I had constructed for myself. As it turned out, one of the only people whom I spoke to during this time was a professor of mine.
Professor Jane Waldman was a very kind woman. She encouraged my studies, helped me to explore my options and my chosen courses. She supported me at this time, even if she did not know what she was sustaining me through or what action she was encouraging. Even though it was entirely my fault that I was alone, I still felt it keenly, and I appreciated her occasional presence. She would sometimes assist me in my studies, but there was only so much I could tell her. The more vivid details of my plan were secret; only I ever knew all of them.
