by Nicole Mello
I excelled at Harvard, which surprises me even now, consumed as I was by this idea I had. I suppose it was just a by-product of my intense studying. I consistently made Dean’s List. Other students in my classes sought me out to ask for help, for tips on how to do as well as I was, for me to join their study groups, on and on. I declined every request. Professors reached out to me often, but I denied them, as well, save for Professor Waldman, and I still sometimes ignored her. I would like to say that I was not quite myself during this time, but sometimes I fear that, instead, I may have been the truest form of myself.
I got the highest grades, achieved the highest honors. It didn’t matter to me. I should have felt proud of myself, like a normal person would have; Henry would sometimes tell me how proud he was of me. It didn’t matter. I kept working, working until I had to eat, or I had to sleep, and even then I barely noticed that I had to fulfill such base survival needs. My own self became nothing to me, a far, far second to the project with which I was so consumed. I needed to achieve this. I needed it so desperately, Doctor, I can hardly explain it to you. I studied throughout dinner, whenever I did pause to eat; nobody joined me, so graphic and unbelievable were the diagrams that I spread out on my table, so dark and frightening was my subject matter. I didn’t care. It didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was a successful end product.
In my third year of school, I successfully reanimated a once-dead cow heart that I had successfully stolen from a local farm which had lost several cows that year due to a lack of grains. The organs I borrowed were not missed, don’t worry; the cow meat was tainted by their weakness, starvation, and ensuing illnesses, but their hearts were strong enough, and useful to my project. I needed an incredible amount of electricity to animate just that heart, and I realized that I would need to generate a great deal more if I was to animate an entire human being. I was then struck with an idea — lightning. My long-standing interest in lightning and electricity, ever since that fateful storm during my childhood, was finally useful to me. I simply had to harness the power that only a bolt of lightning could produce.
I will admit: by this time, I had completely forgotten my original, primary objective. The only reason I had strayed down this path in the first place was my mother, and I had nearly forgotten her in my madness. What would she have thought of this horrible desire that had consumed me in such a way? I didn’t think about disappointing her. She would still have loved me, I’m sure, but what mother wouldn’t have been at least disappointed in such a son as I had become? I hardly thought of her at all, and I’m ashamed of that. But it’s the truth, and I’m endeavoring to tell the entire truth here, to tell you the whole and complete story.
Because of my chosen degree program, I was able to obtain an internship at a local hospital. I’m not proud of what I did, but it is what I did, and it had to be done for the sake of what had become, at that point, my life’s work. I cited my interest in the fields of biomedical engineering and of biology, and they chose me as one of their interns. It was so easy. It shouldn’t have been as easy as it was. It was so wrong, it should have been the hardest thing I had ever done, and yet, I barely thought twice about it, except to consider how lucky I was to have the opportunity in the first place.
I found the hospital morgue on my second day on the job. There was barely any security, and there was hardly ever anybody in there. It wasn’t a very large hospital, and nobody liked to linger in such a horrible place. I only took from unclaimed bodies; I wasn’t a monster. Not then, anyways. The bodies that went unclaimed, that were going to undisclosed locations the next morning, I took pieces from in the night. Nobody noticed; if they did, they didn’t care, or they didn’t say anything. I took parts that I thought would create a perfect specimen. I had a goal; I was going to create life. I thought, if I was going to do it, I may as well do the best job I could. Better than any false God someone might believe in, I would create a life with my own two hands, the first person to do so, and it would be beautiful.
Originally, I built a woman. She looked something like my mother, looking back on it. She was beautiful, I always thought, and I sculpted her as though I was the artist my mother had seemed to believe I could be. I was not ready, though; I built her, with my own two hands, from heel to hair, and, when a storm came, I tried my best to animate her. I failed. I swear, to this day, I got a hint of a pulse, a twitch of a finger. She was my first child, and she was stillborn. I still wonder today what might have happened had I succeeded in giving her life. I miss her; I think she may have been my one chance at a success story. A perfect woman, in the image of my mother; a being who Eliza could have helped me raise until she was fit to join society. My daughter, who never got a chance at life. I tore her apart after my failure. I could not bear to look into her face, and I could not bear to bury her.
I returned to the morgue a month later, and began retrieving new organs. The organs I chose this time were in top condition, the best I could find; even better than the organs that went into my daughter, I thought. He was going to have a strong heart, stronger than hers. I decided on a man this time; my inclinations towards the female form were always iffy at best, I convinced myself, and a woman was far too difficult to get right, anyways. I was able to persuade myself that a man would just be easier to sculpt, easier to create. Creating him was less of a personal struggle for me, after the losses of my mother and of my daughter. There was less for me to get wrong; he would be less of a failure, I thought. He might get a chance at life. I could focus on the rest of the project with relative ease after that. I began creating a man, rather than a woman, and he was beautiful. He was everything that I was not. I was going to create a life greater than my own, greater than the lives of anybody currently living. I was wrong, but that was my goal.
I didn’t make him in my image. It was only after I finished that I realized I was subconsciously intending to make him look like my mother, like I had believed my daughter had, but I failed in that with my son. He had dark skin, and dark eyes; the irises were almost as dark as the pupils. He only had very short hair, but what he did have was as dark as his eyes. He was meant to be handsome. Learning from the shortcomings and failures of my daughter, who had appeared almost normal, I found incredible difficulty in making him of an average size. Of course, this was because of the incredibly intricate detailing that is necessary when creating a functioning, living human. He had to be substantial, far larger than an average human in order to compensate for my work, and his final height ended up being about eight feet, four inches. It didn’t matter, I thought. If an above-average height was all the difference that was necessary to create my living child, so be it. It had to happen. I had to do it; nothing could stop me, not anymore. I was insatiable, unstoppable.
I was a God.
Chapter Nine
He was meant to be handsome. He was not. So much stitching had to be done, so much work, so many details. A human body is incredible, dynamic, complex, as I’m sure you could guess. The brain, especially, took some work. He had so many scars, so many sutures. He was never going to be beautiful, I realized early on. It had only bothered me for a moment; I barely thought about it after that. My goal wasn’t to create beauty. Beauty already existed, and humanity had created beautiful things before. My goal was to create life. Like with his height, if it had to be this way, then it had to be this way. I sacrificed his beauty for his life. Still I continued.
By this point, I was almost entirely out of contact with my family, with Eliza, with Henry. Nobody paid me visits any longer. Henry tried, but I kept him at arm’s length, if not further. I didn’t want them to see what I was doing. Worse, I didn’t want them to distract me from what I was doing, or, heaven forbid, stop me from creating this life. I couldn’t be stopped; I would rather have died. I was a man obsessed. I felt the loss of my loved ones, but I ignored it as I ignored my hunger pangs, or as I ignored the headaches and drowsiness that came with my exhaustion. It didn’t matter; these were human obstacles t
hat weren’t supposed to get in the way of such an incredible task as the one I believed myself responsible for completing. It was my quest. Nothing could stop me. I was entirely consumed. I didn’t care, Doctor. I just didn’t care. I couldn’t afford to care, not when I was that close, and I was so close.
I’ll save you the gory details. If you ever see a photo of the man — the monster — that I created, you’ll be able to see for yourself exactly what I did. But I won’t describe them. I created his insides, then his outsides. I had steady hands, hands that would’ve been useful had I become a doctor or a surgeon as I had originally planned. I plotted out each and every stitch that he received, and delivered them carefully, so carefully. I was nearly done when I received the invitation in the mail.
Gloria was getting married. The knowledge was jarring to me; the world that I had been living in before I moved away for school had become a distant memory to me, and I hardly, if ever, thought about it, consumed by my project as I was. I was jerked out of the world of my monster, and tossed unceremoniously back into my past life. I replied, and said that, yes, I would be attending her wedding. How could I miss it? Whether or not we had not spoken much in the past couple of years, she was still my sister, and I had to go.
I secured the project to such a degree that I had absolutely no need to worry about it while I was gone, but I still worried the entire time anyways. Besides being a worrier by nature, my fear of discovery and my anticipation of success had gotten the better of me, and I was barely human — barely anything, in fact, apart from my drive to achieve new life.
Gloria was to marry Robin Avery, the very person she had told me about what seemed like all those years ago. They had been dating this entire time, and Glo was very happy, Eliza and Henry assured me when they picked me up from the train station. Robin had been spending a great deal of time around the house, I gathered, and they all adored her. They loved her young son, as well. Young Lewis. Lewis took a liking to me when I arrived at my old apartment, which had once been my home. I had returned that first summer, but eventually just ended up staying in Cambridge the entire time after that, save for Christmases, when I had no excuses. It was just easier, and it gave me more time to work. The apartment was barely changed from when I left it.
Lewis, like I said, took a liking to me. That was startling. I had not spent time with any children since Will had been a young child, and Will was a teenager now, a young man in his own right. Lewis, age six, was a surprise to me. Henry thought it was hilarious, but, then, Henry was searching for anything that could make him smile, when I was around. I was aware that my appearance had changed somewhat. Afterwards, when I looked at a picture of myself from that time, I realized how gaunt and starved I actually appeared. I must have terrified my family, let alone Henry, who still claimed to love me. I loved him, but I didn’t think about that. I didn’t have time for that. I didn’t have time for him. What if he tried to stop me? I couldn’t have that. I couldn’t afford to keep Henry around. I didn’t break up with him, but I know he would have been happier if I had. Would I have been, though? I don’t know anymore.
Lewis was easy to be around, and he was relatively quiet. After he decided that he liked me, I offered to watch him most of the time. It gave me a chance to separate myself from the adults who sought to engage me, entertain me, or otherwise occupy my time in a way I believed I just couldn’t afford. Lewis didn’t take too much attention to look after. I, somehow, found myself distracted by him immensely while I was home. I had forgotten the interest I had taken in Will when he was so little. I was captivated by the way that young minds and bodies learn and adapt to the world around them, and I couldn’t yet connect the dots enough to understand that this was a part of my obsession with creating life. This was why I had been interested in life; this, right here. The living part. My resolve was born anew. I had to create life.
The wedding initiated, for lack of a better word, a feeling of sadness in me. I was embraced by the people I had pushed away, and I remembered how much I adored my family. I realized how much I loved them, how much I missed them. But this was only a detour; I was still focused on my project, and, once the wedding was over, I said my goodbyes again and returned to Cambridge. I would not return home until after I was finished, I swore. I had to finish this ultimate project, assigned to me by fate, by destiny. By myself.
It’s clear to me, now, that I should have stayed. I should have clung tightly to those feelings of love, and I should have remained with my family. I should have abandoned that demon that I was building, and I should have abandoned Harvard, and I should have abandoned the man that I had become. So many things I should have done, and only one horrible thing that I did do. One of my biggest regrets is that I lost my family for a second time when I returned to school that day. I should have realized what I wanted, and I should have stayed in New York with them. But I didn’t, and I know that I have to live with the consequences of that decision, but it can’t hurt to wish that I had stayed, can it? Wishes and memories are all I have left anymore.
I returned to that collage of corpses which I was building, that masquerade of life. After spending time with the child, Lewis, I realized that I had to name this being which I was giving life to, as a mother does to her child. If he was to be a proper man — or if, as I hoped, he was to be more than a man, a new being, a new form of life — he was going to need a proper name. I went through lists upon lists of names in my narrow moments of free time. I tried just picking a name at random, opening my books and shoving my hand in, adding whatever name I landed on to the list. I tried Shakespeare (Orlando, Caliban, Lysander, Proteus, Horatio), I tried Byron (Francois, Ali, Juan), I tried Shelley (Ozymandias, Adonais, Prometheus, Atlas). I found nothing suitable. Then, I remembered, and I returned to Paradise Lost, which I mentioned previously as being a childhood favorite. I’m sure you’ve read it; if you haven’t, I recommend that you do. My mother read it to me, and I read it many times on my own.
Anyways, I named him Adam. It was suitable. It was more than suitable. Adam had been the very first human, and my creation was also the very first of his kind. Adam was sculpted by God, and, for all intents and purposes, I was this creation’s God. Milton said Adam was “the first human, the father of our race.” My creation was to be the same. Adam was the perfect name for him, and so, from then on, I called him Adam. He was the first of his kind, the first of whatever you could count him as. My sentimentality, I realize now, led me to choose this name. It was my remaining humanity that led me to choose a name in the first place, a decision which I originally disguised as only logical. I never recognized any sort of parental instincts in myself, but I realize now that they were there. I wasted those; I was never a father. Maybe that’s what I was doing. I don’t know; a psychologist would have a field day with me. You, I’m sure, are thinking about it now, coming up with your own list of what could possibly have been wrong with me. I have my own list, in my head. It could have been anything. Maybe it was everything.
Please withhold your diagnoses until the end, if you can, and thank you for your patience; I appreciate it very much.
Chapter Ten
Not long after the wedding, my creature was finally finished. My creation, my son. My Adam. At last, he was complete. He lay, day after day, on that makeshift bed which I had created for him, as I waited for the perfect storm to arrive so I might finally animate him. I was constantly checking the weather, hoping, delaying, and waiting. Always waiting. Finally, the day came. A tremendous storm struck, which was horrible for everyone — except for me, of course. The streets were nearly flooded, trees were about to be pulled up by the roots, and I moved Adam to his slab. I turned on my makeshift machinery, the bastardized crane-like mechanism that I created out of other machines which I had cannibalized. I organized everything, set the stage, and I waited, again. I got soaked, and I was freezing, but I hardly felt it, so strong was my excitement. It warmed me. I could barely think of anything else; I was out of my mind.
> It worked. Lightning caught my conductor, and surged through my life-giving machines. It was difficult, all of it, the entire setup, moreso than it had been with my daughter, and perhaps that was where my failure laid with her. However, I did it all that night, and it worked. I’m still in awe of the fact that this entire thing was possible, that it actually, really happened, because it seems so unreal. If it seems unreal to me, the person whom it actually happened to, I can only imagine how unreal it must seem to you, who deals with the ravings of madmen every day, so I thank you again for your open mind, your patience, and your silence while I speak.
My rigging was rudimentary at best, but it was effective. I lowered Adam back down to the shingles of the roof, broke down my stage, and returned everything to my room as quickly as I could. My room, which I was the only occupant of, had become my laboratory, and, as difficult as it was, I got Adam back into the bed he had been in. I kept up the electricity surging through him with my made-from-scratch portable machines, but it was not easy, not at all. I did my best, and, fortunately, it was enough. That night, on March 20th, 2007, at 3:38 in the dark, storm-drenched morning, Adam was born. He had been animated; he was alive.
I was, at first, ecstatic. I had created life; the sole focus of my life was finally fruitful, and I was successful at last. The product of so many years’ toil was here before my eyes, and I could barely believe it. Would you have believed such a thing? Could you have? It was incredible to me, almost unbelievable, but there it was.
