I yanked off his shoes then leaned in to unfasten his belt.
“What are you doing?” Owen grabbed my arm.
“You don’t honestly think we can shock someone in jeans, do you? Don’t be such a prude.”
Owen’s face reddened to the shade of uncooked hamburger meat. I thought I heard him say something about common decency, but once I’d unbuckled the belt and the waist of the tattered jeans, he took one pant leg and we each pulled. I had been unaware that there were degrees of dead, but with his jeans removed, the boy somehow looked a lot deader. I pulled his shirt over his ears. The gash down his side smiled up at us, crimson and menacing.
Unclothed down to his boxers, I inventoried the full extent of the damage. Cuts of various sizes marred his legs, presumably from where he’d been sliced by shattering glass. A deep purple bruise colored the side of one thigh. I worked my fingers into a pair of rubber gloves and rummaged for a pair of tweezers before beginning to extract two inch-long shards that were lodged in his chest. Owen turned his back as I let each clink into an empty jar.
I reached for the stack of textbooks positioned nearby. Scraps of paper hung out of dog-eared pages. I selected one with a yellowing spine, my dad’s old copy of Gray’s Anatomy, and flipped open to a two-page spread detailing the nervous system to use as my road map.
I locked my teeth together and tried to steady my hand. The scalpel was cool and stiff between my fingers as I rolled the boy farther onto his side. Positioning the point at the base of his neck, I cut through the skin and muscles until there was a clear view of his spine. With more force, the scalpel dug into bone, and I found what I was looking for—the spinal marrow. I inserted one of the wires I’d gathered so that it touched the marrow with enough lead to trail out several feet once I laid him back down.
The next incisions were smaller. One on each temple with only trace amounts of blood. By the time I hacked through to his sciatic nerve, I barely saw him as a person at all.
Seconds slipped into minutes, and before I knew it, I’d skated through over an hour. My gaze flicked from one end of the body to another, searching for holes, searching for possible mistakes. Mistakes I couldn’t afford.
I rubbed my eyes and then turned the nozzle on the faucet. Water poured over him, mixing with the blood to create a sickly red. Like thinned-out watercolor paints. I raked through every possible nook of my intellect. What had I missed? What could go wrong?
On some level I was there. My mind told my hands what to do and then they did it—basic chemistry, synapses snapping rapid-fire. I dumped the brine water into the basin with a splash. I felt as if there were a layer of Plexiglas separating me from the experiment and I was standing on the other side of it watching.
I nestled the wires into place, each now burrowed into one of the incisions. The next piece of the puzzle was the diathermy device. My crown jewel. The part that had taken me the longest to figure out. Even if the brain patterns were reignited by the jolt of electricity, the blood in the heart still needed to start pumping again, a problem first discovered—but not solved—by Dr. James Lovelock. I opened one of Dad’s tool drawers and pulled out the ancient aircraft radio that I’d made Owen purchase on eBay. Owen was the machinery geek, and he’d retooled the radio until it was in working order and could act as a frequency transmitter to emit microwaves. Before, I’d tried to use heated metal, mainly spoons, to reheat the hearts of several Mr. Bubbleses. The problem was that if they ever woke up, they’d be met with third-degree burns. The radio frequency transmitter was a more humane alternative. I placed the clunky aircraft radio over the boy’s heart and let Owen lean the boy’s torso forward so I could duct-tape the device to his chest.
Meanwhile, my own heart was very much alive, pumping and halfway up my throat. Einstein army-crawled a few inches closer.
Staring at my handiwork with open eyes, it was the first time I could see the complete picture of what I’d done.
And it was a terrible thing.
Because there was a boy. And he was dead.
But instead of looking still and peaceful as he should have, I had sliced and sutured, cut open and inserted, and what was left was a monstrosity lying prostrate in a filthy tub. My limbs turned to wet cement.
Head down, Owen wheeled the kilowatt meter over. “How much?” he asked, his mouth pressed into a white slash.
I glanced over the notes I’d written, the bits of chicken scratch that were barely legible. “Five hundred and fifty,” I said. Five hundred and fifty. The number seemed to ring in the air. Five hundred and fifty. Higher volts than any breathing human body could withstand. He shook his head, but leaned down, placing his elbows on the cart. Adjusting his glasses, he forced the dials to spin.
A cable snaked its way from the gauge, and I held the end in my hand, imagining the buzz of electricity coursing inside my grip, waiting to be unleashed. On the other side, the trail of yellow, green, and red wires leading from the boy’s body floated in the brine water below.
I switched on the radio transmitter, then held my arm out over the water. I looked back at Owen.
“Famous last words?” he said, eyes burning with intensity.
“After this, maybe there will be no last words.” I took a deep breath and released the fingers clutching the electric cable into the brine water.
Sparks created firefly bursts all around us. The cords churned up brine like a water moccasin. I crouched for cover as the storm cellar filled with the smell of smoke and burning hair. The body shook, trembling violently in the water like it was strapped to an electric chair. I turned my head but couldn’t look away. The boy’s face morphed into horrific grimaces. His tongue lolled out the side of his mouth. An eyebrow shot up to an unnatural height, and his pupils rolled back into his eye sockets until all I could see was white.
My throat caught fire. I felt bile rising up, dangerously close to reaching the roof of my mouth, and I wanted to scream and cheer and throw up all at once.
An earthquake swept through the mass of lifeless flesh, blurring lines and distorting the shape that once looked human.
Einstein scurried in between my feet. Then Owen was at my side. His hand reached out for me at the same moment a shower of sparks exploded from the kilowatt meter, and a shock jolted through the soles of my feet and raced its way up my body before my vision snapped off like the click of a camera shutter.
And there was nothing.
SEVEN
Observation: Initial inspection of the first human subject revealed the following injuries: hematoma above the sixth rib (2-inch diameter), laceration along right side of torso (estimated depth of ¼ inch), surface scrapes above right patella, right and left femurs, and left ankle (all minor), small laceration over left ocular socket (½ inch).
* * *
My eyelids fluttered open. Dust and dirt stuck to the lashes. The first thing I noticed was that the ground was in close proximity to my face. A groan came from somewhere nearby, followed by a whiny, “Cut it out.”
I turned painfully onto my side. Einstein’s tail was aimed at my face, and she was slobbering all over Owen. I pushed myself upright. Another wave of hurt shot through my body, like my skeleton was made up of one giant funny bone and I’d smacked it with a baseball bat. The tip of Einstein’s white tail was smoking.
Beside me, Owen pulled himself to a sitting position with the slow deliberateness of a zombie from the grave. The full volume of his hair stuck straight up. His eyes were round saucers of surprise in his skull.
“Well, that was a shock,” he said drily.
I patted the top of my own head, and my palm bumped against hair several inches above where it should be in relation to my scalp. I blinked and glanced around. The high voltage must have reacted with the damp floor, traveling to the spot where we stood and slamming Owen and me with an electrical punch to the figurative gut. Speaking of which, my stomach was killing me. The dirt and concrete must have saved us from the worst effects or else we’d be human French
fries right about now. My heart flip-flopped unevenly in my chest. “What the…?”
Wires cascaded from the edge of the tub. Empty. The transistor radio lay broken into clunky pieces on the floor nearby. I pushed the heels of my hands into my eye sockets. The veins in my head pounded.
Water puddled at the base of the bathtub. Smaller splashes formed a trail at even intervals, and that was when it hit me, coming back in a great, crashing tidal wave of realization. There had been a corpse there earlier. Corpses did not generally move on their own. Unless, of course, they weren’t corpses any longer.
I jumped to my feet. Einstein skittered back. “Owen,” I hissed, tapping his shoulder. As I did so, I turned and froze, my heart now missing a full beat. Buh-boom. Skip. Einstein grumbled then let out a hoarse bark.
“You know that feeling of when a semitruck is driving through your brain?” Owen asked, dragging himself to his feet. “Yeah, that.” He rubbed at his temples, eyes squeezed shut.
From across the room, a boy stared directly at us. I tugged at Owen’s sleeve. He registered the added presence in the room, and his mouth fell open.
My skin tingled. “Eureka,” I said in a slow exhale.
It was not any boy. It was the boy, and now that he was standing in front of me, I could picture him again with his startled expression the second before my headlights crashed into him. He was wearing only his pair of dripping boxers and was slick-chested and wet like he’d just been born.
He cocked his head, examining us. Now upright, he was even taller than I’d thought. More substantial, too.
Owen put his hand up, palm facing outward. “We come in peace,” he overenunciated.
I pushed his hand back to his side. “This isn’t Roswell, you idiot.”
I took a cautious step forward, heart pounding ferociously. The deep laceration that sliced down his rib cage looked dried out now, with cracked, shriveling edges. Wiry thread crisscrossed over the dark red gash where the edges of his flesh were sutured together. The other cuts and scrapes had also scabbed and turned colors. The whole of his torso was coated in angry red branches, like veins, spoking out from where the diathermy device had sat on his chest. I recognized these as the signs of high-level, direct electrocution, and my scalp tingled.
I wrung my hands together. “Okay, I’m just going to say it: You’re not going to, like, kill us, are you? We don’t have a zombie situation on our hands?”
He pursed his lips and sucked in his cheeks; his eyes were wide.
Einstein resumed her deep, throaty growl. “Right. Sorry,” I said when he didn’t respond. “That was … insensitive.”
I looked over my shoulder at Owen, who shrugged and waved me forward.
There was a stillness about the boy in the way he stood that made me worried he’d endured some degree of rigor mortis.
“Let’s start over,” I said. “Hi.” I waved.
His face was no more expressive than a marble slab. “Who are you?” His voice was low and flat.
“I—I—” I stammered, taking one step back without meaning to. “I … I’m Victoria.” I tried to steady the trembling in my fingers. “But, uh, people call me Tor.” Einstein waddled closer to me and took up residence behind my legs. Not much of a guard dog. “And that’s Owen.” I gestured over my shoulder.
“Hey.” Owen’s voice was hoarse.
Dark hair was matted down over the boy’s forehead, and there was an almost imperceptible gray tint to his otherwise olive skin. “Victoria.” He enunciated my name slowly, like he was trying it out for the first time and couldn’t quite decide if it sounded right. “Owen.” He dipped his head, nodding toward Owen. “And who am I?” Slowly, he raised his hand and placed it flat on his chest.
This, I hadn’t expected. “Who are you?” I asked. “You mean you don’t know?”
He shook his head, deliberately, gradually, revealing the two razor-thin incisions at each temple.
This time I took several steps forward, walking over to the busted radio and tub of brine. I had to tilt my chin up to make eye contact. “What do you remember exactly?”
“Nothing.”
I circled him, examining the crusts of dried blood. “A blank slate?” I stopped in front of him. “Where’re you from?”
“I don’t know.” He knitted his eyebrows together. “Did you bring me here? I’m sorry. I don’t remember you. Victoria.” The way he said it was apologetic. Like one of those overly contrite British fellows from a Jane Austen novel, but without the accent.
Owen and I had never thought to consider how re-instigating the brain patterns might affect thought, especially memory. Naturally, we’d expected there to be complications. We’d just expected those complications to be those of a rat, or in other words, relatively uncomplicated.
Explaining the situation to a walking, talking corpse? Considerably more difficult. I took a deep breath. “Okay, then, there’s something I need to tell you.” I felt my mouth twisting to the side the way it did when I wanted to tell a lie. “Yesterday there was an accident.” I stopped. “I feel like you should be sitting down for this. Do you want to be sitting down? The reason people are usually asked to sit down before receiving bad news is that it lessens the distance to fall, you know, if you faint or something.” Like now was the time to play Human Encyclopedia. He didn’t move. Just stood there, arms pinned to his sides. “Okay.” I hesitated over how to proceed. Owen, of course, was being no help. I could tell him how he died. Or I could remind him he was walking the streets at close to 2:00 AM. I wasn’t sure how much information was too much and how much not enough.
The point was he was here now. Breathing. He had a heartbeat even if he had no memory. I decided the best approach was clinical. Give him the facts that mattered. I would ease him into the full picture later. When it made sense.
“All right then.” I clapped my hands together. “I … came across you last night,” I said, choosing my words carefully. “And, well, there’s no easy way to say this, but you died.”
A strained gargle rose up in the boy’s throat. For an instant, a look of panic flashed over his face like he was dying all over again. “Died?”
Owen moved to my side, adjusting his glasses to get a better look at the man-creature occupying space in our laboratory. “Great bedside manner, doc.”
“I was going for the Band-Aid approach,” I said out of the side of my mouth. “Rip it off and the worst is over.”
“Do these look like Band-Aid problems to you?” Owen retorted in a stage whisper.
“Shut up.” I jabbed him with my elbow, and he jabbed me right back. I pressed my lips together and tried to seem in control. “I brought you here,” I said. “Because I thought I could help.” My words were coming rapid-fire now. “See, I’ve been working with Owen on reanimation. And”—I could hardly suppress a smile—“and, as you can see, it worked.”
The boy blinked, once, twice, three times, and then he lurched forward. I shrank into myself. I had a vision of him mangling me to death like a grizzly bear, but then, when I was about to scream for help, he wrapped me inside a stiff hug.
His skin had the coppery tint of blood, and he smelled salty and a little sick with my nose pressed into his chest. “Thank you,” he said. “Victoria. Thank you.”
My lungs tightened at the word thank. I was the reason he was dead. A confession prickled on the tip of my tongue.
Just then, though, there was a pounding at the hatch door. “Tor! Are you in there?” Mom beat her fist against the entrance, and Einstein’s howl joined the chorus.
I squeezed the boy’s shoulders hard and wondered briefly if he was cold without any clothes on. “Don’t say a word, ’kay? Owen,” I said. “You two hide.”
“Hide? Where?” He glanced around the knickknack-filled room. But I was already bounding up the stairs.
At the top, I slapped my cheeks and tried to rearrange my face into something that looked less guilty.
“Victoria Frankenstein, are you in th
ere? It’s seven forty-five in the morning. You’re gonna be late for school.”
Seven forty-five, I mouthed. I had a physics quiz first period. “One second, Mom,” I said, shrinking back farther from the door. There was a crash of metal from down below. My shoulders jerked up to my ears.
“We’re okay!” said Owen’s muffled voice.
“Be. Quiet.” My molars ground into one another.
“I hear you in there.” Mom shook the latches on the door. She wasn’t a morning person.
“Mom, I said I’m coming!” I licked the palm of my hand and used it to flatten the mop of hair sticking out from the top of my head, then added more saliva to try to smudge off eyeliner using my thumb.
“I’m counting to three, Tor. One…” I heaved the inner latch up and over, unlocking the hatch. “Two…”
With both hands I shoved open the door and climbed out. “I’m here,” I said breathlessly, kicking it closed behind me. The sun assaulted my eyes. I felt like a vampire and immediately threw both arms over my head to block the light.
“What happened to your car?” Mom said without introduction.
“I—” I was still squinting against the brightness of morning. The rusted metal groaned on my father’s weather vane, and Mom spared an irritated glare for the rooster outline that spun atop the post of cardinal directions on our roof.
In the events of last night I’d completely forgotten about my car. I cast around for a lie, a good lie, a convincing one. “I … hit a deer, Mom.” There, that was believable. There were deer everywhere in Hollow Pines. “I’m sorry,” I said, and I knew I probably should have felt worse about that fib than I did.
Mom appeared as though she’d been put together from a collection of chicken bones this morning, and I wondered if the light was too bright for her, too. Her teeth were still stained grape juice purple from her favorite brand of Merlot. I’d tried a sip once. It’d tasted like sweet vinegar and made my breath smell like rubbing alcohol.
Teen Frankenstein Page 4
