Teen Frankenstein

by Chandler Baker

  The front door opened, and there was a shriek. A lanky girl with curly brown hair ran across the room and hugged a freckled redhead. The redhead turned an unflattering shade of pink. “What’s going on?”

  The brunette pressed her hands to her friend’s cheek. “Where have you been? I thought you were … that maybe someone had taken…” She was slurring her words, but her tears made her seem genuinely distraught.

  Knox stood up and raised his hands over the crowd. “New rule,” he shouted. “Nobody leaves. Everyone stays right here in this house. There’s a killer on the loose, people.”

  There were cheers and hoots. Only in Hollow Pines, Texas, could a murderer turn a party into a better version of itself. The beat picked back up, and Billy Ray stepped up onto a coffee table and thumped his fist against his chest. “Who’s doing the next keg stand?”

  I scanned faces for Cassidy and Adam. Maybe the celebratory mood was contagious, but as I weaved in and out of dancing bodies, I felt my lips working their way into a smile and had the faintest hint of champagne bubbles floating around in my head.

  I held my near-empty glass of Coke to the light and then sniffed it again. I shrugged.

  When I emerged from the throng, I spotted Adam near the fireplace. I was giddy at the sight of him. Giddy and a little bit groggy. I hadn’t known those two feelings went together. Weird. The thought was fleeting, and I pushed through the cluster of kids from my school. How did all these people go to my school? That was another weird thing. Why was I hanging out with them somewhere other than on campus? I squeezed my eyes shut. My head was beginning to feel like it’d been stuffed with cotton balls. I hoped I wasn’t getting sick.

  As I came closer to Adam, I had to squint. He wasn’t looking right. His skin had that splotchy texture that made him look like he was coming down with a rare tropical virus. He stumbled and caught himself, using the mantel.

  “Smith’s wasted!” a boy nearby crowed.

  Wasted? I registered this in the back of my mind as my tongue would a leftover bit of chicken stuck to my teeth. Adam wasn’t supposed to drink tonight. Hold on. Neither of us was supposed to drink tonight. I flattened my hand to my forehead. The world seemed to have just performed a quarter rotation, and I had to steady myself to keep from spinning with it.

  Where was Cassidy? I had to concentrate hard on each face in the room. They lurched in and out of focus. I didn’t see her. Adam’s knees buckled. A few more hollers of encouragement from the peanut gallery. Adam did indeed look drunk. Obliterated. And maybe he was, but I didn’t think so.

  I cut across the room—or maybe not cut—since I swerved once or twice. This wasn’t good. I squinted at the ice cubes floating around in my drink. What was in this? My feet felt three times their normal size, and it seemed as though no matter how fixated I stayed on my target, which was, in this instance, Adam, he continued to jump to my left or right and I’d have to align my path all over again.

  “Adam.” I caught his elbow. His name turned my mouth into marshmallow fluff. This wasn’t good. I wasn’t feeling right. I forced myself to concentrate. Through damp hair, he peered up at me. His arm, hanging from the mantelpiece, supported his weight. He tilted his chin as if to study me. “We have to get you out of here.”

  “You’re different,” he said.

  “I’m fine.” I glanced to either side. Then I put his arm around my neck and began leading Adam, my Adam, down a dark hallway. I chose the first door that was unlocked. I guided him inside, then made sure to turn the latch behind me.

  We were standing in the Hoyles’ master bedroom. I lowered Adam to the floor on top of a plush oriental rug. The king-sized bed was a four-poster fit for royalty.

  Inside the bedroom, the bass was a muted echo, muffled further by the cotton-ball stuffing that had taken over the space between my ears. I stretched my jaw, trying to make my ears pop. Something was definitely wrong. Adam lay on his back. His chin tilted up. His back arched slightly. His breaths were shallow.

  “Victoria.” His fingers gripped the air and tightened into fists. I hated the cat-vomit-colored circles that spread out from his eyelids. “You’re drunk.”

  “I didn’t have anything to drink except—” A moment of clarity wormed its way through my foggy brain. Knox. I closed my eyes for a moment too long, and the earth took off spinning. My eyelids snapped open, and I used the bed to steady myself. “I’m fine,” I insisted. My arms felt as though someone had filled their veins with cement. How much of that drink did I have? I tried to remember backward. All of it. I was pretty sure I drank all of it.

  Adam closed his eyes and for a second lay very still.

  I dropped to my knees and shook him. “Adam? I’m sorry.” I clutched his hand. “But I think the game drained you faster than normal.”

  He stared up at the ceiling. My thoughts felt as if they were swimming through molasses. I could figure this out. I would figure this out.

  I stood up and nearly fell back down. My surroundings spiraled, and I struggled to reorient myself to begin taking stock of the master suite.

  There was a large walk-in closet with fancy, sliding racks for shoes and little else. I opened up drawers and found sachets, dried fruits and herbs tied up in bows to make rich people’s socks smell floral. I shoved each drawer shut with my hip. There was nothing in here I could use.

  I stumbled and grabbed for the nearest thing to keep me from falling. It was a fur coat, and it drooped onto the carpet. I left it there.

  When I returned to the main room, Adam’s eyes had rolled back into the sockets. “Adam?” I slapped his cheek. He didn’t wake up. I considered dousing him with a cup of water but kept looking instead. Where was a generator when you needed it?

  Under the bed, in the nightstands, nothing. Finally, I turned my attention to the bathroom. I’d never seen a tub that wasn’t also part of the shower before. Again, there was the siren call of a place to nap. I resisted. Instead, staggering, I rummaged through the vanity and other drawers until I found the first thing with a cord: a hair dryer.

  I turned it over, feeling the weight in my hands like a gun. I looked at the dryer, then at the bathtub, then again at the dryer. The plan was simple, which in this case was a nice way of saying dumb. But it was science.

  I plugged the drain and twisted the knob. Water began pouring into the bath. Next, I went to the clock radio on top of one of the nightstands. The numbers blinked from red to nothing when I tore the wires out of the back. I carried my bouquet of red, yellow, and green wires back to the bathroom.

  I pushed my thumbs into my eye sockets. The back of my throat turned slimy with mucus. My hands shook and my insides turned seasick. I couldn’t think about what would happen if I was too late. So I focused on getting him undressed, pulling off his jeans and jersey until he was stripped to his boxers. Stitches framed the cavity in his chest that masked his metal plate, and the electrocution scars formed white tree branches across his chest.

  “Adam, we have to get you up. We have to get you into the…” My eyelashes fluttered and I swayed. “The tub.” I hooked his arm over my shoulders and together we crawled and dragged him to the bathtub. He collapsed inside, and his pupils stared up at the ceiling. Crossing myself, I poured four shakes of expensive bath salts into the water in an attempt to replicate brine.

  I attached each of the wires, per my usual routine, to the rings left open in the conductor plate. Steam billowed into the air and caked the mirrors with fog. I saw Adam, sliced and cabled, for the first time aboveground, and he looked even more grotesque in this position than usual. Almost inhuman. Like a creature stolen from the lab. I wanted to look away. But instead, I switched on the hair dryer, held it over the bath, and dropped it.

  THIRTY-ONE

  It was only on Owen’s suggestion that I thought to look into the power of suggestion as a possible source for the subject’s “memories.” The power of suggestion is a process by which one person’s thoughts or feelings are guided by the allusions made
by another person. This psychological process can be so strong as to create false memories. Think of people who confess to murders after a grueling interrogation only to be proved innocent later. However, I’ve been able to pinpoint no potential sources of allusion that could be creating these memories in Adam’s head.

  * * *

  The lights blinked off, swallowing the room in black ink. Orange and yellow sparks burst from the socket and died midstream. There was a thrashing in the tub, like a shark churning up water. Skin flapped on porcelain, thick thwacks of suction-cupped flesh. The music stopped cold. Muffled shrieks and squeals trickled through the walls. In the bathroom, where I stood motionless, the noises stopped. I held the air in my lungs and could still hear the shallow pulls of someone else drawing in oxygen.

  I fumbled for the light switch and flicked it on. Nothing happened. I must have shot the circuit breaker.

  “Adam?” I whispered.

  A grunt. I dropped to my knees and slid in his direction, feeling with my hands out in front of me until my palm landed on his arm. I slid my fingers down until I could grasp his hand. He squeezed and, in the darkness, where no one could see, I smiled.

  “You’re alive,” I said.

  “I was never really alive.”

  My fingers wriggled around to his wrist, where I could feel the throbbing of the veins underneath. “You have a pulse. You have a heartbeat. You have blood coursing through you,” I said softly.

  “Are those the things that make a person alive?” My eyes adjusted. “Look at me.” A shadowy outline of Adam reached up and snatched the wires attached to his chest.

  I recognized the dark shift of mood that came over Adam after each recharge, but I still hated it and wished it away with a selfishness that was childish.

  Our hands didn’t leave each other. The darkness distorted my perception of the distance between us, but I sensed his closeness like a charge in the air. The short space between our two faces. The hairs on the backs of my arms raised.

  “I saw fire,” he said. “The house.” His voice was strangled. “The one that I always see, it was burning.” He pulled his knees to his chest. “I heard people screaming.”

  “And you’re sure it’s not, I don’t know, a nightmare or a hallucination or something. It could be anything. It could—”

  “I was there, Victoria. I can smell the smoke. I can feel the ashes falling in my hair. The fire’s hot. It pushed me back. I couldn’t go any closer or else I’d burn…” He trailed off. “They’re screaming in there.”

  I gulped. If Adam’s memory was, indeed, returning, how long until he remembered how he’d died? I wanted to tell him. In the dark, here, when he couldn’t see my face, but I was too chicken. And then the lights flickered on. Adam and I squinted against the sudden brightness. I felt woozy. The floor seemed to rock.

  Someone pounded on the door.

  “Let me in.” My head snapped up. Cassidy. “They saw you go in there.” The doorknob jiggled. I stood up and helped Adam to his feet. We looked at each other, then I searched for a window.

  Too late. The doorknob stopped jiggling. A metallic click and the door swung open. Cassidy stood wielding a bobby pin, which she quickly returned to her hair.

  Adam and I were now shoulder to shoulder in the bedroom opposite Paisley, Knox, and a very pissed-off Cassidy. Her fists made tiny balls by her sides. Her bangs fell askew across her forehead. “I knew it,” she said. Her accent came out thick and mad.

  Paisley gasped. An accusing finger flew up and pointed at Adam, who, I realized at that moment, was standing dressed only in his boxers, dripping water onto the carpet. Tracks of silvery scar tissue left twisted rivers of raised skin across his stomach and ribs. Angry sutures pinned muscle and fat over bone. “Freak,” Paisley said.

  Cassidy’s eyes widened as she took Adam in. My shoulders slumped. “It’s not what you think.” A hiccup punctuated the end of my sentence.

  A boy. A girl. A party. A locked bedroom. Cassidy was good at math and she’d already run the calculations.

  She tore her gaze from Adam’s chest and focused on my face. “Everyone said I shouldn’t trust you.” Tears pooled in her eyelids. Her pink-stained lower lip trembled. “And they were right.” She spun on her heel and pushed through the onlookers.

  Adam snatched his clothes from the floor and tugged on the pair of jeans and jersey. Black paint ran down his cheeks. His raven hair stood on end. He was wild. He shoved through Paisley and Knox. “Cassidy!” he called. “Wait!”

  “Nice scars, you mutant freak.” Paisley scoffed and then trained her cold blue eyes in my direction. “Now I see what he saw in you. The circus sideshow and the Whore of Babylon. You deserve each other.”

  When Paisley turned to leave, her form split in two. I pushed the heels of my hands into the side of my head and groaned. The carpet seemed to be tilting at a sharp incline. The outline of everything multiplied like a TV with a bad signal.

  “Turn the music back on,” someone yelled from the other room just before a rap song blasted through the surround sound speakers. The pounding bass nearly buckled my knees.

  “You don’t look so good.” I couldn’t make out any of the features on Knox’s face.

  “I’m fine.” I staggered toward where he stood near the open hall. My shoulder banged into the doorjamb. Deep breaths, Tor. If only this house would stay in one place.

  I followed Adam’s path more slowly, leaning against the wall for support.

  “Slut,” someone said to me as I passed. This garnered hearty chuckles all around that took on a fun house echo.

  I made it down the hallway in time to see Adam punch his fist through drywall. The crunching sound reverberated in my head, and I had to shut my eyes against it. Too loud, Adam, I wanted to say. But my lips felt as if they belonged to someone else.

  “Christ, dude! That’s my wall!” Knox hollered over the music, which had revived into the soundtrack of my own personal nightmare.

  I stretched out my arm, reaching for Adam and misjudging the distance, because now it seemed as though he was much farther away. So much space stretched between us. He tore out chunks of plaster when he jerked his hand, unfeeling, out of the hole he’d left, and went after Cassidy.

  My chest tightened. My brain wouldn’t function. All I could see was the crumbling of Cassidy’s face. The tears splashing her cheeks. Adam’s fist charging through a wall.

  A sea of unfriendly faces glared at me. I swatted the air. My cheeks drooped along with the corners of my mouth. My tongue, suddenly too big for my mouth, was working up words. I wobbled sideways. The house zoomed in and out of focus. The judging faces surrounded me. Everywhere I turned. Mean. Nasty. “You don’t know me,” I slurred. “I’m a genius.” I poked my finger into my chest. “A real live genius!”

  Someone whistled. “All aboard for the train wreck.”

  They laughed. They were all laughing. It roared inside me. I pressed my fists into my eye sockets. Make it stop, make it stop.

  “Maybe you should lie down.” There were gentle fingers on my shoulder. I thought vaguely that they belonged to Knox, but I wasn’t sure. I tried to remember why this mattered. “You can use my room,” the voice said. “It has a big, comfortable bed with your name on it.”

  I whimpered at the mention of bed. Yes, please. Bed. Even the word sounded enchanting. Yes, yes, let me crawl under the covers. I thought I managed a nod. Wet sand filled every inch of my body. I leaned on the arm that was offered to me. It was too much effort to keep my eyes open, so I didn’t. Instead, I caught flashes of carpet through my lashes. Muted footsteps. A lock clicked. A door creaked. Inside there was a dark room that smelled like cologne. I needed to lie down. There was that word, only now it was in object form and it was even more enchanting than when I’d heard it suggested. Bed.

  “You’ll feel better in the morning,” said the Knox-voice. He led me to the great, big, fluffy bed. I dragged myself onto the mattress and fell into a heap on top of the comfor
ter.

  I felt like I was floating. I stretched my hand out in front of my face. It seemed as if it belonged to somebody else. There was something I was supposed to remember. Something important.

  “Just for a second,” I mumbled. “Just need to lie down.”

  He ran his hands through my hair. Only, it didn’t feel like my hair. It felt like someone else’s, too. How funny. I watched a shadow lean down, and then there was a warm mouth on mine. I didn’t know what I did with my lips. I hated the taste, but I couldn’t move. I was consumed by the bed, which seemed to have taken hold of me like a Venus flytrap. If Venus flytraps could be fluffy clouds of comfort.

  “Knox!” A girl’s voice drifted in to meet us. “Where are you?” I was drifting, too.

  A finger replaced the lips. “Shhhh,” he said. I shut my eyes. I heard footsteps. “I’ll be right back.” The door clicked again.

  I wanted him to take his time. Finally, I could sleep. Finally, finally, finally …

  The weight of a deep, dark slumber wrapped itself around my torso and pulled me under. Conscious thought lapped at the edges of my mind. I was supposed to remember something. It was bothering me. Like an itch on the bottom of my foot that I was too lazy to scratch.

  Sometimes I could lay awake for hours at night while my mind spun off into a dozen universes of thought. But this was the opposite. This felt like someone had poured Pepto-Bismol between my ears. My mind was quiet. Too quiet. Except for this one stubborn thought that wasn’t a thought at all.

  Why did I feel so funny? The answer rose slowly to the surface like bubbles. Knox.

  My drink. Knox and my drink. I tried to connect the two ends, forcing myself to roll onto my side. I let out a pathetic moan and peeled open my eyelids. I was still in the dark room. On the big, fluffy bed. Knox’s bed. The door was closed. I needed to get out of there.

  I hoisted one leg over the edge, followed by the other, and slid to the floor. Somehow, in the last two hours, I had gained about a thousand pounds. Pushing myself to my feet, I stumbled for the door. It took me three times to grip the door handle and then to twist it. The light from the hallway nearly blinded me.