"Monster!" she whispered, and knew that no one listening would comprehend the greeting.
It was her Monster, first given form in that long-ago, tumultuous, companionable summer at Diodati when everything had seemed possible if only fate could be avoided. Death and grief, then, had been mere words, with no true echo in her heart, although she, like the others, had thought she knew all the grand emotions of the world. After the first nightmare and the subsequent fugue-like fever of creation, Mary had come to think of the Monster as idle, foolish fancy, nothing more than a toy of a girl's Imagination. Now here it was, more real than she was; she was aware of an odd tingling sensation in the parts of her body that had been paralyzed by the touch of her mother's shade, and of a terrifying warmth in the icy region around her heart.
The Monster made as if to touch her, to caress or attack. Mary tried to shrink away, but the Monster was very close, as if their feet were attached, or the tops of their heads, or—like the infant Siamese twins she and Shelley had seen in a traveling freakshow one autumn in Genoa—their breastbones, sharing one swollen heart.
Mary rubbed her eyes with her right fist and tried clumsily to shake her head. Although the light in the room was steadily growing brighter as the sun rose over ice, she could hardly see. But the peculiar and oddly familiar odor of the Monster overlay the old-woman's-sickroom smell, a mix of acrid human sweat and chemical bitterness unexpectedly, disorientingly, lightened by a flowery fragrance.
She stared, and the Monster took form before her. The boundaries of her body were no longer clear. The Monster was so near to her now that it might have been inside her.
As always, the limbs of the Monster were perfectly proportioned, the features beautiful. Cumbersomely, Mary surveyed her own body and visualized her own face, first as in a mirror and then from the inside out. She had always thought of herself as plain, and years without Shelley had made her ugly; although she could not specify an appendage or a feature out of place, she had long thought of herself as deformed.
The pearly yellow skin of the Monster lightly, almost delicately covered the network underneath of muscles and arteries. Mary was able to lift her right hand enough to inspect it. Her own skin was grayish, wrinkled, mottled, stretched too tightly in some spots and hanging loosely in others; the underlying bone structure and pattern of blood vessels looked wrong, as though they could not possibly function, and, indeed, on the other, distant side of her body they no longer did.
The creature's hair was lustrous black, and flowing. Mary twisted her head crookedly on the hot pillow, and remembered that her own hair was tangled, dirty, dulled by age and sickness and too much sorrow.
All these characteristics of the Monster were familiar to her. She remembered dreaming them, imagining them, writing them down, reading them aloud to her appreciative if somewhat distracted first audience. But there was something new this time. Creation, once turned loose upon her chaos, had not stopped. Horror had vivified. During its ice-bound exile the Monster had changed much as she had changed; its long period of corruption had dropped its disguise and exposed an entirely new face. The mask of the Monster had rotted away. Shelley's heart must have always known: ... he hath awakened from the dream of life . . .
Now she knew what had always been true: her Monster was female. She had not created the pendulous breasts, the delicate hands, the shadowy and concave region between the thighs; she would never have been able to bring herself to allow such thoughts into her mind, much less to set them down on paper or, dear God, read them aloud to the three intense young men who had not in the first place truly regarded women as real. But her Monster was and had always been female, a woman like herself, and Mary did not know how she could bear this revelation.
And she knew why the Monster had come to her now. If she did not somehow protect Shelley's heart, the Monster—her own orphaned creation, the one so long denied—would discover and devour it, would claim it as her own. But how could one protect a heart?
"Go away from me!" It was more a wail than a shout, more a plea than a command.
The Monster drew back a little, her beautiful face contorted with the bitterness of the eternal outcast. Mary had imagined that the Monster's face would look like that to Victor Frankenstein but she had never expected herself to be the agent of such unhappiness. She knew her own features were twisted, too, and she could not smooth them anymore.
"Why are you here? Why have you come to me now?" It was a senseless question, for she knew the answer, but she held her breath painfully for the other's reply.
"You summoned me," the creature said, and Mary recognized the voice as more like hers than hers was now.
She did not deny it. "Go away, then. I have changed my mind."
"I have nowhere else to go. I belong to you. I am your creature. No one else will have me."
"I will not have you, either, you hideous thing." Her own cruelty amazed her and was, she saw, utterly ineffectual.
"I am your creature." The Monster pounded her chest. "And I am empty. I am in need of . . ." She stopped, her neck turning awkwardly as she gazed about Mary's room.
Mary stopped herself from finishing the plea, and said instead, audaciously, "Bring me that bound poem on the mantel, then. There is a linen- wrapped parcel inside. Bring me my husband's heart."
Her Monster smiled in childlike pleasure at being asked to do something for her, and Mary's stomach turned. The Monster did not seem surprised by the request, or in the least confused. She turned stiffly and made her way directly to the mantel, her strides much longer than Mary's would have been so that she crossed the room in two steps. Her hands around the bundle were steady; Mary could hardly bear to see them there and, indeed, could see only their outline in the icy brightness of the room.
The Monster lifted the package from the mantel, pivoted, and brought it to her. Mary could raise only one hand to take it and the Monster would not release it to her, as if knowing she would drop it and the contents would spill. She bent from the waist and set the bundle on Mary's lap. It was remarkably light. That was distressing. Poems should be heavy, Mary thought, and Imagination. Shelley's heart should be heaviest of all.
My spirit's bark is driven far from the shore . . .
Mary fumbled with the brittle pages of the "Adonais." The beautiful lines tore beneath her trembling fingers and she wept.
. . . fed with true love tears instead of dew . . .
The linen bindings were stiff and tight from the years, and with only one hand she had no hope of manipulating them.
One with trembling hands clasps his cold head . . .
The Monster put her hand over Mary's and Mary recoiled, but she was held fast, and the Monster's longer, stronger fingers pried apart the linen, carrying Mary's fingers with them like shadows.
A tear some dream has loosened from his brain.
Mary could not see inside the stiff old cloth. Its shadows had deepened, its wrinkles roughened. Her probing fingers felt nothing but grit and dust. She looked at her Monster, and for a long moment they were both motionless and silent.
Grief returns with the revolving year . . .
Mary cried out. The Monster cried out. The cloth was empty. Shelley's heart was gone.
Mary scrambled for an explanation. Perhaps the heart had never been there. Perhaps Hunt, aided by her own mad fantasies, had tricked her, or Trelawney been crazed by his own grief; perhaps all these years she had kept herself in the unmindful presence of an empty piece of cloth.
More likely, the heart had simply disintegrated. Like everything else in her life, it had likely faded away from her, been reclaimed, altered its form and substance so thoroughly that she couldn't recognize it anymore. The Monster was weeping, her hot tears melting Mary's flesh.
Or someone had taken it.
Mary and her Monster shrieked at each other at the same time, "You have stolen the heart!"
The Monster's hands came around Mary's throat. The powerful thumbs pressed into her vocal chords so
that she had no hope of crying out. The Monster's frenzied thoughts exploded in her own brain, and her whole body was paralyzed now, although she seemed to be moving very fast. Her heart was being consumed by the Monster's flame, as Shelley's had not been; there was a curious sensation of wholeness and warmth. As she hurtled into the dark caverns of this new journey, her Monster came with her, holding high the torch.
▼▼▼
Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley died in her London residence on the first day of February, 1851. Paralysis had set in during the last month of her illness. She was buried at St. Peter's Church, Bournemouth, in a tomb with her father William Godwin, her mother Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, and Shelley's heart.
MAD AT THE ACADEMY
Esther M, Friesner
▼▼▼
IT WAS, as it had to be, a dark and stormy night. Somewhere, anyway. But the California skies over Forest Lawn Cemetery were clear and the moon would not be hurried to fullness, no matter what the darkly evil doings and despite the demands of artistic necessity. A myopic crescent squinted down over the tombs, and almost missed sight of the lithe figure in ninja garb presently stealing from one shadowy mausoleum to the next.
Even without it being stormy, the night was dark. They generally are. And so a flashlight beam bobbed and wavered just ahead of the midnight creeper. The pencil-thin lance of light picked out the crushed gravel paths, the carved sleeping lions, the weeping angels and assorted other funereal bric-a-brac guarding the eternal rest of those who had left life, joy, and good taste behind them.
All at once, the way became a smidgen more jungly. The flashlight snared mountains of flowers in its beam: gardenias by the acre, massed flocks of white orchids, ghastly sheaves of ashy roses, lashed to wire forms. So much horticultural overstatement could only indicate a recent burial. One blanket arrangement used marigolds to spell out: ROBERT, WE WILL ALWAYS LOVE YOU. The "i" in "Will" was dotted with a heart of bachelor's buttons that contained a Smiley Face picked out in pink rosebuds. The comma was candytufts.
The flashlight paused, then clicked off. "This must be the place," said its owner. The voice sounded feminine, but that was just a best-guess. Whoever this untimely caller was, the ninja mask he, she, or it wore did much to garble and disguise voice and words as well as face.
"Time to get to work." Talking to oneself is an excusable aberration if the conversation takes place among the dead, notoriously poor raconteurs all. The flashlight was holstered, a small but useful-looking crowbar drawn. Beyond the heaps of vegetation, the door of the tomb beckoned. It looked almost impossible to reach without running a combine harvester across that miniature ocean of flowers. Difficult? For some. But the catlike grace of the ninja is legendary. Not a petal would be out of place to mark the fact that someone had paid a clandestine visit to this grim monument.
The catlike grace of anyone with the bucks to buy a cheap knockoff ninja suit is a wild variable. Mask or no mask, the words, "Oh, sweet green bloody damn!" were perfectly audible as a freestanding wreath of silvery dahlias pulled a sneaky blindside maneuver, deliberately stuck out one easel-leg where some people wanted to walk, and flung itself on top of its prey when they both went toppling down the tomb steps together.
"Shit, I broke a nail." This time both voice and subject-matter conspired to leave no doubt: that was no ninja, that was a lady. She crawled out from amid the flowers, brushed her black p.j.'s clean of clinging petals, and assaulted the tomb once more. It was easier now. If one wreath was fallen, why stop there? Her eager hands chucked aside all the other floral tributes to dear Robert's memory while she hummed the song about jump down, spin around, pick a bale o' cotton.
Breaching the mausoleum door was a piece of cake. Inside, she was pleased to discover that she didn't need her flashlight. Robert's executor had sprung for an anemic eternal light, a fan of Vaselined orange glass lit from behind by as big a dimbulb as good old Robert had been. Not much light, but enough to see her way clear.
The coffin lid decided to teach her the moral lesson that we must strive mightily to reach our desires. It wouldn't open. It laughed at her crowbar. This would have been good if it were not a mere figure of speech although, come to think of it, Robert too had always managed to laugh between tightly clenched lips. An open-mouthed guffaw would have revealed his fillings. For an actor, visible cavities meant they docked you so many Physical Perfection Points, with a corresponding drop in salary.
Cursing, she gave the crowbar one more stiff-armed downward shove. Something gave. The coffin lid popped up like well-done toast. "About fucking time," she observed, and tilted the lid back all the way.
Death and the Make-Up Department had been very good to Robert. Gazing down on him like this—his limbs composed, his face serene—it was hard to call up a vision of him in earthly sleep—belly down, rump up, nose squashed, gaping mouth drooling into the pillow, one hand invariably tucked underneath himself in case some cat burglar broke in who'd want to steal the family jewels.
Which word, "jewels"—in the concrete and not the slang sense— brought her back to the matter at hand. So to speak. Really, Robert's executor had been niggardly, even for a lawyer. Only three rings decorated each hand, and none of them bearing top-seeded gems. At least the corpse still wore the gold neck-chains that had been his hallmark in life. People would have expected to see them at the viewing, and the paparazzi needed to catch the glitter of real gold in their lenses when they took their bon voyage shots of the dead celeb. Whether or not Robert's attorney had planned to return the next day and strip off the goodies, they had to stay put for the funeral. In Hollywood there was a name for folks who denied the expectations of the Press: dogmeat.
"I'm just saving him the trouble, that's all," she murmured, trying to keep her hands from shaking as she reached behind his neck for the clasps. She wore gloves, but it was hard not to imagine an unearthly cold penetrating the thin black cotton if she accidentally touched Robert's flesh. She worked quickly, eager to be the hell out of there.
She got four chains off and had only three to go when a clasp stuck. She had done this enough times before to know that graverobbing is never without its little glitches. The secret is not to panic, as she reminded herself. Then the clasp got caught on her cuff and Robert's head lolled into the crook of her arm and something went wrong with whatever mortuary magic was used to keep his mouth shut and his jaw dropped and she saw all those fillings winking up at her again and she screamed.
"Allow me."
Fat, capable hands reached over the lip of the casket to undo the golden snare. She was free to fall back a few steps and get a good look at the little black gun levelled at her chest.
"You'd better explain," said the little man whose little gun it was. "But first you'd better take off that mask."
She did, without demur. You don't argue with firearms, even if they are in the power of a small, bald, plump individual in laboratory whites who must be the evil twin brother of the Pillsbury Doughboy. As she pulled the ninja hood away, she tossed the freed masses of her auburn hair just the way she'd done in Amazons in Leather Cages. If you can make your captor want to have sex with you, she reasoned, he won't kill you.
Then again, considering where she'd just met this one, maybe that wasn't such a sure bet. Forest Lawn was her answer to Tiffany's; what if it was this bozo's answer to a dating service? Some like it hot only when they can get it cold.
"Speak up, my dear," he said. "Who are you? What are you doing here? And be honest. I loathe liars."
All right, she told herself. So he's not in show business. Aloud she asked, "Are you—are you a guard?"
"A guard? Me?" He threw his head back and laughed. He had more cavities than Robert, all of his filled with gold. His Klondike mouth closed with a startling snap. "Yes, I am a guard: Guard and guardian of the secrets of life itself! Warder of the mysteries behind the divine spark of human mortality. Orphic visionary who dares to trace backwards the dark path that leads every man from the light of ex
istence into the grim shades of the grave. They dare to call me mad—mad, do you hear? Ha, those fools! Mad! Me! I! I, Dr. Godwin Shelley, mad—!" A peal of maniacal, spittle-dotted laughter echoed within the tomb.
"Oh," she said.
Strange to say, she was not afraid. A bright hope dawned in her heart, a stainless, innocent hope like that of a child who has gone astray in a dark and sinister shopping mall, only to find the rest rooms at last. She knew what he was talking about. She thought he was off his nut, but speaking the same language as an armed-and-dangerous wacko meant you were halfway to disarming him. And she certainly knew this language, all righty. Hadn't she lost her virginity in Devoe Jenkins' pickup truck during the Halloween marathon showing of Frankenstein, Son of Frankenstein, Revenge of Frankenstein, and Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man at the Yellow Rose Drive-In in Eastland? Some things stay with you.
"Pleased to meet you, Doctor. My name is Polly Doree. I'm an actress and part-time model." She took the little pouch from her waist and poured its glittering contents onto the floor between them. "I also rob the dead." She gave him her best Penetrating Sincerity stare, only used once in Swordswoman of Venus, a movie famous for its amount of sincere penetration. "Can we talk?"
"You fool! That was his brain you dropped!"
"Oh, put a sock in it, Doc. He's going to be an actor. It's not like he needs one."
Time passed. Things happened.
"The next asshole who calls me Igor," she said, "I kill."
Dr. Shelley leaned across the monster to pat his assistant's nylon- sheathed knee (in a strictly professional manner, of course) and reminded her, "They can call you anything they like, Polly my dear, so long as they call United Press first and give us more of that lovely, bankable, free publicity." His hand remained where it was, although with the monster's considerable bulk intervening it couldn't have been a comfortable position for the good doctor to maintain.
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