The hours that followed passed in a blur. She was in a hospital, being treated for frostbite. A detective interviewed her, calmly, patiently sifting through her mumbled replies for a description of what had happened to her, and then finally she was left alone.
At one point she came out of her dozing state and thought she saw two policemen standing at the end of her bed. She wasn't sure if they were actually present or not, but like Agatha Christie characters, gathered at the denouement of one of the great mystery writer's stories, their conversation conveniently filled in some details concerning her captors of which she hadn't been aware.
"Maybe it was before your time," one of the policemen was saying, "but that description she gave fits."
"No, I remember," the other replied. "They were residents in the Zeb's criminal ward and Cross killed their shrink during a power failure."
The first officer nodded. "I don't know which of them was worse: Cross with that monstrous face, or Boddeker."
"Poisoned her whole family, didn't she?"
"Yeah, but I remember seeing what Cross did to the shrink—just about tore the poor bastard in two."
"I heard that it was Boddeker who put him up to it. The poor geek doesn't have a mind of his own."
Vaguely, as though observing the action from a vast distance, Harriet could sense the first officer looking in her direction.
"She's lucky she's still alive," he added, looking back at his companion.
In the days that followed, researching old newspapers at the library, Harriet found out that all that the two men had said, or that she'd dreamed they had said, was true, but she couldn't absorb any of it at the moment. For now she just drifted away once more, entering a troubled sleep that was plagued with dreams of ghosts and monsters. The latter wore masks to hide the horror inside them, and they were the worst of all.
She woke much later, desperately needing to pee. It was still dark in her room. Outside she could hear the wind howling.
She fumbled her way into the bathroom and did her business, then stared into the mirror after she'd flushed. There was barely enough light for the mirror to show her reflection. What looked back at her from the glass was a ghostly face that she almost didn't recognize.
"Monsters," she said softly, not sure if what she felt was pity or fear, not sure if she recognized one in herself, or if it was just the old woman's lunatic calm still pointing an accusing finger.
She stared at that spectral reflection for a very long time before she finally went back to bed.
▼▼▼
"We'll find you another," the old woman said.
Her tea had gone cold but she was too tired to relight the stove and make herself another cup. Her hands were folded on her lap, her gaze fixed on the tin can of cold water that still sat on the stove. A film of ice was forming on the water.
"You'll see," she added. "We'll find another, but this time we'll put her together ourselves, just the way your father did with you. We'll take a bit from one and a bit from another and we'll make you the perfect mate, just see if we don't. I always was a fair hand with a needle and thread, you know—a necessary quality for a wife in my time. Of course everything's different now, everything's changed. Sometimes I wonder why we bother to go on. . . ."
The monster stared out the window to where the snow still fell, quietly now, the blizzard having moved on leaving only this calm memory of its storm winds in its wake. He gave no indication that he was listening to the old woman, but she went on talking all the same.
THE LAST SUPPER AND A
FALAFEL TO GO
George Alec Effinger
▼▼▼
IT WAS a brisk, mid-November, frost-on-the-pumpkin night when two men in the front seats of an Arbier Parish Sheriff's patrolcar broke off an argument about who'd they'd rather nail, Michelle Pfeiffer or Kim Basinger. The bigger of the two said he wouldn't have Kim Basinger on a bet, but he wouldn't mind getting close to Uma Thurman. The smaller patrolman started to say that he'd never even heard of Uma Thurman, but they both shut up at the same moment because they saw something in the chilly darkness that shouldn't have been there. They were parked at the foot of the levee, and they were there to chase down high school kids who liked to wind out their dads' cars on the crushed-shell roadway at the top of the embankment. Laying rubber on the levee was desperately illegal in Arbier Parish, though no one could say why, least of all Officer Kasparian or Officer Block in the patrolcar.
Fortunately for the patrolmen, who were relieved to curtail their everlasting debates concerning either unobtainable women or the true meaning of the Arbier Parish Legal Code, all Officers Kasparian and Block saw through their windshield was a guy. A damn big guy. He was seven feet tall without half trying, and he was just standing in the Johnson grass about halfway up the levee, a kind of confused expression on his Mary, Mother of God ugly face.
"That's one ugly son of a bitch," said Officer Kasparian.
"We been trained for all sorts of eventualities," said Officer Block, slowly opening the car door. "But the resources of St. Didier Parish are pretty limited, as you and I both well know after the failure of the recent bond measures. So I think I'm right when I say I wasn't trained for no ugly. No ugly like this. God don't like no ugly."
"Let's not be putting words in the holy mouth of the Almighty, at least not yet," said Officer Kasparian. "You notice that the ugly guy has his head sewn on? Anything in any of those high-tech law enforcement seminars they send you to in Orleans Parish about dealing with sewn-on head perpetrators?"
"They talked about this guy once who had the end of his tongue ripped off and they raced him to the hospital and to this very day he's almost as functional as you or me. This is pretty much different, though."
"Uh huh," said Officer Kasparian, slowly getting out of the patrolcar on his side. Both cops had their nightsticks at the ready, but neither had drawn his sidearm.
Officer Block raised his hands above his head. "We mean you no harm. We are friends. We come in peace."
"Hey," called Officer Kasparian from the defensive position he'd taken beside the front left wheel well, "why are you treating him like some kind of alien invader from space or something?"
Officer Block turned and gave his partner an exasperated glare. "How many seven-foot-tall guys with their heads sewn on do we usually run into between the towns of Arbier and Linhart?"
"Not a lot," Officer Kasparian admitted.
"So let me try it my way, all right?" Officer Block stood in the damp weeds and waved his hands over his head some more, clearly forgetting what happened to everyone who tried that, in the 1953 movie classic, The War of the Worlds.
The damn big guy looked from Officer Block, who was practically hopping up and down trying to establish communication, and Officer Kasparian, who was still in his nearly invisible defensive position on the far side of the car. "Say," yelled the ugly giant, "can I help you guys out with something?"
Officer Block nodded to Officer Kasparian, who crawled carefully back into the patrolcar and called into the Sheriff's Office in Linhart. He gave the sergeant there all the particulars, and the ultimate decision was that the guy who'd just had his head sewn on was doing nothing especially illegal, but Officers Block and Kasparian were to transport the big mother to Mercy Lutheran in Linhart anyway, dump him on an emergency room nurse or doctor, and then get back to their position.
The two patrolmen had time to look at each other. Then Officer Block said, "Well, let's do it." He called out to the big mother. "We think we ought to run you by the hospital. Is that okay with you?"
"You bet," said the poor seven-foot-tall sucker. He got quietly into the back of the patrolcar, separated from the peace officers in front by a heavy steel cage. This was where the ugly giant's problems really began.
Officer Kasparian and Officer Block drove the big mother to Mercy Lutheran Hospital in the parish seat of Linhart. The cops handed the guy with the sewn-on head over to a nurse, accepted a scrawled releas
e form in return, and gladly escaped back into the cool, clear evening.
The emergency room doctor had a lot of trouble getting information from the ugly giant, who couldn't remember his name, didn't know where he lived, and couldn't recall any friends or relatives who might come get him.
The doctor had the innocent sucker undress, and was astonished by the full catalogue of sewn-on parts—not just the head, but arms, legs, lesser appendages, and the top of the skull, where a sly and crafty surgeon could have stashed stolen jewels or strange and virulent poisons if there were no brains inside taking up the space. The doctor shrugged, hid the ugly giant in an out-of-the-way room, stuck him full of Thorazine, and kept him under observation.
Soon, the hospital realized it couldn't justify holding the big mother any longer, and its Social Services Department passed him along to the Hanson State Hospital for the Mentally Disabled, where a social worker steered the weird-looking bastard to a work-release program. They gave him a job and loaned him enough money to get a small apartment. That might have been the answer to all the poor sucker's problems, except when he reported to work the first day, his supervisor discovered the gruesome giant had no Social Security Number.
Without the number, the damn big ugly son of a bitch couldn't pay taxes and couldn't stay in the work-release program. The Social Security Department frowned to learn that the only information the innocent bastard could offer was a name, Victor Frankenstein, which was sewn on a label inside the big mother's sport jacket, which in the first place fit him like a junior miss sweater on the Goodyear blimp.
The dumb guy went from federal agencies to state agencies to local agencies, all promising in their titles to do their utmost with human resources and manpower and economic development. Even the Welfare Department threw the poor bastard out when he could answer only the first question on their evaluation sheet, and the Civil Rights people had a tough time deciding just how his rights were being abridged.
After being evicted from his apartment, he'd taken up residence in a large Maytag refrigerator carton on an upper floor of a burnt-out and abandoned tenement in a rubble-strewn neighborhood of Linhart. There were lots of other people huddled in their cartons in the same building, but they had little to say to each other. At night, in the cold darkness, the grotesque son of a bitch could hear the scamperings of little animal legs.
Days passed, and his frustration grew faster even than his physical hunger. He had no money. He hadn't eaten in days. Begging never even occurred to him, and after all, who would drop a dollar or a handful of loose change into the grotesque, deformed hands that showed every sign of coming from the same human-parts outlet store as his horrible sewn-on head?
The next morning was Thursday, and the big mother awoke to the sound of music. Friday he had an appointment to visit the Community Action Agency and check out their action, but today was free, though. He crawled out of the Maytag carton, stood, and stretched, listening idly to the far-off clashing of drums. He could hear a few other people nearby crunching shattered glass and broken brick, and he saw their shabby figures when they passed before a windowless opening that hadn't yet been boarded over. He stretched again, stared around defiantly in case anyone had designs on his Maytag carton, and climbed slowly down the foul- smelling staircase to the ground floor.
The sun was its ineffectual autumn self, hiding behind clouds that might rain or might snow or might just sit there in the same place in the sky until April. The air had gotten colder overnight, and the ugly bastard jammed his huge, misshapen hands into the sport jacket's pockets. He wished he owned gloves. Gloves were just another treasure he could acquire if he stumbled upon the secret of getting a Social Security Number.
The reedy blare of band music came to him, made discordant by distance. The sorry schmuck sat down on a low stone wall and glanced toward the sound. High above the barren, leafless autumn trees floated vast, fantastic figures, the inflated balloons of Linhart's annual Thanksgiving event. It wasn't New York and it wasn't Macy's, but Linhart, Louisiana took pride in its smaller version of the grand parade. The big mother with the sewn-on head was astonished.
The brain that had recently been crammed into his misfitted and still- sutured skull had not been created new, like a mass of blank and empty neural tissue receptive to every new experience. No, his brain had come from somewhere—from someone, it had to be admitted—and within it there were peculiar vestiges of knowledge and behavior. They explained his unfailing politeness and his grim acceptance in the face of one agency's failure to help after another.
Even more positive remnants were buried, though, in his dim and perplexed mind. One of these was a faint image of a Thanksgiving Day Parade, watched on television perhaps, or maybe in person, curbside in Linhart or New York or some city in-between. The ugly giant smiled slowly, and moved his arms clumsily in time with the music. He stood from the crumbling stone retaining wall and lurched unsteadily in the direction of the parade. "Music good," he said to himself in his rough, hoarse voice.
He walked for ten minutes, up a hill and down another, and then along an avenue that ran perpendicular to the street he was following. He looked down one side-street and saw, like a childhood miracle, a giant inflated balloon in the shape of a mighty rocket ship from a television show that had lasted only one TV season. A high school band marching in front of the balloon was tootling away on the TV show's nearly forgotten theme song.
The ignorant bastard hurried excitedly to the curbside, where he could hear the complaining of the band members. The air was cold, and the lower brass players were having trouble with their heavy metal mouthpieces. The woodwind players worked their fingers constantly to keep them limber. "Hey, man," yelled one snare drummer sourly, "what we doin' this for anyway, man? Nobody payin' us or nothing" Despite the band members' ill humor, it was all more spectacular than anything the unlucky schmuck had ever seen. He turned his sewn-on head and bolted neck to catch a preview of what was coming next. It seemed to be a mass of cold, sullen young girls in pink suits with pointed hoods, carrying flags of blue and silver that they whipped through the air in something approaching precision.
"It's a sign," said the innocent bastard, "a terrible sign, that I woke up this morning in a Maytag carton in a burnt-out building and didn't even know that it was Thanksgiving. It is the perfect statement of my ultimate degradation." Yet the parade passed him by like a religious procession with additional clown units, and he began to feel a deep, overpowering emotion. It was stronger than anything the ugly giant had ever before experienced. It was a kind of cleansing, an absolution that began down at the most basic elements of his being. Witnessing the Thanksgiving Day Parade validated him as a person, even though the wary civil authorities would not take the initiative in their agencies and programs to help him. The big guy shrugged; all that was for the future. For the present, he was just like everyone else, standing on the edge of the street and thrilling at one astonishing marching unit after another.
The supreme magical moment came right at the end, as it always did. The float that closed the parade, the one that was more elaborate, more beautiful, with more sparkles and flocked snow, was the Santa Claus float. Santa Claus had arrived for the season in Linhart, Louisiana, through the auspices of the Sudarin-Cooke department store.
The ugly bastard with the sewn-on head stared up through the twinkling lights, and lithe young men and women dressed like Santa's helpers waved down to him. The concept, the firm belief in Santa already existed in the big mother's truncated awareness, and suddenly it occurred to him that if the government had set itself firmly upon a road to failure, then only magic had a chance to salvage the innocent sucker's desperate life.
"Here, Santa!" yelled the grotesque son of a bitch. "Here, Santa! Here, Santa!" He yelled and yelled until the Santa Claus on the sequined throne swiveled slowly from one side of the float to the other, and Santa's face turned down toward the eager throngs on the sidewalk. Santa's eyes locked with the damn big guy's for just a
moment, and the ugly bastard was sure that for the briefest instant, wordless communication had passed between them. He knew it. He felt it. And just to be on the safe side, the big man began yelling, "My number! My number! My number!"
For his part, Santa stared tiredly and then looked away toward a shrieking young boy in a heavy, uncomfortable winter jacket. "Ho, ho, ho," said Santa, wheezing just a little after the long parade. The boy in the winter jacket just screamed and turned away.
The ugly bastard watched the Santa float move along the street, and he realized that the parade had passed and was over. His restructured chest was filled with hope and joy. Every bit of this day had been a new experience for him, and he wondered how much more blissful life could get, short of death and a return to the parts department.
The poor sucker wandered away from the avenue, back toward his own burnt-out tenement. He walked through a vacant lot, and three men and a woman were standing around a fire in a big old fifty-five gallon drum. They invited him to warm his hands by the fire, and he was so overwhelmed by their generosity that he could find nothing to say. He found himself weeping. Further up the street, a man sat on the front stoop of his apartment building with a tiny portable television. The man invited the dumb bastard to watch for a while, because one professional football team was threatening to do something offensive to the other. The big guy didn't know if he wanted to stand there and witness it. He was still feeling so wonderful from the parade and seeing Santa.
Before he could make a decision, a young woman with a clipboard came down the hill toward him. "Hello, sir," said the young woman. "Happy Thanksgiving."
The poor sucker had become fond of young women with clipboards. They were always so earnest. "Thanksgiving," he said, nodding. "Thanksgiving good."
"You haven't had Thanksgiving dinner yet?" said the woman. She smiled at the ugly son of a bitch. She took him by the arm, something few people had dared to do without a syringe full of Thorazine in the other hand.
The Ultimate Frankenstein Page 28
