Dead Romantic

by C. J. Skuse

  ‘Most of them?’ I said.

  ‘Yes. I salvaged what I could and took it down to the bottom of the garden where there is an old ice house, buried beneath the overgrown grass. I created a small freezing chamber down there using a cryostat filled with liquid nitrogen and stored the organs and hands in parcels of frozen blood. They had thawed when you saw them. That is why they looked fresh. You can come and see it if you don’t believe me . . . ’

  ‘What about the brain?’

  She sighed. ‘If you must know . . .’

  ‘Yes, yes I must.’

  ‘It’s my father’s brain,’ she said.

  ‘Your dad’s?’ I cried.

  ‘You saw me digging on the night of the party when you got bathed in cow manure, if you remember? I was digging up my father. He was always going to be the brain for this experiment. I was just waiting for the right time to . . . retrieve him.’

  A jigsaw piece finally floated into place.

  ‘That’s what this has really been about,’ she told me. ‘Reactivating my father’s brain in a new body. So that he may live again. He wasn’t a mad man, Camille. He was madly in love with his work, with improving methods of anabiosis and organ transplantation. And I won’t let that brain die, it’s too important. The other bits and pieces . . . are immaterial. I wouldn’t go to the trouble of murdering people at the expense of my own freedom, when I could obtain free specimens from graves or medical schools, would I?’

  ‘I suppose not,’ I said, eyeing her up and down. ‘But is the brain going to work if it’s been in the ground for months?’

  ‘I visited his body in the funeral parlour. I believe it was Louis’ father who allowed me some time with him. On my own. I injected his brain with the serum there and then, to preserve it until I could come back and claim it.’

  ‘Oh right,’ I said.

  ‘I just want him back, Camille. I want my family back.’

  ‘I still don’t understand,’ I said.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Why would you? You’ve got your family. Your perfect parents. Your grandparents who come and see you whenever they get the chance. Who pinch your cheeks and tell you you’re beautiful . . .’

  This was well weird. ‘How did you know about my grandma pinching my cheeks?’

  ‘I see things. Things other people take for granted. I watch families.’

  ‘But why?’ I said.

  Without another word, she shrugged herself out of her coat and it dropped to the floor. Then she wriggled out of her black jumper so that she was stood there in just her bra and trousers.

  ‘Oh no, no, what are you doing?’ I cried as she unbuttoned her trousers and stood before me in just her shabby grey underwear.

  ‘Come here,’ she said, holding out her milky white arm.

  I shook my head so violently my ponytail whacked me in the face. Zoe walked towards me instead and I backed up against the wardrobe and snapped my eyes shut, waiting for certain death or forced lesbian sex. But when I opened my eyes she was just standing there, eyes boring into me, her arm held out before her. She was just showing me her arm. There was a deep red scar on her elbow crease.

  ‘There’s something I haven’t told you about me, because you didn’t need to know. You probably should know now,’ she said.

  I looked at the scar. ‘You’re an emo?’ I cried.

  ‘No, I’m a partial,’ she said. ‘I’m a partial reanimate.’

  A what?

  ‘My mother and I were in a car accident when I was six. She walked away from it. But my right arm and leg were both trapped. When my mother saw me, after the operation to remove them, she couldn’t live with what she had caused. She’d been drinking, which was why we crashed. She couldn’t bring herself to look at me, much less be around me. So she left. And I never saw her again. My father vowed to find me new limbs. And he did. Against all the odds, he stitched me together again, made me almost as good as new. I was the first experiment, Camille. His first human experiment.’

  ‘You were?’

  ‘Yes. I never knew where the new arm or leg came from. But as far as I’m concerned, they’ve always belonged to me. There are some things I can’t quite achieve. I can’t throw a ball to any great distance and I can’t run very fast but I don’t feel any different. I just am.’

  ‘Wow,’ I said, hushed and staring at her arm scar and the one she was showing me near the top of her pale white leg. They both encircled the limbs, right the way around, but were no thicker than a red pencil line.

  ‘When my father died a few months ago, I had no one left,’ she explained. ‘I’d always been home schooled so I didn’t know how to integrate with people my age. It was just me. I enrolled at the college to try and ingratiate myself with “normal” society. But I discovered that because of who my father was, what other people thought he was, normal society didn’t want me. So I vowed to do the next best thing: bring him back. Bring back the only person in the world who saw me as just Zoe. Not a freak. Then I met a girl in a graveyard who looked at me like I was extra-ordinary. Someone who didn’t just think, “There’s that mad professor’s daughter.” Who didn’t scurry by. And who helped me dig. And I thought she could help me with my experiment.’

  ‘And that was me?’

  ‘And that was you,’ she said.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me your dad had . . . died?’

  ‘Because in my mind, he isn’t dead. At least, he won’t be for much longer. Not if I have my way. And he didn’t cut off his own head off or get eaten by one of his “Frankenstein creations” if that’s what you’ve been told. He had a heart attack, shortly after he was sectioned. A massive heart attack. He had worked himself very hard and I think it broke his heart when he had to give it up so suddenly. He loved his work. Lived for it.’

  ‘So how did all the rumours start?’ I asked her.

  She shrugged. ‘How do any rumours start? Half-truth plus fear plus paranoia plus hyperbole. He grew to be a little . . . eccentric, my father. Obsessive. Fixated. A little overwrought. But a freak? No. Insane?’ She shook her head. ‘Not a chance.’

  ‘I got called a freak in primary school,’ I said, trying to pop the large bubble of silence that we were suddenly inside. ‘It doesn’t matter now though, does it? It doesn’t matter when you’ve got a friend.’ She moved her mouth like she was going to smile, but it wasn’t quite a smile. It was like she was afraid to make her face do one. ‘So . . .’ I said, trying to get up to speed. ‘What about your experiment? What about Sexy Dead Boy?’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘Is he still going to be my boyfriend?’

  ‘Yes. If you still want him,’ she said, buttoning up her black pedal pushers. ‘He’s almost ready now. He has all his organs and his blood. I just need to attach the head and give him the brain.’

  I made a face. ‘But won’t it be weird? Me having a boyfriend with your dad’s brain?’

  ‘That will be immaterial to you though, won’t it?’ she said. ‘He will still look like one of your poster boys.’ She nodded at the tatty magazine pictures on my wardrobe door. ‘He’ll have the outward appearance of your perfect man, but the brain of a once very sweet and loving, kind and intelligent . . . gentleman. That is all.’

  A gentleman, I thought. A gentleman would open doors for me. Kiss my hand. Offer me his coat when I’m cold. It could still happen. My dream. But she was talking about a STOLEN gentleman. With a MAD brain. And limbs taken from DEAD BOYS. ‘I still don’t know about this anymore, Zoe,’ I said.

  She moved closer to me. I had flashes in my brain of moments from my serial killer documentaries. The last thing the victims saw before their necks were tied or their throats were cut or their noses were full of chlorophyll.

  ‘I just need you to do one last thing for me. Give me back the head so I can attach it and the brain today. Then help me move him to the college on Friday night so I can reanimate him there.’

  ‘You’re going to reanimate him at college?’ I cried.


  ‘I have to. I have to get him out of the house. At some point they’re going to send a locksmith to change all the locks and barricade the gates ready for repossession. I have to leave.’

  ‘It’ll be much riskier at college, surely, with all the students and teachers are stuff, won’t it?’

  ‘No, because it’s empty at weekends, isn’t it? There isn’t a soul about then. You don’t have to stay and watch if you don’t want to. All I ask is that you give me back the head and help me move it to the college on Friday night. Then, if you wanted to, perhaps you could come and see him when he’s finished. If you still feel the same way and want nothing to do with him after that, fine. I’m on my own. Again.’

  I looked at her. ‘You promise me you haven’t killed anyone.’

  ‘Camille, you seem to take a shine to every other male face you see. It really wouldn’t have been worth the effort.’

  I still wasn’t sure. I still didn’t quite trust her. But if all I had to do was see him when he was finished, maybe I could just do that. ‘You promise me I don’t have to go along with it if I still don’t want to?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You can walk away and we need never speak to one another again.’

  ‘And you won’t . . . try and . . . hurt me. Or my family?’ I stuttered.

  She frowned. ‘Why would I want to do that?’

  I shrugged, going a little red. ‘I don’t know. I don’t think I really know anything at all.’ My heart thumped in my ears.

  ‘Camille, I don’t want your family. I don’t want to sever any piece of your anatomy. I just want you to help me complete my experiment. So will you? Will you help me complete it?’

  I thought about the little girl in those photos, little Zoe with no mummy or daddy, and now no house either. She had nothing. And I had all of that and a little dog. I thought of her scars, which didn’t look drawn on so I guessed she must be telling the truth, and I looked into her eyes. I was wrong about lots of things – maths, map reading, the ending of that movie when there’s all these blokes and one of them turns out to be this really evil bloke though you’d never know it because he’s got a limp – but when I looked into Zoe’s blue eyes at that moment, all I saw was my friend shining back at me. And I just didn’t want to not believe her anymore.

  ‘I’ll help you,’ I said.

  Call 999 for Mr DeLISH

  There comes a point in a girl’s life when nothing, absolutely nothing is more important than knowing what her brand new sexy dead boyfriend looks like. I just couldn’t concentrate on anything all day Thursday and, by Friday, I was desperate to see how Zoe was getting on.

  Knock knock knock. Tap tap tappity tap tap. Knock knock KNOCK.

  ‘I can’t wait anymore. I’m on my way into college for triple History so I really can’t stay too long but I just couldn’t wait to hear from you . . .’

  ‘He’s finished,’ she said, stepping back from the front door to let me in.

  ‘He is?’ I said.

  Zoe nodded, looking as pleased as a pie chart and wiping her hands on a bloody tea towel and beckoning me from the front door. Pee Wee trotted in after me.

  This was the moment, I thought. But what would that moment bring? I didn’t dare even wonder as I followed Zoe into the freezing-cold kitchen where she had been working most of yesterday and all of last night, judging by the bags under her eyes.

  On one of my Disney DVDs, there’s this bit when Snow White is supposedly dead in a glass coffin and the prince comes to see her and is just flabberdoodled by how gorge she looks dead and then he kisses her and she wakes up not dead. I’d dreamed about my own Prince Charming kissing me awake tons of times and the thought of it actually happening had never been more real than at that moment. I’d had to settle for Prince Chest Freezer when the moment came but I wasn’t complaining.

  When I first saw Sexy Dead Boy as a whole human being and not just bits of dead ones, I was awestruck by how fine he looked.

  Film star fine. Airbrush fine. Prince Charming fine.

  In a word, he looked totally AY-MAY-ZING!

  ‘Oh my goodness, Zoe!’ I said. ‘He’s deLISH!’

  Zoe wiped her brow with her forearm. ‘I’m glad you said that because he’s been absolutely tedious to complete.’

  ‘He’s beautiful,’ I whispered, creeping closer.

  He really was beautiful, like a prince in any one of my romance novels. Or at least, the hot junior doctor who gets the registrar pregnant in Call 999 for Doctor Delicious. There were no more open wounds or stumps. His skin was smooth like a marble statue and every join was made with the neatest stitches that were, even before my eyes, disappearing, melting into perfect pink skin. His feet were beautifully shaped and clean and the toenails short and white. The toes were the right length too. His legs were long and quite hairy, but finely muscled at the tops. Then came his hands, strong and square, the nails neat and clean. No mole on any of the fingers either. I must have imagined it before. Maybe they really hadn’t been Splodge’s hands. Maybe Zoe had got them from her stash in the ice house, like she’d said. His strong-looking arms were attached to a v-shaped torso with the cutest inny belly button. His shoulders were pale and smooth like the span of a seagull’s wings. And at the top of it all was the most gorgerini face I’d ever seen. He had a jaw that looked like it had been carved from soap. His hair was like golden thread. His lashes were soft and brown, as they should be.

  I wasn’t all that sure I wanted to kiss him on the lips though. He was, after all, pretty dead still. And one look at his winky made me go red in the cheeks. That bit wasn’t a fairy tale. I poked his man boob (which wasn’t really a boob as it was very toned). It was solid.

  ‘You’ve done an amazing job, Zoe,’ I told her. ‘What colour are his eyes?’

  ‘Uh, blue I think, yes, blue.’

  I really wanted to believe she hadn’t killed people. I really wanted to believe those weren’t Poppy’s organs inside that wondrous chest. That those weren’t Splodge’s piano-player’s hands. That it wasn’t that missing model’s head sitting on those soft-as-a-seagull’s-wing shoulders.

  I wondered how blue was the blue under those soft pink lids. Pee Wee’s lead was yanking and when I looked, he was snarfing about inside the carrier bag under the kitchen table – the bag containing the rotten feet and hands. I pulled him away.

  ‘What are you going to do with those?’ I asked her as she washed up a couple of knives in the sink.

  ‘I’ll take them to the garden incinerator at college. I saw there’s one at the back of the tennis courts.’

  ‘And tell me about the brain again,’ I said, stroking my hand over his toes.

  ‘It’s from the outstanding anatomist of the twenty-first century. Two PhDs. Over twenty years’ experience in the field. On his way to being a Nobel Prize winner. As a human being, he was polite, gentle, kind, studied poetry, read widely and loved his family.’

  ‘Perfect,’ I said. ‘He’ll look great in a tuxedo too.’

  This was the finest boy who’d ever lived. This boy would be a living god. And he was all ours. I felt quite squidgily excited by this time.

  ‘Incipit Vita Nova,’ said Zoe.

  ‘Huh?’ I said, my eyes locked on his face.

  ‘“Thus begins a new life.” It’s the college motto.’

  ‘Oh is it?’ I said, eyes still locked. ‘Can we go and get him some clothes?’

  She looked at me. ‘Yes.’

  ‘And can I pick them out for him?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Zoe. ‘That side of things is all down to you.’

  We covered him up, closed the kitchen and hallway curtains, and walked down into the town together. Zoe went to her triple Physics class while I went to triple History. Louis Burnett tried to talk to me afterwards while I was waiting for her class to come out, but I blanked him. I actually blanked him. I felt awful after he’d walked off, but I just couldn’t face talking to him at that exact moment. I didn’t want to hear any more �
��Sorry’s or ‘I was just worried about you’s. And besides, we were on a mission now. A mission to go shopping for the most boring things anyone could possibly buy: men’s clothes.

  ‘He looks too good for me,’ I said, as I thumbed through a shelf of t-shirts. I put three in the basket: green, blue and pink. Pretty random, but I liked them.

  ‘Well, you wanted perfect, didn’t you?’ said Zoe, trundling along behind me. ‘I thought you wanted a suit for him? Suits are at the other end.’ She pointed out the part of the store we needed to go to next.

  I did want perfection, for deffs, and Sexy Dead Boy was as close to perfect as I could imagine. But something just didn’t feel right.

  On the way to the suits department, I aired another worry with Zoe. ‘What can we do about his . . . you know. His . . .’

  ‘Underpants?’ she said as we passed a whole display of them. She found his size and threw three packets of white briefs into the basket.

  I didn’t want to say it. I went all red. ‘No, his, you know . . . his . . . his winky.’

  ‘His penis, you mean. I find it hard to discuss the male organ of procreation by referring to it as a “winky”.’

  We reached the suits. ‘It looks scary.’

  ‘That’s only because you’ve never seen one before.’

  ‘I have. I’ve seen loads. God.’ I blushed. ‘Well, I think I saw my dad’s once when he was changing under a beach towel. But it might have been his thumb.’

  I didn’t like the look of any of the suits. They were all either black, grey or navy blue. No colour or kilts or anything. I turned back and went into the sock department.

  Zoe followed. ‘All male animals have penises, Camille. There’s nothing scary about them. They’re not designed to be on display so it hardly matters, does it?’

  I thought about Damian. He had one of those. Louis had one too. ‘Do they all look like that?’

  ‘I haven’t seen all of them, but I imagine they’re all much of a muchness.’