A Self Made Monster (21 page)

“I’d heard he’s a writer.” The nurse marveled that Alex could write even his name.

David turned to the patient, who had rolled onto his stomach. “The poor guy needs some street fighting lessons.” He peeled the bloody bandage from the man’s neck. “Christ.” He bent over to better see the two wounds in the neck. They were deep and long; the ripped red flesh on the neck’s surface contrasted sharply with the white flesh deeper down.

The patient’s breathing became labored. He jerked his head away from David, and the wounds flexed and foamed like the red gills of a dying fish. “Help me get him on his back, Nurse Kane.”

David moved to the rear of the cot as Nurse Kane moved to the middle.

She worked her hands and arms underneath the patient’s belly, and David reached under the shoulders. David nodded, and they began slowly turning the patient over.

Alex had dropped to the floor and onto his belly. Slowly, he rolled over. When the patient’s right arm got caught behind his neck, Alex’s arm did the same. The patient wailed. Alex wailed.

The patient twisted free and fell to the floor. Nurse Kane kneeled to help him, but the patient grabbed her head. When Nurse Kane tried to escape, the patient lunged at her and bit off her nose.

David pushed the emergency button then tried to pull the patient off Nurse Kane. He got the patient in a bear hug and struggled to heave him into a corner—the corner where Alex writhed, as if he too were struggling in a bear hug.

“Jesus Christ, Alex! Move! Go for help and—” David choked. The patient had his hand down David’s throat.

Alex stopped moving.

The patient jerked his hand from David’s mouth; the hand clutched a hunk of wiggly flesh. The patient winced at the flesh, as a child winces at raw fish on his dinner plate. He kept wincing as he ate it.

Alex stared.

Thirty seconds later, a male nurse and two security guards burst in. One guard wretched, the other screamed. The male nurse, more used to blood and guts, slapped the guards and told them to help.

David’s body was on top of Nurse Kane’s.

The patient and Alex were sitting in the corner. The patient wore Nurse Kane’s blood-spotted cap and sucked loudly at Alex’s bloody neck. Alex ignored the patient and juggled Nurse Kane’s nose.

One guard pushed the nurse out of the room while the second opened fire on the patient. The patient scrambled to the door. Halfway down the hall he trampled the second guard and the nurse, who were screaming for assistance.

The patient dove through a plate glass window and fell two stories onto a doctor’s parked car. He rolled off the car hood and ran ten yards before the afternoon sun drove him to his knees. A rancid, oily smoke rolled off him, then he burst into flame.

Meanwhile, Alex sat in another room, fingering the holes in his neck. The doctors kept asking if he were all right. “I’m fine,” Alex repeated.

And he really was fine. He could not remember ever feeling so calm. He sat on a cot, surrounded by doctors and nurses, and he was relaxed. The worried stares, muffled talk, and glaring overhead lights did not bother him. “I feel good, truly good.”

Alex was born again, the blood and saliva of the walking dead mixed with his own. The husk of human personality left behind in Alex’s skin was perfectly content to be a kind of dead man for whom the world of the living—the world of expectations, demands, and disappointments—meant nothing. For most of his natural life, Alex had bitterly wished that he cared nothing for other people, that he could wall himself from their grotesque emotions and maddening motives.

As a born again dead man, the wish was miraculously granted.

After a doctor bandaged Alex’s neck wounds, he put a comforting hand on Alex’s shoulder. “I’m sorry to tell you that your brother is dead.”

Alex nodded solemnly. “I’ll just have to make the best of it.” He glanced at his watch. “Starting now.”

He stood, thanked everyone for their help, and reluctantly accepted a ride to his brother’s house. He watched the news: the “brutal multiple murders” at the county hospital were the evening’s big news. Officials explained that the murderous drug addict evidently used propellant to immolate himself. The hospital staff tried to forget the incident, and they eventually did.

As years passed, David often tried to recall that baptismal afternoon. Sometimes when he bit a victim’s neck, images flashed across his closed eyes: David’s bloody unbelieving face, Nurse Kane’s nose, the demented patient baring bloody teeth. Yet the images remained opaque and fragmented, like an often-spliced movie illuminated by a dim projector.

Now, as Alex woke from the dream, he smiled. The once fragmented images now cohered into a thrilling gestalt. Finally, he could recall the second birth that freed him from the curse of his first birth. Fleetingly, Alex realized that people would be appalled by his gratitudes: grateful for his brother’s murder, grateful for the bite of a fiend. And unspeakably grateful to escape the demands of the living.

Morality, Alex mused, interests only the smug or the weak.

Alex was neither.

Claire Sweet was anxious. She could not find her notes about two books,
The Greek Idea
and
The Ideals of Greek Culture
. After searching her apartment three times, she searched her car three times. The Chevy was filled with paper cups, fast food napkins, and candy bar wrappers. But no notes. Claire slouched into the driver’s seat and battled the urge to cry. A cry would release a lot of tension, but she could not spare the time.

She resigned herself to the fact that the notes were gone. She made up her mind to pull an all-nighter at the library to catch up. As she trudged back into her apartment, the phone rang.

“This is Mr. Nixon. I need to talk to Claire Sweet.”

“Speaking—”

“I need you at work tonight, Claire.”

“I can’t,” Claire said weakly.

“I’m sorry. We try to stick to schedules, but I need you here by 5:00.”

She hung up the phone. “Goodbye ‘A’ in History,” she muttered. She smoked a stale cigarette and cried.

Mr. Nixon was behind the cash register, ringing up a little boy’s 16-ounce Zip Gun slush.

“Glad you’re here,” Mr. Nixon admitted. His mood was sour because he had been stuck with the busy afternoon shift. School kids streamed in, shouting, pushing, and buying the candy, pop, and chips they could not safely steal

Claire took over at the register. As Mr. Nixon removed his orange florescent Zip-Quick apron, he studied Claire’s rear. Another boy, a bag of Cheezie Corn in his hand, followed Mr. Nixon’s gaze to Claire’s rear.

She turned. “Yes, Mr. Nixon?”

His toothy grin was vaguely perverse. “Pardon me, but there’s a note stuck to your, stuck on your jeans.” He retreated to his office in the rear.

Claire reached around and pulled. The note was written on a small square of paper with an adhesive strip. “Hope You’re Well,” the note declared in neat handwriting: Edward’s handwriting. She had been busy that week and had not been to the library. She knew she was avoiding the problem. How, she wondered, do you fend off a boy’s crush?

“He’s a nice kid,” she whispered to herself. “It’s a nice note.” She tossed the note away, then a revelation struck her: Edward must have her notes! They had shared a messy table at the library, and he must have mistakenly picked up her notebook.

She found his number in the directory and called.

“The number you have called,” the recording chirped, “is no longer in service.”

Claire decided to visit Edward tonight. Her stomach knotted at the thought, but she told herself to be calm. True, appearing at lovestruck Edward’s door past midnight with heavy eyelids might give the wrong impression. I’ll just have to explain, she thought, that I really need those notes.

The evening passed slowly. Teenagers did more loitering than buying. The occasional drunk or pothead wandered in for more wine, more cigarettes, or more rolling papers. At midnight, Claire waved wearily as Marsha entered. “Thank God you’re here,” Claire half-shouted.

“I can tell you’re tired, kid.” Marsha winked as she ran a comb through her graying hair. “Your drawl is comin’ out.”

“And I’m gettin’ out of here.”

“Just give me a sec to hit the restroom, OK?” Marsha disappeared into the rear to sit on the toilet and have a smoke.

A man with unkempt hair and tired, red-rimmed eyes walked slowly down the aisles. He stopped, mumbled, and kept walking. Then he fidgeted before the cooler. Claire fleetingly wondered if he was an incompetent shoplifter. He slowly turned and approached Claire.

“Pardon me.” He licked his cracked lips. “Do you have any bottled water?”

“I think you went right by it. Aisle two.”

“I also need orange juice.” He squinted as a car’s headlights momentarily shone in his face.

He looked familiar. She had seen him in the college’s
Academic
Center
. “There’s orange juice in aisle three,” she told him.

She studied him as he gathered the water and juice. It took him a long time. He stared vacantly at the bottled water before taking it. When he found the jug of orange juice, he shook it several times, then studied it. Finally, he nodded and brought the items to the check out.

He pointed at the cigarette display behind Claire. “I’d also like a pack of Dunhills, please.”

After paying, the man immediately opened the cigarette pack, took out a cigarette. “Got a light?”

Claire handed him a book of matches. His hands were dry, too: red and cracked. He blinked through the cigarette smoke, and she recognized him. “You teach at the college, don’t you?”

“Sorry.” He smiled rather sheepishly through his cigarette’s smoke. “I don’t remember names too well.”

“I’ve not had you for a course. I’m just a freshman myself.”

“Ah.”

She hurriedly explained: “Took me a little while to get the money together. I’ve got some scholarship money, but—” She chuckled to hide her discomfort. “It still doesn’t pay the bills, so I work here, too.”

“Working, saving, keeping up your grades…” The notion fatigued Alex. “You must be in peak fitness, right?”

“Sure,” she joked. “It’s all the coffee and pop that keeps me going.”

“I should try that myself,” Alex said.

“Oh.” Claire extended her hand. “My name’s Claire. What’s yours?”

Alex shook Claire’s hand. “Alex Resartus. I’m in the English department.” He knew he looked addled, so he joked, “At least I think I am.”

“You’re a writer, aren’t you?” She was intrigued by Alex’s palpable weirdness. He was like a surrealist painting: the more she looked, the more odd detail she saw. Only one side of his face was shaved, she noted, and his eyes moved independently, like a lizard’s.

Alex nodded, gathered his juice and water. “I’m trying to be one. It’s not easy.”

“I imagine so.”

“Nice meeting you.”

As Claire drove across town toward Edward’s apartment, she imagined the scene that might await her:

Claire: I’m sorry it’s so late (Tone apologetic yet businesslike), but I think I left some important notes on the library table and—

Edward: Nice of you to come by. (Grin indicates that he misunderstands visit) Let me get you a drink.

Claire: The notebook would be enough, thanks. (Wonders how she can take the notes and run with a minimum of discourtesy)

Edward: I’m glad you’re here because (Takes a deep breath) I need to tell you something. I love—

Claire: —I’m sorry, but there’s just no way, Edward—! (Runs out the door without her notes).

She chuckled ruefully. With any luck, Edward would be entertaining another female—an interested female. She walked to the rear of the apartment and broken glass crunched under her steps. The basement window was shattered. She squatted and peered inside. Darkness. The shattered window seemed too small for a thief to squeeze through, but Claire was still worried. She hurried to the back door.

She knocked, waited a half-minute, then knocked harder.

“Who’s there?”

“Claire Sweet. I’m sorry to come here at such at an hour, but—” She heard him tromp toward the door, wheezing. “Christ Edward, are you all right?”

“I’m trapped in here!” His voice cracked, and Claire wondered if he was laughing or crying. “Somebody locked me in.”

Claire looked down. A padlock, barely visible in the darkness, rested snugly in a thick hasp.

“I need a locksmith.”

“No you don’t. All you need is a—well, I need a big screwdriver. Pass it to me through the broken window.”

She waited by the broken window, listened to Edward bang around. He cursed loudly when he stubbed his toe against a kitchen chair. His curse was followed by a crash as he dropped his toolbox.

Finally, breathing heavily, he appeared at the window.

“Turn on the lights, why don’t you?”