Flesh Failure (7 page)

It dawned on me that I had to discover what the day was today and if I'd missed the lectures already.

I looked at the flyer again. My heart beat so fast I thought I would pass out.

The names on the flyer. Dr. Rueben, Dr. Walker, Professor Klein.

Echoes of memories flashed through me. Did any of these men know my creator?

I walked around the riverbank in a daze, dizziness returning full force the harder I tried to think. My stomach roiled. I was craving something. I didn't know what. There had to be something I could sink my teeth into and a steak pot pie wasn't going to satisfy me. My mouth watered for a juicy, tender mountain of flesh like that man had.

A large woman in standard maid clothing walked towards me carrying a shopping bag and taking glances at the river.

I raised my hands.

“Ma'am, miss?”

“I don't have time to talk,” she said as she attempted to hurry on by. “I have a mission to do for the master and I must be quick.”

“Yes, yes, I'm quick. I promise,” I assured her. We stood by a small garden with several hedges.

The woman stopped and stared up at the grey sky pregnant with snow.

“It will be colder before it gets warmer. Every year we have to get used to it as if it's a surprise.”

“Maybe it is.”

“What?” she asked.

“A surprise.”

“Oh, you're a funny one. But really, what do you want?”

“I need to know what day it is today. I'm not stark raving mad, I just realized that I hadn't checked my calendar in a while.”

“It's December so you are safe. Not quite the end of the year.”

“Have I missed this lecture?” I asked her, holding out the paper.

She looked at it.

“I can't tell. I can't read,” she said.

“So what day is today? I'm wondering if I missed this.”

“Today is the sixth.”

“Ah, good. So I can still go.”

I didn't want to do it, not really, but the scent of her, the countenance of her rather cool demeanour, as if she were doing me a big favour to answer a few simple questions, angered me.

My fingers twitched and quivered. Before I realized what I was doing, I pushed her into the hedges. No one was around as I tore her clothes from her. My mind was filled with white-hot lust and I'm shameful to think of it now. However, at the time, it was the craving of the blood that consumed me.

I feasted upon her too, ripping out her throat as I had the previous man. As her warm blood gushed into my mouth, an intense sense of guilt consumed me.

With the insatiable cravings abated, I was able to think clearly. I needed to discard my bloody clothes before the lecture started.

It was today.

After walking quite a ways, I threw my overcoat into the river. Remarkably, my dress, though dirty from the wrestling, didn't have noticeable blood. I had washed my hands and face and anywhere else there might be blood in the freezing-cold water of the river.

At last I found the theatre. There it was with a big gold sign and people milling around in front, smoking pipes and spitting, their voices loud and animated.

I walked towards them and one of them jumped aside.

“Are you part of the hall?” I asked the first person who didn't turn away.

She stared at me, looking me up and down, and shuddered.

“Are you part of the lecture tonight?” she asked.

“No. What's it about?”

“There will be a talk about how to bring human tissue back to life, reanimate the dead. A very nasty subject.”

“One that I'm looking forward to hearing about,” a male chimed in, stepping near his lady friend as if to protect her from me.

“How much longer before the lecture?”

“A few hours, my dear. Don't worry, you are very early. You should go get yourself something to eat, in fact. You are…pale.”

The man opened his pouch and took out several coins.

“Surely you don't mean to give me all of that, sir,” I said.

“Please take it. You will need more than one meal in your life. Now hurry off to eat so that you won't miss the lecture. And buy yourself a shawl. It's freezing out.”

I took his advice and walked off in the direction he had pointed. I was in the right place. I felt it in my bones this was the place the cards had spoken of. I bought a shawl from a street vendor and purchased some food from another.

I wondered if my creator was connected to anyone here tonight.

Once the lecture had begun, I was able to feast my eyes on the man who was speaking. Was he my creator? Would he admit it?

I seemed like forever as the words trickled out of his mouth, pontifications on the ideas of death and reanimation.

“Death doesn't mean that the body has to die. It has merely run out of energy. Electrical currents will bring that energy back to life.”

He was smug. His tone, his air, the precise way he held his hands. His words echoed through the theatre and though he sounded familiar, so did the other two speakers. But something in my gut niggled about Dr. Rueben. By the time he was finished with his discourse, there was very little doubt in my mind that if he wasn't my creator, he likely knew who was. And if he didn't know anything about my creator, he may very well pay me as proof of the existence of “diabolical creatures created from dead corpses”.

I followed him out of the theatre along with half a dozen other people. He tried to dodge us at first with polite shrugs of how he needed to get along with his night. But we pestered him with curiosity and it fed his ego. How could we let such a man with the key to the mysteries of life just slip through our fingers without getting a chance to sit in his shadow, to find out exactly what made his mind tick. And more importantly, just what was the secret to eternal life he alluded to?

He stopped to look at his six admirers. His gaze stopped at me. His eye twitched a little and he bit the side of his lip. He sighed and flashed a big grin. The charmer was back.

“Who would like to come to the pub?” he asked. “How about we finish our discussions there. You can buy me a round or more, and I'll regale you with tales of what has happened and what hasn't.”

I really couldn't believe my luck. It was nearly unfathomable that not only had I found this man but he would be sharing additional information. Maybe I would learn more about my wretched past as the ale flowed.

As the seven of us sat around a long wooden table, mugs of grog in front of us, he began his tales of torment.

He wove a rich tapestry of despair and dedication with his smug, slick grin. No one was ever certain what would happen next in the new sciences.

He began with a recounting of childhood, signaling for more drink as he told his tale of how he had come to be, much of which he had already told us in the lecture. Yet still, his admirers hung on his every word.

He had grown fond of reading, devouring as much as he could. When he had read all the children's books cover to cover, he had started in with ideas of science and faith. His range widened until as a young man, he was deep into science. Yet he read mysteries and romances and fantastical fictions. He recounted the first time he'd stumbled upon what would become one of his favourite pieces of absurd fiction.

“This odd little story about a man made from pieces of corpses and brought to life was written by a young lady, Miss Shelley, on a dare. It haunted me and then rumours began in the field. Even the papers were reporting about many modern secret experiments. It appears that people were beginning to try out Miss Shelley's fictional experimentations in modified manners for themselves, much as I mentioned in the lectures.”

“Have you done it, sir?” Claude, a man with short curly hair, asked.

“No, not at all. I've known of people, but of course I could never reveal their names. It likely isn't legal though. I don't know for sure if it isn't.”

“It should be legal,” Claude said. “Bringing a loved one back to life is a gift, not a crime.”

“But there's no way to conduct the experiment that is successful.” He looked at me for a moment. He cleared his throat and drank most of the ale from his mug. “It's all still theoretical and no use getting worked up over.”

“I feel as though you have no concept of what you're doing. You're deciding if another human lives or dies,” Clara said.

“Is it human though? Is it truly human?” argued Pierre.

“So if you bring your sewn-up corpse to life through electricity and it walks and talks… Isn't it human?”

“Well, it's comprised of human parts. So perhaps it would have a human soul. If it had the capacity to think and feel and love.”

“I hope that the new superman doesn't feel the pain of being alive, all sewn together.”

As the admirers chattered amongst themselves, Dr. Rueben was staring at me again. I stared back, aware that he must be able to see the scars no matter how well I was healing with the fresh blood. He took another gulp of his beer and spoke.

“Do you think the monster would feel the pain of creating?”

He looked directly at me.

I shrugged.

“What do I know of anything?” I said. “I'm scarred for reasons that have nothing to do with being a reanimated corpse, thank you very much.”

“Are you sure?” Pierre said, ale slurring his words. “You do look like something Miss Shelley could have written about.”

“Why I thank you for your kind words, sir,” I said sarcastically and wrapped my shawl around me. “The hour is late and I have a long journey. Good night.”

“But wait…” Dr. Rueben called after me. I didn't answer him as I pushed my way through the tavern and back out into the street. It was true the hour was very late and I had a long walk back to Whitechapel.

The next day, I stood in the Merrick doorway, watching the hospital for Dr. Rueben to enter or leave. The doctor had introduced himself as working there in his lecture so he had to come and go at some point. Surely, I would see him. A movement. A flicker. I saw others come and go all day long, bracing against the wind and the snow that circled down. Doctors, nurses, patients. I heard the wails of the damned rising up out of the stony hallways, above the restless din of Whitechapel. My ears were now attuned to the cries of the anguished, of the defeated. My gut throbbed and I spotted him in the distance. As he drew near, he noticed me in the doorway and his face changed. He approached me.

“You,” he said.

“Yes, it's me.”

“What do you want from me?” he asked, his smarmy voice shaken by a quiver.

“I wanted to know… Do you want someone to help you?”

“You mean you?”

“I mean, I can be an example of what you speak about.”

“Of a wretched abomination brought to life.”

“Or perhaps a crowning glory of body parts and brain reanimated into a living breathing thinking creature.”

I sighed.

“I find, quite frankly, that I'm more intelligent than those with whom I've been living. I desire to better my circumstances.”

He looked at me warily.

“I'm famished. Let's go eat and discuss this.”

We went to a tavern where he ordered two mugs of grog and plates of food.

“So you mean to tell me that you want to join with me as a freak?”

“An example. I'm not a freak. I was discarded by my creator. You can help me find him,” I said as I tore at a piece of meat from the plate with my teeth and fingers.

“I have no desire to help you find your creator, it could be bad for both of us. But an exhibit…hmmm.”

We both ate and thought. Finally, I spoke.

“The Elephant Man is in that hospital. What's he like?”

“He's a wretched beast. Breathing is laborious. He keeps in good spirits. Childlike. Innocent. An innocence that I don't see in you.”

“He was born. I was made. What do I have to be innocent about? I don't even know who I am.”

“And that should bring innocence.”

“It brings anger and contempt. For you know who you are. Others know who they are.”

“And you, why does it matter? I myself was raised in an orphanage and spent too long in a workhouse until I realized that I had the mind to get an education. My work at the hospital pleases me but my lectures please me more. I've always wanted to go on a world tour. Maybe with you by my side, it could be possible.”

I was turning over the idea of him raised in an orphanage. It didn't really connect with the story told at the lecture hall. I wondered where the truth lay.

“And then you'll help me find him.”

“Believe me, someone will find him once your name is everywhere.”

We ate and he stared at me.

“I want to study you.”

“You mean, you want me to go to the hospital to experiment on me. No,” I said as I drank my mead.

“We can clean you up, and I can make proper notes.”

“Perhaps if the lectures go well.”

We ate some more in silence, each deep in our thoughts. My trust in him was nil but my options weren't plentiful to immediately improve my lifestyle and find my creator. As I gazed at him, I wondered again if it were he who had created me. Although he sounded familiar, his voice wasn't the constant one that I had heard when I was under the sheet in my memories.

“Is there another lecture soon?” I asked. “Not with you but perhaps someone else?”

“There are lectures all the time. You wish to see another?”

“I want to see them all. Science intrigues me.”

“Very well. It can be your entertainment while I book our tour.”

When our meal was done, he leaned back in his chair and looked at me.

“You will be staying with me, yes?”

“Yes.”

“Do you need to retrieve anything from your lodgings?”

I pondered the idea for a few moments. “No. There's nothing I want or need. I trust you will provide me proper-fitting garments befitting the companion of a professor.”