Frankenstein Theory (2 page)

“
Henry,” I whispered.

The only reply came from the rolling thunder.

“
Henry, I say, did you hear that?”

“
What are you going on about?” Henry staggered in, his eyes mere slits.

“
I swear to you, I heard a woman scream.”

“
How could you hear anything with that maddening storm?”

There was no need for me to explain. Before I could open my mouth, the cry repeated itself. Without warning, Henry rushed to the window and tore open the shutters.

“
Dear God, there’s a woman…she’s…” Henry rushed to the door. “Come, Victor. That woman is hurt.”

The rain drenched us within seconds. Thunder cracked and lightning briefly lit the empty street.

“
There,” Henry shouted, “the alley.”

We rushed to the darkened passage to find the body, face down, still and cold. Henry reached out and gently turned her over. The rain washed a river of blood from a gaping wound in the neck.

“
Victor, she’s…”

“
Yes, Henry, quite.”

“
No, Victor, she’s been murdered. We must call the constabulary.”

A chill gripped my heart as an idea was given life. I stepped out of the alley to ensure no one was within the vicinity.

“
Henry,” I whispered. “Do you trust me?”

“
Implicitly, Victor.”

“
What I am about to suggest may offend every sensibility you have ever possessed.” Another glance over my shoulder confirmed our seclusion. “This woman is dead. We need a body for our…”

“
Are you mad?” Henry jerked away.

“
Quite the opposite, Henry. This might well be the moment of clarity we have sought since leaving the university. Help me carry that corpse to our quarters.”

Henry’s eyes grew wide; his mouth gaped. “I will do no such thing.”

With a bit more violence than necessary, I pulled Henry back to me. “Henry, we have failed on our own. If we are to realize even a fraction of our potential, we need flesh and organ to study and manipulate.”

“
Victor, this is not a cadaver. We overheard this woman’s dying screams.”

“
Henry, she’s dead. Murdered, by your own proclamation. By that right, she is now and officially a cadaver.”

“
Nevertheless, it is certain ours are not the only ears to have overheard this poor woman’s screams. We cannot risk being associated with a murder. No, Victor, I cannot be a part of this. What you suggest is not only against the law, it is amoral, and…”

I covered Henry’s mouth with the palm of my hand. “If we do not take advantage of this opportunity, we will most likely find ourselves on the streets, not a penny to our names and no prospect of work or aid. We have an opportunity here, Henry. This woman represents a future we would not otherwise have. If you do not take up this good fortune, your fate will most likely follow down that same dark path. I have an opportunity to continue the work my father began before I left for university. I believe his very reason for sending me off to study was to ensure someone could continue his work on the
occasion
of his passing. Because he died while I continued struggling in class, I consider myself honor-bound to pick up where he left off.”

I turned my cohort to the face the body.

“
Henry, this corpse is our future. With it, we can flourish. Without, we will surely rot.”

A crack of thunder punctuated my thought. A bolt of lightning shot across the sky to illuminate the very shadows of the alley. The woman’s eyes were open and looked frighteningly alive. Henry jumped, but made no move to further protest. When he turned back to me, it looked as though tears ran down his cheeks.

“
I do this, and I will certainly burn in the pits of Hell.”

“
You do not do this, and you will burn under the wrath of your father’s hand and whip.”

Henry spied the area, to the left and right. Once satisfied, he lowered himself and took hold of the corpse’s shoulders.

“
You understand, we cannot make money from this…cadaver. In order to succeed with your ghastly plan, we would have to dissect her and deliver the organs to a university. We drop the body off with our hands outstretched, and the only thing that will befall our hands is shackles.”

“
The research to be executed on this body will not be done within the confines of a university,” I said in hushed tones. “This is for our edification.” I raised my brows at Henry. “Do you understand, my good man?”

“
Let’s be quick about it, then,” Henry sighed. “What are you waiting for, Victor? Grab this woman’s feet and help me carry her to our flat.”

xXx

We had nothing of the equipment offered to us by the university. A cracked and aged bench served as our surgical table. Common knives and kitchen utensils would make do as our tools. Thankfully, we were working with the flesh of the dead, so sterilization wasn’t necessary. Light, on the other hand, was. The candles and oil lamps we had collected (by nefarious means) would have to suffice.

“
Please, Victor, tell me what we are going to do with this body?”

I peeled the clothing from the corpse with due ceremony and respect. “We have the opportunity to study the organs, musculature, and various humors of this body as they slowly give in to entropy. This is our chance to fully and completely understand the effects of death.”

“
What purpose would that serve, Victor?”

“
Henry, to understand how any system works, you must understand its equal and opposite system. To fully comprehend life, one must master death. We are going to unmake this body and then reform it back to its original state. Only then will we begin our journey to unravel the mysteries of life.”

“
You’re a monster, Victor Frankenstein. But I cannot condemn you for your actions, as I would be remiss for not condemning myself. I want you to assure me that this is not some sick game of yours—that there is actually a lesson to be learned in the disassembling of this woman…”

“
Corpse, Henry; you must refer to this as a corpse. This body of flesh, blood, and bones is bereft of life. And please, do not lecture me on the nature of the human soul. I tired of that irrational drivel some time ago.”

“
Then tell me, Frankenstein, how is this corpse any different than the cadavers we studied at university?”

“
The answer to your inquiry is simple. Out there a killer walks free from the mighty hand of the constabulary. Should we not take advantage of his malice, and use this woman to look deeper into the wells of life’s mysteries, her death would have been a pointless act of injustice.”

Henry grabbed me by the shoulder and turned me so that our eyes were level. “The answers to these questions are necessary in order for me to continue on with this madness. Victor, I did not grow up as you did, with talk of medicine and surgery as background noise at the dinner table. For me, this is all very new; add to that the fact that we have a dead wom—a cooling corpse in our flat.”

I took in a deep breath. As the air slowly escaped my lungs, I offered up a quiet smile. “Henry, the primary difference between this corpse and the cadavers we dissected in school is that she was not prepared for us. This flesh was alive but a few short hours ago. Within the veins, blood is congealing. The muscles have yet to give into rigor and the flesh is still pliable. This happenstance will not grace our good fortune again; we must act on this opportunity and learn as much as possible. From this, we will build the very foundation of our work together. With this expired body, we shall come to understand life and death.”

We stared at one another as a maddening crash of thunder rattled the room. As Henry nodded his approval, a flash of lightning danced across the floor. Shadows slithered across the woman’s body, giving it a momentary lie of life. Henry jumped.

“
Good God, man, she has no breath within. Whatever is there to be afraid of?”

I pulled gloves over my hands and handed a pair to Henry. “Shall we begin?”

Henry took the gloves from me and nodded. I picked up the knife from the table and turned to the body. The tip of the blade bit into the flesh at the base of the throat, sans the ease of the scalpels to which we were accustomed. A rivulet of blood trickled from the incision.

“
Victor, the consistency of the blood…”

“
That is correct, Henry. The blood has had time to congeal. The further from life the body grows, the thicker the blood will be.”

“
You speak to me as if
you
were the superior student, Victor.” Henry smiled and tossed me a playful wink.

I pulled the knife through the tissue down to the navel. From there, I cut the skin of the entire torso into flaps that could easily peel back to reveal the internal structure of the thoracic cavity. Once open, Henry and I stared at the unsealed woman.

“
It’s beautiful.”

“
Victor, are we beholding the same objects? What I see is spoiled blood, lifeless organs, and—”

“
No, Henry; you must widen your vision. What you see splayed before you is the future. This is a riddle we two are to solve. This, my good man, is art, and we are the artists.”

Henry turned to me, confusion lining his face.

“
Don’t you mean that God is the artist and we the tools of His trade? Wasn’t it He who painted this picture?”

“
Ah ha! Again, you are translating the metaphor with the filters of mankind. I ask you to transcend your nature and view this body as a portal to a higher plane of existence.”

“
Pish posh, Victor. I loathe when you speak of such abstractions.”

Silence.

I had to convince Henry the path laid out in front of us was worth traveling.

“
Henry, again I will remind you…should you and I turn our backs on what we have begun, our only choice is to return to our families. Or, we can take this journey together and arrive, on the other side, gods among men.”

Ever so slowly, the corners of Henry’s mouth crept upward.

“
I do like the sound of that. Gods.”

Without another word, Henry rolled up his sleeves. One by one, we removed the organs and placed them within labeled containers of an experimental liquid of my father’s creation. The final organ to be removed was the heart.

“
Henry—” I held the remarkable tissue aloft— “this is the center of life itself. Without this magnificent organ, we would most certainly not exist.”

I lowered the heart into the glass jar. Before I could place the lid on the vessel, a bolt of lightning struck nearby. A shock of current flashed into and through the room. The hair on my arms stood straight and my pulse threatened to race out of control.

“
Victor,” Henry whispered, “look.”

Suddenly I felt nauseous. Within the glass, suspended within the preserving liquid, the muscle of the heart contracted.

Once.

Twice.

Thrice.

“
This isn’t possible. Victor, tell me this isn’t possible. You are engaging in some form of trickery. You have wires or some mechanism with which you are causing movement within that vessel.”

There was no trickery. Since my youth, I had witnessed the miraculous within the confines of science. At every stage of life, the scientific stretched the boundaries of reality and truth. Even so, nothing I had ever beheld prepared me for the inexplicable contracting of the dead heart.

“
Is it life?” Henry asked.

And with the question, the stillness of death was reclaimed. The meat grew motionless once more.

Neither Henry nor I spoke of the incident again that night. In silence, we cleaned and covered the corpse and retired to our beds to sleep until morning.

Night had become my enemy.

xXx

“
Victor,” the sultry voice beckoned me. Resistance was futile. As I stood, the bedclothes silently slid to the floor. Lightning lit the room with a firework frenzy—yet the night sky was bereft of the sound of thunder.

“
Victor.” Again, the calling cry was made. One by one, my feet carried me out of the room and into the surgical theatre of the university.

Another flash of lightning lit up the theatre to reveal the unmade woman, standing in the center of the room, her torso open and empty. Scattered about the floor, her organs lay, each beating and moving as if alive. The lungs at her feet slowly expanded to draw a ghostly breath; her intestines slid across the marble in a peristaltic crawl. She raised her hand to me. Resting in her palm was the heart which had, until recently, resided within her breast. The ventricles pumped a death-knell ‘lub’ and ‘dub’.