By Felicity Devoria
(TW: Violence and gore, death, surgery, supernatural creature)
The entire ordeal was not how Thaddeus had imagined his first time seeing a woman he fancied undressed. Not that he had imagined it. That would be unseemly. But if he’d had to hazard a guess, he might’ve thought it would be pleasant … a memory he’d go on to cherish.
He doubted he’d ever wish to relive this particular sight.
It’s not that bad, he told himself as he sopped up pint after pint of warm blood. It was leaking from the crater that had been Lenora’s chest not but an hour ago. Thaddeus recalled the crunching sound when Lenora was struck. The carriage wheel had traced its way from stomach to skull, shredding her intestines and making confetti out of her brain matter. The sight was grisly, but it wasn’t anything the spare parts couldn’t fix.
How long had Thaddeus spent poring over what he could find of Vivienne’s notes? He’d spent an entire lifetime preparing to perform this operation. So he’d skipped the junior ranks? Big deal. This was exactly the sort of situation he’d been hoping for. He was a beggar itching to prove himself, and he wasn’t going to be choosy over an opportunity coming a week or a year earlier than expected.
Once he’d staunched the bleeding, the abdominal organs went easily enough. He’d replaced them hundreds of times in mice, cats, and pigs. He took the parts from the male specimen after a thorough examination. He’d been wealthier than the female, and his elevated status was exemplified by the condition of his innards.
Thaddeus worked his way up Lenora’s abdomen, cringing when he peeled away the top of the dress. The breasts would have to go. He’d never heard of such a procedure before, but surely it wasn’t as hard as the spleen. That had taken him forever to master. Upon inspection, the female specimen wasn’t the prime option for a transplant; her age had been far more advanced than Lenora’s, and it showed in the breast tissue. Still, Thaddeus grabbed a scalpel and got to work removing the pair. He didn’t need loaves nor fish to perform miracles—it was all about making magic out of nothing.
Thaddeus dared to glance at her face only when the final suture on Lenora’s chest was tied. He’d been saving the brain for last. No one alive had done the kind of work required to fix it. Even Vivienne, throughout her many transplant innovations, had kept her distance from the skull cavity. When Lenora had been dragged under the wheel, the impact had cracked her skull at the temple before wrenching the crown of the head clear off. Relief flooded through Thaddeus upon finding her prefrontal cortex intact. He remembered the case study of that man from the States who’d been struck through the front of his head by a projectile and turned all sorts of strange. Unlike him, the best parts of Lenora had been saved.
When Thaddeus finally screwed the borrowed skull fragment into the original foundation, he knew he’d done shoddy work. Even with the two intact brains to supplement, he had been out of his element. He used grafted skin from the female to reconstruct the scalp. It’d be months before the hair filled in, but there were plenty of fashionable hats in the city all for Lenora’s taking. Not to mention six-something million donors for the inevitable revisions he’d need to make on the brain. There was nothing if not time on Thaddeus Grey’s side. The finishing touches were sutures to fix the facial features. Cosmetics had never mattered to Thaddeus in any of his previous procedures, but now he took great care. Lenora’s face was dear to him, and he endeavored to make it even better than before the crash. His heart almost jumped out of his chest when he finally stepped back to inspect his work. His beloved was finished. All that was left were the volts.
He attached electrodes all over Lenora from the donor female’s former feet to the male’s missing skullcap. Thaddeus knew the moment of reanimation would be hell come to earth, not that Vivienne had ever spoken of such a thing. He’d never made sense of her decision to stock the lab with equipment capable of creating life but never trying it. Her research had all but proven reanimation possible, yet she’d died without admitting it. There were no papers published on the possibility and no daring experiments conducted. Thaddeus’s peers came to mind—they’d laughed about his position as a mere assistant in a transplant lab while they embarked on innovations of their own. Vivienne practiced science in near obscurity only inches away from the key to eternal notoriety. Of course, her work pioneering human organ transplants was admirable, but why ignore what could be the greatest pinnacle of thanatogenetics? Would reanimation not heal in ways transplants fell short of?
Thaddeus’s undeniable greatness would be a secret no longer. He pictured what life would be like when everyone knew what blessings he was capable of bestowing. He was a man of science, not shame. There’d be no more laughter from his peers after today.
He glanced out the window. Night.
He pondered the issue of voltage for nearly an hour. Thaddeus suspected Vivienne had calculated the precise amount needed, but she’d kept the specifics of her practice under lock and key, and who knew where she even hid the small, locked chest of lab notes? He’d been privy only to the rare scraps left here or there. To study human life is to take an unbreakable oath to do no harm, Vivienne always said. He groaned at the thought. She’d been the world’s greatest thanatogeneticist and she’d never even revived anyone, forget total reconstruction beforehand.
When Thaddeus took the title, he wouldn’t make the same mistake.
The voltage question shook him again from his reverie. Thaddeus knew a peer who’d been working on something called electroshock therapy. If he ever perfected it, it was supposed to cure melancholia. The voltage would have to be higher than that to resurrect a soul that was dead through and through. They’d never discussed exact numbers, but Thaddeus adjusted the dials until he figured he was approaching the mark. He pulled his eye guard over his face. Any further tinkering would mean another second Lenora’s heart didn’t beat. Thaddeus couldn’t handle another moment of that silence. He flipped the switch.
It was the most beautiful, and the most vile, thing he’d ever seen.
Blue lightning forked across the room in a flash. Every muscle in Lenora’s body, original and replaced, tensed and released at such a speed she appeared to be vibrating off the table. The heat singed off a layer of Thaddeus’s cornea, he was sure of it. It was not unlike his nightmares of getting caught in a twister.
And then there was the terrible moment of finality that followed.
Flowing on and on until Lenora opened her mouth and sucked in the loudest, most ragged of breaths.
The eye guard fell from Thaddeus’s fingers. He cursed the way the tears welling in his eyes kept him from bringing Lenora into focus.
“Lenora,” he whispered, refusing to let the tangle of wires stop him from cupping her face in his hand. “Welcome back.”
She batted his hand away. Her eyes tore across the scene. “I had the most terrible dream.” The voice was gravelly and nothing like hers. It was both low and high at the same time, as if multiple people were speaking at once. Thaddeus’s pulse thundered in fear, but he shoved the feeling away.
“You’re safe now.”
“Safe,” Lenora echoed. She pulled herself off the table, her limbs clambering to stand. “Yet all I can think about—”
Her voice caught as she fell to the ground. The wires still attached to her sent nearby objects sprawling. She gripped at her head, fingernails digging into flesh that hadn’t been hers. Thaddeus cringed at the abuse of his handiwork. He reached out to help her, but she was entombed in the maroon folds of her dress that had started the day white as snow.
She continued in that strange, cacophonous voice. “I fell before, didn’t I? Or something hit me. I must be hurt. My head is pounding, but I can’t stop it—the carriage. All I can see is that carriage.” Her torso lunged against the floor as if to dodge the runaway vehicle.
Thaddeus’s mouth fell open as he watched the form lying prostrate on the ground. Here he was at the catalyst of his career, having just done the impossible, and where were the heartfelt thank yous and tearful speeches? His patient didn’t even recognize the magnitude of his gift to her. He crouched down until they were at eye level. “You were struck by a carriage, but you’ve been blessed with a second chance. I’ve cured all of your maladies and brought you back to life. You’re a miracle.”
Lenora pulled her hands from her face and peered at him. A striking blue pulsed in her irises; whether it was from the pain or the voltage, Thaddeus couldn’t guess. Her look was incredulous.
“A miracle?” She cackled. “You have stolen me from heaven and expect to be received with open arms?”
“Lenora, this is our chance. We don’t have to deny how we feel for each other anymore.”
“Our name is not Lenora.”
Thaddeus felt his heart still. “You don’t know what you’re saying. You’ve withstood a great shock, but once you rest—”
“We do not require rest.”
It is better to go along with a patient’s delusions than to try to drag them back to reality. Thaddeus had heard the old adage from countless professors of the brain. He’d indulge her for now. Later, when everything began to clear, he’d shock some sense into her.
“I want to do things differently this time around.” He did not reach for her again, wanting to avoid causing any further duress to her psyche. “I was always so embarrassed by my place in society before. Things have changed. This is going to put me on the map, and I’ll be good enough for you now. This is our chance.”
“Don’t speak of such things. Moments ago we were hit by a carriage, and now you want us to feel … love for you?”
“Why shouldn’t you? You’re still the same girl you were before.”
Lenora’s head whipped side to side. “No. We have changed.”
He leaned closer. “How so?”
“We are the amalgamation of three soiled souls forced back to the land of the living against our will. We three are surely cursed, for we have been forsaken by our God.”
Thaddeus started to guess why Vivienne hadn’t been in the business of treating brain injuries. It seemed the contributions from the two specimens had muddied the whole system. This new body was not entirely Lenora. He should have guessed at such a reaction, but this was only a slight setback in her progress. He could fix this. Most of the brain remained hers. All he had to do was isolate the three brain waves and augment hers so that she retained control of the body.
Thaddeus grabbed at her wrists, squeezing the feeling out of her fingertips. “Yes, your God did forsake you. He let unspeakable actions rip you from this world before it was your time. How lucky you are to have been found by another, more benevolent creator. I am the master of your fate now, and you need only concern yourself with my rules. Whatever tethered you to that God has been snapped.”
“Snapped by who?”
The release of her wrists was instant. Thaddeus fell back. “Excuse me?” he sputtered.
“Who snapped our tethers to life, to His Divine Will?”
He scrambled back across the floor as if Lenora—whatever she was—had brandished a weapon.
The three souls trapped in the body smiled most ferociously, the stitches across their smile lines snapping one after another. Each clumsy limb pulled them to their feet. When the moonlight from the window hit them, it was a ghastly sight. The cuts had healed in an uneasy way, scarred over but ready to rip at the slightest movement. The patchwork of skin had taken on a greenish hue and the previously beautiful hair stood on end, crimped in haphazard clumps.
“You are no God. There is nothing but the devil inside of you,” whispered the Thing. This voice was singular—high, thin, and weathered by age. They pulled on the chain around their neck. At the end of it hung a cross, and they clasped it to their chest.
Thaddeus growled. “I am not a God but something better. I have created life with no extraordinary powers to my name!”
The Thing took one lurching step. A second voice came from it, low and heady and gruff. “You will never be more than an insolent little boy. You have tried your hand at greatness and have fallen short.”
“I brought you back, did I not?”
“You were so quick to create life that you forwent selecting a master brain. Now we exist together.”
“All that will be solved in its own time. The work will be worth it, so long as my Lenora lives.”
“She may live, but at what cost? You have poisoned your creation against you, and worse,”—The Thing leveled an accusatory finger at him—“you have killed the one person who mastered the art of true resurrection.”
Thaddeus glared. “I have done no such thing.”
“No?” The Thing twisted about the room, fingers flexing in thought. “How else did you manage to sneak into this lab and create such an abomination? Vivienne would’ve never let this come to fruition under her watch!”
Thaddeus’s hands raked through his hair. “I am blameless in her death. The only thing I’m guilty of is loving one woman too much.”
“You loved her so much you went and ran her over.” The third voice was light and plaintive. It was a voice Thaddeus would know anywhere, no matter what body it was coming from. “You were so dead set on escaping the scene of Vivienne’s murder that you weren’t looking where you were driving. And boom.”
Lightning flashed in the window behind the Thing. For an instant, Lenora appeared as she had been: gutted, mangled, and split clean through her head. Thaddeus thought the sight might drive him mad.
“You are nothing but a harbinger of death,” Lenora said.
“You dare insult me now? When I resurrect Vivienne, she will be indebted to me. We will restore you, dear Lenora, together. Once you’re fixed, I will be known as the greatest thanatogeneticist to ever live. Who’ll be laughing then?”
The Thing doubled over, hearty male chuckles rumblings from their chest. “You are not such an inquisitive student, are you, boy? Doctor Ravenscroft foresaw an undeath for herself ages ago and dreaded it. She formulated a special draught that renders the drinker, from the moment of their death, dead forever. Perhaps you would have noticed had you paid attention to her research.”
Thaddeus’s scream ricocheted around the room. He turned to the shelves behind him and tore the contents down. Beakers and vials and substances flew across the room, littering the floor with puddles and fragments of glass. Each time one made contact with the Thing, the cut or scrape faded in an instant, leaving behind a new scar amongst the smattering of them.
When the room fell back to silence, Thaddeus sniffed once. “I will kill you as many times as it takes, beast. I will take you out and bring you back until my Lenora returns to her old self again. Do not test my resolve nor my love for her.”
“Thaddeus,” cried the Thing. It was the first time they used his name. “Admit the truth. Say you do not care this much for me.” It was Lenora, the voice he’d die a thousand times to hear again. He ran to her side and melted at her feet.
“I could never lie to you. Tell me what price I must pay to have you standing at my side, and I will pay it.”
“Come to me, Thaddeus.”
Her arms felt different under his fingertips. The gnarled meetings of unfamiliar skin, the rough new expanses, the deep scars cutting through tissue—they were all new to him. Still, no amount of damage had changed her face. This close, white marks the shape of lightning raced across her skin. It was dark in the lab, but he could make out even the most indistinguishable parts of her. She was still his Lenora. Her mind, her parts—they were all salvageable. He’d have to root through the trash to find her again, but he wasn’t allergic to a bit of hard work.
It was the embrace he’d been waiting his whole life for. The brush of the new breasts against his lapels sent lightning through him, and his heart raced with possibilities. “We can be together,” he repeated, breathless, against her lips.
Lenora nodded.
“Together forever,” she whispered.
There was a split second when Thaddeus did not detect anything amiss. It was his first kiss, and there were no scientific manuals to direct his lips as they worked against hers. But it did not send pleasurable bolts through him as he’d expected, and he tried to pull away—
The Thing’s teeth closed over his bottom lip, his skin screaming as he tried to pull away. The taste of iron flooded his mouth as wetness dripped down his shirt. Their bites were merciless; he could no longer count on his skin being his. His hand scrabbled for purchase on the shelves behind him, but the projectiles were gone, lying wasted across the floor. Not that they’d do anything now.
The Thing excised his tissue the same, messy way he’d stolen from the specimens. Life faded in and out.
And then, there was nothing.
* * *
It was the only thing that could stop the merciless throbbing in their head, the hammering visions of carriage wheels and knives and misused lab instruments. Everything in their body was piercing tight like their skin was a size too small, but it loosened with each sip of lifeforce dripping down their throat. They didn’t need much, just enough to halt the visions for an instant.
Belching, the Thing pulled back. Thaddeus dropped to the ground like a discarded sack, half of its bounty gone. It didn’t take them long to find the secret vial tucked away in a cobwebbed cabinet. Vivienne had shown one of them long ago as if knowing they’d require it one day. The draught chased the life force down.
They affixed the electrodes to Thaddeus first. It was the only way to truly kill him. Nasty piece of work, he had been. His pulse was weak but still there. They let his body jerk until they were sure his soul was gone forever, and then they turned the electrodes on themselves.
Somewhere in their shared mind, the three grasped each other’s hands. They said a prayer to the God they prayed still listened and bid each other goodbye.
There was solitude in the racing bolts. In her last second, Lenora’s mind quieted. She was alone again, and she welcomed it. I could not love a monster, she whispered. Not even if it was myself.
—
Excerpt from the Lab Notes of Doctor Vivienne Ravenscroft, World-Renowned Thanatogeneticist:
How heads would roll if any of my peers discovered what I created with this research of mine. I figured myself a hero when Alistair brought the boy to me. He was only nine years old and was succumbing to a brain fever. It was just the case I’d hoped for when Alistair first offered me his patronage. He had lost his Zelda when she was only five, and we’d both envisioned a future where parents never knew such a loss.
I thought I had done right when the deed was finished and his heart beat once more. Though I detest the word, his instant healing was nothing short of magic. Alistair and I shared a look then—we both knew we’d opened Pandora’s box. I’d only meant to return mortal life to the boy but it seemed I’d made him imperishable. Still, he had recuperated instantly from the fever. We sent him home that night with the parents’ assurance they’d bring him back the next day. Silently, Alistair and I agreed we’d have to reverse the immortality at once, but why not let the family celebrate first?
There had been no word from the family by the following evening, and we set out for their address. It was a grim ride across the city—Alistair and I agreed the boy had probably died following the procedure, and the parents were too heartbroken to send word. But this was not so when we arrived at the residence. No one answered the bell when we rang. A crow cawed from the eaves, and both of us were rather unsettled. We pushed through the front door and entered a house of horrors. The front hall was a bloodbath; a sea of discarded, dismembered bodies was strewn about. I reached into my medical bag then and pulled out a draught of Morpheus, just in case. It was the only weapon we’d brought between the two of us.
We found the boy in his parents’ room. Blood covered every inch of his skin. He held his mother’s arm in both hands, and it was chewed down to a stump. The boy was hungry. He was feeding. If we hadn’t found him then, he would’ve eaten all the way to his mother’s fingertips and then continued with the rest of her.
The draught did not kill him as expected but put him under a deep amnesia. He lay like the dead for seven nights and seven days. Alistair and I restrained him in the lab and never left his side, both praying he’d die from lack of food or water before he awakened. But he did not need those worldly things, and so he did not die. Not even when we tried our hand at killing him.
I knew what I created was a perversion of nature, and I endeavored to right my wrongs as best I knew how.
The boy remembered nothing of his resurrection nor murder spree when he came to. The draught had wiped his conscience as I hoped to wipe mine. We told him we’d found him in time to cure his brain fever, but his family had not been so lucky. They’d all contracted the disease and passed within a week. He was hurt, but not so hurt as most little boys would be at this news.
I took him on as my lab assistant and charge. It was the only way to ensure he stayed under my supervision. I slipped him the blood of my fresher cadavers every day, adding it to his suppers. I knew he wouldn’t be bloodthirsty so long as I kept his hunger for life satiated. It wasn’t long before I developed a powder to reduce his healing and his ungodly strength, and I fed this to him too.
I thought my countless remedies and careful direction of his energy would grow on him in time, but there was something in him that I could not cure. He remained impulsive and obsessive, his mind called to all manners of causes and considerations. He drew war scenes and devoured anatomy books; he caught spiders and discovered girls. All of his sudden interests always passed with time, and I assumed they were harmless. That is, until I realized just how ingenious he had become. Every record before his death spoke of an unremarkable boy, but this was no longer so. I see now that he quickly deduced the nature of my research, but he refrained from revealing it to me for many years. By that time I had turned my studies to organ transplants. Alistair and I agreed resolutely that no one should know what breakthrough I’d discovered, and we worked together to keep it hidden. I pioneered new methods that would have saved Alistair’s dear daughter without corrupting her soul. He funded me without question, so long as no one discovered the boy’s rebirth. But the boy was drawn to create one of his own kind, though he knew not what he was nor why he yearned so.
I suspected what he was up to early in his twenties. He’d moved into his own flat at that time, and my housekeeper Esme had gone to live with him, reporting any strange behaviors to me indiscriminately. She is a pious woman—always has been—and she understands the gravity of the situation even if the details are hazy to her. I knew I had to act when she brought me those drawings of his. He had deduced the abilities of my electrolysis machine and it won’t be long before he replicates my methods. I have to stop him.
I will record here the instructions to make such a draught as what I poured into his wine last night. Once consumed, it renders the body unable to be resurrected after death. No matter what Thaddeus manages, his kind will die with him—and myself. As soft as I know it makes me, I cannot bring myself to end the pseudo-life of the boy I’ve raised as my son. We have spent over a decade with each other—and Alistair, if you count him—as our only family. But I know the electrolysis machine should be able to manage the deed, should one adjust the voltage appropriately.
I will not try it now. I have found it easy to manufacture life but nigh impossible to make that life worth living. The care and rearing of Thaddeus have been my only joy since that terrible night. Even my research and the people it can save rings hollow in my ears when I consider the terrible innovations it could lead to. I will do what it takes to keep reanimation a secret. If he starts sniffing around too closely or finds where I hide these notes or begins to conduct his own experiments, I will kill him—then and only then. I presume he will come to me eventually with questions, and I will know that it is time for us to go. The death of my boy will be the end of my purpose and, by extension, my life. I trust that day never passes, but if it does, I will be ready.
I only hope I am strong enough to counter him.