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The first sentence of Neuromancer

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Frankenstein Revamped: Chapter Seven: Madness

I gulped down acrid air, choking on the sparks that danced in the breeze. Blood pounded hot and furious through my skull. Even as my vision blurred, I felt little more than a light tickling in my mangled arm. I knew no physical pain, only the raw adrenal power that had seized me.

“Damien!” Kaitlin shrieked again. “Damien, get over here!”

“Sybil,” I murmured, looking back to the corpse of our truck. A black, sooty smoke billowed up from the disemboweled machine; glass and twisted steel lay scattered about the wreck. Somewhere within the Chevrolet was Sybil, or what was left of her. Any chance she had survived the impact was nullified by the flames that now licked at the sides of the vehicle. I had watched my sister die, and in a matter of minutes even her body would be consumed by fire.

Yards away, Kaitlin’s Bronco lay overturned, one intrepid tire still spinning freely in the air. Gone were thoughts of sugar and synapses as I hobbled toward the desperate cries of my former employer. Gone was any pity for the creature who had hunted me across hundreds of miles. Gone was my very humanity. Only righteous vengeance held the reigns of my broken mind.

She killed your sister, my toxic conscience whispered in my ear. She wanted to hurt you so badly that she butchered an innocent girl. Though I did not know why, it spoke in the voice of my father.

Kaitlin’s silhouette collapsed onto the asphalt. There was no sign of my rifle, and she looked to be completely unarmed, not that it mattered. Mere bullets could not penetrate my resolve. Kaitlin would die. I would watch the light flee from her eyes and see justice done, a life for a life. The monster would repay its blood debt.

I looked upon the wretch with a countenance of granite. Her grey skin was stretched taut over a nearly skeletal frame. Knotted silver hair fell over her shoulders in an unruly mass. My eyes dropped to the gaping wound in her left thigh, and the primeval bloodlust within me wavered. The woman lying before me was already dead.

“Oh dear,” she saw my face and broke into harsh cackling. “I guess this is the end, isn’t it? Well kill me then! Put me out of my misery!” The woman let loose another coughing fit, hacking up still more blood onto the road.

She killed Sybil, the voice insisted. Take that piece of glass there and cut her throat. Claim her life before she goes out the easy way. Make her die knowing it was you that destroyed her.

“Do it, Damien,” she dared me again. “Go ahead.”

Kill her. Kill her now, and let her burn forever.

“No,” I finally replied. I gestured to the gash in her artery. “Die by your own hand.”

“Fair enough.” A sickeningly carefree smile split her bruised face. “You always were a weak one.”

At once my senses returned. Pain seared through my arm, my head throbbed, and I sank to my knees. I lay sprawled on the pavement, heaving in agony. Rage alone had kept me on my feet, but the emotional and bodily punishment of the wreck had finally caught up to me. My sister is dead, the realization set in. She’s dead, and she died in my care. How could I let her get wrapped up in this? Why did I let it end this way?

The first of many silent tears raced down my face.

“Can’t run away anymore, can you, little lab rat?” Kaitlin jeered. Her accent, usually kept well hidden, now hung thick over her words. “You tasted discovery and scampered away, but no more! You can run from our research, and you can run from me, but just you try to outrun destiny!”

“No,” I managed to say. “I’m done running. BX-2 dies with us. Today.” For the first time I saw grief flash across Kaitlin’s face, but it dissolved in an instant. She’ll die with no one ever knowing of her wonder drug, I realized. She’s leaving this world without giving it anything to remember her for.

I knew now that was all that had ever mattered to her. It had never been about the money. Kaitlin only lusted for glory, a legacy to leave behind. The world might have loved her for a stable, safe BX-2. Skyscrapers would have born her name, and talk shows would have vied for just a half-hour of her time.

You did run away, the voice of my father returned, dripping with venom. If you’d stayed and worked with her, found some way to counter the effects…

“Who was the girl?” Kaitlin asked without warning.

“My sister,” I fought back the urge to sob.

She gave a moment’s pause. “What was her name?”

“Sybil.”

“I lost two brothers as a child.” Her voice had become barely more than a whimper. “But that was life in Luhansk. We were farmers. We got used to death.”

Exerting every ounce of strength left in my good arm, I pushed my body off of the unforgiving ground and sat up. I hardly even heard Kaitlin mumbling as she descended into the inviting relief of delirium. More and more of her blood seeped onto the asphalt, and even her mind had begun to depart. I raised a sleeve to wipe the last tears from my face. I can’t let Sybil go like this. I can’t leave her again.

A light snow started to fall.

“Back then I was little Katyusha! My mother named me for her favorite song...I think. A pity I had to change it.” Kaitlin’s contemptuous grin now glowed true and genuine.

“Damien?” she suddenly sounded frightened. “Damien?! Are you still there?” Once again she began to cough, spewing more of her life onto the road.

“Yes.”

“Damien,” she let out a ragged sigh of relief. “Did you ever hear of Trofim Lysenko?”

I didn’t reply. My mind was in disarray; a million thoughts raced through my head, but my heart could only look to the conflagration our Chevrolet had become. Sybil, the name tolled again and again in the core of brain. We had been reunited for no more than a few days, and my creation had stolen her away from me. I have to find her again, beyond the reaches of Kaitlin and BX-2.

“Such a man! Such a man! He visited our sovkhozy when I was a girl. Of course, my father despised his politics, but still, I saw something in him. His ideas were ludicrous, but he was brilliant all the same. He knew the key to progress! Today we study science like students to some old professor! We ask what science can teach us, but Lysenko had ambition! He had the tenacity to yoke nature to his will, to command science while others would only follow it!”  

Every word that slipped from her lips sounded delicate, as though her voice might shatter at any moment. Kaitlin only barely remained in this world, clutching to the last tendrils of life as they slipped away.

“We could have changed everything, Damien,” she hissed. “We just weren’t ready to change ourselves. Eto ne samyy sil'nyy iz vidov, kotoryy vyzhivayet, no odnim iz naiboleye reagirovat na izmeneniya!”

It took me some time to realize that Kaitlin had passed. Her death was of little consequence to me. For so long I had fought to reunite with my family, and now fate had played its final card, but I wouldn’t let it stand. Death wouldn’t take my sister away from me.

Follow her, my father said. Don’t let my baby girl go alone into the dark.

I could hear a siren approaching in the distance. Ignoring the protests of my crippled body, I stumbled to my feet.  

------------------------------

POLICE REPORT

CASE NO: 9001818

DATE: 12/19/2016

REPORTING OFFICER: Mary Stone

NATURE OF CASE: Attempted Assault Against a Police Officer

PERSONS: Jane Doe 1, Jane Doe 2, John Doe

OFFENDERS: John Doe

EVIDENCE:

One .22 rifle inside Ford Bronco

Unidentified narcotics on Jane Doe 1’s person

One shard of glass (presumably intended for use as a weapon)

INCIDENT:

At approximately 9:30 P.M. I responded to a collision along Highway 191. Upon approaching the scene of the wreck, I saw a large blaze rising up from what appeared to be an older truck. An overturned Bronco lay on its side approximately thirty feet away. Between the vehicles I could see two individuals, one older woman lying on the asphalt and a young man standing beside her. Upon exiting my cruiser, the young man began to walk towards me, brandishing a large shard of glass.

ACTIONS:

I instructed the man to drop the weapon and place his hands behind his head. The individual did not comply and continued to approach me. Again, I told the man to stop and lower the weapon. I then drew my firearm and informed him that I would use deadly force if he did not do as instructed. He continued to approach the cruiser, and when he stepped within five feet I discharged my pistol, striking him in the forehead. In accordance with protocol, I then placed restraints on the assailant and called for backup. Further inspection revealed both he and the other individual to be deceased, as well as a badly burned body trapped within the truck.

SUMMARY:

Regarding the above statement I wish to advise that given the young man’s appearance and the presence of a deadly weapon I feared for my life and acted entirely out of self-defense. In accordance with protocol, he was given ample warning before I drew and discharged my weapon.

Chapters: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 

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One of Damien’s favorite bands, The Smiths.

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Frankenstein Revamped: Chapter Six: Damien Speaks

It was all over in a manner of minutes.

Night had fallen and we were headed down into the town of Moab to find somewhere with a wi-fi connection, maybe a Starbucks or something, where we could check for news reports on the diner shooting. I didn’t have a phone and Sybil was out of data on hers so wi-fi seemed like the best way to start looking for Kaitlyn. The atmosphere in the car was the best it had been since I found Syb at the border checkpoint. We weren’t exactly out of the woods yet, but at least we knew what we needed to do.

I was right about the sugar, my head didn’t pulse as much and the black dots that kept crowding the corners of my vision didn’t seem to come as frequently. Sybil still looked at me like I had just said “yeah, I can probably jump that” while standing on the edge of ten story building.

You got her into this.

It was so good to see her, she wasn’t the scared 12-year-old girl I left in Fairview anymore, sitting in the driver’s seat next to me was a woman. I still looked like a 17-year-old boy, albeit a bearded and scraggly one. I missed so much, she had figured out who she was while I was busy working on my “wonder drug.” She learned to drive, had her heart broken, broken some hearts, gone from a kid to a full fledged adult in the time that I had been gone. Working on B-X2, I wondered if everything I had sacrificed would be worth it, I know now that it wasn’t.

On the dash I noticed a little Buddha statue, one of the cheap ones people get at souvenir shops. The belly was about two shades of green lighter than the jade that covered the rest of the figurine, probably from wear; Syb was always the superstitious type.

“What’s the story with the Buddha statue?”

“I got it in Bhutan; I did a study abroad program there my junior year. I taught english in one of the schools and on the last day the kids gave it to me as a goodbye present.”

You missed that too.

I didn’t really know what to say back to her; she had lived some of the most important parts of her life as an only child because of me. A silent nod was all I responded with, trying to convey my apologies through the downward motion of my forehead.

We were about two miles out of Moab when a pair of headlights lit up the left side of Sybil’s face, followed by the front bumper of a Ford Bronco.

The thing about B-X2 is it doesn’t just rob you of your health, it takes away your ignorance. My brain was moving so fast that I knew Sybil was dead before I had the chance to wonder if she was still alive. There was no moment of hope for me, only facts.

You’ve been in an accident. Your sister is dead. It’s your fault.

My mind didn’t give me much of chance to grieve either. There was so much information pouring into my brain that I couldn’t separate the facts from emotions. The sound of a car door creaking open somewhere behind me snapped me back into the present and I realized that I wasn’t in the truck anymore. I rolled over and saw black smoke rising from the wreck, the front end of the Bronco embedded into the side of the Chevy which had buckled like a tin can. There was a neat trail of glass shards and blood, presumably belonging to me, leading from the broken window to the dusty red piece of earth I was laying on.

Damage report: head, bleeding; legs, bleeding; right arm, numb.

I didn’t need B-X2 to realize my arm, which was currently bent in the opposite direction, was broken.

Laying up against a rock next to me was what was left of the Buddha statue and my mind shot back to Sybil.

You’ve been in an accident. Your arm is broken. Your sister is dead. It’s your fault.

A woman’s voice rose up above the groaning metal and hiss of steam leaving the Bronco’s exposed engine.

“Damien!”

It sounded like it was intended as a yell, but it was stifled by coughs and choking. The voice was familiar, but it wasn’t Sybil’s.

“Damien!”

The voice called out again and this time I had a face to match it with. Silhouetted against the light coming off of the now burning wreck was Kaitlyn, her arm bent at a nauseating angle and one of her legs dragging behind her like dead weight.

My curiosity turned into rage as I saw her. She found us before we could find her and now Sybil was dead. She squinted through the darkness, scanning the ground in front of her until she saw me. She began to speak, but choked on something, spitting out blood onto the ground before trying again.

“Fix this Damien! I’m not going to die like this. I don’t want to get smarter only to understand the different ways in which my body is falling apart.”

She coughed up more blood onto the red earth, turning the rust colored rocks at her feet black. I pushed myself up to my feet with my good arm, thoughts spinning.

Kaitlyn caused this accident. Your sister is dead. Kaitlyn killed her.

Chapters: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 

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Frankenstein author Mary Shelley kept her dead husband’s heart and carried it with her for almost 30 years until she died in 1851. It was found in a desk drawer a year later, wrapped in a copy of one of his final poems. Source

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Frankenstein in pop-culture: Ha ha! You fools! I have wrought life upon this monstrosity! It's alive! Bwhahahahaha!

Frankenstein in the book: *the necromancy equivalent of writing an essay at 4am then looking at the incomprehensible mess next day and screaming*

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Frankenstein Revamped: Chapter Five: Synaptic Solutions

We sat in silence for at least a half an hour trying to process everything that had just happened.

“Sybil, I just killed someone.”

Not the best way to break the silence.

“What are you talking about, Damien?”

“It’s my fault. If I hadn’t escaped, Kaitlin wouldn’t have tried to kill us and Marie wouldn’t be dead. She had nothing to do with this. Plus, that was my gun she stole from the truck. I put the weapon in her hand.”

“Damien, you were brave to escape after all this time. Marie dying is not your fault. You can’t blame yourself for Kaitlin’s actions. You did the right thing.“

He didn’t respond. It was obvious he was exhausted, both physically and emotionally. I convinced him to get some rest. At least that way he would burn a few less calories than he would sitting up mulling over things beyond his control. Every calorie was vital and I refused to lose my brother again.  

I stopped every few hours at gas stations, replenishing our fuel tank and food stocks. Damien demolished the two burgers he got at the grimy little diner. While he was sleeping, I stopped and bought him an array of high-calorie snacks. I purchased a box of off-brand peanut butter protein bars and a case of Peace Lemon Tea. Damien’s favorite, I never understood why he liked that stuff. I remembered how Dad had always told Damien if he kept drinking so much sweet tea he’d turn into a “bonafide hillbilly.”

After sixteen and a half hours of driving through terrible weather, the sun came out. Damien began to stir just as we passed a sign that said “Welcome to Moab, Utah! Home of the Arches National Park.” He mumbled in his partially conscious state and asked if we could stop; he said he felt a little dizzy and needed some fresh air. I figured the park was as good a place as any to stop. There would be picnic tables, a nice view, and probably not too many people around considering it was 4°C. I pulled off the road and drove a little ways through the park to a sign that read, “La Sal Mountain Viewpoint.”

I started to unbuckle my seatbelt, but Damien asked for a minute alone. He grabbed a can of tea and walked out to a picnic table. There was a family of four sitting at a different table across from him. It appeared to be a mom, baby, and a toddler who had come to visit their dad for lunch. They were laughing and talking. The toddler was running laps around the table. Bright-eyed, the child would ask his dad to identify the things he would pick up, then repeat the names back to his dad. The baby lay in its mother’s arms all bundled up, cooing and babbling.

A few minutes passed when I noticed Damien had shifted to holding his face in his hands, slumped over and shaking. I jumped out of the truck and ran toward him. Tears were rolling down his face.

“Sybil, this drug is a mistake... look at that family over there. The innocence of those children. They are exploring the world and learning things naturally, the way they should. Their parents are helping them develop intellectually and physically. My mind is constantly racing and constantly expanding, but my body is wasting away. I won’t even be here much longer.”

My lip quivered. “Daimen, don’t say that. We’re going to figure this out.”

“What are we going to do Sybil? Kaitlin is smart enough not to take this through the FDA yet. If she advertises B-X2 as a ‘smart pill’ on the black market or on the street, people will flock to it without even considering the side effects; and if enough people take it, no one will even notice them, Kaitlin didn’t. Lives are going to be lost and this is my fault. Not to mention, Marie already died and she did not even take the drug.”

I threw my arms around my brother as tears started streaming down my face. I didn’t know what to say. I tried to help him like Mom had always done for us. She would get a cold glass of water and tell us to drink. It’s hard to drink and cry at the same time. Then she would place a wet washcloth on our forehead to cool us down. She’d hold us and whisper soothing words while drying our tears. Even in seemingly hopeless situations, Mom always knew what to do. Even Dad knew she was better at it, so he always let her do the comforting.

Since I did not have the same resources Mom did, I made do with the lemon tea.

“Drink,” I told him.

He took a few swigs and acted like he felt much better. He stopped shaking.

“Did you black out on the way here?” I shifted the conversation.

“I think I did, I felt awful when I woke up. I haven’t taken B-X2 in a few days. Plus, my blood sugar probably dropped a lot. I guess this tea really helped get it back up,” Damien replied through his sniffles.

“So what exactly causes blackouts?”

“The drug opens new synapses in the brain to keep up with how quickly it’s developing. Since I stopped taking it, those synapses are starving, and I keep blacking out.”

Damien finished the can and examined the label.

“Sixty-nine grams of sugar in this can.”

“Since when did you become health conscious?” I replied, trying to lighten the mood.

“No Syb, that is twice as much sugar as someone should have in a whole day. Let alone one drink. No wonder I feel better after drinking this stuff. Consuming too much sugar can alter your brain’s ability to learn and retain information, at least until you drink enough water to dilute the sugar or get flush it out of the blood stream.”

Damien always had a strong interest in cognitive function. Not to mention, he has always been a nerd. Damien was accepted to MIT’s Brain and Cognitive Studies program so I didn’t question what he was saying. I was so proud of Damien when he was accepted to MIT. I wouldn’t show it, but I looked up to him.

“Syb, sugar could close those synapses and help wean me off of this drug until my brain can function without B-X2. It can help Kaitlin too. We have to find her and get B-X2 out of her system before she starts selling it. That’s the only way to make this end.”

 Chapters: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 

Dedicated to Brandon Kathman

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Thomas de Leu, Prometheus, 1609

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Prometheus ~ Jean Delville

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― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

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Mary Shelley

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (30 August 1797 – 1 February 1851) was an English novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus (1818). She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley. Her father was the political philosopher William Godwin, and her mother was the philosopher and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft (edit)

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ladies invented your favorite science fiction subgenres

Margaret Cavendish - Mary Shelley -  Emma Orczy - Catherine Lucille Moore

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Frankenstein Revamped: Chapter Four: That’ll be To-Go

I pushed my bacon away and stared at the table while I tried to process what Damien had just told me. If he were a subject himself I could only wonder what the drug would do… what it had been doing already, and what the consequences of taking it would be on his painfully frail body. My brother looked at me as I took time to process this new information. Silence stretched for a minute or two. “…Go on” I prompted when I was ready.

“At first, our rats only showed positive effects. Almost immediately after taking the drug they were able to breeze through tests that they had struggled with previously, such as making their way out of a maze, or even rudimentary counting. For a while, they only improved, showing marked increases in cognitive functions and problem-solving efficiency.”

“So what’s the catch?” I asked tentatively, not really sure if I wanted to know the answer.

“The rats began to get very sick, and a number died shortly after a week or so of taking the drug. We had noticed that they had been getting skinnier, but initially attributed it to their increased physical activity, with the extra tests and all.”

Marie interrupted us to place a check on our table and grumbled something about having a good day and all that. “Wait, Marie!” Damien exclaimed, quickly gulping down his milkshake. “Bring us two more large hamburgers… to go please!”

Marie sighed.

“Anyway,” Damien said, snapping me out of my thoughts, “We thought we could counteract their extra calorie burn by feeding them larger quantities of food. Simple enough right?”

I sat in silence and stared back at him, waiting for him to continue.

“Shortly before I left we discovered that the drug absolutely works. It turns your brain into a super brain of sorts. The price of this super brain is calorie burn, lots of calorie burn. It seemed that no matter how much we fed our subjects they still withered away, only slower. So while your brain and mental capacity increase exponentially, your body and physical faculties quickly erode.”

“What does that mean for you?” I questioned, sensing that the answer I was about to hear was not the one I wanted.

“It means that I am slowly dying.”

I lost my appetite and my mood was taking a sharp nosedive. The weather was getting pretty bad outside and we were still waiting on Marie for our check. When Marie finally came back to deliver Damien’s hamburgers (a purchase which now made sense to me) she looked nervous and stated that we should hit the road, they would be closing early. She was already in her street clothes, the only thing stopping her from leaving was my brother and I. I placed a twenty on the table.

“We don’t have change” Marie grumbled.

I sighed, but nothing could be done. Damien needed the calories and I didn’t have any smaller bills for the food. We walked outside towards the truck and were caught in a torrential downpour. We picked up our pace, myself in the lead with Damien staring off into the clouds.

I stopped short when I noticed a quick movement in the bed of the truck. Before I could react any further a loud bang sounded, quickly followed by my brother gasping and the sound of a window shattering from somewhere behind us. We both dropped to the ground and scrambled for the closest cover. Damien quickly reached an empty parked car and took cover, but I had nowhere to go within easy reach. The person who shot the gun from our truck could take me out quickly in my exposed state, but nothing had happened yet.

Rapid footsteps from behind me snapped me out of my thoughts and reeled me into the present. They seemed to be going away from me, so I wasn’t in trouble yet. However, that meant they were most likely moving towards Damien. I chanced a glance backwards and confirmed that my brother was indeed the intended target. I could see his feet under the car towards its trunk. The assailant, a younger looking girl, ran with purposeful speed, but something about her gait seemed off, weak in a way. I would say she looked lean, but truthfully, she looked like she was made of skin and bones. Her skin, which looked like it used to be pulled tight over her body, seemed to hang somewhat loosely around her small frame and her limbs seemed gangly.

I realized that I could probably catch her if I got up now and ran. my legs had never moved so fast. Don’t get me wrong, it was a hard-fought run. The girl, so focused on my brother, maintained a constant never wavering speed for the car, and didn’t seem to notice me slowly gaining on her from behind. I had only to catch her and tackle her before she rounded the side of the car, which would give her an open, close range line of sight to Damien. She was 30 feet from the car, I was 40. She was 20 from the car, I was 25. She was 10, I was 12,  and charged headlong into her body, the two of us careened forwards past the trunk and onto the cracked cement.

Shaking off a brief daze I saw Damien running towards our truck, about three-quarters of the way there. I kicked the gun away from the girl (although I realize now that I should have grabbed it) and began running as well, my legs finally feeling the effects of the first sprint. Luckily, the girl seemed to have been knocked into a semi-conscious state by the tackle. This bought me some time. I got to the door of the truck as the first shot rang out. It slammed into the car a few inches to my right. As I got into the truck I fumbled for a second to find the keys.

I finally dug the key out from my apparently very deep pockets and jammed it in the ignition. The old orange Chevy bucked violently before the engine turned over and we were off. Before we reached the edge of the parking lot, we both noticed that the shattering sound we had heard earlier had come from a car, a little yellow Volkswagen. The driver’s window had been blown to pieces. Inside, Marie lay slumped over her steering wheel. A few stray shots sounded in the distance, but nothing got remotely close us.

“What the fuck was that?!” I questioned as I looked both myself and Damien over for any signs of bullet wounds. Between deep, gasping breaths, Damien replied.

“Kaitlyn, she must have taken the drug?" Damien said while gasping for breath, "I don’t understand, I thought she knew all of the bad things that happened, but shit, she didn’t see it, Sybil. She didn’t see the effects.” He laughed nervously. It died away quickly amidst the rain.

I pushed on.

Chapters: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 

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Frankenstein Revamped: Chapter Three: Diners, Drive-Ins, and Die

The truck’s gas levels had plummeted earlier in the evening without my knowledge. Once I noticed the weak orange light from the corner of my eye, I pulled into the first gas station we came across.

Damien stayed in his seat as I stepped out into the frigid air. Too lazy to grab my jacket from the back, I wrapped my arms around my torso and shivered while gasoline pumped into the old truck. My breath was visible in the air and a cold chill traveled down my spine again. I looked across the road from the run-down station we were at and saw a sorry excuse of a shopping center. All of the spaces had “For Rent” signs displayed but two: a pet store and a dingy-looking diner.

“You hungry?”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Will's Diner wasn’t a charming place; everything was covered in a substantially thick layer of grime and reeked of leftover grease. I wasn’t picky about such things, but honestly had to wonder how it had passed any health inspections. Our waitress, a blonde with dark brows, approached us with a bored expression.

"My name's Marie, what can I get you guys?" She mumbled.

Damien spoke up before I was able to, "I'll have a milkshake and a bacon burger with a side of fries, and she'll have... scrambled eggs, bacon, and orange juice?" He ends with a questioning tone in his voice, looking at me for confirmation. How did he-

"You haven't changed much," he responded, answering my question before I even ask it. But he was right, I'm almost exactly the same as I was when I was 12, right down to my breakfast order. My brother leaving without a trace was enough change to last me a lifetime

“Nervous?” Damien asked, raising an eyebrow at my uneasiness. It's funny that I couldn't seem to think of anything to talk about, considering there was so much I’d wanted to tell him over these years.

“No,” I replied simply. Though his eyes held the same glint I’d seen every day as a young child, there was something heavy to them now. They took up too much of his gaunt face, the delicate skin ringed around them a sleepless bruised hue. The rest of his face was entirely too pale, almost translucent where I could see little blue veins near his hairline. His cheekbones jutted out in sharp angles and deep wrinkles had formed between his brows and on his forehead. Damien looked at least ten years older than his actual age and terminally ill. He was watching me, waiting for me to say something.

“You look. . . awful,” was all I could think to mention. Nice, I thought. My brother's actually alive after all these years so I'll insult him firsthand.

He laughed. “Well damn, so do you. Never grew out of the ugly phase, huh?” I stayed silent, biting the inside of my cheek and watching him, expressionless. Wanting to laugh, but unable to, I offered a weak smile.

“That was a joke,” Damien assured me in a teasing voice. “You look great. Happy.” I frowned.

“No, I know that. It’s just . . .” I picked at a scab on my knuckle.  “You’re—I thought, or, well, I assumed that you—”

“That I was dead,” he interrupted gravely. “I worried about that.” His response didn’t sit right with me and I knew my face showed it from the way he paused.

“Were you actually worried?” I asked, and there was more malice in my tone than I intended; It shocked both of us but I continued, leaning over the table and talking at a harsh yet quiet pitch. “Because from what I can tell, you never called to check up on us or, I don’t know, let us know you were okay. You just about killed mom and dad. None of us wanted to assume you’d died, but honestly it was easier to accept than you having left us willingly.” My fingernails dug into my palms I realized how hot the room seemed all of a sudden.

“How are mom and dad?” He asked, his guilt apparent in the way his voice quieted.

“They’re alive,” I said tersely. “And so are you, apparently.”

Damien ran his hands through his already messy hair, pulling out too many strands too easily. He untangled them from his skeletal fingers and set them aside, not seeming phased by it. I chose not to comment. “I know you don’t believe me, but I tried to come home. I really did,” he insisted.

I scoffed sourly. “You tried and after twelve years it finally worked, is that it?” He winced. “Oh wait, no— I just happened to run into you.”

“Sybil, I’m sorry,” he begged, and I began to feel bad about giving him so much grief. “Please, let me explain things.” I crossed my arms across my chest as a cue for him to continue.

“Around Christmastime that year, a couple of men approached me regarding a career opportunity. They said they had noticed my achievements throughout high school and wanted to talk to me about joining their most recent research group.” Despite being odd, random “career opportunities” wouldn’t have been surprising; Damien had been an academic genius as a teenager.  

“Both of them were painfully vague when it concerned exactly what I’d be researching, but insisted that its secrecy was due to the subject’s importance. I declined, of course, because I had been accepted into MIT and there wasn’t anything that could distract me from my plans to attend the next fall. Not even a week later, I received a call reminding me of the ‘opportunity’. I suppose curiosity got the best of me and I agreed to meet someone before a family dinner.”

I felt pin pricks behind my eyes as I made an effort not to tear up. “The 17th,” I said, remembering the day we had waited and waited for him to show. He nodded solemnly. “You didn’t tell anyone where you were going, let alone that you were leaving.”

He put his hands in his lap and straightened his shoulders. “Yes,” he confirmed quietly, waiting for me to say anything else. I didn’t, picking up my napkin and folding it into a diamond.

“Orange juice, eggs, and bacon for you,” Marie droned, suddenly at our table and pushing a plate in front of me. “Chocolate milkshake and bacon burger with a side of fries for you. You two need anything else?” We both shook our heads.

“No thanks,” Damien answered politely, and she walked away. “At the meeting, they told me they wanted me to lead a project they’d been working on— a drug, to be specific. The team had recently quit, they wouldn’t say why. I was intrigued, asked for more information. What they were able to tell an ‘outsider’ was extremely limited, so I learned very little about what I could become involved in. Long story short, I was told that agreeing to work on this would mean leaving behind a lot of things.” Damien glanced at me; I didn’t move or say anything but could feel a heavy pull in my throat.

“You said yes,” I stated definitively.

He nodded. “I did.”

I frowned. “But earlier— you said it wasn’t your choice to leave, that you didn’t want to.”

“Sybil,” he laughed bitterly. “Do you really think it was my choice to leave like that? They hadn’t told me I’d have to leave everything, everyone. Immediately after signing something, I was escorted back to my vehicle and told to drive.” I recalled my parent’s pain at their son voluntarily leaving. Shrugging, I took a bite.

“The car was gone, we assumed you’d left on purpose.”

He paused, but then nodded, accepting that it was a logical reasoning. “The team they told me about was small— I was the third to join. Almost immediately I was submerged in this project, investigating, creating, and lastly, experimenting.” He had already devoured most of his burger between words, sipping from the milkshake every now and then. I couldn’t help noticing the shaking in his hands as he ate.

I sipped from the glass of orange juice. “What were you researching?”

“We were supposed to be developing a treatment at first, but its purpose quickly changed. Once Kaitlyn noticed a correlation between B-X2 and increased cognitive function and capacity, she began looking at it as a drug instead of something to help those with mental disorders. Suddenly we were put to working on creating a ‘super-brain’ concoction. They were ruthless with it, paying no attention to the symptoms that were possible if one were to use it, I tried to—”

“Wait, wait,” I interrupted. “B-X2. What is—”

He, in turn, cut me off impatiently. “Bremarium X-268. Originally it was supposed to help mental disorders such as Alzheimer’s, Schizophrenia, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Bipolar, the list goes on.”

“Okay, even I know that none of those are remotely the same. You can’t possibly treat those with one universal drug, can you?”

He chewed a French fry. “That's exactly what we were trying to figure out. Kaitlyn had different plans. She became obsessed once B-X2 showed indications of increased cerebral functions. Essentially, she wanted to make a smart-pill. It’s a great fantasy, but everything comes at a price,” he said evenly, wiping his mouth with a napkin. “I, unlike Kaitlyn, began looking at the possible negative effects. Many of the lab rats began to show increased brain activity. They were smarter than the control rats and solved puzzles in no time, but before long they began to wither away."

He rolled up his sleeve and I set down my cup, paying full attention to what he seemed to try to be showing me. The more exposed his arm became, the more I realized how frail he was; there was a marbled effect on his skin from bruises. In the crook of his elbow, I saw what he was presenting: needle marks. I was confused, but it quickly dawned on me.

“You took the drug,” I said. He nodded.

“It was the only way I could think to prove it to them. I couldn't leave--I had to try to stop them. But once they realized I’d made myself a subject, they kept me as not only a contributor to the research, but an experiment.”

Chapters: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 

[derekstein]

Frankenstein Revamped: Chapter Two: This Charming Man

I drove for what felt like hours before either of us spoke a word, though a quick glance at the stereo clock confirmed it had been only been 15 minutes.  “Any idea if we’re even headed in the right direction?” I asked, breaking the silence.

“Nope,” the stranger replied, toying with his unkempt beard. “I’m not exactly from around here. All roads lead to Rome though, I’m sure we’ll figure it out.”

Something about his voice comforted me. Whatever reservations I had about driving this stranger across the country seemed to disappear with that one statement. Don’t get too comfortable with this guy, Sybil. He pointed a gun at you like, 20 minutes ago, I remind myself. What happened to “don’t talk to strangers” and all that? Damn, mom would throw a fit if she knew about this. Even after the reality check my conscience gave me, I couldn’t completely shake the sense that I already knew him.

“There’s a map in the glovebox there, can you get it out for me?” I asked, easing to a stop on the slick road. The sky was unnaturally dark for it to only be 6:00, and from the looks of the worsening snowstorm, I began to doubt if the map would be any help at all. After all, I could barely see the hood of my car. “Where are you from?”

“Fairview, Alberta,” he supplied, handing me the crumpled map after a quick dig in my junkyard of a glovebox. “But, God... It’s been a while.”

“Woah, small world.” I responded, surprised that anyone other than myself actually managed to escape that place. “Me too. Don’t worry, though—I don’t think Fairview has changed a bit since the 1850s. You haven’t missed much.”

He stared at me for a moment, his frustrated expression dissolving into one of sadness, “I’ve missed enough,” he responded.

I busied myself with the map, tracing the winding roads with my finger in an attempt to figure out where the hell we were. “I think we’re on course. If you’d even consider our journey to have a course. ‘South’ is pretty vague,” I laughed nervously. “I guess if we’re going to be at this for a while, we might as well play some music. I only have cassettes in here, though. They’re un—“ Before I finished telling him where they were stashed, he reached under the passenger seat and pulled out the shoebox full of my brother's old alt-rock tapes. I never could get rid of them. He paused a moment before lifting the lid, as though he was scared of what he might find inside. Almost as if on cue, the wind outside hurled a tree branch against the side of the car, startling him from his trance. He quickly thumbed through the selection of cassettes like he knew exactly what he was looking for, and without hesitation popped in This Charming Man by The Smiths.  The music filled the car, drowning out the sounds of the storm outside, and all I could think of was how much my brother used to love this song. I looked over at my passenger and saw something I recognized in the way he bobbed his head along to the music. He was trying to hide it, but his compulsion seemed so familiar. I pushed the sensation from my mind and started driving again down the icy highway.

“I love this song,” he mumbled. “Used to torture my sister with my music whenever we went on roadtrips. She usually threw a bitch fit and said I had the most pretentious taste in music, but she never seemed to mind this one,” his wary smile faded back into a frown when he whispered to himself, almost inaudible,  “Though I wouldn’t be surprised if she grew to resent it after I left.“ It’s just a coincidence, Sybil. Focus on driving.

“How long have you been gone?” I prodded, with a creeping suspicion that I already knew the answer.

“It’ll be 12 years on the 17th,” he breathed, and my heart skipped a beat. No, Sybil. Stop. You’re imagining things.

“What’s your name?” I asked, knuckles white from my tightened grip on the steering wheel. Several seconds passed with no answer. I stepped on the brake, too quickly judging from the fact that the old Chevy nearly met its fate in the ditch to our left. As soon as I regained control I snapped my head to look at my suddenly mute passenger. “What is your name?” I insisted again, repressing my urge to scream.

The stranger continued to look forward, but confessed.

“Damien.”

I studied his face, looking for signs of my brother. He had matured since I last saw him, but with some effort I spotted the 17 year old boy I knew, buried under a layer of frown lines and unruly hair. His cheeks were hollow, his eyes darker, and when I saw him last he couldn’t even shave, and now had a full-grown beard. I wondered if I ever knew him at all. I had trouble forming the questions that I wanted to ask, but he seemed to read my mind.

“I didn’t choose to leave. It’s impossibly complicated I would’ve never left you if I had a choice. I know it sounds like bullshit. I tried coming home, I—”

“When did you recognize me?” I whispered.

"I had a hunch it was you when I saw the hideous orange Chevy, but I couldn't be sure. I can’t believe Dad never trashed this hunk of junk,” he answered, pausing for a moment before continuing. “I wanted to tell you immediately, but I wasn’t sure if you remembered me. You were 12 when I left, Sybil. It’s been so long, I—“

“What happened to you?” I interrupted, forcing my voice to remain steady. “Everyone thinks you’re dead, and you look like a corpse so I’m not entirely convinced they’re wrong.”

“I tried coming home, Sybil. This is as far as I’ve gotten. The blackouts didn’t help... I started traveling, but I’d lose track of where I was and end up miles off course. The blackouts haven't stopped, but Sybil… I’ve done something, I’ve made something terrible.”

“What did you do…” I asked, noticing that my hands were trembling. Damien shifted away from me and looked out the window.

“I really thought I was going to help so many people, Syb. I didn’t mean for things to turn out this way, you have to believe me. I thought I was doing something great, but I may have done something unforgivable...”

Chapters: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 

[derekstein]