#FrankenSmack Tale: DAY 8

A couple weeks ago, author Mike Jung challenged me to a Frankenstein story smackdown, and being of a foolish and compulsive nature, I accepted. Today, we post our #FrankenSmack tales.

Make sure you read Mike's story, right here!

Note: This story's more PG-13 than most of my posts, and more YA than the project I currently have on submission. So.

DAY 8

The syringe is heavier than I expected.

The liquid inside looks like piss. It wobbles as I clear the air. Then the needle points down again, and I grip the cylinder with both hands. Extend my arms. And hesitate.

A drop hits his perfect chest.

He growls in frustration. “What are you waiting for?” His eyes glint, entitled, like two little pools. I hate them and the way people always fall into them, thrashing as he holds them under, then loving him more when he lets them surface.

I haven’t fallen in, I tell myself. My arms shake in front of me. I won’t.

“Christ.” He takes a deep breath, huffs it out. “Relax,” he mutters to himself. His hands flex under the wrist straps. “Almost there.”

I frown. Almost where? Then I get it: Vic Stone never does anything he can’t take credit for later. So he can’t have thought this through. He thinks he’s coming out the other side.

“No points for second place.”

He’s not.

“Nut up, you worthless piece of—”

Turns out, the force I use is more than required. He grunts with the impact. But my aim is good. The syringe stands like an exclamation point beside his sternum, his open mouth the misplaced dot.

He stares at the thing like he didn’t think I’d really do it.

I jam the plunger down with my fist.

* * *

When Vic suggested this eight days ago, I thought he was crazy.

Or crazier than usual. Because when he pulled the nine-volt from his pocket and attached the frog’s feet to the terminals and it jittered in its wax tray, I wanted to puke. Afraid to touch it, I stabbed its chest with a dissection pick to hold it in place and yanked the battery from its feet.

Vic looked at the pick, then at me with that beautiful, arrogant grin. “Exactly, Iggs.”

Then the principal showed up, called me into the hall, and handed me the worst day of my life.

*

The funeral happened quickly, of course. So did my decision to sit shiva. It didn’t matter that I wasn’t his son or brother. He’d been my mother’s father. My namesake. My best friend. He’d taught me how to play chess. Prepared me for my bar mitzvah. Charmed the bakery girls out of extra bits of rugelach. We would wink at each other over those pieces because they always tasted best. How could I not cover the mirrors and light the candle and spend seven days thinking about what he meant to me?

Only...around day three, about the time my ass went numb from sitting on the floor, I thought about the dancing frog. I shuddered.

I waved off the blanket my mom brought over, but she ignored me and draped it around my shoulders anyway. “Take care, Iggy. Don’t freeze on his account.”

I pulled the blanket tight. It helped. It kept the unholy thoughts in my own little cocoon, where they could fester and twist and feed on want, and turn me into something my family would never recognize.

I emerged two days later. I made some excuse about peeing, then veered into the guest room, where our coats lay on the bed. Mine was on the bottom, so I had to dig. When I found my cell, I broke shiva and texted Vic.

Told him to get everything together.

Told him where to meet me.

Told him tonight.

Then I went into the study and took a book from the shelf.

*

Vic came over the wall with two shovels and a cooler. He scowled at the name on the temporary grave marker. “This isn’t a woman, is it?”

I set my jaw and pushed my shovel into the loose, mounded dirt. Asshole.

* * *

When the green line goes flat, I pull the syringe from the chest and throw it aside. I don’t have much time. Or maybe all the time in the world—who the hell knows? Have I done this before? Still, I hurry.

With a scalpel I trace the hairline down from one temple, around behind, and back up the other side. Nudging with gloved fingertips, I peel the scalp up and forward, until it rests upside-down on the face. I cover it with damp gauze and pick up the bone saw.

I have done this part once tonight. I had to be careful not to nick the brain, so I was hesitant. I only retched a little, when the saw sprayed bits of skull onto my glasses. On this second head, I’m not so reluctant. Maybe I dig the screeching blade deeper than I need to, because when I lift the pate, matter spills out like oatmeal.

I clean the cavity. Pull the other brain from the cooler. Graft tissue. I staple the skullcap back to its base, stitch the scalp together. I open the drip lines and attach the electrodes.

Finally, I open the book. Circling the body, I say the words. I pray. I apologize to Rabbi Loew, and every Jew who ever lived, for being a superstitious nutjob and the worst rep my people have yet begotten.

Then I wait.

And just when I think I’ve failed—when the light around the blinds begins to pink, and I worry that Dr. Stone will find me here, amid the gore of his favored son—it happens.

It moves.

I grab the shoulders. The muscles underneath twitch. I hold my breath.

When the eyes open, I don’t hate them. They blink at the light, take in the room. Find me. Crinkle at the corners.

“You,” he whispers.

My lungs burn and my breath comes out in a sob. “Grandpa.”

And it’s good. It’s good like the extra rugelach, like we’ve gotten away with something. It’s so good, until he looks down.

Sees his new eighteen-year-old body. My spattered apron. The bone saw.

“Isadore,” he moans, "what have you done?"

His eyes meet mine.

I fall in.

The ripples mar his too-young skin.

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