The Modern Prometheus

by Nicole Mello

  Then, he opened his eyes — his hideous, horrible, bloodshot eyes — and the joy that I felt left me as suddenly as it had come. Horror took its place. Looking into his eyes, and at the expression set deep into them, I feared how terrible he could be, how ugly and how monstrous; I feared that this was not the wonderful life I had set out to create. It seemed, in fact, to be far from it, and I struggled to reconcile this product with what I had imagined for so long. I had dreamed of a child for myself, like Will, like Lewis, or like my daughter. He was nothing like them.

  He was an abomination. He raised himself from his bed, and he lunged at me, his limbs stiff and awkward, like a zombie, like a corpse straight from a scary movie. It horrified and shocked me, and I had the immediate instinct of fight-or-flight. I fought. I attacked him. He was so new, so helpless, and he crashed through my window, falling several stories to the ground below.

  I cleaned up the disaster in my room as quickly as I could, sweeping up glass shards and disposing of machinery pieces, hiding what I could not destroy, before I left to retrieve him. I didn’t want anyone coming to my room while I was gone and finding the leftovers of my failure. I hurried outside to where the body should have fallen, only to discover that the corpse was gone. He was nowhere to be found. I searched for hours in the freezing rain, in that cursed storm, calling his name, even though he probably had no idea it was his, before I was forced to return to my room.

  I collapsed in my bed once I got there, worn to nothing by the events of the night. I couldn’t process what had happened to me; I was dead on my feet, and I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow, which was a largely unfamiliar feeling to me by that point. I had terrible nightmares, though I don’t remember exactly what they were about, anymore. I could probably venture a guess, and I imagine you could, as well, and we’d have corresponding ideas. I was woken from my nightmares by a tremendous weight falling onto my chest and shaking me roughly. I looked at whatever it was only to find a huge, disfigured hand there, clawing at my shirt, and I fought it off immediately. It withdrew.

  In the darkness, I could barely see; I grappled for my glasses, and, after locating them, shoved them onto my face hard enough to scrape the skin off my nose and temples. I could see a shape, a shadow, giant and horrible, before my eyes adjusted to the dark. It could only be Adam, returned to the place of his birth. I should have recognized this is a sign of intelligence, of true life, but, again, I was filled only with an automatic, instinctive terror. I was frightened, and I attempted to fight him off once again, a natural response to waking up to what I perceived as an attack. Adam was probably more afraid of me than I was of him, though. I know this is usually what an adult might tell a child about, say, spiders, but it seemed to be very true. He fled once again. I was, for a while, unsure of whether or not that was a dream, if the whole night was a dream. I’m now sure that it was not. That night happened. That moment happened. He was alive, he had returned to me, and, now, he was gone.

  That experience, coupled with the hours I spent in the cold and rain, launched me into a sickness that I couldn’t recover from on my own. I’m sure I almost went insane. I was so horribly ill, so weak, but I refused to leave Cambridge, where the beast was likely still wandering, just in case he came back. Eliza could not come to me; she was too far into her first-year program to stop at that point, and she sent me apology after apology, which I accepted. I told her not to worry, that I would be fine, but we both knew what a straightforward lie that was. Gloria offered to come, but I declined; she had a family now to think of, a son of her own, and she couldn’t spend an indefinite amount of time nursing me back to health. Will could not see me, not in this state, so that ruled out both him and my father.

  In the end, it was Henry who came.

  Henry left his home, his education, and his new life without me behind, and he came to Cambridge for me. I hardly remember those four months that he spent nursing me back to health, but I remember the day he first arrived. I was in such a state that I screamed at the sight of him, and I attempted to fight him off, believing that he was a hallucination, or a trick by Adam, though, in retrospect, that didn’t make much sense. I wasn’t myself, and I was far from my right mind. Henry stayed with me. He didn’t have to, but he did. He brought me back from the brink of death. Would it have been better if I had died then? I sometimes wonder. Sometimes, I wish I had died then, but I didn’t. I didn’t. I wish I had died.

  Henry dragged me, kicking and screaming, back into the world of the living. After the first month, I barely moved, barely spoke. I once asked Henry if that made it easier or harder to treat me, but he would just shake his head. He usually just said that nothing was ever easy with me. He was at my side constantly. I could never thank him enough for what he did for me. He had no reason to come, and no reason to stay. I didn’t give him the love and respect that he deserved. He said he stayed because he loved me, but I think it was his personality and his morals that really fueled him through those months. He could never ignore someone who needed saving, and it was plain to him that I needed to be saved. He was my knight in shining armor, just like he had always wanted to be. He didn’t know that he always had been. It seemed to me that he was mine once more; I had no intentions of releasing him from my possession again, now that I was returning to life.

  Once I was well again, and I was myself, Henry decided to stay. He reapplied to Harvard, and they accepted him. Of course they did, genius that he was, charmer that he was. He transferred his credits, and he moved into my room. He had cleaned out every piece of evidence from my experiment. Whether or not he knew, at that point, what I had done, I had no idea; if he did, we didn’t talk about it. He came to me, and he embraced me once again, and I could never thank him enough for that. Henry was everything to me, and, without him, I would have been absolutely nothing, both then and now. I needed him, and, lucky me, I had him.

  Henry could have saved me, in that moment. I firmly believe that he could have. I could have made the whole thing out to be a terrible dream, and chalked it up to that. I could have passed my life like that, could have run away from everything. Couldn’t I? Why not? Henry made me happy; he could continue to do so, and I could come back to myself and make him happy in return. We could have had a life. Henry made me happy. Henry made me forget. Henry made me feel born again. I loved that about him. I loved all of him, of course, but I loved that in particular. It was unfair of me to want that from him, but that didn’t stop me from wanting it. It didn’t end up that we were able to have happy endings, but I did do my best. Nobody can say that I didn’t.

  It was a short time after I was healthy again that Henry and I rekindled what we once had: our high school romance. It returned to us tenfold; I was much more intense than I had been as a teenager, weathered by my experiences and worn by the weight I now carried on my shoulders, and Henry was romantic and desperate for me, for my touch, for my love, even though I still don’t know why. I wasn’t immensely happy, because I wasn’t capable of immense happiness anymore. I was, however, the happiest I believe I could’ve possibly been, and the closest to happy as I could’ve gotten after such an event as Adam’s birth.

  Henry rescued me. That’s it, in essence. He rescued me, and I remembered my love for him, beyond just a cursory acknowledgement of the fact that I loved him. It was ingrained in my being, my love for him, and I just accepted it as fact, just something I knew. Now, I was able to experience that love again, and it was incredible in a way nothing else was to me anymore.

  Henry, in his way, was everything to me, and he took that in stride. His life meant the world to me; I was obsessed with him. I don’t know if he knew, but he was perfect, in every way, in every capacity. He was normal. That was all I needed. He took me on dates, out to dinner, to movies. I hadn’t seen a movie since before my mother had died. We went to school, and we went out, and we lived. I was happy. He seemed like he was so happy.

  We had a long talk, though, once he thought I was capable of it. He
told me that he was unhappy with me and with what I had done, and I apologized. He wept. I did not. I did hold him, though, and I told him I was sorry, over and over. I didn’t have an explanation, I told him. I didn’t have an excuse. I made a mistake, I said, the worst mistake of my life. I should never have pushed him away, never; he was my everything, and I had remembered that. I made him my everything again, so that I didn’t have to deal with what I had done. I pushed Adam out of my mind, and I focused on building a brand-new life for myself.

  I tried to be normal. I did. I tried not to be weighed down by what I had done, but the knowledge of it alone? The possibility? The awareness that I could create life, and that the very life which I had created was out there somewhere? It was so much to handle, too much for any one man. I felt as though I was split into two people, and that was very difficult to maintain. Henry knew; of course, Henry knew. He was perceptive, sensitive. He knew I was struggling, and he tried to make up for it by being romantic, by being spontaneous: in essence, by being himself. We went out camping in great green woods together almost every weekend, him and I, because he knew how I loved it. Returning to nature was refreshing for me, and I basked in every moment of sunlight, every strike of wind against my face, every crunch of grass and leaves under my feet. Those days in the woods were, I think, my last good days.

  Henry and I planned to get married. It was a tentative thing, and we didn’t have a date set or anything, but we had rings that Henry made for us at a renaissance fair with a metal tradesman, and he called me his fiancee. It was enough. It was a plan. It was moving towards a normal future, a normal life. I wanted Henry to have that. I wanted that for myself, too, of course; I wanted that normal life. We could be together, I thought. We could adopt a child, and that was how I could create life from then on.

  I thought I could have Henry and keep living, I really did.

  I thought that I could have it all.

  Chapter Eleven

  I was so, so wrong. In January, just over nine months after Adam’s birth, Gloria called me, and she told me that I needed to come home immediately. She could barely get the words out, she was crying so hard, and breathing so heavily. I demanded to know what was happening. Henry took the phone from me, and attempted to calm Glo down. He got the information out of her before I was able to, and all the blood drained from his face; his skin was so white, his freckles standing out against the ghastly paleness of his face, and instantly I knew that something horrible had happened. It took a lot to do that to Henry. He was crying, but nowhere near the hysterics Glo was in, probably because he knew I would need him. He told me what happened.

  Will. My beloved brother, the light of my family’s life. He had been killed. I had been trying so hard to be normal, to be happy, and any hope of that ever happening vanished alongside my brother’s life. I could hardly believe it. I had just created life that past year, and, though terrifying, it was exhilarating, it was incredible. I had almost entirely forgotten the other end of the spectrum, that end which had claimed my mother so quickly. Could it really have come for my brother? I could barely believe it. It didn’t make sense. I couldn’t process it.

  Henry continued on to tell me that our next-door neighbor, a young woman about our age by the name of Justine Wawetseka Moritz, a name which you might know, was believed guilty of the crime. This only made the whole ordeal that much more surreal. Justine was a playmate of ours as children, a lovely girl who showered our playdates with optimism and joy. She was someone who I might consider an acquaintance, or maybe even a friend, in my younger years, even considering the limited scope through which I saw friendship, and the distance I had placed between myself and my old life. I had forgotten her as I grew older, but, in my youth, I had spent time with her. I knew her. She was a dear friend of Eliza’s, and still was, at that time, I’d imagine. I couldn’t believe it.

  Henry was invaluable to me during this time. Though I didn’t see Will as often as I once did, or as often as I would have liked, he had been something like a tether to life for me. While he grew, I was sure that there was still growth in this world, still purity, still goodness. Will was not just my brother, who I loved so, so much; he was a symbol in my life, a reason for living. Without that driving force of goodness, what were we? What was I? I lost someone I loved, but I was also starting to lose myself. Henry tried valiantly to keep me above water; he kept me from drowning when that was what I wanted more than anything.

  We returned to New York immediately. A change of scenery was, apparently, necessary; though I couldn’t forget what had happened, I already felt a little better once I was away from Cambridge. I should have left long ago, I realized. Henry drove; my usually steady hands had begun to shake more and more with each passing day, and I didn’t trust myself. Henry trusted me more than I did, but he also trusted my judgement of myself. I kept the window rolled down, let the wind blast my face. I let myself feel numb for a little while. Henry allowed it. He allowed so much. I wish there was a God I could thank for him.

  We left late, and had to stop at a motel overnight. We were both exhausted, and both so mentally, emotionally, and physically drained. Henry would start crying every now and then, which didn’t help his vision at all. We pooled the cash we had on us at the time and got a room with a double bed. It didn’t matter; it could’ve been a twin, or it could have been a California king, we would have taken up the same amount of space on it. I was missing a piece of myself. I curled up on the bed, trying to suppress the sensation that I had a vital chunk of my body gone. It didn’t work, but Henry tried his best to help fill the void. I knew he must have missed Will as much as I did; he was, in essence, a brother to him, as well. Will was the light of our lives. I couldn’t cope.

  I also couldn’t shake the feeling that something was terribly wrong. Something beyond the loss of a child, and the accusation that had been cast on Justine; something more was wrong. I feel now that, if we’d been able to look at the big picture, at the whole frame, we could’ve seen a dark stain growing larger and larger, getting closer and closer to us, almost close enough to taint our images. I couldn’t explain it. I tried to articulate it to Henry; he listened, and he nodded, and he told me that I needed some sleep, that I needed rest.

  “Everything will be better in the morning,” he said. “You’ll see.”

  Neither of us believed what he said. How could we? But, true to himself, he was trying. So I listened, and I nodded, and I shut my eyes. I tried to sleep. I couldn’t. I don’t think he could, either. We left as soon as dawn was cracking over the horizon, a broken egg spilling yellow. I took the wheel over from Henry; by this point, he couldn’t stop crying. I had already started to let the numbness settle, so I wasn’t crying much, and my hands had begun to steady. This probably wasn’t a good thing, but, while it was happening, it was, at least, useful.

  I’m a cautious driver. We were in New York by eight, and got to our home in Brooklyn before nine that morning. We hurried up to the apartment; I found myself expecting Will to answer the door, as he had every time I visited. Though it had not been often happened, he still came, every single time, to greet me with a hug and a smile and a hand with which to drag me in. Instead, this time, a red-faced, tear-stained Eliza opened the door. She embraced me immediately, throwing her arms around my neck and tugging me down to her level. I stooped over to hug her back, holding her as tightly as I could. We stood there in the doorway for some time, her crying noisily into my shoulder while I held her and tried to be the rock that I wasn’t when my mother died. Eventually, Henry moved over and took her from me, switching her grasp from my neck to his. I left their side to seek out my father.

  I came across Will’s bedroom first. It had police tape over the threshold, but the door was shut. I had a compulsion, in that moment. They say curiosity killed the cat, but you never hear the second half, which is: “but satisfaction brought her back.” I pushed the door open and maneuvered around the yellow caution tape, careful not to disturb it. I was silent a
s I entered the room, and still the closet door opened, as though whoever was lying in wait heard my footsteps and knew it was me.

  Adam was there. I don’t know how he escaped detection by the authorities; I can only assume, now, that he waited and returned to the scene of the crime once everyone was gone, and he knew that nobody would enter the room, save me and my morbid curiosity. My son seemed to know me better than I knew myself, though I had no idea how that could be. He had been all but dead to me then, save in my memories and my nightmares. Seeing him alive was jarring. He noticed me in a split second. I think he only wanted me to see him, not to confront me. He immediately ducked through the open window and vanished down the fire escape. By the time I reached the window and climbed out of it, he was already out of sight.

  I knew then. I knew immediately what had to have happened. I had no proof of it, and yet I was so sure of my theory that I felt sick, like I had a lead weight in my belly. I knew that Adam had killed Will. My abomination which I had released into the world, my wretched monster that I had given life to, my own son, was the very thing that had killed my brother. Adam killed my brother. I killed my brother. It was my fault, all my fault, and I was barely able to stumble out of Will’s bedroom, slamming the door behind me, before I was on my knees on the floor, gasping for air.

  Henry came to me at once, as did Eliza, the two of them having heard the door slam, and my frantic, desperate attempts to get enough air into my lungs. My father was still nowhere to be found, as were Gloria and her family; it was just the three of us, for the time being, and I debated telling them not only what I had just seen, but what I had done, what I suspected regarding Will’s death — the whole of it, everything, everything that had happened.