by Schow, Ryan
Georgia’s answer was unemotional, factual. “He fused my DNA with a homicidal little girl’s DNA and now I can burn people to death with my mind. Gerhard did this for some reason beyond my comprehension.”
Netty opened her mouth to say something, but Brayden was already talking. Speaking softly, pointing at Georgia’s chest, he’d said, “Georgia, your nipples.”
She looked down, oblivious. “What about them?”
Netty said, “Cover them up already.” Like she was being rude wearing what she was wearing. In truth, Brayden had the feeling that modesty and proper body etiquette no longer hit Georgia’s radar. Not this version of her anyway.
Georgia cupped her breasts, and just stood there holding them until someone spoke. It was Netty who broke the very uncomfortable silence. She said, “Well, we have to do something. We can’t just sit here all day waiting and wondering if Abby’s going to be dead dead, or if Gerhard’s making progress.”
“Yeah, well, I can’t do it here,” Brayden said. “You guys will have to wait impatiently without me now that my face is all over the news. Plus, someone has to tell Abby’s dad she’s…gone, because the cops will be probably be calling him soon enough, then he’ll be calling us.”
“I can tell him,” Georgia said.
“No offense,” Netty replied, “but your bedside manner sucks fat ass on Sundays. And let go of your tits. For fuck’s sake, you’re making me uncomfortable.”
Georgia looked at her blank-faced, then dropped her hands. Brayden fought hard not to stare at her chest, but her nipples were hard now, and even at a time like this, even in such a state of nausea and confusion, he was wired toward perversion. So he stared. He tried not to, but he did anyway.
“She’s right, Georgia,” Brayden finally managed to say. “Your bedside manner blows. Besides, he already doesn’t like me, so I’ll call and tell him.”
The idea of talking to Christian Swann after being berated by the man and then kicked out of his house left Brayden feeling even worse. He had to do the right thing, though. If not him, who?
“No,” Netty said.
“What, you’re going to call now?” Brayden asked. They’d been round and round on this subject and he was ready to scream.
“No, just, I don’t know, wait for like…a day or two. Two days. You never know. And you can hide out here. It’s not like you’ve gotten off the couch since you been here anyway, except to sleep or take a dump.”
He thought about it, about staying the two days, about how he would tell Abby’s dad about her death and her body’s healing abilities despite no pulse or brain activity. He tried to be brave, to think he was brave enough to tell a man his daughter was dead, but in the end, he was sure he’d chicken out.
“Fine,” he said, “two days, then I’m making that call because I can’t sit in this sorry state of limbo anymore.”
Cock Sure and Full of Swagger
1
Abby did not open her eyes, but Gerhard knew she was alive. She was his now: a vessel for his most ingenious ideas. A stable host who could not die. If she ever came back to him, if her soul returned with her body, she would be his most triumphant monster, the one he would make into a perfect war model: the teenage girl edition.
He changed the locks on the door, making Brayden’s, Netty’s and Georgia’s stolen key useless, then he stopped answering his cell phone. These were impulse decisions based on instinct. He needed to focus. Which proved difficult with no sleep and two always-bawling infants in the apartment. The squealing, slurping, shitting little miracle infants. The real miracle would be finding someone to take care of them while he worked. Someone other than Alice.
The lab was now his sanctuary. A place where he could work and take the sport of drinking-to-get-drunk-to-deal-with-Arabelle’s-death to uncharted levels. His behavior was shameful, yet it was a necessary evil. It had to stop. He knew that. With as much alcohol as he was currently consuming, he was waking with the kinds of hangovers not even suicide could cure.
The point was, if he wanted to perfect the blending of Abby’s DNA with elements of the cow-killing boy’s DNA, he had to have his wits about him.
He would need silence.
So he regretfully left the babies with Alice, who said she could handle them just fine. He might have believed her. Still, he said, “If those babies die, you die, understand?” Alice acknowledged him with a nod, unfazed by the threat.
For the better part of the day, he worked tirelessly on what he called his new super-cocktail. His obsession with physical perfection and radical mutations bordered on psychopathic. Except for when he was working. The voices in his head, the burrowing worms sluicing away at his brain, they all stopped moving and eating when he was working. For a moment, he was his best self.
He told himself everything he ever learned about genetics came down to this one moment, this one girl: Abby Swann. She was his reason for living, the reason his heart beat day in and day out for eons. One day she would wake up, and when she did, Abby would be his most beautiful and talented doll, a flesh and blood weapon of mass destruction. His weapon.
The perfect human.
The key, he told himself, was in the genetics of the pituitary gland. There, he hypothesized, lie the basis for telekinesis.
2
Introduction of the test serum made Abby flat-line twice, and twice he barely managed to resuscitate her. He really needed an assistant. The third variant of the new super-cocktail, however, took. Her pulse remained steady; brain activity returned to normal. Waiting breathlessly, he monitored her for negative reactions, and when there were none, he clapped his hands with delight.
He watched her for an hour more and nothing changed. He’d done it! Still smiling, even though he was so far beyond wiped out it was a miracle he was still functioning, he stood and went to Rebecca’s canister.
The incision in Rebecca’s stomach was fully healed; not even a scar remained. At this point, he could wake her whenever he wanted. The problem was, he didn’t want to wake her and have to explain everything. He was drained. Plus, he had no idea what to do with her. What he needed now was a new Nurse Arabelle to handle the patients, the administrative work, and specifically calling the research and development contacts he’d lined up to expand the testing on his and Dr. Heim’s miracle birthing serum.
There was only so much one man could do.
Plus, he had to find Dr. Heim. Deep down, he believed the man was gone, that something had happened to him. He made a mental note to ask Abby about it the moment she woke up. Or Brayden the next time he saw the boy. Georgia might even know.
He pounded his head for a minute to right his mind. Stay focused! he told himself. Back to the infants for a second. Jesus, they hadn’t even given their miracle serum a name yet! If Heim really had gone missing, Gerhard needed another partner, and fast. Finally, he sucked it up and made the one call he hoped would bear the most fruit.
“Dr. Wolfgang Gerhard,” former Virginia Corporation executive, Tate Russell, said reverently.
“Tate,” Gerhard replied. This was the second time Gerhard had spoken with the man since his transformation in New York. A transformation he should have told no one about, not even Gerhard.
The man was young, though, he thought, and bound to suffer his spells of immaturity.
“If I wasn’t so into the night scene these days,” Tate replied, “I’d say you’re calling far too late for good manners.” Tate’s voice sounded different, but his attitude was the same: cock sure and full of swagger.
Gerhard checked his watch, not realizing he was well into the early hours of morning. Had he worked that late? He was rapidly losing track of things, even the basic things, like time.
“You called asking for a project to invest in,” Gerhard said. “I believe I have one.”
“I’m listening,” Tate said.
Gerhard told him about Rebecca’s ability to take two out of three babies to term, but in less than three months rather than nine.
“So the mother is healthy?” Tate said. The excitement in his voice was him putting himself back on the map again. Gerhard was pleased by the change of tone.
“She is.”
“And the children? You’re measuring their vitals, recording everything, right?”
“That’s where I need you. I’m short staffed due to…unforeseen circumstances. I seem to have lost the other half of my research team and my assistant as well.”
“Did they quit?” he asked. He was chewing into the receiver, peanuts or something. The tactless sound irritated Gerhard. Then again, he didn’t realize how hungry he was until he heard the man eating.
“They quit life,” Gerhard said.
“On their own accord?”
“No,” Gerhard replied, “not on their own accord.”
This sunk in, and when next he spoke, it sounded like Tate had stopped chewing whatever the hell it was he had been chewing. “I’ll contact Christian. We’ll have a team together within a week.”
“Christian Swann?”
“Yes.”
“He may not agree to this,” Gerhard said.
“Let me handle him, you just do what you can to keep those babies safe and healthy.” Arrogant and optimistic. Head strong without all the facts. Typical.
Gerhard blew out an exhausted sigh. Tate started chewing again, this time more discretely.
“Christian’s daughter, Abby—formerly Savannah Van Duyn, as you know—kidnapped the host mother, Rebecca, from the lab and took her home to live with her and her father. My research partner, Dr. Heim, kidnapped her back, torturing and practically killing Abby in the process in Christian’s new home.”
The chewing abruptly stopped. It was like a screaming silence had filled the line with so much nothingness, Gerhard could hardly take it.
“That’s not good,” Tate finally said.
“Christian does not know Rebecca was brought back here, to my lab, or that Dr. Heim was my research partner. Dr. Heim is gone for good, I suspect. And this Rebecca, she is our surviving mother. Because I have Rebecca, Christian will suspect I was complicit in the attempt on Abby’s life unless I turn over Heim, but I can’t do that because I believe in my heart, Abby has already disposed of him.”
“Are you kidding me?” Tate said, clearly flabbergasted. “She would do that?”
“It gets worse. Your former partner, Monarch Enterprises, orchestrated the hit on Abby, rather Savannah Van Duyn, long before any of this went down. You’ve used Monarch slaves before, I’m sure. They’re good. And Monarch is apparently persistent about its contracts.” He paused for a long second, then said, “Abby was killed by one of the Monarch assassins several days ago.”
Tate took a moment to breathe through this, to digest this, then he dropped a bombshell of his own. “I was in the room when Warwick Bundy ordered the hit.”
The new Gerhard didn’t care. “Christian still doesn’t know. The second he sees Rebecca…my God, I can’t say what he’ll do. The possibilities are making my brain squirm. Considering Abby was assassinated by your company’s primary partner in both body procurement and elimination, Monarch Enterprises, it’s hard to imagine him wanting to do business with any of us again.”
“For the first time in my life,” Tate said, “I’m actually speechless.” The swagger was gone. He wasn’t so sure of himself anymore. Gerhard didn’t know if this pleased or bothered him. At least he got his point across.
“How liquid are you?” Gerhard asked.
“I’m surviving.”
“We’ll work on Christian later,” he said. “For now I could use your services.”
“What exactly do you need from me?”
“I need an administrative assistant and a competent lab assistant. Preferably someone from the New York office with experience in this particular field.”
“That’s fine and all,” Tate said, “but Christian is in New York right now. Apparently Margaret caved. She’s there getting the treatment as we speak.”
Gerhard’s exasperation knew no end. Making his hand into a fist, sparkles of light brightened the dead space in his mind. He could feel things shifting again. His stomach was rumbling for food and he wanted to rage at every little thing. It was all he could do to stave off these wild impulses.
“Poach discretely,” he said through gritted teeth. “Tell them you need someone on loan. Make it sound short term.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Tate said.
The way his mind was coming apart in fits and spurts, Gerhard had officially lost all patience, so instead of saying good-bye or wishing their new partnership well, he simply hung up the phone and went back to work.
Work, at this point in the night, was overseeing the rapid, well-timed transformation of his Salt Lake City slave. She was at the stage where the body was at its ugliest, most radical state. In a day or two, she would be ready. In three she would be gorgeous and awake.
Abomination
1
Ever since I was shot, even before death settled over me, I have been around. Shelled from my body, left to hang invisible in the air. I am no where. I am everywhere.
Hovering.
Just being.
Where I am, stuck in this in between, the concept of the rational mind does not exist. IQ’s don’t matter. When you’re dead, there is no such thing as smart because you know everything. Like you are part of an infinite consciousness holding the answers to every question you ever had, every question you have yet to ask.
Being dead, you have no body, no hang-ups, no friends and frenemies, no sense of time or loss or grief. There is no right or wrong. When you are on the other side, there is no safety, because there is no such thing as risk or danger. Your life has already been taken.
Arabelle is gone, her soul already headed into the light. But for some reason I remain ever present. Still lingering. The truth is, my infinite state remains ripe with want, a want that feels more like restlessness, like uncertainty. What I think is happening is that I long to be back with my friends, and with my father, whom I have yet to check in on, simply because he does not know that I am dead, therefore he has not yet begun to hurt for me.
Here, in this in between, there is someone with me. I don’t know who. A guide perhaps? My guardian angel? All I feel from this entity is companionship, love. No, this is greater than love, more abundant, more complete. It is every delight, every certainty, every wondrous emotion wrapped into a singular indescribable entity who seems to always be with me. I believe the entity is waiting for me to decide: will I go back, or head into the light?
Is this even a choice I have?
When I was younger, I read the book Lovely Bones, and that dead narrator never returned to her body, so why should I? Still, the entity waits.
It wants to know my choice.
Perhaps what I need is closure, the kind you can only get when you spend enough time slumming in the aftermath of a traumatic event to finally give yourself over to the inevitable. Is it foolish to think I don’t want this choice? Are the dead still indecisive?
Am I still dead?
For the first time since crossing over and realizing I have a companion, I want to make contact. It’s time. The problem is, I am without a body, so I have no mouth. How will I ask the question? The minute the question is posed, however, the answer breathes with life inside me: bring the unknown into creation, send it to your guide.
Like a cosmic text message. If I think it, it is sent.
The question is formed, and in that moment, so is the answer. I want to know if I have a choice of going or staying. To that, my guardian responds with the word, yes.
The two of us float like unseen light and energy in the lab. I can be anywhere I want: up close to whatever I am curious about, or on the ceiling; I only have to decide, and the second I decide, it is done.
My choice is the ceiling.
Human eyes and their peripheral vision can see/sense nearly one-hundred eighty degrees in front of the face. Th
is gathering of energy, my soul, it sees three-hundred sixty degrees all the time. I see the lab in its entirety. I see all the atoms and molecules of energy that make up each and every item, the air, breath. And I experience the connection everything has to everything. It’s a wondrous emotion. A pure and religious feeling.
In the glass canisters circling the lab are naked men floating in stasis (Gerhard’s contributors), and two naked girls: Rebecca and some…unformed thing—the girl Gerhard brought in. If she were a loaf of bread, she would have just been put in the oven.
Gerhard thought something about three days to completion. Based on my infinite knowledge, including my ability to hone in on a person and understand their thoughts, in three days she will be a new doll.
Then there is Gerhard, working over my body. He is hovering over my naked form, speaking to its face, trying to wake it up even though it is already alive.
It being the former me. Savannah, then Abby.
A fog of blackness surrounds him, an aura polluted with cosmic corruption. The flatness of his color suggests frustration, madness. His transformation created errors in his brain. His soul is turmoil. Earlier I watched him smash up the lab. I bore witness to the unraveling of his sanity brought on by a mutation he has yet to identify or understand. The emotions he felt, they were twisted, dipped in toxic waste; they were the kind of nightmarish emotions that have you crawling the walls. For a creature like Gerhard, an abomination bred to feel nothing, having these feral emotions is akin to sticking your wet tongue on a live wire.
Another question forms in my non-existent brain and is answered the minute it is asked. Am I an abomination as well?
My guide’s answer: no.
Is my body an abomination?
The answer: No, your body simply is.
Right now, I’m perfect clarity. This answer I understand: I am not my body. My body is simply a vehicle I use to get around in. A transport for my soul. No one compares a Mercedes-Benz to an old Chrysler and says because the Mercedes is better looking and more expensive than the Chrysler that the Chrysler is a freak of nature. A blight on humanity. No, they’re both just cars. And my body? It’s not an abomination, it’s just a Mercedes-Benz that used to be the biggest piece of shit car ever.