by Steve Vernon
He didn’t look at all American, for what that mattered.
“Who the hell are you when your momma wants to call you?”
“My name is Victor Frankenstein,” the little man said. “Doctor Victor Frankenstein.”
And then a tree fell on the back of what was left of my skull. I felt the top of my head bend out of shape, even worse than it had been before. The room spun around me like a windmill in a dream.
I let go of the bartender.
I wasn’t sure who hit the floor first, him or me.
*
I could see the saloon when I woke up, floating before my vision, thin and dirty, like the film on a cup of whiskied coffee.
The face of Doctor Victor Frankenstein, pale and white and grinning like a Sundayed up corpse, leaned over me. Standing beside him was a beast man that looked like it had stepped out of a graveyard’s worst nightmare.
The beast man was bigger than any blacksmith I’d ever laid eyes on. The top of his head looked flat, like it had been shaved with a wood chisel. His skin looked like the color of old wax, that funky stuff that clogs the bottoms of your Aunt Matilda’s oldest pair of candlesticks. His eyes reminded me of slugs with vision, peeled grapes surrounded by pits of twisted gristle and dirty sand tears.
He must have been the one that hit me.
He was the only one in the room that was ugly enough and big enough to try.
I would shoot him first, I decided.
“What were you thinking?” Frankenstein asked. “Laying your hands on me like that?”
I tried to muster up some spit but my mouth was too damn dry.
“I wasn’t thinking much at all,” I said. “How could I? You cut my damn brain out.”
“It was poker. You lost the hand.” He giggled. I hate a man who giggles. “You lost the hand and then you lost your mind. It usually happens the other way around.”
He giggled again, like he thought it was funny.
I had the distinct feeling the good doctor’s belfry bells weren’t quite all ringing in tune.
“You cheated,” I said. “Nobody ever beats me. Nobody dares.”
“I didn’t cheat. I calculated. Poker is a science of mathematic probabilities - all easy to calculate. A learned man like you ought to know the difference.”
That last bit surprised me.
I didn’t exactly advertise my college education.
“What do you know about me?”
He smiled in a superior sort of way, that made me want to put a bullet through his smugness. I’d seen my share of that sort of smugness back East in law school, a dozen years ago. I’d left it in my back trail, but I kept running up against it, wrapped around bosses and politicians and the occasional town drunk.
“I know that you are brainless,” the doctor said. “Although you did not start out that way. I know that you are fast with that gun, but foolish with cards. You shouldn’t gamble if you can’t afford to lose.”
“You counted the cards.”
“I calculated the likelihood of you drawing that extra ace. It seemed minimal, so I upped the ante. If you’d been thinking, you’d still have your brain.”
“I want it back.”
“Too late,” the doctor said. “I have already given it to someone else.”
I glanced up at the big boy.
“Him?”
The doctor shrugged.
“He’s my creation. A man’s man. Nothing but maleness, surrounded in musk and muscle. Three times the average man’s level of testosterone on any given Sunday.”
“Your creation?”
“I built him. Out of the best bits. Anything I found along the way. Picking up organs and limbs of various sorts from New York to here. The last brain he carried had belonged to a New Mexican padre, fallen upon drink and the wrong kind of women, as if there were any other sort.”
I had the feeling that the good doctor wasn’t much for frills and petticoats, unless maybe he was wearing them. Of course that might have been nothing more than pissful spite talking out of my head.
The doctor kept on talking.
For a man of science he surely did love the sound of his own voice.
“A man wants the best for his son,” he said. “The best thoughts, the best eyes, the best hands.”
He looked straight at my hands when he said that last bit.
“How about a return match, double or nothing? Your brain for your hands. It seems a pretty good deal.”
“No deal,” I said.
“Why not? I could have taken them last night, but it didn’t seem fair. The wager had only been for your brain.”
I shook my head. Slowly, because at this point I couldn’t afford to let the room spin. “I ain’t playing poker with you again. I’m calling for the sheriff.”
“I don’t think he’ll be in much of a mood to listen. He was there at the table. You beat him two hands out of three. He helped hold you down while I made the necessary cuts.”
“I ought to take you apart,” I said, catching the doctor up by the shirt.
“I’ve done that to you already,” he said. “And that’s twice you’ve laid hands on me.”
He slapped me with one of his quick little hands. “I challenge you to a shooting contest.”
“A duel?”
“A shooting contest.”
“You and I?”
The creature stepped forward between the good doctor and myself.
“Oh no,” the doctor said. “You and him.“
“Done!” I said, going for my gun. My brain was gone but my reflexes were working just fine.
I didn’t wait for anyone to count us off.
I drew and I fired.
I had three shots into the big galoot before he moved any closer. They tore into him hard and fast, puckering up the body meat like unhappy kisses, but he kept on coming.
Three more shots into his face, and he had hold of me, dangling me up as easily as I’d dangled the bartender, which is a whole lot more fun when you’re the dangle-maker.
“I believe that you have just lost,” said the doctor.
“It sure looks that way.” I said, trying to appear calmer than I was.
“And I am the winner or rather I am the victor, if you will pardon the pun.”
That did it.
I hate puns.
They made me want to shoot someone.
“And being the victor I believe that I will claim the spoils.”
“You already took my brains out. What else can you take?”
“There are three things, I believe, that a gunfighter of your obvious prowess must possess. A keen brain, a sharp eye, and the hands of a surgeon.”
“You being that surgeon,” I wryly commented.
He tipped me a short mannerly bow.
“The fight wasn’t hardly fair,” I said. “You didn’t tell me that he was bullet proof.”
“You didn’t ask.” the doctor said. “Now, I believe I’ll take those hands of yours, and your head to boot. You’ve ruined his.”
“My hands, head or boot, make up your mind on this side of the grave.”
I drew my holdout derringer and popped the doctor square in the chest. He wasn’t nearly as bullet proof as his creation. I made sure to put the bullet straight into his heart. I didn’t want anything happening to the good doctor’s brain.
If I lived through this I had plans for that.
Then the monster had me by the neck again, holding me close, like he was getting set to kiss me. I kicked him for spite but it didn’t do much good. He was going to tear my head off and cram it up my asshole.
I attempted to be philosophical about the prospect.
“Friend?” he said, in a voice that kind of sounded low and grating like a dried out pump.
Well shit.
“Sure. Friend. Why not. I killed that doctor. He was always cutting you up, wasn’t he?”
The monster nodded.
I was on a hot roll.
I kept on talk
ing.
“Well anybody that cuts you up, you have just got to cut him back, now don’t you?”
It’s the way I would have figured it, and figuring it was my brain that was in the creature’s flat skull, I reckon I ought to know.
“Well why don’t you hold him down while I put paid to the good doctor’s drinking bill.”
The creature nodded his big flat head.
I smiled, but not enough that he’d notice. He had my brain and I was always easy to fool. Dickering is simple business when you know what’s on the other guy’s mind.
The creature held the doctor’s body still. Not that I expected the good doctor to get up any time too soon. I just wanted to keep that monster’s hands busy for a while.
I set my knife into the doctor’s skull.
“I sure hope I’m doing this right.”
I cut into the skull bone. It wasn’t easy work. Worse than trying to break open a grizzly’s ribs. I cut the brain out as cleanly as I could and then I held it there in my hand.
Was this all there was to a person, I wondered? Just a wad of something that looked like gellified grey gumbo?
Nope.
Character counted for something. It always did in my book.
I cut open the stitches on my own skull and slid the doctor’s brain inside. I couldn’t tell if I felt any different at all. I didn’t even know if I was supposed to.
Getting the stitches right was the trickiest part of the operation. I had to use a mirror that I had to shoot the town barber to get.
Finally it was finished.
“There you go,” I said, sliding a big old ten gallon hat on board to cover up the stitches. “As good as new.”
I handed him my old Texican sunstopper. I reckon it’d fit his flat head a whole lot better than it ever fit mine.
“Friend?” I asked, sticking my right hand out to him.
“Friend,” he answered, catching me in a handshake somewhere close to death.
I do not think that he meant to squeeze that hard, but it was a damn good thing I could still sew left handed. Although sewing the good doctor’s right hand onto my freshly crushed stump proved to be one hell of a neat trick.
Especially given that I was one-handed when I went and did it.
The End
About the Author
Steve Vernon is a storyteller. The man was born with a campfire burning at his feet. The word “boring” does not exist in this man’s vocabulary - unless he’s maybe talking about termites or ice augers.
That’s all that Steve Vernon will say about himself – on account of Steve Vernon abso-freaking HATES talking about himself in the third person.
But I’ll tell you what.
If you LIKED the book that you just read drop me a Tweet on Twitter – @StephenVernon - and yes, old farts like me ACTUALLY do know how to twitter – and let me know how you liked the book – and I’d be truly grateful.
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Lastly, if you REALLY enjoyed this book – then go and buy another of my books. With over forty e-books independently published, you are BOUND to find something that you like.
Also By Steve Vernon
My Regional Books – from Nimbus Publishing
Haunted Harbours: Ghost Stories from Old Nova Scotia
Wicked Woods: Ghost Stories from Old New Brunswick
Halifax Haunts: Exploring the City’s Spookiest Spaces
Maritime Monsters: A Field Guide
The Lunenburg Werewolf and Other Stories of the Supernatural
Sinking Deeper OR My Questionable (Possibly Heroic) Decision to Invent a Sea Monster
Maritime Murder: Deadly Crimes From the Buried Past
My E-Books
In the Dark and the Deep – Steve Vernon’s Sea Tales #1
Harry’s Mermaid – Steve Vernon’s Sea Tales #2
I Know Why The Waters Of The Sea Taste of Salt – Steve Vernon’s Sea Tales #3
Flash Virus
Fighting Words
Tatterdemon
Devil Tree
Gypsy Blood
The Weird Ones
Two Fisted Nasty
Nothing to Lose –Adventures of Captain Nothing, Volume 1
Nothing Down – Adventures of Captain Nothing, Volume 2
Roadside Ghosts
Long Horn, Big Shaggy
Author: Steve Vernon
ISBN-13: 978-1-927765-40-1
First Printing – February 1, 2015
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