Dead Romantic

by C. J. Skuse

  ‘I like your room,’ I told her.

  She laid the two-part puppy carefully on her desk next to all kinds of instruments and knives and stuff I’d only ever seen at the dentist’s. She lit lots more candles and set them down beside her patient.

  ‘Don’t you have electricity?’ I said.

  ‘We’re trying to keep costs down,’ she said, washing her hands in a little basin in the corner and snapping on a pair of disposable gloves from a small cardboard box. ‘Aunt Gwen only has her pension. Times are hard and it’s an expensive place to run.’ She sat down at the desk and reached for the headlight she’d been wearing the night in the graveyard and put it on her head, then took the end of a little tube dangling from a hanging packet of blood and inserted a needle into the end of it.

  ‘The credit crunchy thing.’ I nodded. ‘Yeah, my dad’s all, “If it’s brown, flush it down; if it’s yellow, let it mellow.” And my mum’s started buying value washing-up liquid. It’s well depressing.’ I picked up the anatomy model from the end of a bookshelf and tried to prise out the heart. ‘She used to do mobile nail art but she had to give it up. She had to do like a thousand nails a week just to pay for the petrol for the van so it wasn’t worth it in the end. We’ve still got the van though.’

  The beam from Zoe’s headlight flickered as her hand moved back and forth with a needle and thread. Slowly but surely, the puppy’s head began to join its body.

  ‘Are you on Facebook?’ I asked her.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh. You should join, then we could chat. Look for me. I’m Camille Omnomnom Mabb at the moment. That’s not my real name though. Last week I was Camille Hufflepuff Mabb and the week before that I was Camille EverybodyLovesaParty Mabb. It’s just something me, Lynx and Poppy are trying out.’

  ‘But not any more,’ said Zoe.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Guess I’ll always be Omnomnom now. Damian’s on Facebook too. He’s got all these pictures of himself in front of mirrors. One of his photo albums is just of his six-pack. I can’t help fancyng him though, even though I know it’s wrong. Why am I still in love with someone who’s such a . . . ?’

  ‘Runt?’

  ‘No. Someone who treats me so badly?’

  Zoe stopped sewing and turned to me. ‘People in love, or in your case lust, go slightly insane for a time. It’s scientific fact.’

  ‘Are you saying I’m mad?’ I asked, fumbling with the model and organ bits.

  ‘Yes, in a manner of speaking. Love or lust makes one so. I don’t have any truck with it. Can’t take the risk of suffering such intellectual impairment. My father always kept me away from boys when I was home-schooled.’

  ‘Wow, I’ve never met anyone who was home-schooled,’ I said, still fumbling with the model’s plastic heart, until my hand slipped and the organs burst out over the floor. Zoe didn’t stop working. I scrabbled round the carpet, collecting them up. ‘I bet you know the names of all these organs, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  I stood up and replaced the model on the bookshelf, not really sure if I had everything back in correctly. I was pretty sure nothing was supposed to stick out. ‘Is that easy to do?’ I asked her, leaning over the desk.

  ‘Fairly easy,’ she said, repositioning the dog. ‘In the grand scheme of things, the head’s the most straightforward part to attach.’

  ‘And then you inject the blue stuff and it sticks everything together, right? Like you did with the hamsters?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Glad you were paying attention.’ She tapped the hanging blood packet. ‘I’m giving him a transfusion as he’s lost some blood in transit.’

  ‘Where did you get the blood from?’ I asked, but she didn’t answer.

  I was looking around her room, and on the shelves above her desk, in amidst all the science books and jars of pickled bones, there was a photograph in a wooden frame of a man with a baby. The baby looked like Zoe. And the man had Zoe’s eyes. Not in a jar or anything, just his eyes looked like hers.

  ‘Is that your dad?’ I asked, picking up the frame.

  Zoe looked up. ‘Yes.’

  ‘He looks like you.’

  She stopped working. It was then I realised just how silent it was at the house. There were no cars going past, no seagulls squawking like they do at all hours at our place. Only the distant grandfather clock clonked on the landing. Outside in the trees, a little bird twittered for all he was worth. What was a bird doing twittering at night? Birds didn’t twitter at night. It sounded like he was going for a world record. I wondered if Mad Dad was up there too, squeezing the tweets out of him.

  ‘Black pouch. There,’ said Zoe, pointing at a small black zip-up bag on the end of her bed. The same small black bag she’d had with her in Biology. I handed it to her. Inside were seven syringes bundled up with an elastic band. They were all filled with the blue liquid Zoe had called ‘the serum’. She took one of them out and aimed it over the puppy’s heart.

  ‘So you’re going to inject him with that one now, yeah?’ I checked.

  Zoe rolled her eyes and plunged down five millilitres into the little dog.

  We waited. Nothing happened.

  ‘Nothing’s happening,’ I said.

  She looked at me. ‘You don’t say. What was the next thing I did with the hamsters, do you remember?’

  ‘You put clips on their paws. And you electrified them!’ I cried, remembering.

  ‘Electrocuted them, yes. Pass me the clips,’ she said, pointing at four black leads, also laid out on the end of her bed.

  Zoe attached two clips to the puppy’s front paws and two to the flesh on his back legs. She then clipped the other ends to a battery block at the back of the desk. She flicked a switch and the puppy’s feet jumped. His whole body juddered and his tail shook and went all pointy like a ballerina’s leg, and then loose and wavy like a skipping rope. A nose twitch. A whisker flutter . . . An eye opened.

  ‘Oh my God, you did it! He’s alive!’ I cried, hugging her. ‘He’s alive!’

  The puppy looked up. Zoe pulled out the blood tube and put a little plaster over the hole. ‘Welcome back, little one,’ she said, tickling his chin. His eyes narrowed with glee. She picked him up off the desk and handed him to me.

  He immediately licked my face. ‘Ha ha, silly boy, silly boy.’ I felt all around his neck. Smooth. Bloody, but smooth. ‘There’s no join,’ I said. ‘There’s actually no join where it was cut! You’d never know! How did you . . . ?’

  ‘The serum,’ she said, scribbling down some notes on her notepad. ‘It’s the world’s best-kept secret. They thought my father was a deranged madman. And who listens to the mutterings of the deranged? Only the deranged.’

  ‘Shall I give him a bath?’ I said, seeing as the puppy was at that moment a brown and red Jack Russell, rather than a brown and white one.

  ‘Yes, could do,’ she said, tapping her pen. ‘You can keep him if you want.’

  ‘REALLY?’ I cried. I cuddled him close and he licked my neck, which was weird but sort of enjoyable. ‘Wow, oh thanks, Zoe! What shall we call you?’ He licked my neck again like he was so relieved to see me and I wanted to cry. I already knew I loved him more than anything. ‘I’m going to call him Pee Wee, because he’s so small. And because of Pee Wee Peppermints.’

  ‘Fine,’ said Zoe. ‘He’ll need looking after. He might be out of sorts for a while.’

  ‘Oh yes, yes, I’ll look after him and train him and everything!’ I said, squeezing him tightly, but not too tightly in case his head came off again. ‘I can teach him some tricks and give him lots of cuddles.’

  ‘Yes, that kind of thing,’ said Zoe, slowly starting to collect up her instruments from the bloody desk. That wasn’t swearing. I mean, the desk had blood all over it.

  ‘You don’t seem very excited,’ I said, putting Pee Wee down on the floor. He immediately darted under the bed. ‘You’ve just brought a puppy back to life. A headless puppy! That’s incredible. Aren’t you
happy?’

  ‘It’s not the first time I’ve done this, Camille,’ she said, removing a tiny bone-shaped biscuit from a drawer and putting it on the floor. Pee Wee ran out, scoffed it and darted back under the bed. ‘I watched my father many times. I learned from him. I owe everything to him. You saw the animals in the hallway. Some of his prototypes. Failures and false starts. Now it’s my turn. I’ve perfected the serum now, so no more zombie mice, or squirrels that climb trees backwards, or cannibalistic cats. I’m going to find a way to really prove to them just how important my father’s work is.’

  ‘Who’s them?’

  The authorities who . . . took him away.’

  ‘I’m sure it was a misunderstanding. Your dad is a brilliant scientist.’ Pee Wee trotted out again with a tartan slipper in his mouth and swiftly began tearing it to pieces. ‘He must be.’

  ‘Yes,’ she replied, more calmly. ‘And once I prove that the serum works on more substantial creatures, they’ll have to acknowledge that. He’ll be vindicated a thousand times over.’

  ‘What do you mean? You want to try it on a bigger dog or something?’ I said.

  ‘Hmm, maybe,’ she pondered. ‘Maybe bigger.’

  ‘A cow?’

  ‘Maybe not. We’ve always found that the serum works better on male specimens for some reason.’

  ‘A man cow then?’

  ‘A bull.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Not substantial enough.’

  ‘A rhino?’

  ‘Where would I get a rhino from?’

  I shrugged. ‘The zoo?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ Zoe walked over to the window and I joined her and we looked down at the town. It was raining. The town was still all lit up. The pier was still open and little ant-sized people were still walking along the seafront towards it. It all looked so pretty from a distance, even though it had been the scene of such hideousness earlier that night. ‘No, I need to go one step further. Do something no one’s ever tried before.’

  ‘Like a fish finger or something?’ I said. ‘Like, if you gave a fish finger the brain of a mouse, maybe?’

  Zoe looked at me. ‘No. You can’t reanimate something that was never animated in the first place.’

  ‘Oh right. Why not? A fish finger used to be a fish.’

  ‘A subject has to have a circulatory system, a brain, musculoskeletal and nervous systems. And preferably no breadcrumbs.’

  ‘Just a suggestion,’ I said. ‘Can I help you do it? Would you let me be involved?’

  She looked at me. ‘Yes. You can. You said you trusted me?’

  ‘I do, Zoe, I do. For deffs.’

  ‘Then you can’t disapprove if I decide to do something a little . . . off the wall?’

  ‘No, of course not. I promise.’

  Suddenly her face was a concrete building with a flaming blue fire flickering in the upstairs windows. And then she just said it.

  ‘I want to try it on a human.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A human.’

  ‘A human what?’

  ‘A human being,’ she said. ‘I’ve been considering it for a while. Imagine if I applied these methods to a human and it worked. I wouldn’t just break down the boundaries of science, I’d obliterate them!’

  ‘But, how?’ I said. ‘Do you mean digging someone up?’

  ‘No, I need to push the science as far as it will go. Really put my father’s methods into action. How about we create a human as near perfect as we can imagine? Perfect face. Perfect body. Perfect brain. How about I create you the perfect boyfriend?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘For your Halloween party. We could assemble from all the best parts of different boys – a strong body, healthy lungs, good legs, a superlative brain – and electrocute him back to life as a complete human being. And of course I will be able to present him to the British Medical Association and restore my father’s reputation. And you, well, you could finally have your perfect boyfriend.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, really.’

  My very own Electrocutie. Bliss, I thought. ‘But hang on a minute, isn’t this all a bit . . . impossible?’

  ‘You’d have thought bringing those hamsters back to life was impossible not so long ago,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah, but . . .’

  ‘You’d have thought reattaching a dog’s head and having him run around and chew slippers again was impossible an hour ago.’

  ‘Yeah, I guess.’

  ‘Imagine all those faces at the Halloween party when you walk in with the most desirable boy any of them has ever clapped eyes on. Think how jealous all the other girls at college will be. Think how jealous Damian will be.’

  I looked down at Pee Wee who sat beside my feet, chewing happily on Zoe’s slipper. Maybe it was because I’d had a door slammed into my face or maybe it was my loneliness, but it was all actually making sense to me. A whole new boy, just for me. A beautiful boy who would make everyone totally jelly pants, and completely wipe away the hideous memory of tonight and freshers’ night and every other hideous night forever. ‘You really think it could work?’

  ‘You doubt me?’ she said.

  ‘No way. I just . . . can’t imagine someone as perfect as the boy you’re talking about. And even if I could, I can’t imagine him falling in love with me.’

  ‘Well, start imagining,’ said Zoe.

  I felt a bubbliness in my stomach. Suddenly, I was dead excited. ‘Oh my God, yes please, let’s do it!’ I said, launching myself at her for a hug. ‘I’m no good at science though, stitching and chemicals and all that. You’ll have to teach me.’

  Zoe looked at me. ‘Your role as my assistant will be to aid me in obtaining my components, hand me my instruments, clear away detritus, etcetera. And of course, keep our secret. I can’t present this to our A level group like the hamsters.’

  ‘Why?’ I said. ‘It would make a great joint coursework project.’

  ‘Well, there’s the tiny problem that we will be breaking the law. We won’t have the consent of the previous owners to make you a boyfriend from their limbs or organs, so it will require some degree of stealth.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said. Love against all the odds it would have to be. Criminal, forbidden love. Love at a high price, but totes worth it.

  ‘But once I’ve proved it works, it won’t matter one jot. Nobody will care because what we will have done will be so awe-inspiring, so unbelievable that the law will be irrelevant. So this must remain between us for now, until I’m sure it works.’

  I nodded. ‘But where will we get all the different boy parts from?’

  We stood at the window as lightning flashed in the sky outside. I followed Zoe’s stare back down towards the town lights.

  ‘They’re all down there, somewhere,’ she said, grinning, ‘like the pieces of a jigsaw, just waiting to be put together.’

  The Plan

  Even though the parentals were pretty worried about my purple nose when they saw it the next morning and did the whole ‘Maybe we should take you down the A&E’ bit, I somehow managed to keep Pee Wee away from them. I fed him the cereal meant for room three when Mum was out of the kitchen and then we headed to Wonkies, the seafront cafe overlooking the Bracht, where Zoe had asked to meet up for a planning session. On the way there, Pee Wee attacked a Pomeranian and I had to tell him off. But I gave him a treat for letting go of the Pomeranian’s leg eventually, and because I felt really bad about telling him off.

  Zoe had got to the cafe before me. We settled ourselves at a four-seater table by a window overlooking the beach. They’d just switched the fryers on, and rather than going for the usual doughnuts or bacon and eggs you were expected to eat at this time on a Wednesday morning, I asked for cod and chips and a hot chocolate. I was celebrating the end of dieting forever. Zoe asked for a glass of water.

  ‘Why did you want to meet so early?’ I said, taking off my arm warmers and tucking them inside my bag beside Pee Wee’s
sleeping body.

  ‘Because there’s much to do,’ said Zoe, as I lined up my condiments in front of me. I was going to have ketchup, brown sauce, tartare sauce, curry sauce and mayo. I’d always wanted to try full fat mayo on chips and now I had my chance.

  The waitress came over with our order. I’d forgotten I’d asked for buttered bread with my fish as well and my heart did a little leap when I saw it on the side plate. I gazed at the glorious squashy mess of crispy golden cod and the mountain of chips before me. Now that I didn’t care about staying thin to find a boyfriend, it was faboosies to finally be able to eat as much as I liked. Our homemade boyfriend wouldn’t mind if I was fat. He would think bigger girls who ate like pigs were actually the best and that’s how every girl should be. I’d teach him that. Zoe said we could teach him anything if he had the right brain. Zoe was watching me.

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘You’re guzzling that like you haven’t eaten in days,’ she said.

  ‘I love fish and chips,’ I said, offering her my pot of curry sauce. ‘Dip a chip in there, it’s awesies!’ She shook her head. ‘This is so good. I wish I’d got large now.’

  ‘Camille, we have some serious matters to discuss now. Are you going to be able to leave your breakfast long enough to join me or am I doing this alone?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said through my crammed mouth.

  ‘Right, so, first things first. Here’s what you need to know,’ she said, taking a large lined notepad from her bag. The pages were filled with the messiest writing I’d ever seen. She thumbed through to a page where there was an inky drawing. She flipped the book round and showed it to me. It was of a blue lizard.

  ‘Camille, say hello to Ambystoma zoexanthe. The blueblooded salamander.’

  ‘Hello . . . blue-blooded salamander,’ I said. ‘Hang on. There was one of those in a glass case in your hallway.’

  ‘Well remembered,’ she said. ‘This is the main ingredient of the serum. My father went travelling early in his career and spent some time on an island called Tdk Benar in the Indian Ocean, where they are native. He was researching human stem cells in the brain and bonemarrow and methods of self-renewal in already existing organisms and he’d heard about this creature.’