The Solace of Monsters

by Laurie Blauner

  Father leaned back in his chair. “So that’s what I sound like? I only protect you for your own good. You are the most important thing in the world to me.”

  “I know.” I kissed Father briefly and carefully on his cheek with my own wine-soaked lips.

  “So Mara, what IS the most important thing to you? What would YOU like to toast to?” my father asked me.

  I drank another glass of wine before I answered. “I want to look at everything with open arms. I want a sense of autobiography. Do you know what I mean?”

  “Sort of,” Father said.

  “I don’t have a clue,” Greg replied.

  “I think she wants more of a life,” my father told Greg. “She’s reached that age too soon. Everything seems to be going by so fast.” His white eyebrows knitted together.

  “That’s a great dress,” Greg acknowledged, lifting his glass.

  “Father knows everything,” I explained to Greg.

  “Hardly,” Father said. “But I know how to make something wonderful out of nothing.” He winked at me. Father had never winked before. He pulled two more bottles of wine out of his suitcase.

  Greg laughed. “Mara, wasn’t that a television program a long time ago? Father Knows Everything,” Greg looked around the room. “Hey, isn’t the ball game on today?”

  “I’m sorry, Greg. We don’t have any TVs here. It’s a silly box full of programs for stupid people,” Father chided him.

  Another glass of wine and I got the hiccups. My chest was warm and my stomach felt primitive, worn out. Air was compliant and pooling around my flaccid limbs. My cheeks grew flushed. I could think of the thousand ways different parts of my body had already died. I closed my eyes.

  A man in a black and white suit was pouring wine into my glass from a bottle as I sat in a lounge chair. I drank it in one gulp. I tilted my feet into sandals, a long, white garment wrapped around me, hugging me, as I stood. I walked past a lit pool into darkness. I knew my way, walking down some steps, past dunes and stubby trees, and long, thin grass. A large, restless moon stared at me. I kicked off my sandals and cool sand engulfed my feet as if it wanted me to remain stationary. I entered the lapping water that spread everywhere, the cold ocean. I was searching for something underneath the waves. I kept on walking until my feet couldn’t touch the bottom anymore and every part of me was leaking back into that water.

  My hiccups stopped. When I opened my eyes, Father and Greg were laughing, patting each other on their backs. I had missed something although only a few minutes had whisked by. The men were blurry. A different dead chicken was slowly inching its way back up my borrowed esophagus. My insides were roiling. Father and I had studied male and female anatomy in detail so I was well versed in potential medical issues. The indiscriminate mouse was lurking under the table and began running in circles around my feet although no one seemed to notice. Maybe it was looking for food. I heard some faint howling outside, in the distance. I couldn’t tell what kind of animal it was. Father grew lopsided in his chair, fell back against it, and began snoring. I didn’t want to be left alone again with the guest and all that food on the table, which smelled suddenly rancid. Maybe this was the test.

  “Subsumed,” I yelled loudly, giving Father a good word. But he didn’t wake up to receive it. “Subsumed,” I repeated with as much force as I could muster. He was still snoring.

  “Okay, subsumed,” Greg said, his hand wavering over the table. “Calm down. Please. What the hell does it mean?”

  “It’s a good word, a really good word.” I started crying.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “Your father’s asleep. That was a delicious wine.” He tried to pat my hand across the table, but it drifted away from him, as if my new hand had a life of its own. My fingers rested on my unhappy stomach.

  Then I felt my dinner knocking at my mouth, trying to get out again. I ran downstairs, to the lab, without thinking. Luckily Father had left the door unlocked when he had fetched the wine. But there wasn’t a bathroom down there. I found myself vomiting around the surgery table that I knew intimately, under the watchful eyes of the Mother and Daughter in the Photographs. The Scientist looked on disinterestedly. And then I received an odd memory.

  Bright lights stared at paintings which were filled with large slashes of bold colors. I said my name and all the people threaded with jewelry and beautiful, interesting clothes at the party lifted their glasses of wine to me and smiled. I, too, held a glass of wine aloft. I was happy and proud. Someone’s arm slipped around my shoulders. I looked up, smiling, into the face of a handsome man. When I glanced below his waist, under his tuxedo jacket, he pawed at the floor with the legs of a black horse.

  “Centaur,” I yelled into the crowd.

  Everyone laughed. Then I noticed everyone was dressed in elaborate costumes or they held up masks on sticks. There were cats, mice, queens, ballerinas, knights, and some people were merely dressed as themselves. I looked down at myself. I wore a smock filled with paintbrushes and splotched with paint.

  “I’m so glad everyone likes my art,” I told my handsome companion.

  He laughed. “Who said these are your paintings?”

  Greg had slipped downstairs while I wiped my mouth, drank a cup of water usually reserved for after-surgery.

  “Wow, what is this place?” He was looking around.

  “My father’s laboratory.”

  “This is amazing.” He started touching things, which would make Father very angry. “I’ll have to ask him what he does down here.”

  “Please don’t touch anything in here. I have to clean up.” I looked at my vomit and began searching for a rag.

  He sidled closer to me, closer than anyone had ever dared. “I’d rather be touching you.” He took my hands into his, got onto his tiptoes, and leaned up toward my mouth.

  Greg’s corneas screamed with my awkward reflection, but I was looking for more than myself. I kissed Greg because I didn’t care whether I hurt him or not. I wasn’t afraid of him anymore. Then I couldn’t remember anything else.

  Chapter Three

  I woke up defeated, gravel in my head, a parched throat, and stars twittering around the shrinking brain behind my eyes. I was in my own bed in my bedroom, curled into a ball under the sheets and blanket. How had I gotten there? What had happened? I was wearing my underwear, which appeared to be unmolested, and my dress lay neglected on the floor in a blue puddle. I was tucked into my bed tightly. Everything was in its usual place, dresser, chair, bed, closet. My door was unlocked and lay open like an afterthought or an invitation. I could hear birds singing outside the barred window but all their statements hurt my head. Where was Father? Greg? What had I done? The mouse scrambled behind a wall and I weakly yelled, “Shut up.”

  I pushed myself away from the crumpled sheets, donned the first available pants, shirt, socks and shoes and slowly made my way down the stairs. Why hadn’t Father locked me in?

  No one was in the kitchen or dining room although our food from last night was still there, congealing, along with our wine glasses and a half empty bottle of the infamous wine. It all smelled terrible. The living room was unchanged. No one had cleaned up and no one was there. I peeked downstairs, and the door to the laboratory was ajar.

  As I crept down the stairs I saw a horrible sight: Father ladling a fresh kidney into one of his pickling jars. He had weighed it, labeled the jar. He saved everything. I knew that. An opened corpse lay on the surgical table and it was slit down the center, the skin pulled aside into two tents. Most of the cadaver’s interior had already been removed. A few intestines and the complete skeletal system and peeling skin remained. I had seen pieces of carcasses around the laboratory. I didn’t know where Father got these things. I saw the corpse’s bare feet, hairy legs, male genitalia, the open crater of the body. I couldn’t see upward from the gash of a chest under the glaring lights. I couldn’t di
scern the face. The lights over the body hurt my eyes and I shielded them. Father was very busy, in his blue mask, gloves, and scrubs, absorbed in his work. His jacket was smeared with blood.

  “Is this what I am?”

  Father jumped, with a scalpel and tongs in his hands. “Shit, Mara. You scared me.” I could see his bloodshot eyes. He was tired. “Did I leave the door open? Shit. Oh well.”

  “You left my bedroom unlocked too. That is, if it was you who put me to bed.”

  “Of course I did. Who else would have?” Father’s eyes blinked under his eyeglasses. He pulled down his mask so he could talk. “Oh yes, well. No. I shouldn’t have brought out that wine last night. But still, all in all, it was a good night. You did supremely well, Mara, except for the bit about coming down to the laboratory. I think we’ll be ready for excursions soon.” He smiled. “I can’t wait to show you off to my colleagues, my darling daughter. Do you think you’re ready?”

  I nodded. But even that hurt.

  “Good, maybe in about a year, maybe two, with some more social exposure, body stability, training. We could travel the world.” He moved his gloved hand around in the air. “You look under the weather today. How are you feeling?”

  I pointed at my head. “It aches a bit.”

  “Ah, yes. Wine will do that. That was your first time drinking. Take an aspirin and call me in the morning.” He laughed and I didn’t know why. “You should go back to bed. Do you want me to lock you back up?”

  I shook my fuzzy head. “Did Greg say much about me before he left?”

  Father removed his bloody elastic gloves. He looked at the floor. He said quietly, “When I woke up, I came downstairs and found Greg reading about my personal experiments in my private office. He had gotten pretty far. He knew a lot, too much. He started firing questions at me about you and the other Maras.” Father went over to the Photographs, touched the Mother’s face, kissed his finger and then pressed it on the Daughter. “You’re too precious to lose.”

  I wasn’t sure whether he was talking to me or the Daughter.

  He continued, “He had all these ideas on how to make money from the results and what could be done with my successes, like bringing wealthy people back to life, creating replicas of famous people, allowing rich people to live forever. It was disgusting, Mara, and I couldn’t listen to that moron go on and on. Besides, he was going to tell everyone. And I had already learned,” he pointed to the photograph of the Scientist, “that failure made me stronger and taught me to try harder. People can make things difficult when all you want is something simple.” He looked at me teary-eyed.

  “I didn’t hear anything going on last night. Is he coming back to visit?”

  “Greg?” Father looked askance at me.

  I nodded with pain.

  “Who do you think is on this table?”

  I shuffled to the top of the table and saw Greg’s pale head. The cranium and brain had been excavated and a large slit circled his throat. The light focused on his familiar face. I began shaking and crying uncontrollably. I was horrified.

  “It’s immoral to kill any living creature, even if you don’t mean to,” I yelled, really to remind myself. Father appeared surprised and reached up to stroke the hair on my head. “I did this to him, didn’t I?” I sobbed while somebody else’s tears stained my father’s jacket. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do it.”

  “Oh no, Mara, you fell asleep on top of the operating table, and I had to carry you upstairs. This happened when Greg and I were discussing my projects becoming our projects.” He glanced at me skeptically. “Why, did anything else happen?”

  “No,” I shook my head. Was this the first time I had purposefully excluded information? “So I didn’t kill him by mistake?”

  “No, Mara. I killed him intentionally to stop him from saying anything and pursuing his ideas for the project. He didn’t have any family or friends. Life is hard, sweetheart.”

  I was relieved it hadn’t been me. But I was disturbed by Father. “What about death?”

  “It’s harder on the people around you.” He tentatively probed something inside of Greg. “And Greg didn’t have anyone.”

  I thought about what Father often told me, “If you have to think about what you’ve done, you didn’t do it well enough.” My father was everything to me. I sat on a chair and wailed some more. I didn’t know if it was for my father or for me. I looked at my hands and knew I was capable, intentionally or not. I was not always aware of my accelerating strength. I peered at my distorted father through my tears. One of us always needed something. One of us loved or was being loved. That would never change. Something within me had transformed me, something that was my own.

  I was beginning to understand how good and bad could live together. “What makes something alive?”

  “I don’t know. I only know what I can do to regenerate cells step by step. It’s a long, meticulous project.”

  “Lugubrious,” I gave my father.

  “Wow,” he said. “Thanks for the great word.” He continued working on Greg, whose face I couldn’t look at again. “I have a limited time to get some of these organs and body parts. Sorry, Mara.” He peered at me over his mask. “You know that you can never talk about my work with anyone,” he reiterated.

  I nodded slowly. It was terrible. It was my inheritance.

  “Dolorous,” he gave me. If he was smiling behind his mask I couldn’t see it.

  I slept all afternoon and that night I knew I needed to talk to Father about all the things he didn’t want to talk about. I made spaghetti and spinach. My head was better, but again I wondered how many of someone else’s brain cells I had killed.

  I passed him a plate. “What are your plans for the future?”

  “I don’t know right now, Mara. I have other things on my mind.”

  “Is anyone going to come about Greg?”

  “I told them at work that he met someone on the internet and probably left to be with her in Thailand. The police might find his skeleton in a state very far away from here in an anonymous storage facility. I’ll clean out his apartment. Since he doesn’t have any relatives or friends or anyone close, it should be easy.” He began eating. “And I might be promoted to Greg’s position as a supervisor now.”

  “What are you going to do with the body parts?”

  Father smiled. “Why, Mara? Would you like a male companion?”

  I spit out my food. “What would I do with one?”

  “Would you like someone else like you?”

  I thought to myself that I wouldn’t do that to someone. What I said was, “No, this is enough.” I pointed my fork at my father and then back at my chest. I put the fork down, cradling it. “Why am I so large and strong?”

  “Your frame has to be bigger to fit everything inside. Your strength comes from the way the muscles are regenerated and attached and with my new adhesive compound you are growing stronger.”

  I hesitated. “Tell me about her.”

  “Who?” He looked at me sadly over his food.

  He knew who.

  “She was twenty. She was riding in the back seat of the car. My wife was in the passenger seat. Her life was just beginning.” He held a spoon in his hand, but he wasn’t eating. He was far away. He didn’t want to talk.

  “What was she like?”

  “We were close. She was smart, pretty. She was thinking about becoming a scientist. She was practical yet she wrote beautifully. She was a kind person.”

  “Was she married or seeing anyone?” I knew this was painful for him, maybe also for me.

  “No. She had several boyfriends in high school and a serious relationship early in college, but they had decided it wasn’t going to become anything more and they had broken up several months before the accident.” He started crying although he didn’t make any noise.

 
“Was her name Mara?”

  “I don’t want to say her name.”

  “What happened to the other Maras?”

  “Some are in you. You know that.” He didn’t want to speak anymore.

  He had invented me. I wanted to leave him something. “Thank you for creating me,” I told him and kissed his wet cheek. But when I picked up my fork I realized I had bent it again.

  The fork had given me an idea. I went to my bedroom window that night, brushed the curtains aside, began pressing the bars with all my strength. They started to bend. I could hear metal groaning. I stopped. I could see the moon and trees swaying in an evening breeze through the space between the bars. I received another memory.

  I was in a prison, painted shades of gray and green, and a woman in a uniform handed me a flute. She locked the door, comprised of vertical bars, behind her after she entered. I was alone on a cot with a dark gray blanket. I could feel a deep melancholy returning. Photographs of smiling men, women, and children lined the cement walls. I lifted that flute to my lips, my blonde hair fell around my neck and flowed around the instrument. Music wafted between those bars, roamed everywhere.

  The woman in the uniform smiled, said, “Would you rather be a musician or a criminal?”

  I didn’t need to answer. I thought: the criminal could kill the musician. What could the musician do but play? So I did. That music was a happy maelstrom let loose upon that tiny place. I played until I forgot where I was.

  I was sitting on my own bed, smiling. It was morning. Sun stained the floor. A trapezoid of light, the shape of my barred window, was draped against the locked door. Evening was approaching later and later, which meant it was summer. I could see Father’s car, parked as usual, a bit down the road, near another road. I had never been outside. This house, Father, the computer, and books were the only ways I could view the world. I had other people’s memories to learn from too. What was he saving me for?