A Soft Barren Aftershock

by F. Paul Wilson

  Except for the dreams.

  But now clouds gather over my Elysian fields as I remember Karl’s betrayal. I’d thought he avoided me in order to protect his family name, but the dream-Maria’s words have not only awakened my memory, they’ve shed new light on all the things that happened to me after that night I went to Karl’s uncle’s house.

  The clouds darken and thunder rumbles through the distant mountain passes as my anger and suspicion grow. I don’t know if Karl lied and betrayed me as the dream-Maria said, and I don’t know if he was the one who killed his uncle, but I do know that he deserted me in my hour of most dire need. And for that I will never forgive him.

  The clouds obscure the sun and darken the sky, the storm threatens but it doesn’t rain. Not yet.

  The nightmare again.

  Only this time I don’t fight it. I’m actually glad to be in this monstrous body. I’m a curious thing. Not a seamless creature, but a quilt of human parts. And powerful. So very powerful. My years of farm work left me strong for a girl, but I never had strength like this. Strength to lift a horse or knock down a tree. It feels good to be so strong.

  I head for Maria’s cottage.

  She’s home. She’s alone. Karl is nowhere about. I don’t bother knocking. I kick down the door and step inside. Maria starts to scream but I grab her by the throat with one of my long-fingered hands and choke off all sound. She laughed at me last night, called me stupid. I feel the anger surge and I squeeze tighter, watching her face purple. I straighten my arm and lift her feet off the floor, let them kick the empty air, just as she said mine did in the dream-death she watched. I squeeze and squeeze and squeeze, watching the blood vessels burst in her eyes and face, watching her tongue protrude and turn dusky until she hangs in my hand like a doll. I loosen my grip and shake her but she remains limp.

  What have I done?

  I stand there, shocked at the rage within me, at the violence it makes me capable of. For a moment I grieve for Maria, for myself, then I shake it off.

  This is a dream. A dream! It isn’t real. I can do anything in this nightmare body and it doesn’t matter. Because it’s only happening in my sleeping mind.

  The realization is a dazzling white light in my brain. I can do anything I wish in my dream-life. Anything! I can vent any emotion, give in to any whim, any desire or impulse, no matter how violent or outrageous.

  And I will do just that. No restraint while I’m dreaming. Unlike my waking life, I will act without hesitation on whatever occurs to me. I’ll lead a dream-life untempered by sympathy, empathy, or any other sane consideration.

  Why not? It’s only a dream.

  I look down and see the note I wrote Karl. It lies crumpled on the floor. I look at Maria, hanging limp from my hand. I remember her derisive laughter at how I’d donated my body for the furtherance of science, her glee at the thought of my being dissected into a thousand pieces.

  And suddenly I have an idea. If I could laugh, I would.

  After I’m finished with her, I set the door back on its hinges and wait beside it. I do not have to wait long.

  Karl arrives and knocks. When no one answers, he pushes on the door. It falls inward and he sees his lover, Maria . . . all over the room . . . in a thousand pieces. He cries out and turns to flee. But I am there, blocking the way.

  Karl staggers back when he sees me, his face working in horror. He tries to run but I grab him by the arm and hold him.

  “You! Good Lord, they said you’d burned up in the mill fire! Please don’t hurt me! I never harmed you!”

  What a wonder it is to have physical power over a man. I never realized until this instant how fear has influenced my day-to-day dealings with men. True, they run the world, they have the power of influence—but they have physical power as well. Somewhere in the depths of my mind, running as a steady undercurrent, has been the realization that almost any man could physically overpower me at will. Although I never before recognized its existence, I see now how it has colored my waking life.

  But in my dream I am no longer the weaker sex.

  I do not hurt Karl. I merely want him to know who I am. I hold up the note from last night and press it against my heart.

  “What?” he cries hoarsely. “What do you want of me?”

  I show him the note again, and again I press it to my heart.

  “What are you saying? That you’re Eva? That’s impossible. Eva’s dead! You’re Henry Frankenstein’s creature.”

  Henry Frankenstein? The baron’s son? I’ve heard of him—one of Dr. Waldman’s former students, supposedly brilliant but highly unorthodox. What has he to do with any of this?

  I growl and shake my head as I rattle the paper and tighten my grip on his arm.

  He winces. “Look at you! How could you be Eva? You’re fashioned out of different parts from different bodies! You’re—” Karl’s eyes widen, his face slackens. “The brain! Sweet lord, Eva’s brain! It was stolen shortly before you appeared!”

  I am amazed at the logical consistency of my nightmare. In real life I donated my body to the medical college, and here in my dream my brain has been placed in another body, a patchwork fashioned by Baron Frankenstein’s son from discarded bits and pieces. How inventive I am!

  I smile.

  “Oh, my God!” Karl wails. His words begin to trip over each other in their hurry to escape. “It can’t be! Oh, Eva, Eva, Eva, I’m so sorry! I didn’t want to do it but Maria put me up to it. I didn’t want to kill my uncle but she kept pushing me. It was her idea to have you blamed, not mine!”

  As I stare at him in horror, I feel the rage burst in my heart like a rocket. So! He did conspire to hang me! A crimson haze blossoms about me as I take his head between my hands. I squeeze with all the strength I possess and don’t stop until I hear a wet crunching noise, feel hot liquid running between my fingers.

  And then I’m sobbing, huge alien sounds rumbling from my chest as I clutch Karl’s limp form against me. It’s only a dream, I know, but still I hurt inside. I stand there for a long time. Until I hear a voice behind me.

  “Hello? What’s happened here?”

  I turn and see one of the townsfolk approaching. The sight of him makes my blood boil. He and his kind chased me to that mill on the hill and tried to burn me alive. I toss Karl’s remains aside and charge after him. He is too fast for me and runs screaming down the street.

  Afraid that he’ll return with his neighbors, I flee. But not before setting fire to Maria’s cottage. I watch it burn a moment, then head into the countryside, into the friendly darkness.

  Awake once more.

  I have spent the entire day thinking about last night’s dream. I see no reason to skulk around in the darkness any longer when I’m dreaming. Why should I? The townsfolk realize by now that I’m still alive. Good. Let all those good citizens know that I am back and that they must deal with me again—not as poor Eva Rucker, but as the patchwork creature from Henry Frankenstein’s crazed experiments. And I will not be mistreated anymore. I will not be looked down on and have doors shut in my face simply because I am a farm girl. No one will say no to me ever again!

  I will be back. Tomorrow night, and every night thereafter. But I shall no longer wander aimlessly. I will have a purpose in my dreams. I will start by taking my dream-revenge on the university regents who denied me admission to the medical college. I shall spend my waking hours devising elaborate ways for them to die, and in my dreams I shall execute those plans.

  It will be fun. Harmless fun to kill them off one by one in my dreams.

  I’m beginning to truly enjoy the dreams. It’s so wonderful to be powerful and not recognize any limits. It’s such an invigorating release.

  I can’t wait to sleep again.

  THE NOVEMBER GAME

  Two human eyeballs nestle amid the white grapes on my dinner tray. I spot them even as the tray slides under the bars of my cell.

  “Dinner, creep,” says the guard as he kicks the tray forward with his sho
e.

  “The name is Mich, Hugo,” I say evenly, refusing to react to the sight of those eyes.

  “That translates into creep around here.”

  Hugo leaves. I listen to the squeaky wheels of the dinner cart echo away down the corridor. Then I look at the bowl of grapes again.

  The eyes are still there, pale blue, little-girl blue, staring back at me so mournfully. They think they can break me this way, make me pay for what I did. But after all those years of marriage to Louise, I don’t break so easily.

  When I’m sure Hugo’s gone I inspect the rest of the food—beef patty, string beans, French fries, Jell-O. They all look okay—no surprises in among the fries like last night.

  So I take the wooden spoon, the only utensil they’ll let me have here, and go to the loose floor tile I found in the right rear corner. I pry it loose. A whiff of putrefaction wafts up from the empty space below. Dark down there, a dark that seems to go on forever. If I were a bit smaller I could fit through. I figure the last occupant of this cell must have been a little guy, must have tried to dig his way out. Probably got transferred to another cell before he finished his tunnel, because I’ve never heard of anyone breaking out of here.

  But I’m going to be a little guy before long. And then I’ll be out.

  I upend the bowl of grapes and eyeballs over the hole first, then let the rest of the food follow. Somewhere below I hear it all plop onto the other things I’ve been dumping down there. I could flush the eyes and the rest down the stained white toilet squatting in the other corner, but they’re probably listening for that. If they hear a flush during the dinner hour they’ll guess what I’m doing and think they’re winning the game. So I go them one better. As long as they don’t know about the hole, I’ll stay ahead in their rotten little game.

  I replace the tile and return to my cot. I tap my wooden spoon on the Melmac plates and clatter them against the tray while I smack my lips and make appropriate eating noises. I only drink the milk and water. That’s all I’ve allowed myself since they put me in here. And the diet’s working. I’m losing weight. Pretty soon I’ll be able to slip through the opening under that tile, and then they’ll have to admit I’ve beaten them at their own rotten game.

  Soon I hear the squeak of the wheels again. I arrange my tray and slip it out under the bars and into the corridor.

  “An excellent dinner,” I say as Hugo picks up the tray.

  He says nothing.

  “Especially the grapes. The grapes were delicious—utterly delicious.”

  “Up yours, creep.”

  Hugo squeaks away.

  I miss my pipe.

  They won’t let me have it in here. No flame, no sharps, no shoelaces, even. As if I’d actually garrote myself with string.

  Suicide watch, they call it. But I’ve come to realize they’ve got something else in mind by isolating me. They’ve declared psychological war.

  They must think I’m stupid, telling me I’m in a solitary cell for my own protection, saying the other prisoners might want to hurt me because I’m considered a “short eyes.”

  But I’m not a child molester—that’s what “short eyes” means in prison lingo. I never molested a child in my life, never even thought of doing such a thing. Especially not Marion, not little eight-year-old Marion.

  I only killed her. Nothing more.

  I made her part of the game. The October game. I handed out the parts of her dismembered body to the twenty children and twelve adults seated in a circle in my cellar and let them pass the pieces around in the Halloween darkness. I can still hear their laughter as their fingers touched what they thought were chicken innards and grapes and sausages. They thought it was a lark. They had a ball until some idiot turned on the lights.

  But I never molested little Marion.

  And I never meant her any harm, either. Not personally. Marion was an innocent bystander caught in the crossfire between her mother and father. Louise was to blame. Because it was Louise I wanted to hurt. Louise of the bleached-out eyes and hair, Louise the ice princess who gave birth to a bleached-out clone of herself and then made her body incapable of bearing any more children. So where was my son—my dark-eyed, dark-haired counterpoint to Marion?

  Eight years of Louise’s mocking looks, of using the child who appeared to be all of her and none of me as a symbol of my failures—in business, in marriage, in fatherhood, in life. When autumn came I knew it had to stop. I couldn’t stand the thought of another winter sealed in that house with Louise and her miniature clone. I wanted to leave, but not without hurting Louise. Not without an eight-year payback.

  And the way to hurt Louise most was to take Marion from her.

  And I did. Forever. In a way she’ll never forget.

  We’re even, Louise.

  (suck . . . puff)

  “And you think your wife is behind these horrific pranks?” Dr. Hurst says, leaning back in his chair and chewing on his pipe stem.

  I envy that pipe. But I’m the supposedly suicidal prisoner and he’s the prison shrink, so he gets to draw warm, aromatic smoke from the stem and I get pieces of Marion on my food tray.

  “Of course she is. Louise was always a vindictive sort. Somehow she’s gotten to the kitchen help and the guards and convinced them to do a Gaslight number on me. She hates me. She wants to push me over the edge.”

  (suck . . . puff )

  “Let’s think about this,” he says. “Your wife certainly has reason to hate you, to want to hurt you, to want to get even with you. But this conspiracy you’ve cooked up is rather farfetched, don’t you think? Focus on what you’re saying: Your wife has arranged with members of the prison staff to place pieces of your dismembered daughter in the food they serve you. Would she do something like that with her daughter’s remains?”

  “Yes. She’d do anything to get back at me. She probably thinks it’s poetic justice or some such nonsense.”

  (suck . . . puff )

  “Mmmmm. Tell me again what, um, parts of Marion you’ve found in your food.”

  I think back, mentally cataloging the nastiness I’ve been subjected to.

  “It started with the baked potatoes. They almost fooled me with the first one. They’d taken some of Marion’s skin and molded it into an oblong hollow shape, then filled it with baked potato. I’ve got to hand it to them—it looked quite realistic. I almost ate it.”

  Across his desk from me, Dr. Hurst coughs.

  (suck . . . puff )

  “How did you feel about that?”

  “Disgusted, of course. And angry too. I’m willing to pay for what I did. I’ve never denied doing it. But I don’t think I should be subjected to mental torture. Since that first dinner it’s been a continual stream of body parts. Potato after potato encased in Marion’s skin, her fingers and toes amid the French fries, a thick slice of calf’s liver that didn’t come from any calf, baby back ribs that were never near a pig, loops of intestine supposed to pass at breakfast as link sausage, a chunk of Jell-O with one of her vertebrae inside. And just last night, her eyes in a bowl of grapes. The list goes on and on. I want it stopped.”

  (suck . . . puff )

  “Yes . . .” he says after a pause. “Yes, of course you do. And I’ll see to it that it is stopped. Immediately. I’ll have the warden launch a full investigation of the kitchen staff.”

  “Thank you. It’s good to know there’s at least one person here I can count on.”

  (suck . . . puff )

  “But tell me, Mich. What have you done with all these parts of Marion’s body you’ve been getting in your food? Where have you put them?”

  A chill comes over me. Have I been wrong to think I could trust Dr. Hurst? Has he been toying with me, leading me down the garden path to this bear trap of a question? Or is it a trap? Isn’t it a perfectly natural question? Wouldn’t anyone want to know what I’ve been doing with little Marion’s parts?

  As much as I want to be open and honest with him, I can’t tell him the trut
h. I can’t let anyone know about the loose tile and the tunnel beneath it. As a prison official he’ll be obligated to report it to the warden and then I’ll be moved to another cell and lose my only hope of escape. I can’t risk that. I’ll have to lie.

  I smile at him.

  “Why, I’ve been eating them, of course.”

  (suck . . . )

  Dr. Hurst’s pipe has gone out.

  I’m ready for the tunnel.

  My cell’s dark. The corridor has only a single bulb burning at the far end. It’s got to be tonight.

  Dr. Hurst lied. He said he’d stop the body parts on my trays but he didn’t. More and more of them, a couple with every meal lately. But they all get dumped down the hole along with the rest of my food. Hard to believe a little eight-year-old body like Marion’s could have so many pieces. So many I’ve lost track. But in a way that’s good. I can’t see how there can be much more of her left to torment me with.

  But tomorrow is Thanksgiving and God knows what they’ll place before me then.

  It’s got to be tonight.

  At least the diet’s working.

  Amazing what starvation will do to you. I’ve been getting thinner every day. My fat’s long gone, my muscles have withered and atrophied. I think I’m now small enough to slip through that opening.

  Only one way to find out.

  I go to the loose tile and fit my fingers around its edges. I pried it up with the spoon earlier and left it canted in its space. It comes up easily now. The putrid odor is worse than ever. I look down into the opening. It’s dark in my cell but even darker in that hole.

  A sense of waiting wafts up with the odor.

  How odd. Why should the tunnel be waiting for me?

  I shake off the gnawing apprehension—I’ve heard hunger can play tricks with your mind—and position myself for the moment of truth. I sit on the edge and slide my bony legs into the opening. They slip through easily. As I raise my buttocks off the floor to slide my hips through, I pause.