Little Deaths Read online

  Frankenstein’s bolts.

  I realized two things instantly.

  I hadn’t yet cried.

  I had completely lost my mind.

  * * *

  Spirit gum… I can remember the smell of it filling the room as I uncapped the small, brown vial of the stuff.

  Spirit gum… strange name, considering my intentions.

  I stood in the doorway to the bedroom for a long time, the vial in one hand, the plastic bag with the bolts in the other, stood there as the sun climbed up the blinds, watching her, my Rabbit.

  She seemed so small in our bed, so tiny, so forlorn with her arms thrown open and hair tousled, her eyes closed, her face drawn into a small moue, like she was frustrated or annoyed with me.

  My brain, understand, was still gone, still moving into the distance.

  Kneeling at the side of the bed, I carefully brushed aside her dark hair, exposed her neck.

  I unsealed the plastic bag, knocked one of the bolts into my hand. The two were slightly different. One had a blunt cap, like the head of nail; the other was just a flat rod. Each had a little L-shaped wire that angled out like a tiny antenna.

  There was a thin circle of rubber around the base where it attached to the neck, which was then was covered with makeup.

  I remembered from pictures of Karloff as Frankenstein that the capped bolt was on the right.

  With trembling hands, I applied a smear of spirit gum to the rubber seal.

  Taking a deep breath, I placed the bolt on Rachel’s neck, guessing about where it should be.

  The spirit gum stuck immediately, but I held it in place until I was sure.

  When I finished, I looked at her. The bolts seemed to be in the right place, seemed to make a straight line through her neck.

  I nodded, pleased with the work I had done, then collapsed in the chair at the foot of the bed and waited… waited.

  * * *

  After an hour or so, I stood and tried to rouse her.

  Nothing.

  Then, it struck me.

  Of course…

  They weren’t bolts at all.

  They were electrodes.

  * * *

  In the end, I ripped the electrical cord out of a lamp on the nightstand, peeled it apart, stripped both ends with a paring knife.

  I wrapped each bare wire around one of the bolts, careful not to pull them from her neck. The Y shape of the cord draped her unmoving chest as if she had fallen asleep wearing a pair of earphones, listening to music.

  I closed the blinds against the sun, and the room swam in darkness.

  My hand, holding the plug, hovered over the outlet.

  My brain, exhausted from its long run, was making its way back, bringing with it the first slivers of doubt.

  But I plugged it in.

  And… well… nothing.

  There was no Frankenstein’s laboratory scene of arcing electricity and showers of sparks. No crazy flashing lights or breakers popping.

  She didn’t suddenly seize on the bed, her teeth clenched. Her hands didn’t tighten, her toes didn’t point.

  My hand moved to pull the plug, when I saw it: subtle, beautifully eldritch.

  Thin arcs of violet-white electricity zagged across the tiny gap between the antennae and the bolts. A soft sizzle accompanied this, an electric razor heard from a distance. The smell of ozone reached my nostrils, as fresh and clean as the air after a spring shower.

  I thought of how the bolts, made of rubber, couldn’t possibly conduct electricity.

  I knew that they would melt, would have to melt.

  I saw her chest expand suddenly, rise.

  I heard a strangled breath escape her suddenly open mouth, the intake of another, sounding as if it would never end, never draw enough breath to fill her lungs again.

  I cried, finally.

  Not just because she was alive.

  But because she was crying, too.

  * * *

  I helped her into the shower, where she slumped in my arms as the water fell over her.

  Her hair went lank, plastered her face.

  She was jabbering, incoherent. It wasn’t just that she didn’t make sense: she wasn’t making words.

  Her eyes were dull, vacant, staring right through me, no sign of recognition, of awareness.

  I thought she might have had a stroke, must have had a stroke.

  A hospital. I needed to take her to a hospital.

  I held her slippery, trembling body in the crook of one arm while I prepared to remove the bolts from her neck.

  How to explain those?

  She must have been alive all along, had to have been. I mean, Christ, I wasn’t a doctor.

  How could I be sure that she hadn’t actually been breathing, that her heart hadn’t actually been beating?

  What had I been thinking?

  Gluing those bolts to her neck, zapping her with a lamp cord?

  Shit, I might have really killed her.

  As my hand neared the bolt on the right side of her neck, made ready to peel it off, fling it across the room, she flinched, and her eyes rolled in their orbits, focused on me.

  I saw two things in those eyes.

  The first was sadness, an almost wistful sorrow.

  The second was fear tinged with revulsion.

  My hand paused, fell away.

  Her skin was a pale, luminous blue. More disturbingly, there were patches of deep green that looked as if they were floating on her skin like algae on a lake.

  Her flesh was no warmer than it had been, even though the shower was hot.

  She hadn’t been alive earlier and she wasn’t alive now.

  A single finger reached out and touched the bolt on her neck.

  I was rewarded with a brief, light shock, like walking across a carpet and touching a doorknob.

  As I jerked my hand away, she moaned, thick and full of grief, slumped in my arms and began to weep again.

  * * *

  I eventually wrestled her to the bedroom and put some clothes on her. She was shivering, icy cold. It was like trying to put clothes on a human-sized doll. She didn’t help, didn’t try to help, didn’t seem to know how to help.

  It was all I could do to get a t-shirt and a pair of shorts on her. When she was dressed, I led her to the kitchen, step by lurching step. I lowered her forcefully into a chair. She was unwilling or unaware of how to bend, to conform her body to that shape. Her hands gripped my arms tightly, sank her nails in my flesh, but she eventually sat, rigid, straight backed. I sat beside her, looked at her.

  Her dark hair was still wet, still adhered flatly to her head. Her skin was a mottled bluegreen, so pale, devoid of anything red or pink, the colors of health, of life. Her eyes were pale, too, as if the lens had fogged over with a green-yellow mist.

  And the bolts… they completed the look, jutting from her neck, spidery electrical arcs jumping intermittently across their antennae.

  Rachel looked at me, dull and sad; each move of her eyes, her head, her body was ponderous, slow, even when she blinked. She was still crying softly, her sobs thick and garbled, as if coming from deep within her.

  “Rachel,” I said, touching her arm. “Rabbit, it’s okay… it’s okay. You’re okay.”

  Her eyes fixed me and the look I thought was uncomprehending suddenly took on a horrible clarity. She tried to speak, to say something, but it just came out as a long, grunting nnnnnnnnnnn.

  Her head shook, slowly at first, from side to side, then more powerfully.

  No!

  I reached out to embrace her, but she pulled away, her eyes tracking down to my arm, then widening in fear.

  “NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN,” she growled, trying to grab my arm with fingers that didn’t work. Her head still shook from side to side, spraying spittle across the table.

  I looked down at my arm, the arm she had grabbed as I had forced her into the chair. There were four perfect half-moon cuts from her nails in the meat of my forearm, each weeping b
lood that had run down to my wrist and dripped to the floor. They were deep, and they bled profusely.

  She continued to hold my arm with one hand, while the other found its way to her mouth, wedged inside and muffled the already impenetrable sounds of her distress.

  * * *

  I cleaned myself up, applied some Band-Aids while she looked on, propped against the bathroom doorframe, still muttering.

  When I finished, I showed her the arm, told her it was okay, but she looked away, groaning.

  I took her back to the kitchen table, sat her down, this time more easily, and sat myself, trying to figure out what to do.

  If you’re wondering: yes, there was a tiny, annoying voice at the back of my brain that was screaming, in the mad voice of Colin Clive:

  It’s alive! It’s alive! It’s alive!

  When I looked up from my reverie, she was stuffing cold banana pancakes inexpertly into her mouth. Gobs of chewed pancake coated her lips, fell onto her t-shirt.

  She smiled then, smiled with teeth coated in gummy yellow, her greenish tongue lolling like a happy puppy’s.

  My Rabbit.

  Dear lord…

  * * *

  A few days passed. Then a week.

  The phone rang off the wall, her office, her friends, her family.

  I didn’t answer, didn’t know what to say.

  Rachel? She’s fine. Well, she did die, but I glued some Frankenstein bolts to her neck, real ones, and she’s getting better.

  I helped her dress every morning, helped her eat, helped her bathe. I brushed her teeth and hair… both of which started to come out. A few clumps of hair in the brush, another tooth in the sink every morning.

  I helped her use the toilet, but I don’t want to talk about that at all.

  She didn’t like to be away from my side or out of sight of me, so we spent the days mostly sitting in the main room watching television or reading. Well, I read. She mostly stared into space or at me.

  All the while grunting at me in her strange, guttural new voice.

  Neither of us slept much. I’d wrestle her into bed and she’d lay there as stiff and unmoving as… well, as a dead girl, muttering through the night.

  I was able to sneak out a few times to get food, groceries.

  Each time when I came back, she had destroyed some new section of the apartment. Not deliberately, mind you, just staggering around in anguish looking for me, waiting for me to return.

  When I did, she shuffled to me, weeping as she often did, hugging me tightly and moaning, her eyes both sad and reproachful, like a dog disappointed at its master for leaving but overjoyed at his return.

  After a couple of weeks, the knocking at the door began. First the gentle, tentative knocks of family and friends, then the more forceful knocking of the police.

  I didn’t answer, didn’t know what to do.

  * * *

  The landlord called, threatening, letting me know the police had been by. The other tenants had been complaining about the loud noises, the midnight shrieks, the crashing and banging that occurred at all hours.

  And the odd smell.

  It couldn’t go on.

  I couldn’t go on.

  Not like this.

  Late on a Sunday night, we sat on the couch together, watching television.

  By chance, Frankenstein was on one of the classic movie channels.

  I hadn’t seen it in a long while, so I let it play, despite some misgivings over how Rachel might react. But her rocking and moaning seemed to subside a little, and I thought she might actually be watching it.

  Towards the end, that’s where I got the idea—after the villagers chased down the good doctor and his creature, torches blazing, cornered them in a windmill, set it on fire with the monster inside.

  In the movie, the creature hurled his creator out of the windmill, where he was saved by the villagers.

  I didn’t expect, didn’t want that for me.

  I simply can’t let go.

  She knew this.

  * * *

  The room is warm now. I can feel the heat.

  There’s knocking at the door, pounding.

  I ignore it as best I can. The door is solid steel. If they break it down—and they might be able to—it will take some time.

  I sit on the bed and hold her hand, her cold, cold hand.

  She turns to me, and her face is blank.

  She mouths words, but they’re just sounds really, deep, guttural.

  Her free hand paws the air, finds my face as if by accident, strokes it roughly.

  Her eyes lock on mine, but they aren’t her eyes anymore, not the eyes I remember. These are a spoiled, poisonous green, limned with yellow.

  Her mouth moves again, her lips twitch and grimace, her tongue twists thickly around words that I finally understand.

  Silly boy.

  So I hold her hand, rest my head on her shoulder and feel a trickle of her cold drool drip down my neck, pool in the hollow of my collarbone.

  And let go…

  CALENDAR GIRL

  It was at the reception that Josh spoke the first words that truly scared her.

  The wedding, like the rest of Melinda’s courtship, moved with a dreamlike cadence.

  People drifted in and out of perception, events passed like objects whirling around the heart of a hurricane. Time, rather than connecting these happenings, separated them, split them into odd, unconnected vignettes.

  Here she was, as if just awakened, getting married to a man she hardly knew.

  It was only five months ago that they’d exchanged their first words across a conference room table.

  Josh, the bright, new supervisor brought in from the company’s Chicago office.

  She, the eager, dynamic account executive just out of college.

  Josh had handled his first meeting as if he knew every intimate detail, spoken and unspoken, about the clients and their business.

  “I love an organized man,” Melinda had said to break the ice after the clients left, and the others applauded her effort with nervous, restrained laughter.

  Except Josh.

  He’d looked at her with that baby face, those light brown eyes, looked seriously at her.

  “Of course,” he finally said. And that was the beginning.

  Melinda had been surprised when, only a month later, Josh produced his ubiquitous black date book, bulging fat around the tiny clasp that held it shut, opened it and said:

  “March 4. That’s the day you’ll marry me.”

  His handwriting was firm and clear even in the dim light of her bedroom.

  “Oh, Josh,” she sighed, burying her face in his neck. “I do.”

  * * *

  As they finished their first dance, they were stopped by Melinda’s aunt and uncle.

  “Well, we’ve got to leave,” said the uncle, hitching up his unnaturally brown polyester pants, his gaping shirt exposing flesh the color of suet.

  “We’re so happy for you, honey,” cooed the aunt, pulling Melinda in dizzily for a too-tight hug. “You’ll have to get your address to us when you settle in. Do you know yet where you’ll be living?”

  “We haven’t had time to think about that.”

  “Well,” said the uncle, who had been eying the exit. “You’re both young. Take your time.”

  “I’m not worried. I have it all planned,” Josh broke in solemnly, hooking his thumb back over his shoulder.

  Melinda followed his aim as he said his goodbyes.

  The head table lay in that direction, cleared of the dirty dinner dishes.

  The only things left were two champagne flutes, an open bottle of Dom.

  And Josh’s date book, like a dark window in the tablecloth.

  A chill scurried through her body.

  Then, the whirlwind took hold of her again, tugged her along after it.

  * * *

  “So, it’s been nine months,” began Jeannie, shoveling in a forkful of pasta during her annual C
hristmas lunch with Melinda. “Are you still getting any?”

  “Jeannie!” Melinda squealed, taking a small bite of her salad.

  Melinda noticed sourly that, as she did every year, Jeannie had ordered the most fattening thing on the café’s menu. She was one of those women who looked good no matter what she ate or how much.

  In fact, given her masculine table manners, Melinda suspected that Jeannie looked good no matter how she ate.

  “Come on! Everyone’s taking bets on whether you two schedule it in advance.”

  “He’s not as bad as that,” Melinda said, picking at her salad. “He’s just … organized. And no, we do not plan that!”

  “He carries that book with him everywhere,” Jeannie said, slathering a hunk of bread with butter.

  “Not everywhere,” interrupted Melinda, beginning to feel uncomfortable.

  The fact was, Josh did carry it everywhere, and, yes, she was aware that everyone whispered about this particular eccentricity. Melinda had even joined in before they started dating seriously.

  “What does he write in there that’s so important?” Jeannie continued, unabated by Melinda’s interruption or even the food in her own mouth. “Have you ever looked?”

  “No, that’s private. I would never do that.”

  “It kind of takes the spontaneity out of things, doesn’t it? What does he do when things don’t go as planned?”

  “It’s funny. Everything seems to go just as he plans. Always,” Melinda said, spearing a lettuce leaf and chewing on it thoughtfully.

  Melinda dropped her fork, took a drink of water.

  “Hey, sorry,” said Jeannie, reaching across the table to grab her hand. “I didn’t mean anything by it. Josh is a great guy, a real catch. He’s just a little strange, that’s all. But all men are strange, aren’t they?”