Page 12 of Her Creation

Alphonse had always been firmly against taking anything for himself, even fighting soup or peppermint water occasionally when he was ill. She knew that if he was taking laudanum, things were worse than she knew.

The glass shook as he held it, causing the dark liquid to slosh around unsteadily as he lifted it to his lips. He gave her a reproachful look before draining the contents. “This is the first of, I’m sure, many future doses.”

Victoria turned back to the corpse, her hand still resting on the cold shin, lending her stability and the faint, imaginary feeling of someone else being there to comfort her.

Alphonse positioned himself at the head of the cadaver and nodded toward Victoria’s small wooden desk and the stack of empty leather notebooks before he pressed his spectacles higher up his freckled nose. “You’ll want to dedicate a new notebook to your creation. We have our work cut out for us, more so than I had expected. Are you prepared?” he asked as his stuttering hands clasped hold of the white sheet still covering most of the cadaver save for a foot.

Victoria reluctantly removed her hand from the corpse and inhaled a large, calming breath. She couldn’t wait to meet him. Obviously, it would be a while before he was alive and reciprocating her interactions, but it didn’t matter. Hope, long missing, had lit an ember in Victoria’s cold, vacant chest, and if this old, battered man were the reason, she didn’t care. She was thankful to feel something other than sadness.

Quickly, she went to the desk and collected the items she would need to log her assessment of the cadaver’s condition. She took the spare moment to collect herself while her back was still turned to her father. She tried to steel her stomach, irritated by the way her nerves and appetite were reacting to her anxieties. She felt disgusting and uncomfortable in her own skin; it was as though her outside was mirroring the emotional horrors that plagued her insides. Her stomach twisted and flipped; the pulse of adrenaline threatened to embarrass her further. She’d worked on cadavers before, but never quite like this. If she got sick in front of him, her father would think her incapable and feminine, unable to take over for him one day. She needed to show him that a dead body meant nothing to her.

“I have rigged the table to move into that chamber. The machine for his current brain monitoring will rest under the table and will move with it.” He pointed to the bolted door in the cove of her office. “It’s protected but goes to the earth and will keep the body cold enough, at least while we are in winter. We may occasionally need to fill the chamber with ice from the lake and soak the body in alcohol to ward off decay as best we can. Are you ready to begin?”

Victoria moved to the side of the table so that she might see the cadaver’s face first. She wasn’t sure why, but it seemed respectful. “What shall we do in spring to prevent decay as temperatures increase?”

“If all goes well, I hardly think we will need to worry about that,” he replied with a smile. “If we are as close to the correct procedure and formula to resurrect as I believe we are, then it will likely be done by spring. This body will be gone, swallowed back up by the earth. Until then, the machine we attach to his brain will send out neural signals to assist in slowing deterioration.”

Victoria’s skin prickled and pinched at the thought of losing someone else in her life, even if it was an old, dead man she had yet to meet—or build for that matter. “But then if we are to be correct and successful in the resurrection of this person, which I am certain we will be, why would they be gone? Would he not be alive and with us in spring?” She watched the flame of the lamp nearby flicker in the reflection of his glasses. If she looked him in the eye, he would see an emotional attachment that he shouldn’t. A tickle ghosted her arm until she was forced to set her notebook down and brush her hands over her skin. Something black dropped to the floor and crawled off.

A spider.

She lifted her foot without another thought and held it over the small, leggy, useless arachnid before she stilled her foot, watching the way it ran from her helplessly.

Alphonse scowled harshly at her. “This cadaver is for our experiments, not our pity. Though we may be capable of playing God, we are ill-equipped to fight the devil.”

Victoria slowly set her boot on the smooth stone of the laboratory floor, sparing the spider. It hadn’t bitten her. For all she knew, it had crawled onto her seeking safety or comfort from someone it thought would protect it. Only to be killed simply for being what you were born as. Executed for the sin of being small and insignificant.

Victoria reeled back and looked at her father. “What do you mean? You do not think we should resurrect others? Restore their lives? How can you say that? What—what would the point of all this have been if we don’t mean to use what we have learned?” She wanted to scream. Yell. If she’d had the strength, she’d have flipped the heavy stone table over. “What about you? If your illness should worsen, you will experience it. Would you not wish for a friend that’s been through it?”

Alphonse’s face paled, and the sheet dropped from his fingertips. “Victoria…” He shook his head slowly, an expression on his face as if he’d just seen a spectre. “I told you long ago. You will not disturb my peace in death or your mother’s peace. You cannot bring me back just as you could not bring her back.”

Shock froze her face in horror. “Why not?” Victoria snapped. “Disturb your peace? You will disturb my peace by leaving me! I will bring you back. You will see—you will see, Papa. Should something happen, you will be just as you were before; everything will be the same. We will test the methods and make certain they’re perfect! You will—” The cold slap of a hand crossed her cheek. She gasped. Her hand touched where her father’s handprint burned her cheek and jaw and swam into her very soul. Her unblinking eyes latched on to the head and the outlined face of the cadaver beneath the sheet as she panted and struggled to catch her breath.

“I—I,” Alphonse stuttered. “Victoria, my child, I’m so sorry.” His palm trembled as he looked at it with horror.

It was another moment before Victoria could pull the mask of consternation down and move. Her father had hit her. Her mind circled, promising her she misunderstood, but the sting of her cheek corrected her. She had upset him. Disappointed him. Despite her battling, heat welled in her eyes as they remained locked on the covered outline of the cadaver’s nose.

“You must swear to me now—swear that you will never resurrect me. I do not want that fate. My body yearns to be laid next to your mother again.”

Victoria looked at her father and stiffened her jaw. “No.”

“Victoria!” he shouted. His voice rattled and shook the thin glass of the lamps nearby. “You will not go against my wishes. Do you understand? This is not your decision! Have some respect for your mother—for me! When the time comes for me to die, I will leave your side and return to hers. Do not be selfish in your grief!!”

For the first time in her life, Victoria took a step away from her father as fear rolled through her. A numbness pooled in her body as though she were watching this all happen to someone else. The safety net that held her together had fallen into a pit of flames. Her life’s focus fell behind the net into the fire, burning her sense of stability. “Why—why would you not want to stay here with me?”

Alphonse shook his head, removed his glasses, and ran his palm roughly over his face before answering. “Because it’s not the natural order of life. When the time comes that I must leave you, your mother and I together will watch over you. Swear to me, Victoria, that you will respect my wishes and leave your mother and me to the peace of death. Do not, under any circumstances, bring me or either of us back to life. Do you understand? Promise me, or I will stop everything now, and you may never step foot in this laboratory again.” Victoria nodded as she stared at the cadaver. A tear trickled down her face. She felt as though the world and its last hope of light had just been snuffed out. Every drop of hope that had festered since childhood was suddenly extinguished. A god had just been made mortal. Her years of studying and learning meant nothing—it had all been for nothing. Her destiny of blackened, hollow loneliness had just been set.

She couldn’t keep her father from leaving. Should he fall ill tonight, it would be over. For both of them. The overwhelming feeling of nothingness swelled inside her, spreading and suffocating her like thick plumes of black smoke.

“I wish for a verbal confirmation, Victoria Rose,” Alphonse clipped, still angry and flustered.

Victoria’s glistening, unfocused eyes fell to her father. “I—I…” There were no words in her mouth or head, there was nothing left in her; what little she’d had left had been taken. All that remained was a mask, and as it fell into place, she stiffened and moved closer to her father. She reached in front of him and clasped hold of the sheet covering the cadaver. “As you wish, Papa. I will not, under any circumstances, bring you or Mama back to life.” Her voice was clinical and devoid of the torrent of emotions she felt.

“I’m sorry, Vic. I have been under such duress about this cadaver arriving without issue and everything else. I’m taking it out on you, and you are doing so much. I apologize for striking you. I—I think I need to rest.”

Victoria peeled the sheet off the cadaver’s head and lay it over his chest. Another gust of shock filled her body as she looked at the dead man. Her mouth hung open.

Beneath the sheet lay the most handsome man she had ever laid eyes on. Younger than she had expected, he had been badly beaten. Large chunks of skin were missing, peeled off from burns that covered most of the skin that remained on one side of his face, neck, and chest.