The Frankenstein Experiments

It was another beautiful morning in the suburbs, the sky a bottomless shade of perfect sunlit blue, and as Mr McAllister wandered out of his house, clad in a navy blue dressing gown, he was greeted by a familiar morning sight. Will was jogging up the road towards him, accompanied by his latest running buddy, a tall, strong-looking man with thick black hair and jarringly pale skin. Mr McAllister raised his hand in greeting, and Will yelled out a cheery,

“Good morning!”

His friend raised a hand and gave a stiff little wave, accompanied by a monosyllabic grunt, before his powerful strides carried him away up the sunlit street. Mr McAllister picked up his paper, and shuffled off into the house, thinking how nice it was that Will never jogged alone. He was a quiet sort, and the only time they ever saw him was on his morning jogs, so Mr McAllister was glad that shy little Will had some friends. Even if his friends were an incredibly strange lot, with their pale skin and absolute aversion to eye contact, none of them ever saying more than three words at a time…

 

 

Mr McAllister saw Will again, three mornings later. He was accompanied by the same friend, and their small group had gained the addition of a dog. It was a decrepit looking thing, small and brown and hairy, running with a stiff gait, its tail bent an unusual angle. Nonetheless, Mr McAllister thought that it was nice for Will to have a dog, some companionship in his life. He raised his hand in greeting and asked,

“What’s he called?”

“Bobby!” Will called back, the scruffy little dog jolting along determinedly at his side.

Mr McAllister took a step towards them, bending down to stroke the strange creature, but Will tensed up, blurting out,

“Don’t touch him! He’s very snappy!”

Mr McAllister ignored this warning, for he had always been fond of dogs. As the hairy terrier ambled by he brushed his hand along its back, but something about the feel of the dog made him recoil in horror. Beneath the coarse hair, its flesh had been cold and unyielding, bringing back strange memories of his childhood hamster, and the day he had found it lying motionless on the floor of its cage. When he lifted its stiff little body, it had been a cold, solidified mass, as bereft of life beneath its silky coat as a paving slab – moreso; the apparatus of life was present, but empty, a terrifying void. And when Mr McAllister touched that dog, it was the void he felt beneath his fingertips.

Will threw him a tense smile, and powered on up the road. The dog lurched along behind him, looking neither left nor right, its hairy coat shagging around its stiff little body. Mr McAllister watched the three of them shrink into the distance, and a cold shiver ran down his spine.

 

 

When Will returned from his jog, he saw to the dog first. Bobby was the first dog he had ever had, and already Will was very fond of him. Although his other friends far surpassed Bobby in their complexity, their inability to form coherent speech was a constant frustration to Will. But with Bobby, it didn’t matter. The second most obvious failing of Will’s friends was their eyes. They became yellowed and cloudy, and more disturbing still was the emptiness that lurked behind them. No matter how lifelike their movements and their facial expressions, their eyes remained horrifying portals to the realm of the dead. But Bobby was such a hairy little dog that his dark eyes were barely visible, and to any onlooker, he was just as alive as any other dog on the street.

Will led the dog into the living room, and lifted him onto the sofa, before gently unbuckling Bobby’s collar. Beneath it, he felt with his fingertips for the flap of severed skin, which he peeled up, searching out the single small button, and pressing it. The dog became an eerie statue of dead flesh, sitting stiffly erect on the brown sofa cushion. Will picked up his old phone charger, and plugged it into the back of Bobby’s neck, giving the dog an affectionate pat, and moving on to the essential needs of his second friend.

Frank stood patiently waiting in the doorway, his clouded eyes fixed on the ground, never looking up. Will commanded him to go to bed, and Frank turned on the spot, and marched away down the stairs to the basement. For fun, Will got Frank to push in the combination to the heavy steel door, and was delighted with the success of his programming when Frank got it right first time.

As the door swung open, the temperature dropped sharply, and there was a cold scent of dead flesh and the iron tang of clotted blood. Will breathed it in deeply with a contented smile – it was the smell of friendship.

A metal surgical table with troughs for spilled blood was placed in the centre of the tiled room, and behind a curtain of thick translucent plastic stood a row of silent figures. Will drew back the curtain, and admired his handsome friends. Two young men stared blankly at the ground, and a petite blonde woman leaned against the wall. Frank marched obediently into line, and Will stood on his tiptoes to reach into the thick matt of Frank’s hair, yanking out the chip that brought him to life. In its place, Will shoved a phone charger, and Frank lapsed into perfect stillness, his muscular frame at rest.

When Will plugged the chip into the woman’s altered brain, a handful of her blonde hair came away in his fingers, and the sickly sweet odour of cloying putrefaction enveloped him. Her pale skin was turning a jaundiced shade of mottled yellow-green, and when he crouched down to examine her further, he saw that her left eyeball had ruptured, was now a wrinkled sac that leaked viscous jelly in a shimmering tear-trail across her cheek. Will let out a weary sigh, and brought her decaying body to life, watching as she shuffled stiffly over to the table, and dragged herself onto it.

When she lay down, he carefully unbuttoned her flannel shirt and jeans, slid them down over her hips. Her pubic hair had grown a little since it was shaved, the last miracle of the dead, and it now made a fine blonde dusting over the purple lividity of her crotch. Will took a stethoscope from the wall, pressed the cold metal to her abdomen, but from within the waxy flesh there was only silence. At his next command, she opened her legs with a muffled crackling of decaying ligaments, and with his fingers he delved inside the cold passage of her vagina. It was moist and slippery with clotted semen, and as his fingers sank deeper he felt movement and warmth, his eyes widening. He eagerly scooped out the chunk of living matter, but on his fingertips he found only a cluster of white, wriggling maggots, the stench of rotting flesh assaulting him. With an irritable sigh, Will yanked the chip from the back of Suzie’s head, and went out to dig another grave.

 

 

Will’s life continued in the same routine, and he began half-heartedly searching for a new Suzie. Every day he would scan the obituaries for a likely candidate – young, attractive, the cause of death leaving their body relatively whole, but as the days passed, he felt ever more drained by this search. It was an eternal problem, and one that deeply troubled him. He loved every one of his friends, put great efforts into each of them – the initial, intricate rewiring of their brain, the specific programming of their individual personality, and the constant, arduous healthcare, fighting an eternally losing battle against putrefaction. But just when he came to truly love his friend, they would fail him, and then he would have to dig another grave.

What Will needed was a friend who would never die, a friend that straddled the chasm between life and death, a creature that was both, and neither – as obedient as the dead, yet as vibrant as the living. A creature that possessed all the bloom of youth, caught eternally in the permanence of death.

The experiments had never worked before, but perhaps Will had been wrong, had got his theory backwards. The spark of life had not ignited within the body of the dead, but perhaps if this were reversed – if the seed of the dead was immersed within the body of the living, could such a creature be born into the world?

Will began surfing the internet in earnest, when little Bobby had been returned to the refrigerator, and he was alone once more. It wasn’t long before he found a chatroom for shy people, and it was there that his search began. Within two nights he had befriended a woman, who lived a mere fifteen miles away. She was a young, healthy 26, had survived an abusive relationship only to become withdrawn, afraid of the world. Will reassured her, told her he could help, that he knew a way, a simple, easy way – a way to make all the friends in the world. I am never alone, he wrote, not since I learned this technique, and you shouldn’t be alone either. No one needs to be alone…

He sent her pictures of himself and Bobby, the terrier’s hair carefully ruffled over his eyes, and Will was delighted with the images, with the lifelike poses of his newest companion. The dog was sprayed daily with expensive cologne, to mask the odour of its inevitable decay, but Will didn’t mind, because all dogs were a bit smelly – it was part of their charm. The girl wrote back with enthusiasm, sent a picture in return – she was brunette, moderately attractive in a shy sort of way, and three days later, her trust was fully won. She agreed to drive over on Saturday, to meet Will and his delightful Bobby, to learn the miraculous secrets to social success.

 

 

Will spent the next two days making preparations, and by Saturday, he was ready. When Kelly arrived, nervously hunched on his doorstep, he invited her inside for a glass of her favourite Blossom Hill rosé, to break the ice. She shuffled inside, and perched on the edge of his sofa, while he slipped into the kitchen. Into her glass he poured a tiny vial containing his chosen paralytic, which he topped off with a generous splosh of wine. When he handed it to Kelly, he began a cheery monologue about his day, and about how excited he had been to see her, and out of sheer nervousness she drank the entire glass within minutes. He had barely begun his pre-rehearsed ramble about his love of jogging when she keeled over onto the sofa, and he scooped her up and carried her off to the basement.

Inside the refrigerated room, a mattress lay on the tiled floor, and Will laid the girl’s limp body down on it. She stared at him with wide, horrified eyes, and he called Bobby over, to relax her. The little dog came lurching stiffly across the room, and Kelly’s right hand moved weakly to touch it, but when she felt the cold, hard flesh that lay beneath its wiry coat, a high-pitched keening noise came from her open mouth, her brown eyes widening. The dog jerked its way onto the mattress, and licked her nose with a cold dry tongue. The odour of rotting meat was on its breath, its clouded eyes watching her vacantly. Will smiled at how well they were getting along, and went to prepare Frank for his big debut.

Behind the plastic curtain, Will’s favourite friend was a nude statue, his feet and hands purple with pooled blood, his cock a limp sack of flaccid, jaundiced skin. As Will plugged him in, he jerked to life, marching over to the mattress. Will started up a programme he had never run before, and Frank grabbed his cock in one large purple hand, began vacantly tugging at it. Kelly was making high pitched animal wailings again, the cold body of Bobby lying on her chest, and Will crouched down next to her, moving the dog and gently unbuttoning her shirt.

“You don’t need to be afraid,” he explained. “These are my friends – they won’t hurt you. You’ll never be alone now, because you’ll be here, with us, and soon we’ll be a family – forever and ever. And I think Bobby really likes you!”

He gave her a reassuring smile, and dragged off her bra, unbuttoning her jeans and yanking them down. The feel of her warm, pliant flesh was strange to him, slightly repellent, and the vivid life in her warm brown eyes unnerved him slightly. Bobby lurched back onto the bed and started silently gnawing her right nipple, until Will moved him again, pleased to find that his playful little terrier hadn’t drawn blood.

When Will stood up, Frank was towering above him, his greenish cock now fully erect, a thick, custardy substance seeping from its tip. Will stepped back, and let the magic begin. Kelly started squealing again as the corpse lurched towards her, dropping heavily to its knees. It smelled of formaldehyde and thick, meaty rot, its cold, lifeless hands clutching at her breasts as its face moved steadily closer. Its eyes were yellowed and milky, fixed on hers in an empty, soulless stare, the face of a corpse animated through grotesque flesh-puppetry. She felt its cold, lifeless organ roughly penetrate her, felt the eruption of frigid ooze from within, before the corpse withdrew and the room filled with the rancid stench of decaying tissues.

Will inhaled deeply with a contented smile. It was the smell of a new friendship.