Page 22 of Adam, Mine

The monster felt around himself, tearing the heart machine away from him and hurling it to the floor. He ripped the breathing tube out of his throat with enough force that he spat blood, letting out that horrible wail all the while.

Victor stumbled back.

The patient gulped air, then curled in on himself and vomited black bilious fluid. It steamed hot and rancid in the air, and Victor covered his nose with his arm.

Not once since noticing him had the patient broken eye contact. It was hypnotizing and repulsive. Victor wanted to go to him, he wanted to run from him. But he couldn’t move.

The patient heaved yet again, this time a clear, watery fluid: saline or mucus. Then he took a deep breath.

His mouth moved, but nothing Victor could understand came out. For a moment, it was still. The patient brought a hand to his throat, realizing with new terror what he’d done when he removed the breathing tube with such recklessness.

Then, rage again.

Incandescent.

And in his eyes, hate.

Victor remembered himself. He snatched the blue book from the table, grabbed a candle, and fled.

His weakened legs did their job to get him to the top of the stairs before Elias could finish untying himself from the table and he seized his chance.

He tore the candle from its holder and set the top of the staircase alight and slammed the door.

He could hear the patient’s cries of despair and fury and knew he couldn’t let Elias leave this house alive.

Victor dashed upstairs to his rooms and grabbed his remaining money, letters from his family, diploma, and identification. He snatched the candle from the lantern in the hall and hurled it into the center of his bed, which burst merrily into flame.

He ran about the house, drowning out the sounds of the patient’s cries and his hands beating against the basement door with the roar of fire.

Victor stumbled out into the night and turned away from his sins.

Walked from the house that had once been his home.

He could still hear the commotion even as he left his neighborhood behind. The bucket brigades rushing to put out the flames, neighbors screaming, people running in the streets.

The orange glow of his landlady’s house haunted him until he put distance between it and himself and the night faded to a calmer blue. Victor walked to the east, to a terrible area, and acquired an extremely private room in an inn for cheats, whores, and thieves.

He lay down on a bed that smelled of flesh and sweat and closed his eyes.

All Creation

Elias pressed his forehead into the dirt and tried not to scream.

There was so much behind his teeth that he could fill this valley with the echo of his grief. But they were hunting him, and he had to stay quiet.

His entirety was an open nerve strummed hard by careless fingers. That madman had torn into every part of his skin that stretched and moved; even crying silently stung wild like nettles. And still, with open wounds, flaking burns, and stitches, all: it could not compare in the least to the beast that was his heart.

His brain caressed each step of the heist of himself, and with every facet fresh agony swept him further and further out to sea.

No man alive deserved this.

The terror in his father’s eyes, his mother wailing, the lack of recognition on his sisters’ faces. He had walked two hours, barefoot, on mud and sticks to reach them. Ran through town pursued by friends and neighbors, hoping and praying they would see him beyond the devastation of his form. Watching them turn from him and run to join the mob hurt perhaps more than fire.

And then the faces. They seared themselves into his mind. The fair, hard-voiced beauty who stole him. The scholars standing to bear witness.

He had never hurt anyone in his entire life. He had only ever used his hands to make and build and serve. To mend clothes and wash plates and bake bread and hold babies.

Was the crime of looking at that boy so terrible as this? Was the stirring in his heart fit to be punished so cruelly?