A Last Embrace - Chapter 3

It was supposed to be over, but Dr. Frank had another idea.

Dr. Frank had another idea. Walking through the cold, hostile streets he thought: what about if I reanimated Alice? It hadn’t worked out too well with Vince, but he had been dead a few hours. If he got to Alice quickly, who knew?

He hurriedly retraced his steps through town. He knew he was now embarked on a plan fraught with many dangers, but it was just something he had to do. He loved Alice, had loved her since the first moment he had met her, and he thought she loved him, or at least would come to love him if he brought her back from the dead.

With pounding heart he entered the Mogles’ home. It was just as he had left it, quiet and peaceful, everything in its right place. The cellar door was open, as he had left it. And there they lay, entwined in their last embrace. Dr. Frank checked both pulses; not a tremor. Alice’s skin was cold, but the pristine beauty of her face was intact, even accentuated by death’s pallor. Death always stripped away the facades, Dr. Frank thought; if you would know a person to the centre of their being, see their face after death. Of course, it was too late then, usually. But Alice’s face showed the unblemished beauty of her essential self, and Frank was deeper in love with every glance.

He tried to wrest her from Vince’s grasp. It wasn’t easy, he had her in a vice-like grip. He thought he might even have to get the hacksaw involved. Eventually, though, he released her, and carried her over to the steel table where he had resuscitated Vince. He laid her out, then set about preparing the mixture.

As the mixture was being heated, Frank went to unbutton Alice’s blouse, baring her left breast to receive the injection. He felt inexplicably shameful and guilty as he performed this operation, glancing over his shoulder to make sure no one was watching. No one was. Vince was still dead and there was no one else around. He did it as before, focussing all the strength of his body into his left arm as he plunged the needle through the chest, penetrating deep past the chest bone and straight into the heart.

She shot up as the needle reached her heart, her face expressing great shock and confusion. She looked at Frank but didn’t seem to see him. Then her gaze lighted on Vince’s body lying on the floor. The memory came flooding back to her. She looked at Frank: “But…how?...”

“It was me,” said Frank, “I brought you back to life. Vince asphyxiated you, do you remember that? And I injected you. Now you’re alive again.”

“You brought me back to life?” she said, and Frank was a little surprised by her tone of voice. She didn’t sound as pleased and grateful as he had hoped.

“Yeah,” he said. “Isn’t it cool?”

“No, it’s not cool,” she said, speaking the last word in a savagely mocking falsetto unlike any tone he had heard in her voice before. He was starting to feel a little uncomfortable.

“Um, sorry. I thought you’d be pleased.”

She raised her arms into a strangling position and lunged at Dr. Frank, screaming with a demonic fury. Dr. Frank ran for the stairs, jumping over Vince’s body. She followed at his heels, uttering obscenities directed at Frank. She seemed really pissed, thought Frank. He made it to the top of the stairs and ran for the front door, but she was fast, superhuman fast, and she caught him just before he got there. She knocked him to the ground and sat astride him, trying to throttle him with her bare hands. Frank’s arms flailed about wildly. He clawed at her face, etching deep grooves in her skin that welled with blood, but she hardly seemed to notice. Her blood, the blood of the once dead, dropped and splashed onto Frank’s face.

He gouged at her eyes, but still she continued to squeeze the breath from him. Suddenly, his grasping hand came into contact with an umbrella that stood against the wall by the door. He picked it up, and drove it towards Alice’s face. It had a sharp point, he noted with approval, just before it came into contact with Alice’s eye area. With a sickening squelching sound it pierced Alice’s eye, causing her to howl in pain and relieve the pressure on Frank’s neck. He pushed her backwards; she fell with the umbrella still protruding from her eye. Then she ripped it out with the most anguished bellow, one that Frank was to hear echoing in his head in silent moments for the rest of his life. Now he didn’t think of that; he sought something to fend off his attacker. The hall was empty of such an article so he skipped past her to the kitchen. He heard her lumbering rise behind him. He went straight for the knife-block and removed the biggest one. Then he turned and she was in the doorway, approaching him but swaying and moaning to herself. Blood and pus was oozing from her eye socket where the umbrella had entered. As she reached him he plunged the knife into her stomach and then stood back.

Her eyes widened, and cleared, till she was Alice again, as he had first known her. Then she sank to her knees, then fell onto the knife, driving it deeper into her stomach. After this, she did not stir, nor make a sound.

Frank stood there, breathing heavily, then he slumped back in a chair, exhausted beyond movement. He fell asleep; he did not know for how long, but when he awoke the sky was darkening, though all else was as it had been. Was he now guilty of murder? He asked himself. Was Alice a living human being when he had driven the knife into her? It was a difficult issue. She had died, medically. Can a reanimated body be subject to murder? Anyway, it was self-defence, thought Frank.

“A man always kills the thing he loves,” that was a quote Frank remembered hearing someplace. “How true,” said Frank, “How true.” Even if it wasn’t meant literally, Frank had found it to be literally true. Now he knew he had only one duty left: to make sure that the secret of Vince’s reanimating potion did not escape. He had seen a can of gas in the cellar; he picked it up and poured it out all over the house. Then he set a match to it and watched it burn, watched the mighty conflagration from the lawn, until the heat drove him back, and he sat on the opposite kerb, and waited for the police to arrive.