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You see, I take the parts that I remember and stitch them back together
to make a creature that will do what I say
or love me back.
- Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out, Richard Siken
In the bathtub, Victor sits his newborn creation down—despite the thing’s inability to learn language, he did seem to respond well to guidance from Victor, settling in the tub, watching Victor with dark eyes as Victor runs the water, lets it flow over him. He thought the Creature would be frightened of water, but it stares at the water curiosity instead—Victor supposes that’s a good sign, he could work with curiosity—and reaches forth to scoop it in his hand, let it flow over his fingers, then does it again, as Victor takes the wash cloth to his body. He wipes him over his shoulders, cleans him up, then does the back of his neck, getting all the dirt and grime off him.
If Victor didn’t know better, he’d say he’s playing.
“How did you get so filthy?” Victor asks the thing he made. As if it could—would—respond to him.
The thing looks at him with wide, beseeching eyes. Sometimes, Victor thinks he sees a spark of intelligence in those brown eyes he selected for him, something truly alive, with thoughts running in his head, but then it opens its mouth and calls out Victor once more, the only sound his tongue can make. Victor. Vic-tor. Viiiiiiiic-tor. All tongue and growl. Victor Victor Victor.
He’s never hated the sound of his name so much. The Creature’s voice is low, sometimes a purr and sometimes a growl. He wonders what difference the larynx makes—how the shape of his throat, the various men he pulled together—resulted in such a voice. Which one gave it its texture? Its low rumbles?
“There’s nowhere for you to go,” he mutters—he shouldn’t, he’s certain the Creature could not understand him, but Victor can’t help himself, can’t help but ramble. “You are in the basement, you have a chain. Is it too long? Shall I shorten it? Are you rolling around on the floor?” His creature does not answer, but rather leans his head back into Victor’s hand, the whole circular shape of it, no longer smooth, but growing coarse with hair—hair Victor has to shave day after day after day because it grows incessantly, at twice a normal man’s rate—and makes an odd sound in the back of his throat, that Victor recognizes as an almost-moan, a sound of pleasure.
“Enjoying this, aren’t you?” Victor asks, his voice a sharp point, laced with bitterness. “You get to enjoy being bathed. I don’t.” He’s been awake too long and his nerves have been stretched far too long, to the point of snapping, frayed like a rag doll that has been shaken too long.
Victor has half the mind to take his hand away, to remove the source of pleasure. For a half second, a mad vivid thought emerges from the crevices of his brain, of pushing the Creature’s head underwater, watching him kick. Would he fight him? He certainly was bigger, taller than him, could overpower him—or would he go quietly? Accept that his creator was going to hold him underwater, accept certain death, would he even be aware that he was killing him?
Victor’s breath catches in his throat, stilling him. The thought frightens him, terrified by how vivid and clear it is in his mind’s eye, as if he could simply start moving and commit the act to end its horrid life.
It’s not his thought, he decides, that is not a thought he has. He’s been awake too long and he can no longer determine which thoughts are his own and which are depraved thought forms spawned by a lack of nutrients in his mind’s synapse.
The Creature—a him, or an it, Victor isn’t sure, can scarcely separate the two in his mind—blinks at him owlishly. Unaware of his Creator’s morbid preoccupations.
Victor needs to sleep. He needs to eat. That’s all.
He’d never break his creation. He worked so hard on him. Decades of his life spent on him. Poured out blood, sweat, tears; poured everything into him. He would not drown him in a fit of pique, despite his limitations.
He shudders, horror in his throat, peaking out, threatening to spill out.
Victor slips his hands down the Creature’s head, towards his neck, and his hands are no longer washing his creation’s head, but on his shoulders now. Squeezing, rubbing. They are moving away from him. They are moving of their own accord. They are taking care of his creation which is what he ought to be doing.
“I’m sorry,” he apologizes, though certainly, the Creature does not know for what. Or what an apology even is—but he soothes his hand across his shoulders, moves with a little more caution, a little more care. He runs his palms over the scars of his body, the places Victor stitched him up, the places he is jotting down in his notebook, day by day, to see how long healing takes. It fills Victor with a strange, perverted sort of pride to see them; it should shame him, the places he could not make his Creation perfect enough, but they will heal entirely one day, and the memory of putting him together, sewing him up, tendon by tendon and vein by vein, is a pleasant one, one that brought joy. It was simpler, then, life before the Creature was birthed—that space in time between life and death. Easier to subsist.
One day… how long will he have his Creature? How long will he live?
The Creature leans back in the tub, arms outstretched over the edges of the tub, the picture of languid luxury in his large body. Does he even know what luxury is? Does he know how lucky he is? That he’s here and not in a charnel house, not in some mass grave. That he was pieced together from the most perfect parts of imperfect men, to form a beautiful homunculus.
He continues to rub his hands over him, down his chest, down his body—no hair on his chest, not like other men. Hard to find them, in a sea of bodies, unclaimed and unnamed, their identities lost to war—Elizabeth would hate that, but those men didn’t matter to him. It only mattered that he could put their corpses to better use, to bring back something more powerfully alive than they ever were.
Others would say he’s not beautiful, but Victor finds his creation unnerving in his beauty—that eye that glows with light, cat’s eye, otherwise deep brown. The long lean angles of his body, the shapely muscle and sinew.
It is then he notices a certain appendage on his creation, as Victor’s hands creep past his belly, down into his groin—the long organ between his legs, thickening up, growing erect—a sight that was so preposterous to Victor even though he gave him that organ, that he gasps, caught off guard.
“Oh,” he says. “Are you enjoying this?” I made you well, I made you capable of responding to stimulation, he thinks, so this shouldn’t be a surprise. A sign of a job well done.
The Creature does not seem to notice his own erection, head still tilted back, staring up at the sky, then glancing at Victor, his gaze dark and piercing.
Their eyes lock and Victor shudders. A part of him can look upon him clinically—a well made penis, well suited to his body, proportional—and another part of him feels his own breath catch in his throat, heat travel up his spine, a strange warmth stirring in him.
Victor’s mouth parts open. His Creature mirrors him.
For one, terrible moment, he thinks the Creature knows exactly what Victor has done to him, could do to him, aware of what an erection means, aware that Victor caused it—perhaps, even aware of Victor’s impure thoughts, buried deep down in the back of his mind. Improper thoughts he’d never see fit to confess, not to William, not to a priest he didn’t believe him, certainly not to Elizabeth—thoughts about men’s bodies and the strength of their arms and the girth and thickness of their shape.
Victor could fall into those thoughts, sink down into the unknowable well of madness, further and further until he could not be reached.
“Of course you’re enjoying this,” he says, his voice distant, even to his own ears, a ship drifting in the ocean. He grabs the washcloth—he dropped it on the ground, didn’t even realize it—and rubs it over the creature’s chest—smooth, bare, hairless. Unlike his head, hair did not grow there, no matter what. It pleased Victor to look upon him. To place his face against the creature’s bosom, and feel the terrible rhythm of his heart.
If he’s honest with himself, everything about his body pleases Victor—Victor’s touch is in every piece of him, all over him—and sends a hot flush of possessiveness and ownership coursing through him. Mine. I made him. Mine.
“Base as you are, all creatures enjoy stimulation,” Victor says, reaching down to grip him in his hand, firm and with a confidence he didn’t know he possessed. The Creature gasps; Victor watches his pupils dilate, the blackness spreads out and nearly consumes his whole gaze, darkening as he looks upon Victor. His mouth is half parted open, and he draws in a slow breath.
The Creature’s cock is sizable. Victor traces the veins of the shaft, rubbing his fingers along them. This is a good experiment, Victor knows—touching his Creation’s cock, testing to see how much sensation he retains after surgery, can he climax, can he ejaculate, can he expel seminal fluid, like any other living man, all important pieces of information—but in this room, in this tower, between just the two of them, Victor knows this is not an experiment, not right now.
He is touching his creation like this because some mad thought has taken hold of him, some part of Victor that always longed to touch another man’s cock, to see what it’d feel like. He likes touching his creation, almost as much his creation seems to enjoy it, the organ twitching in his hand every time Victor rubs a finger down the slit, down his shaft, or over the head, feeling the soft, velvety plush skin there, different from the rest of him. He is stitched together here as well, put together from the best pieces of men, and Victor touches where he sewed the flesh back together with awe and reverence, even as he tries to get his Creature to completion. I made you I made you I made you.
“Victor,” the Creature pants, breath coming in hard. Like this, he almost sounds like a lover. His chest rises and falls visibly. His single nipple pebbles. His eyes begin to widen. “Victor,” he repeats again, and though his creature’s ability to communicate is limited, there’s an almost panic in his eyes, voice rising, shoulders beginning to stiffen.
I made you.
“It’s alright,” Victor reassures him, squeezing him harder. “Pleasure is normal. This sensation is a good thing. It happens to all men. That’s what this is made for—”
Well, that and procreation. Could he do that as well? Propagate a whole race of living dead. Sounds horrible. Sounds amazing. Look what you’ve done Victor—isn’t it wonderful?
Victor takes his hand up and down the Creature’s shaft, his fingers brushing his testicles; the whole organ was alive and twitching and pulsing under his touch, and it churns a sort of hunger in Victor’s belly. He had a terrible desire to see him climax, a terrible urge to reach over and claim his cock, to swallow up all the sounds the Creature makes as his discovers pleasure for the very first time—who else but to give this to him, but him? His Creator? His father? His god?
“Your body will feel as if it’s seizing. Your heart will race. Your breath quicken. It’s normal. I’ve done this several times to myself.”
Victor always hated doing it—the urge to touch himself was ugly and base, and most importantly, a distraction from what really mattered—giving life to his own perfect being.
Orgasm looks beautiful on his creation.
He doesn’t know if the Creature understands him, but he must trust him, as he doesn’t fight the moment of completion. His shoulders shake. His eyes fall shut momentarily, as if overwhelmed. His cock is fully capable of the act of procreation, it seems, spitting and drooling semen all over Victor’s fingers, even in the bath, fluid going milky white in the bathwater.
When it’s over, Victor soothes his Creature, whispering nothing sounds, meaningless platitudes, it’s alright, it’s alright, that was pleasure, you’re alright he explains as he strokes his belly like a dog.
When he pulls his hand away, there is a bit of white over his knuckles, scooped up.
It is too late for Victor. It is too late to stop himself. It is too late to lie to himself that he cares about any propriety, good sense, any other religion or god. He is this thing’s creator, and everything he is for him.
Victor brings his fingers up to his mouth and licks them clean, and finds the taste of him sweeter than he thought it would be, sweeter than his own, the Creature’s eyes never leaving him.