Archive of Our Own

Dr. Leopardus was the most charismatic man Hal had ever met. Frighteningly intelligent, with a keen edge in conversation belied by his general amiability, he was always one step ahead of everyone in the room in a way that delighted his peers but made Hal nervous. Hal felt under his thrall sometimes. It had certainly seemed like a fluke that Hal of all people would be accepted as the doctor’s research assistant. Quiet, unassuming Hal fresh out of college yet walking one step behind this grandiose genius... Perhaps it was that self-effacing disbelief coupled with the doctor’s charm that made it almost impossible for Hal to say no to him.

That was why he was now knee-deep in a cemetery. It was the middle of a cold night, and Hal’s fingers were already numb, like clumsy sausages sewn into his gloves.

The only lights were an eerily fogged moon, the lantern they’d set in the arms of a nearby stone angel, and the flicker of the matches Leopardus kept rhythmically lighting then snuffing out again with a flick of his wrist. It was a habit of his, sometimes getting lost in those tiny flames between his fingers, an uncharacteristic melancholy crossing his face. He would go through matchbook after matchbook. Hal never asked why.

Hal heaved his weight onto his shovel, sinking it deeper into the earth.

“Doctor…” he said breathlessly.

Leopardus’ smile was briefly caught by his flickering match, under his carefully tailored mustache, before he flicked the match away. “How often have I told you to call me Adam?”

“Sorry,” Hal said automatically. “Um, you’re sure the police won’t--?”

“I also told you not to worry about them.” Leopardus finally pocketed his matchbook in his rather grand coat and came to stand uncomfortably close behind Hal’s work. “Although I will say, we’ll never hit the casket at this rate.”

“Sorry,” Hal said again. He heaved up a shovelful of dirt and very carefully flung it aside. It was true, his arms already felt like jelly. Hal was more fit for cluttered laboratories than physical labor.

The headstone over this butchered grave was plain, reading simply the name John Sears. He was a convicted criminal, hanged, and this was where Leopardus built his flimsy morality. If the state didn’t want him alive, they surely wouldn’t mind losing his corpse. But Hal felt there was something more to this decision. Leopardus was a deeply methodical man. Nothing was purposeless for him. There had to be a reason he chose this dead murderer above all others, but Leopardus was also deeply mysterious.

He smiled unreadably in the dark and watched Hal’s back like a hawk.

It was blessedly a shallower grave than normal, a grave without ceremony, but it was still perhaps an hour later before Hal was scraping the last bits of dirt off the coffin face, standing in a hole up to his waist. Leopardus joined him at this point, his fine boots squelching in the earth as he scrambled for purchase. He ran a red-gloved hand almost reverently over the wood.

“Get the bag,” he ordered, and Hal had to use every last bit of his depleted strength to hoist himself out of the hole again to their supplies.

A simple black body bag, the filmy cloth shivering slightly in the cool air.

When Hal returned to the grave, Leopardus was already prying open the coffin lid with a crowbar. It cracked and groaned and then finally flew open with one last heave…

Hal covered his mouth and nose on instinct, expecting a vile reek. However the smell was… earthy, as if the corpse had already given itself to the dirt.

Hal couldn’t make out much of the dead man’s features, but in a strange and somewhat chilling gesture Leopardus reached forward and cupped the corpse’s cheek, gently running his thumb over waxy flesh.

“Come on then,” Leopardus said, his voice unusually gruff, and together they got about transferring the body to the bag and lugging it to the surface.

“Will we fill the grave back up now?” Hal asked, wilting at the idea of more shoveling.

But Leopardus shook his head, repositioning the body in their wheelbarrow as if to make it more comfortable. “I think this mess sends a nice message, don’t you?” Leopardus said, but with more fatigue than his usual devilishness.

Hal had no idea what he meant, but that’s the thing.

Hal never asked too many questions.

x

Leopardus’ mansion was on the outskirts of town, high on a black hill as if exalting itself in its own geography. They had to take a taxi, but the carriage man was one of Leopardus’ most zealous fans and only required a generous tip to keep his mouth shut about his strange midnight patrons and their dead ward.

Leopardus patted the horses goodbye, then he and Hal lugged the body the rest of the way up the doorstep on their own shoulders, before the servants (also very loyal and good secret-keepers) came to assist.

The great austere house was abuzz briefly with activity, as they transported the body through high-ceilinged rooms, before finally taking a steep staircase up to the laboratory. It was a chilly room, the electric lights always somewhat dim and therefore augmented by gas lamps set around the many stone tables. A complex network of bulky black machinery and wires lined the walls, the triumph of modern electricity, but everything was typically shut off, without enough power to run it. Leopardus’ genius was unfortunately more advanced than its power source. Electricity was still clumsy and new, rare in general and even here at the estate of a wealthy scholar always in short supply.

It was a tidy chaos in this room, vials and beakers set alongside increasingly complicated machines, the idle backdrop of a creative mind constantly tinkering. They set the body on an empty table and Leopardus waved the servants away.

He had a certain brightness in his eyes, the beginning of the sort of mania of genius Hal had often seen overtake him in their joint studies. Leopardus was a handsome gentleman in his thirties, always carefully put-together, his prematurely gray hair held back in a black ribbon and a blood-red cravat at his throat. However, he currently hadn’t thought at all to remove his coat, exhilarated as he was about their current task.

He pulled down the bag to reveal the dead man’s face.

“Here he is, Hal, the man who will change the world.”

Hal approached the table with what could only be described as a polite smile. Truthfully, he was never sure how to handle Leopardus in these exuberant moods.

The dead man was, to Hal’s great surprise, rather handsome. Or at least he must have been before the pale, mottled texture of death seized him, his skintone unpleasantly reminiscent of gray mushrooms. His eyes were closed and deeply shadowed in his own skull, but he had sharp cheekbones and a strong jaw, everything framed by a gentle fall of brown hair.

Leopardus absently tapped the corpse’s chin with a gloved finger. “You know, this man always wore a beard when he was alive,” he said. “But they shaved it to make his corpse more presentable. That’s rather silly, isn’t it? If you ask me, they were just trying to goad him post-mortem.”

“Doctor…” Hal said slowly. “You’re speaking as if you knew him.”

“Am I?” Leopardus said cheerfully. “Are you implying I run around with murderers, then?” His smile was sharp.

“Uh! N-No, of course not.”

But this answer only seemed to amuse the doctor, who finished removing the bag from the body.

The dead man was broad, well-built, but Hal didn’t get much of a look at the details before Leopardus tossed the bag into Hal’s arms for him to throw away.

“I won’t be needing you for the rest of the night,” Leopardus said. “Go get your rest. Celebrate! If you’d like some liquor, just tell the servants I’m being generous tonight.”

Hal knew he wouldn’t be able to stomach alcohol with this sort of nervous giddiness in his stomach, but he smiled queasily and said, “Thank you.”

Leopardus made a shooing gesture. It was clear he wasn’t just giving Hal the night off, he was ordering some privacy.

Hal bowed slightly, a weird bobbing gesture of submissiveness, an old habit, and left the genius to his own devices.

There were plenty of thoughts whirling around in Hal’s head as he made his way down the staircase, apprehensive but also strangely motivated and excited, but all this was interrupted when he paused on a middle step and listened. He could hear Leopardus’ distant voice up in the lab, speaking to no one.

It was an intimate, conversational tone, as if addressing an old friend.

x

Re-animating dead tissue.

It was certainly an absurd concept to many science men, a pipe dream, but if anyone could do it, in Hal’s opinion, it would be Leopardus.

For the past few months, Hal had been working at the doctor’s elbow or occasionally his own side projects in the same room, gathering data from a wide variety of experiments for what Leopardus called his Liquid Study. They worked on everything from frog legs to cow brains to arduously-cut slides of membranous skin tissue, treating them with electricity and elixirs, producing chart after chart of information…

Was it possible? Could dead tissue be brought back to life? That was the question of the Liquid Study.

The findings weren’t entirely conclusive, but there was enough to wonder, enough to hope rather than snidely dismiss the concept.

Leopardus, of course, wanted more. He wanted to experiment on bringing an entire organism back to life.

This final, ambitious project was called his Solid Study.

He didn’t do it halfway, either. He wasn’t going to pick some dead varmint off the street for what he no doubt viewed as a future triumph. Leopardus went immediately for a human body. John Sears.

It was all bizarre, fanciful, and when Hal stopped to think about it too thoroughly he got goosebumps, tiny spikes of unease and even fear in the face of Leopardus’ extremism… And yet, Hal was a creature of faith. A small part of him really did believe Leopardus could pull this off, and any scientist with that belief couldn’t possibly give up the opportunity to be a part of it.

Life at the mansion changed once the body was in the lab.

Leopardus treated the body himself, somewhat fastidiously, and went long hours without food or sleep or (most uncomfortably for Hal) any instructions for his assistant and lingering servants. Hal found himself having to keep nervously busy in other unscientific ways around the household, almost begging the groundskeeper for something to do other than drive himself crazy in the library worrying too much.

There was a spark of energy in the air, its own sort of electricity. It was excitement and unknowing. Yet the world outside was bleak and autumnal, gray skies and moist lawns, entirely unaware of the potential for miracles.

Finally, the time came.

It was the middle of the night, and Hal was restlessly asleep in his room off the wing of the servants’ quarters.

Half in a dream and half awake, he felt a rumbling in his chest, a deep primeval quake. Then his bedroom door was thrown open with a bang that woke him, and in the same moment lightning illuminated his window in a brilliant flash.

Thunder. The rumbling in his chest had been the crack of thunder.

He sat up, blearily alert, as Leopardus rushed to his bedside. The doctor’s eyes glistened in the rain-speckled moonlight from the window.

“It’s time, Hal!” he exclaimed, ripping the blankets straight off Hal’s bed. “Get up. The Solid Study is commencing.”

Hal fumbled for his glasses on the bedside table and hurried to get appropriately dressed in the dark. He was a man who slept in his underwear.

Meanwhile Leopardus stood in the doorway thrumming with an almost boyish glee. His gray hair was down at his shoulders, somewhat wild. He obviously hadn’t slept and was already in a white labcoat, buttoned up to his chin.

They had planned this night for months. They could never produce enough electricity for their revival experiment on their own, not for an entire human body, but they could certainly borrow from nature.

Another clap of thunder boomed as they hurried down the halls, almost running, and lightning threw strange white shapes across the floors from high windows.

They raced up the spiral stairs to the lab.

The body was already prepared, laid out on a table like a morgue slab with a thin white sheet pulled up to its chest, as if to modestly hide its current nudity. John Sears was ghastly to behold now… Leopardus had kept him preserved with various elixirs, but the side-effects hadn’t been altogether pleasant. His mottled white flesh was bulbous and pocked in places, stretched thin in others, and his face had pulled itself apart in pussy lacerations that Leopardus had stitched together with puckered lines of surgical thread. He looked less like a man, and more like a quilt of unrecognizable faces. His hair fell out in handfuls.

Yet Leopardus had already hooked the body up to various machines along the walls with wires. He ran to these machines now, pressing buttons and flicking switches, as Hal stood watch over the body, wringing his hands.

“Stay here and monitor his progress,” Leopardus commanded, as thunder boomed around them once again. It was louder now, this lab high in a tower, exposed to the cold rainy night. “I’m going into the alcove.”

“Are you sure you’ll be safe, doctor?”

Leopardus flashed him a devilish grin. “It hardly matters,” he said, thrusting one last lever and then running to the end of the room with his labcoat hem drifting behind him.

There was a small steel staircase back there leading up to the highest point of the house and access to the roof. Months ago they had set up a series of lightning rods there, and a black box of wires meant to bring that precious electricity rushing down into the lab’s machinery.

Hal listened as Leopardus’ footsteps clanged up to that rooftop to activate the system.

This was it. This was the night they would see if miracles could be man-made.

Hal took a step back from the table but carefully watched the cold, dead face over the sheet.

“Initiating in three!” Leopardus’ voice called over the pouring rain. He sounded powerful, a formidable joy giving strength to his every word. “Two! One!”

Silence. One beat, two beats.

Then lightning struck.

The lab burst into crackling chaos, blue sparks dancing across the machinery with an overwhelming fizzing sound, a smell of burning metal, tendrils of black smoke.

On the table, the body jerked, its arms thrashing erratically, its chest rising up as if pulled toward the lightning in the sky…

“Stop!” Hal shouted over the pops and crashes. “Doctor, stop, you’ll destroy everything!”

But Leopardus didn’t turn it off. The smell of smoke began to fill the room; parts of the machinery were melting into black tar; a too-close beaker on a nearby table exploded in the heat, the sound of shattering glass.

“DOCTOR!” Hal screamed.

And then it all stopped. With a few final muffled wheezes the machines eased into dark stillness.

Hal stared wide-eyed at the table.

Was Leopardus alright? Oh God, was he dead?

But then all his fear froze when he saw the body shift under its tarp, the sheet billowing gently.

John Sears slowly opened his eyes.

They were blue.

Hal watched dumbfounded as the creature turned its great head from side to side, eyes rolling, and then the overwhelming realization of triumph made Hal burst out with an exultant cheer, his grin wide and wild to match Leopardus’.

“It’s alive!” he crowed, overflowing with joy, clutching his own hair. “It’s alive! IT’S ALIVE!”

Then the creature sat bolt upright with a guttural groan. It was as if it was trying to scream, but its newly revived windpipes couldn’t muster the sound. Its head lolled as it turned its gaze on Hal, and suddenly Hal realized he was not looking into the face of a man.

This was a monster, its face stitched together, a hunk of mismatched meat, and its eyes staring out at Hal through lumpy sockets were filled with an animalistic rage.

It lurched off its table, falling to the floor with a great thud, and then scrambled slowly to its bare feet. Its movements were unnatural, fumbling and lumbering, but Hal was so paralyzed with fear that he stood rooted to the spot as this cursed creature forced itself upright and grabbed Hal by the throat with such strength that it lifted Hal off the ground.

Hal couldn’t breathe. His hands scrabbled at the hard, cold fingers at his neck but they didn’t give. The fragile skin peeled off but the grip only grew stronger.

Am I going to die?

The monster growled, then came the clambering of Leopardus’ footsteps down the metal stairs.

Hal could barely register the paleness of Leopardus’ face before the doctor grabbed the monster around the chest and heaved him off of Hal.

“John! John, it’s me!” Leopardus barked.

Hal was dropped to the floor, landing in a gasping heap, as Leopardus somehow managed to steer the monster back to the table.

The monster sat, staring at the doctor.

Leopardus’ hair was all over the place, a smudge of some kind of soot smeared across his stubbled jaw. He stared right back at the monster, as if beholding not only a miracle but something intimately precious.

It was like the doctor was witnessing the very meaning of his own life.

He was panting but smiled, open mouthed to breath heavily through his teeth, canines bared.

“John,” he said again. “You know me don’t you?”

The monster was silent except for a low rumble at the back of its throat.

“Can you speak?”

“… Yes.”

On the floor Hal watched, utterly bewildered. The word “yes” was mangled and raw, but it was a word nonetheless, spoken by a beast. A living, breathing body that had been dead mere moments before.

Leopardus stepped forward and cupped the monster’s awful face in his palms. “It’s Adam. You know me, don’t you?”

The monster gazed up at him, and for a moment they were like a twisted parody of lovers.

Then the beast swallowed, and in a voice like gravel murmured, “No.”

The honesty of Leopardus’ expression froze. Whatever was happening in his mind from here, whatever recalculations, occurred unseen.

He smiled. “The revival process of course has no precedent,” he said. “You were dead just now, John. We’ve brought you back. The effects on your brain are hard to know at this point… A bit of rewiring would be entirely understandable.”

He gave the monster’s jaw a quick firm press with his hands, then left to a desk across the room. He fumbled about in a drawer, apparently found what he was looking for and turned back.

In his hand was a lone cigar.

He brought it to the table and placed it gently between the monster’s distorted lips. Then Leopardus pulled his usual matchbook out of his pocket and lit the cigar almost reverently.

It was as if this was the purpose those matches of his had always been waiting for so impatiently.

On the floor Hal might have laughed at this bizarre picture, a revived corpse puffing its first breaths of cigar smoke. The monster’s eyes were oddly pensive.

Leopardus knelt, like a knight before his liege, and laid a hand on the monster’s bare knee.

“Do you remember, John?” he asked, a tenderness in his voice, a wistfulness.

The monster raised a hand to remove the cigar and simply stared down at it, a string of drool running clumsily from twisted lips.

“… I don’t,” the monster rumbled. “I don’t know who John is.”

Hal thought perhaps this was the first time he’d seen such a crack in Leopardus’ charisma.

But it was quickly smothered, turned into a carefully practiced smile again as he turned to his assistant.

“You’ll apologize to my student, won’t you, John?” Leopardus asked. “He helped revive you and you’ve given him a nasty shock.”

With unease, Hal found the monster’s gaze on him again, calmer and more calculating. More strangely human.

“… Sorry,” the monster said.

“No problem,” said Hal breathlessly.

Leopardus’ grin was conclusive.

“I’m sure we’ll get along just fine,” he said.

The lingering smell of metallic fumes and cigar smoke was dizzying.

x

The next few days were surreal. The monster was given a bedroom close to Leopardus’ and was mostly sequestered there as the doctor nursed it to not-quite health, teaching it to walk steadier, speak more clearly.

It should have been a time of celebration, but there was a lingering tension in the air. Leopardus often shooed Hal away, wanting to care for the monster entirely on his own. He seemed to always be motivated, overcome by the inspiration of science, but there was an unpredictability about him, a strange glint to his eyes that Hal couldn’t place.

It seemed John wasn’t remembering who he was, nor any of the circumstances of his previous life.

Finally, on the third day, Leopardus was required to attend a meeting at the university for retaining his research budget. He was harried and snappier than usual as he instructed Hal to bring the monster its lunch, a goopy sort of porridge designed to digest easily.

Leopardus smiled quickly in farewell, but something about him seemed terribly unhappy.

Hal brought the porridge on a tray to the monster’s bedroom, dithering at the closed door. Even the simple glimpses he’d had of the monster since its initial reanimation had been harrowing… Could he stomach an encounter on his own? The servants had been ordered to stay away from this room, and the hallway was oppressively empty and silent.

Resorting once again to politeness, he knocked before opening the door.

It was a medium-sized room, bigger than Hal’s, with a large but simple desk and a bed against one wall.

The monster was seated on the bed, dressed in a gray shirt and trousers that looked terribly out of place on such a misshapen and gawky body. It raised its head to stare at Hal in the doorway, eyes unreadable, its clumps of remaining hair stuck up in wiry tufts.

“Hello,” Hal said waveringly.

The monster’s throat worked, gargling groans, and then finally it spoke, its voice a harsh growl.

“Are you frightened?” it asked.

Hal swallowed. His grip on the tray was so tight his fingers were white and painful. “Yeah,” he said. “You aren’t much to look at.”

The monster’s flesh had gained some color, an old and dusty circulatory system sluggishly shifting blood again, but that face was still held haphazardly together, sometimes bleeding now from its stitches. This disfigurement would never fully heal, and it was not only unpleasant to behold but looked painful as well.

That was it. The monster not only turned Hal’s stomach but bombarded him with an unbearable amount of pity and regret.

Should a creature so miserable and unnatural even be alive?

But the monster unexpectedly enjoyed Hal’s answer. Its mouth twisted into something almost shaped like a smile.

Hal took the opportunity to scurry forward and place the tray at the monster’s side.

The monster watched him the whole while. “What’s your name?” it growled.

“Emmerich,” Hal said. He stepped back to his original place immediately, a manageable distance. “… Just Hal is fine.”

“Hal.” The monster seemed to have no interest in the food yet. “You’re a… doctor?”

“Not technically. I’m the doctor’s assistant… I haven’t had as much education.”

“Tell me something.”

“O-okay.”

“Who am I?”

In all his time working under Leopardus, Hal had never felt so utterly unequipped as he did now. How could he answer such a question for anybody, let alone a beast?

“I don’t know,” Hal admitted. “You’re John.”

“That’s what the doctor says. But I’m not so sure about that.”

Hal fidgeted uselessly. “Who else would you be?” he asked.

Finally, the monster’s expression seemed to reflect the proper weariness for its existence. “I don’t know.”

It was painful. Why was this miracle so painful? What had they done so thoughtlessly?

Hal didn’t have any good words. All he could offer was honesty.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I truly am.”

“Don’t be.” The monster seemed uncomfortable at the rawness of Hal’s emotion. “You were trying to bring someone back. I’m just not sure that you did.”

“If you’re someone different… Would you have a different name?”

“I guess.”

“What do you want me to call you, then?”

The monster shifted a shoulder. Something as ordinary as a shrug. “I don’t know.”

“… Solid,” Hal said. “You’re the Solid Study. That’s the name of the experiment.”

“That’s what I am, then?”

“It’s what you are now, anyway.” Hal glanced at the floor. “I guess… You could be what you want. But that’s the start of it.”

“Alright. I’ll be what I want.”

“I’ll help you. If I can.”

The monster nodded distantly, its eyes unseeing and introspective now. Something in that dead brain was turning and examining.

“Call me Solid, then.”

Hal smiled, one of his reflexive polite things, but when the monster smiled back something like relief lifted the pain in Hal’s chest.

The stresses of trying to rehash a dead past let go of them both, and it felt like a new beginning.

x

Hal needed to expend energy and therefore went to pester the groundskeeper for work again—he was greeted now with an exasperated but not unfriendly smirk—but was quick to abandon his task the moment Leopardus returned.

The doctor was in his sitting room when Hal found him, not lounging as one would expect but instead standing before the broad shelves of his gun collection. The weapons perched along almost an entire gray wall, traveling across the fireplace mantel to still more shelves beyond. Everything from pistols to rifles, many of them intricately engraved or shining with real gold caps.

Leopardus had taken down a revolver and was idly brushing a gloved hand across its side, wiping away dust that wasn’t there.

He smiled absently when Hal entered.

“You look a bit lower than your class at the moment,” Leopardus drawled. This was true, Hal was sweating and had taken off his jacket, but Leopardus had never actually cared about such things.

“Doctor… I need to tell you something about the, uh. About John.”

Leopardus finally showed genuine interest, turning to Hal entirely and spinning the gun in his hand. Hal watched it nervously as the doctor tossed it in the air and caught it rhythmically.

“Well?” Leopardus demanded, clearly not in the mood to indulge Hal’s shyness.

“You mentioned that the human brain might react to reanimation in unforeseen ways,” Hal stammered. “Such as memory loss or changes in personality… But what if it was bigger than that? I spoke with the… man, and he seemed to believe… I mean, it’s absurd but…”

“Out with it.”

“What if in reanimating him, we gave him a different soul? Somehow rewrote his brain to be a different person entirely?”

Hal was somewhat excited by the prospect, but was alarmed to see that Leopardus definitely was not. The doctor’s face went stone cold, expressing such an honest cruelty that Hal had never seen there before.

“John said that?” Leopardus asked very calmly. He was spinning the revolver again, the light from the windows glinting along its cylinders as it slowly turned.

“If we can even call him John…” said Hal, but he was suddenly very aware of how the barrel was briefly pointed at him each time the revolver spun around. “He wants to be called Solid. I figured that’s alright until we can come up with a proper identity for him…”

“Tell me something,” Leopardus interrupted. “If that brain somehow got reconfigured, if that’s some newborn person in that bedroom, then what happened to John?”

Hal’s mouth snapped shut.

All at once, Leopardus took three large steps until he was right on the brink of Hal’s personal space, standing tall before him.

Click, click, click. The cylinders made subtle noises as the revolver spun from one hand to another.

Hal could see from this close that Leopardus’ mustache was just slightly more unkempt than usual. Everything about him, his carefully tucked and polished demeanor… it was all a little off at the moment, his cravat lopsided. The doctor was so very good at being dishonest that Hal hadn’t noticed at all…

Ever since the monster had come back to life, Leopardus had been slowly fraying at the edges.

“You are telling me the experiment was unsuccessful,” Leopardus said, still so calmly.

Hal could barely stand to meet his eye, but also couldn’t will himself to look away.

“No, not necessarily… I-I mean… In some ways it’s still quite a triumph, it’s—“

“Our goal was to revive a man. We haven’t done that yet.”

“No, but this new man, this Solid—“

The revolver stopped spinning pointed directly at Hal’s gut.

“Get out,” Leopardus told him.

Hal felt all the color drain from his face in one rush. “Doctor?”

“OUT!” The stone mask fell and suddenly Leopardus was in a blind rage with a gun pointed at him and Hal didn’t need to be ordered again.

He turned and ran for his life, muscles tense and fully expecting a bullet to bite through his back.

It didn’t.

He ran through the halls and out into the gardens again until he crumpled exhausted to the wet earth.

What in God’s name have I done? he asked himself as he heaved and choked and tried not to pass out.

What in God’s name am I doing here?

x

That afternoon stretched out long and thin, ready to break. Hal hovered restlessly across the grounds, feeling sick. When the servants asked him what was wrong he smiled almost manically and waved them off, certain that if made to choose sides they would always support the doctor.

His friend the groundskeeper was perhaps the only one Hal really trusted, but even in that case… Hal worried. He didn’t want to direct Leopardus’ dangerous fury at anyone else, certainly not a man who had showed him kindness.

Hal was trapped here, at this lonely house away from town. He could steal a horse, but surely he would pay the price afterwards. It would just give Leopardus a reason to exert his substantial influence and land Hal in jail at the very least. He considered asking one of the servants to organize a carriage for him but anything he told the servants now would surely reach Leopardus. The doctor would know Hal was running from him, and that idea was inexplicably terrifying.

So Hal lingered, pacing restlessly outside and inside the mansion, as if waiting for his own execution.

When the cook invited him in for dinner, he declined. It was shortly after that, in a cold and purple dusk, that Leopardus finally approached him.

Hal was in the library, hiding, when Leopardus walked primly into the room, as if this whole time he’d known exactly where Hal was at every moment.

The doctor was smiling and unreadable. He had always been unreadable. His calm amiableness had returned, but how much of that was a front was impossible to say.

“Hal,” he said, and Hal felt like a leaf about to shiver itself to pieces. “I think I owe you an apology. My behavior was inexcusable.”

Leopardus didn’t enter the room any further, giving Hal his space, and Hal found himself sinking into an armchair, unable to stand. The doctor’s smile was so gentle.

Was this kindness or something else? Had Hal ever been able to tell the difference?

“I had the servants save a plate for you. I’m sure they’ll warm it whenever you’re ready to eat,” Leopardus continued. “Truly, I cannot apologize enough. I allowed my own anxieties to taint our professional relationship.”

“It’s fine,” said Hal. It was not, but the response came automatically.

“You’ve helped me come to terms with the great flaw in our project, and I thank you for that. In my idealism, I think perhaps I was ignoring the reality in front of me. But now, as I can see clearly, I am able to embark on a new thread of research to fix what we’ve broken. To find a cure for John’s ailment.”

Hal’s brain couldn’t find any words and his throat probably would have closed on them anyway, so he just nodded dumbly.

Leopardus gestured grandly. “Today, I begin a new study,” he said. “A deeper research into the workings of the human brain… It will be a lot of book work at first. While I sequester myself with my readings, I’m afraid I must ask you to take over John’s nursing. You must attend to his needs in my stead. At the very least, I will need you to bring him each of his meals. Can you do that for me, Hal?”

Hal didn’t want to. He wanted to leave this wretched place. He was so scared, had been so scared all these hours, that he felt like an empty shell, flimsy and weak.

Was his passion for science really enough to keep him here?

What about responsibility?

He thought of the monster he had so cruelly helped to create, the misery in its barely human visage. Could he just run away from that beast in his own cowardice, leave it to fare on its own in a world it wasn’t meant for?

Yes. He could do that.

But it occurred to Hal then that he had nowhere else to go. Where would he run to? He had no family that wanted him. No close friends.

He thought briefly of a young girl, a child, pleading for him to stay with her and protect her from a broken family. His sister. He had abandoned and betrayed her by running away. He could never return to her in the act of running away from something else. His cowardice was weaker than his self-disgust…

He had no choice. The isolation of this house wasn’t the only thing keeping him here.

“Leave it to me,” Hal said finally, weary straight to the bone.

Leopardus’ smile broadened into a grin. “I knew you’d say that,” he declared.

Hal had no doubt that he did.

x

Hal’s new duties started with bringing the monster its dinner, another lumpy porridge late in the evening.

“You again?” Solid said conversationally, still sitting on its bed, hands hanging casually between its knees.

No… “It” wasn’t the right word. Solid was a “he.”

The corners of Hal’s mouth twitched tiredly. He felt weighted with melancholy, the simple tray heavy in his hands, but surely he couldn’t pity himself when presented with Solid’s hardship.

Solid’s suffering would always be worse than his own.

“I’m afraid the doctor is going to be busy in the coming weeks… You’ll have to settle for me.”

Hal set the tray on the bed, lingering longer in Solid’s presence. It was as if his despair was great enough that there was no energy left for fear. At least not fear of Solid.

Hal had also brought up three books hooked under his armpit, and he brought these out now, offering them to Solid.

“I thought you might be getting bored here by yourself, so I brought you some reading,” he said.

Solid’s eyes traveled across each book in turn. They were just silly adventure stories from Hal’s own collection. He’d always enjoyed books about great heroes and faraway places…

“I can’t read,” Solid said.

“Oh.”

Wasn’t that just the icing on the cake? Hal gave one bitter chuckle and brought himself feebly over to the desk to sit in the chair there.

“Are you alright?” Solid asked.

Hal shook his head, grinning brittlely. “It’s… absurd,” he said. “I’m sorry. It’s just… everything is so absurd.”

He pushed two of the books roughly across the desk, and held the third one in his hands, opening to the first chapter.

“I’m sorry…” Hal said again, blinking back tears. “I’m such a mess and you’re… Well. You certainly shouldn’t have to concern yourself with my little tantrums.”

Solid was silent, watching, and Hal sniffed wetly, staring down at the familiar words.

“Let me read to you while you eat,” he said. “It’s a good story. A fast one. I’d like to share it as much as you might like to be entertained.”

Solid simply continued to watch, then finally brought the tray into his lap with a clatter and gave a low rumbling noise of assent.

“Thank you,” Hal said, and began to read.

It was such a selfish action, really. But as the story unfolded, fanciful and simple scenes about swordfights and gentlemen pirates and beautiful princesses, Hal’s voice low and rhythmic, Solid silently eating his dinner… a strange warmth entered the cold room, wrapped around Hal’s shoulders.

Hal shed a few incongruous tears, wiping them away quickly under his glasses and reading through it. Solid finished his porridge and set it aside to simply listen.

They finished the story that way. At some point Hal had turned the chair to face him.

It was a happy ending, of course.

Slowly Hal closed the book and kept his head down, staring at the faded cover.

“You’ll be back tomorrow?” Solid asked unexpectedly.

Hal looked up. “Yes. And the next day.”

“I’d like that,” Solid admitted.

“Yes…” Hal said slowly. “Perhaps I’d like it as well.”

He smiled honestly, and something in Solid’s eyes glittered, a moist sort of intensity.

“Thank you,” Solid said.

“No… I assure you, I’m a pretty puny person. I’m sorry for the fuss.”

“You’ll read again next time?”

“If you want me to.”

“I do.”

“Good,” Hal said, feeling the air in his lungs coming easier now. He felt lighter.

He too wanted to simply sit and read stories.

At least stories made sense.

x

For convenience, Hal began eating his own meals in Solid’s room while delivering his porridge three times a day. Hal agreed with Leopardus’ general concern about testing the revived man’s digestive tract too much, but Hal would sometimes mash up the mashable portions of his lunch with a fork (some yams perhaps) for Solid to try. It seemed a shame that Solid shouldn’t taste anything good at all.

For hours, Hal would also read. He tried teaching Solid some of his letters, but it seemed Solid’s vision had also grown poor with rebirth, and they both gave up in favor of Hal sitting with one leg crossed in the desk chair, reading aloud great romantic adventures for Solid’s enjoyment.

At first, Solid was a quiet listener, but as the two men grew used to each other, Solid began to have a running commentary on every story. He was surprisingly very intelligent and also meanly funny, his snide comments often causing Hal to choke and cover his face for a laughing fit mid-paragraph.

Hal found that he liked this man.

In liking him, he also found himself wanting to spoil him for entirely unscientific reasons. Of course a person with such an appearance couldn’t be flaunted around town, at least not before the Solid Study was officially presented to the academic community, but Hal did convince Leopardus to allow Solid access to the grounds.

He and Solid began to take short walks together. They were short because Solid’s gait was still clumsy and feeble, but he seemed to enjoy the exercise, appearing if not exactly healthier at least more fulfilled after a morning in the gray sun.

The servants hurried away from him, turning aside, and Hal found himself more irritable about that than Solid ever was.

On one such day, deep into autumn with winter approaching, Hal and Solid hobbled slowly through the back gardens. Solid looked a bit funny bundled up in coats and even a blanket over his shoulders. They didn’t know whether a once-dead body could catch a cold, but didn’t want to find out how that might turn out.

Habitually, Hal rambled to fill in the silences. At this point he’d told Solid a number of strangely personal anecdotes, as if talking to a house plant. His school days, glimpses of his adolescence taking care of his sister, even a few of his closely guarded dreams.

“It’s funny I wound up in biology… To be honest, I always preferred machines to people,” he said.

They walked side by side with Hal’s hand upon Solid’s arm to steady him. Solid stopped and Hal stopped with him, concerned for a moment before realizing Solid just wanted to examine a line of wilting daffodils more closely.

“If you were a machine I’d know how to deal with you better,” Hal admitted.

“Yeah, you’re shit with people,” said Solid, not meanly but frankly.

Hal laughed. It was fair enough, really. All Hal could do was talk about himself and hope it helped somehow.

Solid hunched a little, grabbing fumblingly at Hal’s coat for balance, and extended his free hand to gently cup a flower with his fingertips.

It was a yellow daffodil, going brown at the edges, but the brownness was almost more charming, like a new more intricate design. Solid’s touch was unsteady but soft, barely brushing the lower petals and tilting it upwards.

The more Hal watched, the more the flower was beautiful.

This often happened. Solid would notice some small detail of the nature around them, something wonderful that Hal would have walked right past if Solid hadn’t been at his side.

“It’s you,” Solid said.

“What?”

Solid bobbed the daffodil gently. “This flower. It’s got a big nose.”

Hal scoffed. “Terrible.”

Solid began to straighten again but stumbled slightly. Hal reflexively put out a hand to his chest to catch him.

Solid leaned against him heavily for a moment. “I’d keep it but it’s not looking so hot, is it?” he said. “Picking it would probably kill it faster.”

“Probably,” Hal agreed.

They simply stood like that, until finally Solid shifted his weight upright again and began to walk.

“You’ve never shown me the maze,” he said.

The hedge maze at the end of the gardens was enormous but unkempt, clearly something Leopardus ordered on a creative whim then left to its own devices after getting bored of it. Hal did know the right path to get through the maze, but he’d always found it somewhat distasteful. Just walls of lopsided green hedges choked by ivy and weeds on all sides. But if Solid was curious, Hal wouldn’t deny him anything.

They approached the entrance, which was marked by a simple marble statue of a young girl mid-stride, with wings like a butterfly.

“Remind you of Emma?” Solid asked.

Hal couldn’t help his large and somewhat bewildered smile.

Solid had been listening to Hal’s foolish rambling closely enough to remember his sister’s name.

“Yeah… I guess so,” Hal said, giving the statue a little nod as they passed it into the maze.

The scenery was monotonous as expected, the greens all dreary and dark in the gray autumn light, punctuated by moist brown roots that were a pain to maneuver over, especially when Solid was already prone to tripping on more even ground. They wound through the paths, Hal playing guide, leading them away from the dead ends and into the geometric turns necessary to pull them into the center then out again as was intended. Solid seemed as bored as Hal, not stopping and admiring as usual but simply following Hal’s guidance in silence.

Finally they were nearing the end, in a passage at the very edge of the maze, with one hedge wall between them and freedom.

It was then that Solid stopped.

“Are you tired?” Hal asked, fretting a bit that their walk had gone on so much longer than usual.

“No,” Solid said, clearly only a partial truth, but he nudged Hal’s side with his elbow. “What’s that sound.”

Hal listened, and sure enough he heard a distant chord in the cool air, eerie and half absorbed by atmosphere.

It was music. The familiar tinny melancholy of a violin.

Solid listened raptly, standing straighter than his usual weary slouch, his jaw strong and elevated.

“It’s the groundskeeper,” Hal explained. “He’s my friend. He told me once he’s played the violin since he was a boy… He lives in a cottage on the estate. It must be just beyond this wall.”

The dark hedge in question rose a few heads above them, blocking out everything but overcast sky.

Solid looked to that sky now, listening, and Hal felt this man was very distant from him all of the sudden despite standing right at his side.

Hal watched the ghoulish face without fear now, and saw Solid’s blue eyes misting over, not quite tears but certainly an emotion neither of them would be able to put words to if they tried to discuss it. It wasn’t a bad emotion. In fact… It was good. Something stronger than good, deeper and more disfigured perhaps, but infinitely and unfathomably joyful.

Hal’s chest ached painfully.

He had always felt sorrow for Solid’s condition, but in this moment it occurred to him perhaps it was beautiful in its own right.

Perhaps life was simply, in itself, beautiful. Even when a person hurt in it.

He found himself slinging an arm around Solid’s waist, unable to impose on this experience but wanting to support him, this unnatural man who understood humanity so much better than he did.

Hal would remember perfectly this expression in Solid’s eyes later that evening when he asked Leopardus why they hadn’t yet presented Solid’s success to the university.

Leopardus’ flippant response made a sick unease roil in Hal’s stomach.

“He is incomplete.”

x

It had been two months since Solid was created.

It was evening, and Hal brought up their dinners and a book a bit later than usual. He had been overthinking and hesitating a bit before this particular visit.

In his makeshift home in his room, Solid had created quite a nest for himself. Hal brought him puzzles and small games to keep occupied and fine-tune the dexterity of his hands. These were cluttered about the desk and floor, as well as vases of carefully attended flowers that Hal had to sidestep to get to the bed, carved figures (nearly fifty dogs), even a jar with a caterpillar in it that had since chrysalized. Whatever amusing things Hal could find. Solid also had more blankets on his bed now as the weather grew colder, and even long underwear which he was currently wearing rather comically.

Hal smiled brightly as he entered, Solid immediately lumbering over to help hold open the door as Hal came in with full arms. He set their dinners at the foot of the bed and sat in the desk chair, like always. The book was a bit chilly between his hands.

“You look like you’re up to something,” Solid said, sinking gingerly to the bed, his knees clumsy and creaking.

“I was thinking… Well, I should ask you first. Have you given any more thought to your name?”

“My name?”

“We can’t just call you Solid forever, right?”

Solid watched him carefully for a long few moments then shrugged one shoulder, waiting.

“You can reject my suggestions, of course, but a certain name struck me.” Hal rubbed his hands together with the book between them, as if trying to warm it. “Have you ever heard the story of David and Goliath?”

Solid shook his head slowly.

Hal raised the book. “It’s in the Tanakh… I rather fell out of religion, but I have this old book from my childhood… It’s just children’s stories.” He said it almost apologetically. “May I read it to you?”

Solid nodded.

Hal read, and Solid’s snarky comments were gone, nothing but pensive silence as Hal told the story of a man taking down a giant, with reverent pauses at theatrical moments and slightly different voices between the titular foes. When it was over, Hal kept the book open in his lap and finally looked up. Solid’s mangled face was unreadable, even his eyes.

“It’s fitting,” Solid said finally.

“You think so?” Hal was relieved.

“Goliath. A rather strange name, but I’ll take it.”

Hal’s heart fell. “No! Not like that… Not the giant.”

“Then David?” Solid shifted, his gaze searching.

“Yeah. The man with a seemingly insurmountable task.”

“A man who defeats a monster?” Solid smiled. “Isn’t that a little ironic, Hal?”

Maybe it was. Maybe it was all foolish. But Hal couldn’t help but remember briefly the hard loathing he’d witnessed in Leopardus’ eyes in the sitting room beneath a wall of weapons. Every fake smile calculated. An invincible, unfathomable man.

And then here in this room, this supposed monster sat in long underwear teasing him.

“I just think it suits you,” Hal finished, closing the book with a conclusive thump.

“I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“You didn’t. And like I said, it’s your name, you can do what you want with it.”

Solid snorted at Hal’s snippiness, but his pale hands came together between his knees, almost a mockery of a prayer.

“I like the name,” he said finally. “We’ll test it out. Please call me David.”

Feeling ridiculous but pleased, Hal stood to join him on the bed for their dinners.

x

A day later, Leopardus was in an exceptionally cheerful mood. He stopped Hal as he was out in the garden, carefully trimming a couple of roses and removing the thorns. He would include them on David’s dinner tray.

“I’ve made a breakthrough,” Leopardus announced, in lieu of small talk. His hair was back in a black ribbon today, and his cravat and gloves were the same color. He’d been favoring it over red lately. “We’ll be beginning the next stage of the Solid Study tomorrow morning.”

Hal stilled his scissors, flowers held loosely in his other hand. “What do you mean?”

“Hypnotism.” Leopardus tapped his own temple. “We’ll start a rigorous treatment. Give it a month, and we should be able to suppress this new personality easily enough.”

“Will that be… painful?”

“No, John won’t be aware of it obviously. Once this new persona is smothered, we might be able to drag John back to the surface with a similar technique.”

“But what will happen to David?”

“David?” Leopardus was barely hearing Hal. He was in one of his creative manias, but more than that. He was truly and deeply happy.

Hal wouldn’t be able to reach him with any sort of dissent, he realized.

He opened and closed the scissors nervously and looked away, at the rose bush.

“Nevermind,” he said softly.

“You needn’t worry about serving John’s dinner tonight,” Leopardus continued. “I’ll do the honor. I would like to explain tomorrow’s procedure to him myself.”

He clapped a hand onto Hal’s shoulder and it took everything for Hal not to flinch away.

“You’ve done me a great service,” Leopardus said, smiling. “Take the night off. Go into town. You’ve earned it.”

“I’ve earned it,” Hal repeated numbly.

Leopardus jostled him playfully and turned on his heel to head back inside, leaving Hal in the chilly gray evening with useless flowers in his hand and equally useless cuts on his fingers from inexpertly removing the thorns.

He tossed the roses upon the dark soil under the bush to wilt away unseen.

x

Hal did go into town, per Leopardus’ offer. He requested to stay the night and the doctor cheerfully clapped him on the back and told him to have a good time.

Hal did not mention that he would be returning at midnight.

He instructed the carriage to leave him at the bottom of the hill… then to wait at the far edge of the estate for further late night work.

He climbed the long drive himself, nervous each time his boots crunched particularly sharply in the dirt, and let himself in through a side door.

With equal stealth, he went to David’s room.

“It’s me,” he murmured, as he entered and quietly closed the door behind him.

David was seated at the desk, fiddling with one of his dog statues in the light of a small gas lamp. He hadn’t slept, nor did he look as if he were planning on sleeping any time soon.

He turned slowly in his chair as Hal heaved two large bags off his back and onto the bed.

“Hal…?” David said questioningly.

“Shhh.” Hal spoke in a frenzied whisper. “Be quiet… The doctor’s room is just next door, right?”

From one bag he took out a long hooded cloak and flopped it across David’s pillow.

“Clothing,” Hal explained, patting bag number one. “Food, water, provisions…” He patted bag number two.

Lastly, he nudged a pouch at his belt. “Money. We have enough for a few weeks, which should be more than we need to get ourselves a few towns over at least.”

David watched him, the small wooden dog clenched tightly in a fist.

“What are you doing, Hal?” he asked, quietly as instructed and also strangely gently.

Hal turned to face him at last. He was fully dressed for a cold nighttime journey, his glasses somewhat misty.

“Dr. Leopardus told you what he has planned for you tomorrow, yes?” Hal whispered. “It’ll take a long time, it will probably be torture… and it all starts tomorrow. That means we don’t have any time to lose. We’re going to escape.”

Why wasn’t David reacting at all? Just sitting there, not getting himself dressed?

“Come on,” Hal urged, but David’s gaze fell to the floor.

“Maybe it would be better if the doctor succeeded,” David said. “John would come back.”

Hal’s face was too honest, it crumpled the same as his heart.

“What? But David, what about you?”

David looked to the wall now but still pointedly not at Hal, his eyes dark, his jaw set. “I was never supposed to happen, Hal.”

“But you did!”

“You don’t have to pity your mistake.”

Hal took a moment to get air back into his lungs, but the blow of those words wouldn’t stop him, not now. They were true, but they were also an intentional cruelty meant to disarm him.

He strode forward with immense purpose and took David’s shoulders in his hands, bringing his face close to that patchwork of deformity that Hal had grown to see as a face in its own right, the face of a man he was just starting to know but already cared about.

“John Sears is dead,” he said firmly, holding David’s gaze with hard determination. “Regardless of who he was, he’s dead. You though… You’re alive. And I certainly pitied you before, I certainly looked at you with fear and disgust because I was too foolish to understand… but I know now, David, that you are a good man. This is your life now, and I’ll be damned if I destroy the life of a good man with my own hands.”

David’s eyes bore into his, as if trying to go straight to his brain, and Hal hoped they somehow could because everything he was saying was utmost honesty. Everything in his mind now revolved around David and hope and the beauty of life, that sacredness…

“I was never sure you were that sort of person,” David murmured. “The sort of person to fight against someone else’s injustice.”

“I never was,” Hal said. “But I am now.”

David smiled, his eyes very warm.

He stood with Hal’s assistance and they got him dressed, in coats and trousers and finally the cloak Hal had taken out, the hood pulled low over David’s head and face. It would be enough to deceive the carriage driver, at least. Hal explained that the taxi was hidden at the edge of the estate waiting for them. It was just a matter of getting to it without alerting any of the servants.

Or Leopardus.

They left the room slowly, an awkward hunched pair, Hal supporting David and also carrying the two satchels flung across his back.

That first hallway was the most nerve wracking. They had to ignore every instinct they had to just run as far away from Leopardus’ bedroom door as they could in one bolt, and instead went painstakingly slowly, every step measured for quietness.

Finally, they made it to another turn and quickened their pace.

They left the way Hal had entered, a side door into the gardens. They would circle the hedge maze and make a run for it from there, or at least as quickly as David’s pace could get.

In the dark it was a lot of stumbling and picking their way through the greenery. The flowers were dying now, the soil underfoot hard and frosted over. Only the rose bushes still held some color, though it was drowned out by the night and dishonest to begin with. The flowers were still pretty, but they were already half-dead.

David’s arm was slung through Hal’s, their hands tightly clasped, their shoulders leaning against each other, propping each other up.

They were almost to the end of the garden when a square of light suddenly appeared from the doorway they had left behind.

Then came the crack of a gunshot, like condensed thunder.

“I see you, gentlemen!” It was the voice of Leopardus, booming and commanding yet somehow snidely friendly. “You will turn around immediately unless you’d like to learn the kind of marksman I am.”

Hal’s blood ran cold. They were out in the open, sitting ducks, and he could hear already Leopardus’ legs roughly brushing their way through the undergrowth of the gardens behind them…

They were upon the butterfly girl at the entrance of the hedge maze. It could be their only chance… It would only lead them back again but perhaps they could lose him in there… And anyway, there was nowhere else to go.

“Quick, in here!” Hal gasped out, but David was already lumbering in the same direction, the two men quickly ducking between the hedges and stumbling down their first path.

It was suffocating, claustrophobic. They were shut off here from the outside world, yet desperately tunneling themselves deeper and deeper into an unknown. They couldn’t see Leopardus, but they could hear his voice and the occasional snap of a distant root.

“I’ve no qualms about murdering you, Hal,” Leopardus exulted. “As for John, I’ve proven already that I can bring him back to life at my own convenience. You won’t escape me with some puzzle. You know perfectly well, Hal, I’m much cleverer than you!”

It was true. The dark mirth in Leopardus’ voice pierced straight through Hal’s chest and he began to shake terribly.

It was true. Leopardus was always smarter, always one step ahead… In a match between the two men, Hal would always certainly lose.

Hal was nothing. Hal was just a frightened, naïve boy.

But David… David was different.

David was the sort of man worth protecting, even if Hal stupidly threw his life away doing it.

They were reaching the end of the maze, one last wall between them and the outside, but another gunshot cracked through the night and it was too close. Hal and David’s clumsy progress was too loud, both men panting with exertion, tripping over untamed roots, barely keeping each other standing…

It was no good. Leopardus knew exactly where they were and it was only a matter of time before he was upon them…

Once they reached the end of the maze they’d simply be back at the house again. They would be trapped between Leopardus and his loyal servants…

“I’m sorry, David,” Hal wheezed, his pale sweating face pressed close to David’s shoulder. “I’m sorry. I really—“

“Emmerich!”

A new voice erupted from the hedge, making Hal and David freeze.

For a moment it was almost like they’d dreamed it, then the voice returned, “Emmerich! Hal, are you there?”

It was coming from the other side of the hedge, and Hal realized now that he recognized it.

It was the voice of the groundskeeper, his kind friend who had watched over him this whole time…

“Mr. Miller!” he shouted, lurching forward with David in tow to clutch at the hedge wall separating them from freedom. “Mr. Miller, I’m here! I have the experiment, he’s… I don’t have time to explain but--!”

“I know,” the groundskeeper said simply, and then came a great rustling thwak of a sound.

An ax. Mr. Miller was determined to cut a hole for them clean through the wall.

Hal babbled tearfully, useless thanks and apologies and prayers, but would this slow hacking and hawing be able to free them in time?

Leopardus’ footfalls were close enough now to hear, thuds upon the frozen earth slower and more powerful than Hal’s frantically pattering heart.

David was shouting too now, joining Hal’s litany of encouragements and pleading.

Finally, the head of the tool appeared near their shins, slashing and rustling. The hole was barely anything, but it would have to work. It was now or never.

Hal guided David onto his knees to crawl through it.

“You first,” Hal commanded breathlessly.

“Hal—“

“Just go!”

David obeyed, making painfully slow progress as his atrophied muscles tried to adapt to this new position.

Hal watched the end of the hedge passage, wild-eyed, waiting for Leopardus to appear there around the corner…

Finally David was through, and Hal pushed the two bags after him one after the other.

He glanced up one last time and caught the barest glimpse of the tall figure of a man, the moonlit glint of a gun, rounding the corner…

Hal threw himself through the hole, scrambling and clawing.

David and Miller both helped him to stand.

“Mr. Miller I can’t possibly—“ Hal began, stumbling forward to embrace his friend, but Miller shoved him off with the handle of his ax.

“Go!” the old groundskeeper ordered. “Run as fast as you can!”

And he turned to keep watch over the hedge with his ax held firmly in his hands.

There was no time to look back.

Hal took David’s hand again, dragging the bags in his other, and they ran, a horribly uncoordinated stumbling run that had them falling multiple times into the cold dirt but they got up each time and kept going, going, going!

Right before they reached the street, they heard sharp and clear four more shots as Leopardus emptied his revolver into the night.

Then came the most haunting sound of all.

Leopardus screamed, not an angry sound but the sound of a heart breaking, such desperate ragged despair that tore itself hauntingly from his throat and seemed to rend the very heavens above them all. A roar of complete and utter anguish.

David’s grip tightened on Hal’s hand, and Hal forced himself not to look back.

They made it at last to the carriage, shaking and muddy. The driver stared at them both as if they were monsters.

If David pulled down his hood, perhaps the driver’s assessment would be more on point than he realized.

Nevertheless, the driver opened the door for them, took their paltry luggage, and even helped David to step up into the cab.

“He’s an old man,” Hal lied. “It’s difficult sometimes for him to move…”

“It’s alright, there’s plenty of old men out there,” the driver interrupted. “Say, mister, are you two alright?”

Hal finally met the driver’s eye, trying to ignore how the hairs on the back of his neck still stood on end, drawn to the scenes they’d just left behind.

They’d left all of it behind…

“Yes,” Hal said breathlessly, as he hoisted himself into the cab as well. “Yes. We’re fine, thank you.”

The driver seemed satisfied enough with that. He didn’t ask questions, instead simply closing the door and stepping up behind the horses.

The night was so quiet now. Hal could barely register just how quiet and peaceful it was.

The carriage cab was small, and he and David sat across from each other, their knees interlocked.

The warmth of another body in such proximity was comforting as the taxi began down the winding road.

They were alive.

x

In the early morning hours, Hal gently placed a mask over David’s face, simple and black, his blue eyes glinting through the eye holes.

They were in the stuffy attic room of a halfway house, a few miles yet from the next town over. It would be difficult to finagle transportation for the next leg of their trip—they might be stuck at this inn for awhile—but for now they were safe.

David’s hood had fared them for their initial travel, but forging ahead, even living a life, would require something more substantial to avoid undue attention and Leopardus’ hunt for them. Hence the mask.

“It’s comfortable?” Hal asked, lowering his hands to his lap.

Slowly, David nodded, his fingers tracing the leather cheek.

“It’s not perfect,” Hal continued. “But I guess you never had a real face to begin with, did you?”

The face of another man, and a butchered version at that…

David hmmed. “I chose this mask. I think that makes it more real than anything.”

That was the whole point, wasn’t it? David would try to be who he wanted to be, the same as anybody.

Surely a man so unnatural by birth was the most free when it came to the arrogant trappings of biology.

Something tightened in Hal’s throat. “I’ll leave you now if you want me to,” he said slowly. “But I’d rather not. I helped give you this life, with my thoughtless science. It’s my duty to witness it.” His words weren’t quite coming out right, but he sat straight and strangely proud in his own vulnerability. Hal was done with regrets. “It’s not only because of science that I’m responsible…” he added. “Sticking with you to the end, if you need me… so you don’t have to be alone through this… That’s also my duty as your friend.”

“A friend, huh?” David’s voice was low, and his eyes behind the mask held Hal’s determined gaze. He reached forward and placed a cool hand over Hal’s fist. “Guess I could use one of those.”

Hal smiled, and he thought he could see in those eyes that David was smiling too, a wet shine.

“Let’s live, David.”

“That sounds pretty grand.”

David brought Hal’s fingers up to the etched design of lips on leather, and the mask was warm.

x