Rage

Chapter 3

Chapter Three

Casper

S omething is wrong with me.

When I sleep, there are images I don’t remember, conversations with Samantha I’ve never had. There’s yelling. There’s pain.

“Casper.” I wake with wide eyes, staring at Samantha hovering over me. My hand finds my throat, trying to stop bleeding that’s not there—the dream being confused with reality. My mouth strains under the tight stitching, trying to open. I see her brown eyes, and for a moment, all I want is to escape her—she’s dangerous.

Samantha sees my fear and takes a step back, her eyes wide with her own terror. Then, I exhale, and the dream is gone. My hand finds hers, and I twist them together, my muscles relaxing, the images retreating.

“I have to go,” she says suddenly. She starts to pull her hand from mine, trying to evade my touch suddenly, but I tighten my grip before she can retreat. She sucks in a breath and looks at me with wide eyes.

She doesn’t have to get away if I don’t want her to. Samantha with her soft curves. Samantha with the secrets in her warm eyes, whose hair smells like saltwater and the flowers she sometimes brings.

She’s smart. I know that now. She pays close attention to detail. She likes to ponder and think while biting the tip of her thumb. Her eyes linger on the scar beneath my hips when she examines me. Her middle finger has a callus where she holds pens. Sometimes, ink stains her hands, and she stares at the dark blotches as if she sees something darker.

“Casper, let me go,” she says softly, gently pulling her hand.

I don’t have to let her go if I don’t want to. She starts tugging harder and harder. Her attempts don’t budge me at all. I fear more that she’ll hurt herself trying to escape my grasp. I get up and start to pull her closer. I don’t want her to go. I want to feel her against me.

My arms wrap around her as I pull her body close. She’s so soft—hard muscles and rough stitches against soft cloth and smooth skin. Her warmth bleeds into my belly where the swell of her breasts touch me. She trembles in my arms.

“Please,” she gasps. My arms loosen, and she pulls away quickly.

“Don’t do that again,” she admonishes, taking on a harder tone. She’s diminishing me to an animal—a naughty cat, or perhaps a child. That’s the way she’s talking to me. I am neither. I sigh and look away from her.

“Oh, now you’ve grown an attitude?” she asks with a small laugh, but then her face changes. We’re both thinking the same thing, I swear it. We’re remembering what started this. My dream, my fear—grabbing my throat.

Something is wrong with me. I can tell by how she won’t look me in the eye.

I can’t tell her to stay—to ask her to explain what I did wrong, to implore Samantha how to fix what just happened. She doesn’t even let me try.

I watch silently as she leaves in a rush, wrapping herself tight, as if the temperature has dropped. My fingers brush over the stitches on my mouth while I watch her go. She doesn’t look back at me before the door shuts and locks.

Over the rain and the waves, I hear the engine of her small boat sputter loudly and then drift, taking her away from me—across the water that’ll be rocking her boat. I imagine her eyes scanning the sky, her bitten fingernails holding the wheel, salt water spraying her face and leaving the taste of salt on her skin.

I wish to bite her fingers and lick the salt from her skin.

My teeth press together. I feel distraught. She has given me life but not the parts I need to have her. Although her abrupt absence leaves me feeling emptier than ever before, I’ll use the time with fervor. Today, I’ll change one of the mistakes she made with me.

She doesn’t know I’ve been reading her books and realized what I lack. I know so much more than she seems to imagine. It’s okay that she thinks I'm an ignorant fool. If she knew the truth, she might never come back. She’s already afraid of me. If she ever threatens me with her permanent absence, I will never let her go, no matter how much she trembles in my arms or begs for freedom.

Samantha gave me life, gave me this lighthouse and island. So many wonderful, tainted gifts. It’s all so lonely without her: the drafty old house attached to the lighthouse, the brutal little island surrounded by sharp rocks, and the cats that won’t stop fucking staring at me—hissing when I get close, as if they know I’m not like them. That I’m not like anyone.

I’m Samantha’s abomination. Humans can’t speak to their god—can’t know what the point of it all is. But I’ve held my god in my arms and understood exactly what the point of my life is. It’s for her. Her creature, her monster, her everything—I will be it or become it.

I move through the long hall that connects the lighthouse tower to the adjoining structure. There are different areas in the house, but I’m not sure what their purposes are. Sometimes, I can sense a hazy memory, like I used to know, but no matter how I claw at the sensation, it never reveals more. My knowledge has holes. Sometimes, it’s shocking what I know when other, simpler things elude me.

My eyes shift around the room, searching for what I need. There are parts and pieces everywhere. There’s a brain, a foot, hands missing fingers, spleens, bladders, large intestines, small intestines…

I know all the parts she gave me.

I know all the parts she didn’t.

It has left me with a hole that makes me less human. There’s gnawing hunger inside me that grows each day, and she gave me no way to feed it.

I poured over her anatomy books and human biology texts. I even memorized her own journals about her experiment before I realized she was talking about me. I was only a thing to her.

I am not a thing . Being nothing, being a thing, an it , a series of objects Samantha wanted to see come together and writhe beneath her…there is nothing worse than that. I will make her see I’m someone. I’ll take being anything other than nothing to her. Nothing is something I can’t accept. Can she fault me for that?

Sometimes, I think Samantha might be a cruel person. I don’t wish for her to change, but it’s difficult for me when she treats me so coolly, when she runs away without looking back.

There . I spy what I want behind a floating face. I move towards the large jar and bend down, looking at the severed head. It’s missing the top of its skull…and its brain. I eye the mouth hanging open, the rows of teeth. I wonder for a moment if this was me in a past life, if this is the man Samantha yelled at in my dreams—the brain inside my head. There’s a tongue in his mouth. I wonder if I used to roll it over my gums. I wonder if I talked, ate, and kissed, if Samantha herself tasted those lips. I hope not. I don’t care if it was me in a past life; I’ll be ragefully jealous of him all the same.

I know so very little, but I understand my mouth wants to press to hers. If I had a tongue, I’d taste hers with it. I’d taste the pulse on her neck. I’d taste the soft skin of her wrist. I’d taste the corners of her eyes and where her legs meet her body. There are so many places I wish to taste Samantha…if only she had given me a tongue to do so.

My hand moves up and shoves the jar aside. Behind the floating head is what I need—a severed tongue. Perhaps it’s even the one she cut from my head before stitching me up.

I must fix the empty places she left me with because, every day, my hunger grows. I want to eat the bread she brings in the mornings, still warm in the cloth, to swallow the spiced tea she sips all day, even when it has turned as cold as the sea.

Yet, it’s not only food and drink I’m starving for.

I’ve learned she purposely left me incomplete, although she didn’t effectively detail why. My hand reaches out to grab the jar, pulling it closer. It makes a soft growl on the wooden shelf.

She wants me incomplete, but what I want is different. What I want is more .

With determined conviction, I take the jar back to the lighthouse, down the dreary hall with all its windows showing the sea. The yellow liquid sloshes quietly in my hand as the waves roar outside.

Today is…gray. I need more words. There is a feeling the grayness gives me, but all I’ve had to study are medical books, and the holes in my knowledge let me down right now. I need different books to help me—not scientific academia. Something about the sea, or something about this feeling Samantha gives me when she touches my body.

So many feelings inside me, so few words to understand them. I don’t need words, not really. The feeling is there, and that is all that matters. Words would be nice, though. Words would be a softer way to show Samantha instead of holding her trembling body in my arms forcefully. I’m not sure I’ll ever be capable of telling her, though, and if I must show her in the ways I know how, I will.

I get back to the base of the lighthouse. She has me stay in here, next to the beakers, test tubes, and surgery table. I look for the tools I need—the needle and thread, the scissors, tweezers, and scalpel. I’m running my own experiments now. I’ve read how she made it work. Her science is murky. She doesn’t understand the exact mechanisms, only the tools.

Perhaps it’s because there is so much time on my hands, but I’m beginning to understand it, even finding room to improve her designs. Then again, maybe it’s the brain she chose for me. I wonder what sort of man he was while thinking of the dead head floating in a murky green jar, a past life of mine like each finger and toe. I’ve had so many lives, it seems, and there are so many stitches to document them.

Under my bed is a drawing I’ve made—Samantha, looking off in thought. It was amazing to see the pencil move and her likeness come to life on the paper. To think, it wasn’t long ago that I couldn’t even lift a pencil, and now, I’m drawing her—shading in the shadows around her lips, sculpting the lovely shape of her nose.

I turn with the picture in hand, going back to my collection of supplies by the window. The glass will help me see what I’m doing—even if poorly.

Outside, one of the cats hisses at me. He’s angry I’ve ruined his view through the window with my presence. His fur stands in a line down his bent back, his lips peeled back to show me his teeth.

It would be such a simple matter to kill him. I’ve killed other things. A mouse was running around, and Samantha hated it, so I snatched it up in my hand and crushed it. Maybe that was why she was so frightened when I wrapped my arms around her. Did she think I’d crush her like I did the mouse?

She’d been so startled by the rodent's death, her mouth hanging ajar as I opened my palm and showed her the broken body—blood dripping from my palm.

“Dear God,” she’d whispered. Her reaction was curious. I watched her neck move as she swallowed. Her eyes lifted to mine. “It’s okay, Casper. I’m not upset.” The idea of her being upset hadn’t entered my mind, but when she said that, I didn’t believe her. That was the day I learned Samantha was a liar.

I know now that I’m one too—one of omission. There are many things Samantha has omitted from me as well.

I care so deeply for her, and I want to know everything there is. I want her to let me in and tell me the truth. All of it.

The cat outside the window runs off. I wouldn’t have killed it anyway. I like it, even if it’s scared of me—just like Samantha.

The storm that was brewing all morning finally arrives as I lift the scalpel to my mouth. My hand trembles as I spot lightning in the distance. The pain of my birth still lingers in my bones when I see flashes of light.

Thunder cracks, and the building around me groans and wails as the wind pummels it. I tease the scalpel under the first thread in my mouth. I could stop now, not operate on myself, not try to fix the things Samantha thought it best I went without. I could be her little object, her experiment—neither man nor monster.

But whether she intended it or not… I love her, and this love will drive me to do what might be the wrong choice. Lightning flashes, and I swallow. Thunder booms, and I cut—one thread at a time, as swiftly as possible until nothing is keeping my mouth shut any longer.

My lips peel apart, my teeth seeing light for the first time. I open my jaw and snap it shut. As the darkness descends outside, my reflection becomes clearer in the window. I stretch my mouth wide, smiling.

I’m sorry I love you, Samantha. There’s no going back now.

My fingers dip into the alcohol-filled jar and finger out the tongue. I practice opening and closing my mouth. My jaw is already sore, my cheeks burning from the single smile. I’ll have to practice, but I’m good at that. I’ve come so far already, and I’ll continue to grow.

The surgery takes all day and night. It’s difficult making everything connect—extremely tedious—but I’ve perfected my hand-eye coordination to prepare for this. Gone are the days I can no longer pinch a pencil.

Samantha is pleased by my dexterity, and I’m pleased to show her. However, I’ve hidden other things from her. I’ve hidden so much, all because she fears me.

The surgery hurts, but it’ll be worth all this trouble and pain.

Samantha has so many expressions—her lips stretching in a thin line, her face spreading wide in a smile, and sometimes, even her mouth opening to spill laughter. I’ll learn how to do all of it.

I take off my clothes and climb out the window. The tongue is heavy in my mouth as I stand on the shore. I stare at the sky, my arms open wide in welcome, my hands holding metal rods. I’m scared, but for her, there is no suffering or terror I won’t withstand.

Brightness and pain overtake me. I’ve been struck by lightning. Everything goes black.

When I dream, it's of death. I’ve never seen this before. I don’t think I’m the man from before. I’m standing on a platform, a scratchy rope around my neck, a gathered crowd looking up at me. The wooden planks creak beneath my feet, the crowd jeering, and I smile at their hatred. I hate all of them too. I’d kill them all if I hadn’t been stopped. Why, why, why—that’s all anyone asks. Why kill all those people?

Why? I asked back. Because it was fun . Who cares if I kill them? We all die in the end. Plus, they wanted it. They wanted me. That charming boyish smile was irresistible, so I gave them what they wanted. I gave them me .

Then, the floor gives out, and I fall through the little brown hole. I think I’m going to be strangled, but I’m not. My neck snaps, and I’m instantly dead.

Then, the previous dream comes back to me—the yelling, anger, and fear. Samantha’s voice takes on tones I’ve never heard—demanding, begging, pleading. She’s distraught and I’m upset.

“You must stop this,” I say. It's the man in the jar, the one whose brain I have. Samantha looks every bit the madwoman I’m calling her. Her hair is a disheveled mess, her eyes blazing with mania as tears fall down her face.

“I’ll have to alert the authorities,” I tell her, trying to make her see reason. I turn away from her and then…

Then, there's red pouring from my neck.

“You’ll be part of this one way or another, Professor.” I’ve fallen to the floor—I’m dying. I try to get out of the room, to find help, but she’s sitting in a chair in front of the door, blocking my escape. There’s blood up to her elbows, twin smears beneath her eyes where she wiped her face clean of tears. The Edison bulbs reflect in her eyes as she watches me die.

I wake with a start, sweat over my body. I look around in a panic for Samantha, but she isn’t sitting at the door watching me die. I’m outside the lighthouse. I’m Casper again, whoever that might be. I get up and crawl back through the window, dripping rainwater on the floor as I slam the pane shut behind me. I shake my head and look at the mirrored reflection in the glass, stretching my mouth in a charming boyish smile . It transforms my face from an apathetic glare into something else entirely, something I think Samantha would like.

Even though I love her, I don’t think I should trust her.

I stare at the devilish smirk on my face and remember laughing with a noose around my neck. I don’t think I should trust myself either. Samantha, what have you made?

I open my mouth and watch as I move my new tongue the smallest twitch.