Dark
Victor took a deep breath and handled this the way he handled any emergency his father had needed him for: He had to be efficient, he had to take notes, and he had to be neat.
He asked his landlady for permission to clear the basement for lab work, paid extra to store her belongings elsewhere.
Scrubbed the stone floors and musty walls, sealed cracks, whitewashed the whole of it.
Procured tinctures, tools, and machines.
Brought a long table down and prepped it for surgery.
Outlined his schedule with room for variation. Then, he began.
You must start with rats, even though Victor disliked them. He fed them lush grains and clean water and sweet fruits, then put them to sleep before starting.
Their weight changed slightly after they expired, so there was an element missing. Victor wanted to call it the weight of the soul, but that felt too mythological. It may be a change in quickly expiring gases or perhaps the weight of the electricity needed to keep a body going.*
But the rats were too small to be precise in his calculations. An animal of fifty to eighty pounds would be much easier to calculate for. But in these parts that meant a pig or small sheep and, unlike rats, livestock would be immediately missed and prosecuted.
So Victor moved to something bigger.
He spent his food budget on pricey cuts of meat, small toys, and soft blankets. Eating his penance in watery gruel while his vermin—only the old and sick—spent a week in heaven after years on the street, before finding sleep.
But it wasn’t enough. There were too many variables still.
He knew, after weeks, that there was a time he called the Undeath: a short period of perhaps two to five minutes after perishing when the body could be quickened before subsiding into true and permanent death.
Hearts shocked into beating, lungs bellowed with air.
But the process wasn’t sustainable and it did not reactivate the brain in any real way that mattered.
He must start here. The brain could not survive without . . . something.
The heart machine was expensive to make and somewhat dangerous to use but structurally sound.
His breathing machine was simple to conceptualize but strange to locate parts for.
If he got the pressure incorrect for the bellows, the lungs simply exploded.
This was foul and messy but not nearly as much as his electrical exploits.
Once, he touched a body without protective gloves and a shock ran through him so terribly that his own heart faltered.
With every failure, he was driven back out into the night with his anesthetics and his great burlap sack.
It wasn’t inconspicuous. His landlady wondered at him about where he went in the evenings, and he felt awful whenever he saw her face. Victor dreamed up a world for her of new friends and boyish mischief, so the wrinkles at the sides of her eyes and mouth wouldn’t tug so.
She settled to think of him this way, seemed pleased, even. Suggested that he take a few nights off from dinner with her to foster these friendships, which Victor took advantage of—gladly.
Then, there was the other thing.
Victor hadn’t grown up in a house where he had been expected to clean. They’d had servants, and even if they’d gone without for a time, he was the elder son.
He made his messes and left them, and when he returned, they’d disappeared.
But he couldn’t leave the basement a mess: it would start to smell and the smell would court curiosity.
So Victor learned to put away his organic messes the same night.
Stripping them to the bone like a butcher, separating out meat from fur and dumping with the refuse of their local meat shop.
He tossed the bones in the Danube. He started to rub things down with vinegar, then clarify them with salt water.
He switched to alcohol when a classmate who sat behind him sneered that he made the whole room smell like salad dressing.
During the day when he was not home, his lab was clean and shining with a faint air of hospital. In the evenings, he sealed the bottom of the door so the heavy scent of blood and offal stayed with him while he worked. Then he cleaned again, sluicing the floors and wiping them dry before midnight.
By the time the frost was starting to set in, Victor was efficient. He was getting closer.