Made to Be

CHAPTER 1

When choosing a corpse,

ensure you have all pieces for assembly.

IF I TOLD MY past self that I would one day be dragging a body into my basement to create the perfect boyfriend, I would have slapped myself silly. Either that or exclaimed, “Victor, you mad genius, why hadn’t you thought of this sooner?!”

But here I was. Dragging a body. Into my basement. On a Tuesday afternoon.

I had been in the market for the perfect body for a while now.

One year, eight months, and eighteen days to be precise.

Not that I was counting or anything. And this poor guy had been the victim of a careless driver.

Bam, literally. Free dead body. Luckily, he hadn’t been mangled too badly; nothing my magic touch couldn’t fix up.

Plus a few borrowed spare limbs, courtesy of my friend Alice down at the local Briarwood town morgue.

Was I abusing my connections to my advantage? Probably. But I needed this corpse for my long-awaited master plan to finally see fruition. Don’t get me wrong; I felt bad for the guy. I really did. Like, what horrible luck? For him, not for me. I’d hit the jackpot with this man.

The corpse’s feet steadily thump, thump, thumped down the stairs as I carefully made my way into the cool, damp space.

However, once I made it to the bottom step, I forgot that it was slightly shorter than the rest and misjudged the distance to the cement.

I stumbled backwards to topple heavily onto my back, the body landing as a solid, dead – pun intended – weight on top of me.

It sent the air rushing out of my lungs as I gasped for breath, wheezing like a deflated balloon.

“Fuck,” I groaned. “Fucking ouch.”

I struggled to roll the corpse off of me, but managed after several pathetic moments.

Thank god he was in his body bag but boy was he heavy.

Also thank fuck no one was here to witness this embarrassing display.

That was, unless my resident ghost was watching in.

I had to lay there for a solid minute before the musty air re-filled my spent lungs and any meager strength managed to return to my wobbly, abused muscles.

I didn’t exercise if I could help it, and this was the most action my muscles had seen in a long time, including sex. I hadn’t had that in over a year either, so it didn’t help matters.

I digress.

When I sluggishly crawled to my feet, I re-adjusted my glasses and stretched my aching spine with a groan.

With the snapping of my fingers, my magic sent the dim light hanging from the low ceiling flickering on, bathing the small space with its weak yellow glow.

Propping my hands on my hips, I glared down at the body in its not-so-discrete black bag on the concrete as if it was its fault that it was there in the first place and not my issue that I directly caused.

I tended to solve most problems by creating new ones as distractions. As was my nature.

That was when I threw my head back with a frustrated, dramatic huff.

My groceries. I stormed back upstairs, the practically ancient steps creaking heavily, and stomped outside to my car.

After lugging the bags into my kitchen, I deposited them carelessly onto the floor in a pile to deal with later.

I did put away the cold stuff though; I wasn’t a heathen.

Milk was expensive, damnit. And the creamer I’d bought was the limited fall-edition Scream-O-Lantern Spice.

Like hell would I let that spoil. The bags of ice had survived the twenty-minute drive home, but my ice cream sadly had not, having long been forgotten in my car when I’d been perusing at the morgue.

RIP, rocky road.

I lugged the ice directly to the basement where I filled the antique copper bathtub that had been stashed in this house since long before I moved in.

Definitely since before I was born. It was one of those deep tubs with the fancy little knobby feet and everything.

Some would call it vintage, but I simply deemed it conveniently useful.

After hefting the body into the tub of ice – which was a fucking feat – I went back upstairs to fix dinner. Couldn’t do these kinds of risky spells on an empty stomach, no matter how eager I was to begin.

After a hearty meal of “fancy ramen,” meaning I simply added a hardboiled egg and some diced green onion for garnish, I went into my spell room to round up my supplies.

Necromancy wasn’t a particularly easy skill to master, and I certainly hadn’t mastered it.

I had actually never successfully brought anything back to life.

I’d never tried. The fact that it was also technically illegal didn’t help matters.

This was for science! And if it didn’t work then...

Well, I didn’t really know what I would do with the body then.

But that was a problem for future Victor.

Getting my hands on the books stacked in my arms had been the second most difficult task – thank you, Darkmage Web.

Second only to actually acquiring the body.

And I had been buying the necessary supplies over the past year so that I would be prepared when the moment arose.

It was particularly challenging to gather a lot of the items the instructions called for, like grave root, corpse fly wings, tongue of a black toad, Foxglove seeds...

It was well-known that these ingredients were used in a variety of dark arcane spells and potions.

Buying them all together would have raised suspicions.

It would have drawn unnecessary attention.

I didn’t like attention. At least... the bad kind, anyway.

The silence was interrupted by the ringing of my phone, so I set the books down and pulled the noisy object from my back pocket.

The caller ID read “Ali Cat” with the emoji of a black cat beside it and displayed the hilariously terrible photo of my best friend Alice when she had been slosh-drunk during our last night out on the town.

Her eyes were practically crossed as she gave me the middle finger with her pierced tongue sticking out.

I tapped on the answer button and propped my phone between my ear and shoulder.

“How’d it go?” she asked nosily. Oops, excuse me, curiously.

Not so much as a “hello” or a “did you make it home okay.” I grinned because that was just us.

We always got straight to the point. Neither of us were fans of dreaded small talk.

I piled the books back into my hands and strode for the hall to make my way downstairs.

Cool, damp air swallowed me up moments later.

“Girl, I just got home half an hour ago,” I informed her.

“So?” she argued. “I figured you would have started as soon as you got there.”

“Perfection takes time, dollface. Plus, I was hungry.”

I set the books on the table along the wall next to the rusty, slanted storm cellar doors. Then went back up to get the rest of my stuff.

“Ramen again?” She clicked her tongue admonishingly. “A balanced diet consists of more than just noodles, Vic.”

I scoffed, mildly offended. “I can cook. I just choose not to. And it had veggies and protein. I met my quota for the day.”

“You mean you’re too lazy to actually cook.”

I rolled my eyes even though she couldn’t see my attitude. She wasn’t wrong.

“Anyway, mom,” I teased, “I was just getting started. You interrupted me.”

I set my phone down and put it on speaker then scooted the rickety old stool out from under the table to begin organizing the spread of books, papers, jars, and bowls across the wooden surface.

I was loathe to admit that I wasn't a very tidy person.

Okay, I was messy. I was a messy person.

But not when it came to my work. I was downright meticulous.

I methodically placed the jars and bowls in order of use and opened the books to the necessary pages I would need.

“I’m genuinely shocked that you’re not up my ass about this being too reckless,” I mused, then pitched my voice up a few octaves to imitate her, “Like, Vic, what if you blow yourself up again?” I cleared my throat, voice returning to normal, “As you know, I’m entirely unsupervised.

Terrifying, but there are endless possibilities. ”

Alice scoffed, “Yeah, this idea of yours better work. You need to get laid. Also, you could really benefit from having someone looking out for you. Hopefully that guy knows how to cook. Or, oooh, even better, bake.”

“Oh yes,” I chuckled darkly. “I will certainly be eating plenty if this works. Plenty of dick.”

The silence stretching between us was comedically heavy.

“What is wrong with you?”

“You mean today or... like, in general?” I deadpanned.

She snorted, “Smartass.”

“Well,” I said sagely, “it all began the day I discovered my dad’s dildo-”

“Dude! Ew, shut up!” Alice screeched.

I winced, “Damn Ali Cat, my poor eardrums.”

“And my poor psyche! I did not need the mental image that just conjured. Marty, if only you could see your son now!” she lamented in true theatrical fashion.

I huffed a laugh, “It’s Doctor Martin Grimsley now, remember? He just got his PhD in psychology. And let’s not inform him of what I get up to in my basement, shall we? He would probably use me as his next research topic and publish a thesis about it.”

She snickered, “He totally would.”

“Other than distracting me, did you need something?” I asked, getting back to the topic at hand. “I would like to get back to work please.”

“Yeah yeah, get to making your perfect boyfriend or whatever. But don’t forget who delivered. You owe me. ‘Gotta go, date night with Mandy. And you bet your ass I’m getting lucky tonight. Bye, bitch!” She then made a kissing noise and hung up.

The line beeped as the call ended and I pushed my phone off to the side. Then set it to silent for good measure.

Time to focus.