None of the love I have ever given in this harsh, cruel world has ever been returned back to me. Perhaps I am incapable of love. Still, I see other men who are far less capable than myself married with children. Throughout much of my twenties I studied biology and dated a Betty with whom I was head over heels in love, named Betty Bright. She was stunning in a sun dress and I would have given my left arm for her hand in marriage. Still being young, however, I figured marriage was an eventuality and focused on my career. I was particularly interested in stem cell research, which involved cells with the ability to replicate and transform themselves into any cell in the human body. Betty Bright was less interested but humored me always and often helped on experiments I was conducting. We had a little house off campus and would make love often, sometimes four times a day. These were the best days of my life. The only days of my life. When I think about the years that follow and how I was transformed by the events that occurred, I shudder in disbelief. You see, the thing was, I would have done anything, did do anything to try to be with her again. Oh why, oh why did I ever try to revive Betty Bright?
The day of the accident is forever etched in my memory; it was the day that altered my life forever. I awoke late, vanishing dreams of anguish fading from my consciousness. Often in later years I would imagine that the accident had been a dream and Betty were still alive. My sweetness had left a message on my phone. She didn’t say much, but reminded me to meet her for lunch, and then she said goodbye, I love you. These were technically the last words she would say to me because I don’t really think the thing I brought back from the dead was actually Betty.
I was distraught and possibly out of my mind, for in that moment I would have done anything to get her back. Anything. I remember falling onto our hall carpet, my face buried in the shag, bawling “DEAR GOD, WHY HAVE YOU TAKEN HER FROM ME?” The pain was so bad my heart actually ached with trepidation and loss. Several times during that first week, I had anxiety attacks during which I literally thought I was having a heart attack. A good doctor prescribed me some anti-anxiety medication just so I could make it through the days. It would not be unfair to say that I had temporarily lost my mind.
Betty’s badly mangled body was taken to Arugone Funeral Home (pronounced Aru-Goh-nay).
After the mortuary closed, my colleague and best friend, Joshua Christiansen Lazarus, broke in. Not to steal the body as one might expect, no, Joshua, or as I usually called him, Laz, was extracting stem cells from the expired body of my love, Betty. He did this with a needle and a couple of vials. We worked in the dark for we did not want to be caught. Even though her body was crushed and shattered, I still wanted to climb onto that gurney and stay with her forever. Normally I have more of a moral compass, but I was just so distraught over losing her, again, I would have pretty much done anything.
When we got home, we were dog-tired, but we did not go to bed, no sir, we went straight to the basement, a secret laboratory of sorts that Laz and I had created one winter break when we were bored. We put the stem cells in the chamber we had made which looked like a mutant microwave. The chamber had been a microwave at one time but had been rigged and rewired and no longer heated food with electromagnetic wavelengths. We closed the chamber and then flipped a switch on the wall, pumping the chamber full of the secret electricity. The lights flickered slightly and I would later be livid about the 400-dollar electric bill, but other than that nothing out of the ordinary happened.
The next night we slipped through the back door of the funeral home with the needle and vials of Betty’s stem cells. We didn’t realize that at this point Betty had already been perfused with embalming fluid. We injected Betty with the re-energized stem cells, as was the plan, and waited.
I had been feeling for a pulse; she was cold. We had been waiting a few minutes, when we heard footsteps. We saw a lone light from out in the hallway. It was security. Quickly and stealthily we sneaked back out. From outside we watched and hoped and waited. The security guard eventually moved on or went back to his post to take a midnight snooze. It was at this point that we sneaked back into the funeral home, tiptoeing to the spot Betty Bright’s body had been. At first we just suspected she had been moved, but then Laz pointed out that the gurney her body had been on was still there. Even the sheet that had covered her body was there. It was just the body that was missing.
“It worked,” Laz whispered with excitement. “It actually worked.”
I was slightly more freaked out; it felt like a dream within a dream. “Betty was dead, but now she’s alive,” I said to myself.
“What about her mangled body,” I whispered to Laz. He shrugged.
“Where is she?” I whispered. He shrugged again.
We spread out, searching the darkened funeral home, then the grounds around the funeral home, and eventually the neighborhood, but there was no sign of Betty Bright. I half-suspected someone was playing a joke on us, but who would do such a devious and wicked thing? After an exhaustive search, we finally gave up at dawn and returned to my house looking disheveled and unglued.
Something was amiss; upon entering, Laz and I were both astonished to find my house had been broken into. We were even more flabbergasted to find that the laboratory entrance had been broken into, especially since the entrance was inside a hallway closet. We both hesitantly made our way down the steps to the basement. I wasn’t sure what we’d find as we made our way down the creaking staircase. As I flipped on the lights, I thought it was some kind of a joke. Again I suspected foul play. There, lying lifeless on our operating table, was the body of Betty Bright. Her body was as mangled as ever and upon checking her pulse we found that she was cold and dead.
A week went by and Betty’s body showed no signs of life. In the meantime, the body had been reported stolen and the police had been by. Again they did not know about the secret laboratory hidden at the back of the closet in front of which we had put a bookcase just in case. We were examining the body, and we noticed that Betty had lost both of her kidneys in the accident.
“Is it possible,” Laz questioned, “that if she had a kidney, she would come back to life?”
I wasn’t sure but I was just so desperate. Again my moral compass normally points more toward the straight and narrow, but that night we broke into the university. If you’re keeping score at home, that makes three breaking and entering’s and a stolen body, although technically we didn’t steal her body; Laz and I naturally assumed she had walked on her own free will, though neither of us had witnessed her dead body even twitter with any signs of life. The biology department was dark, but I knew where they kept
the human organs. We were in luck; there were two kidneys small enough so they might fit inside my Betty. We returned around dawn and immediately set to work transplanting the kidneys inside her. She needed to be stitched up in several places, and then finally we shot her up with more stem cells that we had replicated in our rewired microwave. I held Betty’s cold, stiff hand while we waited. Again nothing. Around noon we both staggered upstairs, having been up the entire night, and passed out cold. The dead themselves couldn’t have woken us.
When I eventually did awaken, Laz was standing over me. He was in something of a panic; frantically he searched for words. “The bbb-ody,” he stuttered.
“Huh?” I had just started to wipe the seraphim from my eyes.
Laz’s eyes bulged and suddenly I knew it had to do with Betty. “The b-b-b-body is ma-ma-missing.” We both flew down the stairs. The body was indeed again missing. We searched much of that day and well into the evening, but there was no sign of Betty’s body. The next day we returned to work, and tried to return to normal (even though there still hadn’t been a funeral because of the missing body).
I zombie-walked through the day like a deadman. I thought many times of Betty but little of the twisted escapades of Laz and myself, and the reanimation of Betty Bright. I came home, slumped onto the couch and flipped on the boob tube. Laz was supposed to come over but I assumed he felt similar and just elected to stay home. We made no contact that evening nor the next morning. It was not until the next evening that I realized Laz was missing. I had called him several times and he didn’t pick up, but I had thought nothing of it. After racing across town, I found the front door to Laz’s apartment wide open, and there seemed to be signs of a struggle, some scuffs on the hallway carpet.
I didn’t dare call the police, although I couldn’t have anyway since I was having a panic attack that rendered me partially paralyzed. This couldn’t be happening; Betty’s body was missing and now my good friend Laz was also missing. The two couldn’t be connected, could they? I was careful not to touch anything while searching for clues. My heart was racing. I popped some anti-anxiety pills and tried to calm down. I couldn’t figure out my next move and there was no one I could tell, so I went to the pub to drown my sorrows in a pint. The bartender could tell I was troubled but didn’t press the issue. I got drunk but nothing eventful happened. My sleep was restless and haunted by visions of Betty: us at the beach, us holding hands, her reaching out to me.
The next morning I went back over to Laz’s apartment. The door was still wide open. I was particularly interested in the series of scuffs on the hallway carpet. Had someone or something dragged him off? Could it have been Betty? After examining them I went into the bedroom. The mattress appeared to be knocked off its frame. As I walked around the bed I was startled at what was lying on the floor near the closet. My heart leapt into my throat and I almost let out a blood-curdling scream. There, beside the bed, was a finger. Either an index or a middle finger. Was it Laz’s? Then I was even more startled because I knew whose finger it was. It was Betty’s finger. It was Betty Bright’s finger. I picked up the finger and pocketed it into a plastic baggy. I left everything as it was and got the hell out of there. Laz being a bachelor, so far no one seemed to notice he was missing, but it was only a matter of time before his family started asking questions. Disheveled and exhausted, I went to work the next day and tried to pretend everything was normal. I grappled with the idea of calling the police. Wouldn’t I be the one who discovers he’s missing, I reasoned. But I still withheld from divulging any information.
It was two days later, the police were back at my door, and apparently now there was an investigation. A girlfriend’s missing body and a missing best friend. It was fair to assume I was the prime suspect. They searched the house but didn’t find the secret laboratory; again I had pushed a bookcase in front of it.
After they searched vigorously, I retired to my laboratory to think. I still had a sample of Betty’s stem cells. I ran some tests on them. With a needle and syringe I shot Betty’s finger with the stem cells. As I had never seen the body up and conscious, I still thought it suspect that we had reanimated her. Still I was fairly certain it was her finger. If she hadn’t gotten up and walked, who had placed the finger there?
The next day the police were back at my door, more of them this time, searching for fingerprints. I froze when they opened the door to the closet. With a rubber glove, a detective touched the bookcase that hid the doorway to my secret laboratory. My tell-tale heart was darn beating out of its chest and I could not help but wonder if the jig was up. My more paranoid side was convinced there was no way they could not know. However, after sniffing around the bookcase for what seemed an inordinate amount of time, they moved on. My heart that was near pounding out of my chest began to subside, and I begrudgingly breathed a sigh of relief as the police got into their squad car and drove off. They were certain to find the laboratory sooner or later and then what could I say? They’d find the finger and I’d be sentenced without trial.
That evening I retired to my laboratory and once again began an analysis of Betty’s stem cells. They were replicating beyond belief, and I once again injected her appendage full of another sample of them. After several uneventful minutes of waiting, there were miraculous results. I could hardly believe the scene that was unfolding before my eyes. I rubbed my eyes, amazed to see Betty’s finger slowly start to move, then wiggle and eventually inch its way along the counter as though it were a caterpillar. If you’re picturing this biologist yelling out IT’S ALIVE like some mad scientist, well, I hardly was laughing or jolly; the truth is my blood had turned icy cold, because it meant somewhere out there was Betty’s body minus one finger, and it may have started a body count.
I was so shaky, I went upstairs to have a drink and to try to calm my nerves. This couldn’t be happening. I hadn’t just seen Betty’s finger wiggle across my examining table like some inch worm. Had I? However, Betty’s finger’s inching was nothing compared to the finale of the evening. It seemed to creep up on me like a nightmare. I had just popped a few anti-anxiety pills and was sipping a strong drink. I turned around when I realized I was not alone in the house. There was clearly another presence. I could hear no discernable breathing per se, but I heard slight movements from the darkened kitchen. At first it was very soft and subtle, just the light shuffling of feet on the linoleum. Foolishly, I called out “Who’s there?” There was no answer, but I knew who was there. I should have known. “Hello,” I called out. I could see shadows dancing against the wall from inside the kitchen and my mind tried to picture what hideously disfigured beast was waiting there. “Hello, Betty, is that you?” I called out again. What answered was not Betty. My blood was as chilly as a mountain stream as I was met with a low moan, a guttural sound like that of something subterranean. If she was alive, it sounded as if her larynx was torn and she was suffering. My glass crashed to the ground, shattering as it hit the floor. My mind filled with trepidation, I was paralyzed for fear of what lay beyond that doorway. There was a rustling and then the sound of more breaking glass, and the kitchen was again empty. I flicked on the kitchen light. The window was broken and there were mud tracks and embalming fluid smeared across the floor. Had the reanimated body of Betty Bright seriously just been in our kitchen? It was hard to believe. I still felt as if someone was playing a sick practical joke on me. For the next two years I slept not a wink and never felt I was unconscious for more than two minutes at a time.
>To be continued
By Joe DeMarco
