“Yes.”
“Mother, what is ‘dead’?”
“Sleeping, my darling. One day we must all go to sleep, never to wake again.”
I frowned. “I couldn’t sleep that long.”
I didn’t understand why she laughed at that.
Once inside, I picked up a stray skull and hefted it in curiosity, testing its weight. My mother cried out to me to replace it, for it had been laid there to rest until the Day of Judgement. It could not be separated from its owner except at the cost of his immortal soul. And all at once, I realized what she had meant: That this object was what lay inside my own head, under my face, housing my brain. Some day I would “go to sleep,” and then the skin which covered me would creep away. My bones would collapse in a heap and be left here, grinning under a blue sky, covered in birds’ droppings.
I let the skull fall with a crunch, and was violently ill.
Not long after that, a fever took hold. My life was feared for, and I too believed—wholeheartedly—that I would die. As I tossed in my soaking sheets, I prayed to everyone and anyone I could remember for another chance.
“Twenty more years, Lord. Ten, even. And I will make sure there is no more dying ever, no more of the long sleep. Then dreams will come true, and the world will be full of light.”
Childish, yes. But it held the seed.
* * *
It was as I stared at you, entranced, that the top of the keep burst into flames. I regarded this with amazement, but no thought of danger. You, however, saw and reacted—pulling me to the floor with one quick yank. I screamed, learning pain, and fought to dislodge you, not understanding your intent. Burning beams had begun to rain from the roof. One grazed me.
From that moment on, I have feared fire. Fire can strip me of everything you gave me in an instant.
Whimpering, I allowed you to lead me away.
Behind us, the roof collapsed with a sigh of heat, flames engulfing the laboratory. You shut the door against these sights. You barred it.
And then you led me away to your cousin’s room, where you put me to sleep in his bed.
* * *
From my tenth year on—until the day they struck my name from the medical register—I fought to keep my childhood vow. My aim, and the unashamed way I spoke of it (as well as my need for an ever-steady supply of dead flesh) conspired to keep me an outcast. In England I treated with those grim men known as Resurrectionists to meet my experiments’ demands, which so outraged my peers that they revoked my license.
I was alone then, my mother having died some years before in a carriage accident, miscarrying my stepfather’s child. So I took what money of hers was deemed mine, and went to Russia, the ancient lands of my father’s blood.
And it was here . . . with Ivan’s kind assistance . . . that I finally delivered upon my promise.
* * *
Later, I regained my new-found senses and went in search of you, groping unsteadily along the walls. Luckily, I did not have at all far to go—only across the hall to the adjoining chamber, a room so dark that I stumbled over the threshold before I even knew it was there. Only a chance grab at some handy draperies preventing me from falling. But since my motions thus disclosed you—sprawled half-clothed beneath your bed’s curtains—I soon had more than enough light to see by.
My eyes swept you up and down, each pass adding new detail. Your sharp profile, blurred in a moony cloud of hair. The bleak enamel of your nails. One cyanose nipple, half-revealed under your shirt-sleeve’s shadow. Those long, pale lines—from ankle to hip to out-flung arm and clenching fist, the whole of you sheened with a fine ivory fur—drew me in, hypnotized, like a languorous undertow. By the slow pulse at your throat, the line of fleece shadowing your stomach brought a silent groan to my lips. Before I could quite reason my actions through, I found myself reaching—as gently as possible—to trail a single finger down from throat to nipple, to navel, and beyond.
You turned in your sleep beneath my touch, sighing. And as I traced the curve of your jaw, I felt us both come to full attention.
* * *
On occasion, I felt my apparent lack of every other passion but for an overwhelming need to conquer death severely. It seemed as though my quest to reorder Nature had determined I be punished for daring to flout its rules—to wit, that each time another touched me (my pretty cousin, for example), I would be forever doomed to remain at best acquiescent—at worst, annoyed.
But I was still human. As that sweet flush settling over me like a prickly veil—seeping, with exquisite lack of haste, down through the pressing fathoms of fantasy—testified.
Uneasy at this unexpected sensation’s power, I pried my eyes open and reached for the bedside candle.
Dulled with sleep, it took a second for me to realize that the figure looming over me was, in fact—
—my creation.