October 2021 Microfic! (Whoopsie, late!)

Hey y'all!

I've been kicking up my visual novel project pretty seriously, which has left less time for Patreon stuff, but, nevertheless! I will continue to do my best for y'all!

This story didn't quite turn out the way I originally envisioned, but I think it's nice regardless. Hope you enjoy it too!

~Benn {Doomgender} Ends

Theme: Monster X Monster

Prompt: Frankenstein's (trans) monster is enticed by an eldritch being offering  to stitch their body anew with stranger and more monstrous parts

Suggested by Amelia (Thank you so much!!)

CW:

• References to abuse
• One dead guy who deserved it
• Light body horror descriptions 

~~~

I slowly sway back and forth on the edge of the operating table, kicking my legs playfully. I look around the room curiously, as if taking it in for the first time.

My first memories of this room are of pain. Arcing electricity and burnt flesh and primal screaming. Frustration as I pull at leather straps strong enough to keep me in place. A strange man looking at me like you might regard an insect trying to walk without it’s legs. He told me I was his son.

That was a while ago though. Now the straps are torn and the room is quiet except a gentle dripping sound. I look out at the strange machines, and hum a little tune in their place. I can’t speak easily, but at least I can hold a tune.

After a while, I notice that someone else is in the room too. I can’t see them, but I know they’re there.

“He-llo?”

“Hello there. Can you tell me what happened here?”

“Can-t talk eas-y. It, will ta-ke time.”

“I’ve got as much time as there is.”

“O-kay.”

And I tell a story the the person I can’t see while sitting on the table with the dripping sound behind me.

See, the other day I got out of the house. I wanted to see something besides a small room and testing implements and my father’s dispassionate expression. So I waited until he was busy and broke a window and left. The lights in the distance lead me to town. 

It was a festival. There were bright lights and good smells.

People thought I looked strange, but they weren’t mean like my father.

Someone even gave me food! It was ‘fried’ and it tasted so much better than the nutritional slurry my father made me eat.

Some child asked if he could touch the metal spikes on my back. He asked what they were for and I said catching lightning. He said I was funny.

Another asked how old I am. I said I’m probably twenty or twenty three, but I’ve only been alive for eight months. She also said I was funny. She called me her little brother and I said I’d rather be her big sister and she said okay. That was my favorite.

It didn’t last long enough though. My father came and made a big scene. He yelled at people and found me and threw a big coat at me and told me I shouldn’t have let anyone see me. One of the towns people told him to ‘take it easy’ and he yelled at him too. I didn’t know I could cry until then. I thought some of the towns people might try to stop him, but I knew he had a gun so I told them it was okay and went with him. He locked me in a room without windows.

That was a few days ago. My father came to talk to me a few times since. He told me that I’m a secret no one can find out about until he’s done researching me. He said that no one would understand me and that they’d hurt me. I said he was the only one who had hurt me and he got mad again.

Today he brought me back to this lab. He told me it was another test, so I let him strap me to this table. I asked what kind of test and he said it wasn’t a test. I guess he lied.

My father told me that if I was already causing trouble, I’d only cause more, so he was going to have to ‘reset’ me. I asked what that meant and he said he was going to make me the same as when I first was alive. I asked if I would remember the festival and he said no, that the whole point was to make me not remember it. He said he would reset me monthly from then on, so I wouldn’t go out again.

I asked him not to and he didn’t say anything. I got scared of the machine he was setting up, and I used all my strength and I broke the straps on the table and fell off it and crawled away from it.

He yelled and told me to get back on the table and that’s when I decided not to be scared of him anymore. I told him I was going to leave and he couldn’t stop me. Then I turned away.

I heard him talk to himself. He said it was already too late and he’d have to salvage. Then I heard a loud noise and felt a lot of pain in my back.

He was shooting me! His aim was bad though. I thought about running, but I can’t move that fast and I was worried he would hurt people if I went to town. He seemed surprised that I wasn’t dead, and picked up a big blade and started swinging at me. I held up my hands to defend myself and that’s why I only have one arm now.

“Interesting,” says the person in the room.

“What did you do next?”

Well, I don’t think that I’m proud of the next part, but I don’t feel bad about it either. He had already been so cruel, and now he was going to take me apart and try to make a different person out of me.

With my one good hand, I point behind me at what’s left of my father, crushed against and into the wall, blood dripping slowly down as it’s drawn by gravity.

“You killed him.”

“I, did.”

“Do you think it was the right thing to do?”

“What, is right? I, would ha-ve left. He insis-ted only one, of us could. I didn’t like, be-ing dead.”

“That’s as good an answer as there can be, I think.”

The person moves across the room to look at my father. I still can’t see them.

“Are you, up-set that I killed him?”

The person considers it for a moment.

“I’m not especially happy that he’s dead. See, he owed me for something I gave him. When I came to collect, he had run away with it, hiding in this little town. It took me some time to track him down.”

I consider this for a moment. My father gave me very little that I like, I only hope I’m not also going to inherit his debts.

“What did, he take fro-m you?”

The person I can’t see lifts my father’s hand to check his watch. The watch is fine but the hand comes off.

“Do you think he hated you, at the end?”

“He hate-ed and, feared me. From the firs-t day he saw me. He said, that peop-le would hurt me, but he, was the only one. Who wanted to.”

“That’s because you were not what he wanted to accomplish. He needed a test subject before he felt it would be safe to apply it to himself.”

“What. Did he take, from you?”

“He was scared to die. Lots of people are. But he was particularly shallow, and instead of letting himself be afraid like a normal person, he decided that he had to defeat death.”

“Tell, me.”

The person I can’t see drops my fathers hand and the watch breaks. They turn to me and I feel eyes crawling across my skin.

“He stole your heart.”

Oh. That doesn’t sound good.

“Your father’s original research stemmed from an idea to use stored electricity to restart a heart automatically every time it failed. It was an interesting idea, but ultimately flawed. The human body is in a constant state of decay, and electricity can make it move, but cannot heal it.”

I touch my chest with my good hand and look cautiously in their direction.

“So, he came to, you.”

“He did. I fashioned a doll’s heart. Because it’s not a real heart, it doesn’t work like one. It wasn’t bound by human rules. What he did with it was up to him. He never solved all the problems it was causing in your body, but if he had, he certainly would have killed you and integrated your heart into his own body.”

“Prob-lems, with, my bo-dy?”

“You’re dying. Without your father’s constant medical intervention, your body will shut down within a week.”

Nodding somberly, I stand up and face the person I can’t see.

“That make-s me, sad. I sup-pose it, does-n’t matter. Be-cause, you are here to. Take what is, your-s.”

I can almost hear it think, like a whisper of a conversation at a distance carried by the wind.

“No. Your heart has no value to me.”

The person comes closer and gently takes up my good hand.

“Your father was an arrogant man. He didn’t see any value to things he was responsible for, unless they directly benefited him. He would not create for the sake of making something beautiful.”

I’m confused, but I let them continue. Their fingers feel like countless tiny threads, wrapping around my hand with a strange sort of intimacy. 

“His punishment, were he to betray our agreement, was that he would suffer great misfortune. If he had finished his key to immortality, I would have smashed it out of spite. But since he’s dead and I can’t ask him, I’ll have to guess at what I could do would would anger him the most.”

They still haven’t let go of my hand, but I don’t feel particularly threatened, so I don’t pull away.

“And what, do you thin-k, that is?”

They laugh.

“You, of course. A flawed experiment that never yielded the results he wanted, one which killed him instead of submitting to disposal? It’s already funny enough that I want to take credit for it.”

I tilt my head. Odd sense of humor.

“But, I think the punchline needs one more little tweak. See, if you just die in a few days, it’s like the whole thing didn’t happen.”

“Sorry, but, can you get to, the point? I’ve had. A long day.”

The person releases my hand.

“I’ll fix you. You are made of human meat and polished metal, but your heart is like mine. So I’ll alter your body, repair it, and let you live whatever kind of life you like, forever. That should be sufficient punishment.”

I pause for a long time, idly poking one of the bullet holes in my chest.

“I think, I get the jo-ke now.”

“I’m glad.”

“I don’t know if, it’s fun-ny. But, I do like. How it, sound-s.”

“So, you’ll help me get revenge on your dear deadbeat father?”

“Hap-pily.”

~~~

It feels weird.

Fingers under my skin.

My body is made of scars and stitches and the person who I can now see has gently prised them open and carefully come inside. They stand over my shoulders pushing threads of alien flesh that feel like oil tastes into the seams of my arms and the holes in my back.

“Do you like the way you look? I could change it.”

“I would like, to make my-self look, more, fem-inine.”

“I meant more, are you sure you want to look approximately human. You’ll be able to change that.”

“Oh? Like horn-s, and wing-s, and cla-ws?”

“Sure, or stranger.”

I turn my head to look at them. They look like a hole in the wall made of thread and turned backwards.

“I will. Ha-ve to thi-nk about it.”

I feel my bones being knit.

“Do you like the way you talk? I could make you talk at an average human pace.”

“I will, be immort-al. I will, have plen-ty of time. To get a, sent-ance, out.”

I look down at my legs, which hang in pieces from the table, threaded together by slick black tendrils that coil and shift. It’s a good thing I’m not squeamish, because it’s quite a sight.

“Once I’m done stitching you’ll be able to control your appearance, though you’ll never be able to look truly human.”

“I nev-er have, or want-ed to.”

“I’m done with your right hand, if you’d like to try.”

I hold it up, my arm crisscrossed with scars and attachment points. My wrist is one of those points, as the hand came from someone the arm didn’t. I look at the thick fingers, and will them to be something else.

I’m not sure what a human would see when I try this. But what I see is the stitches come loose, and black threads pour from the gap in skin, wrapping around my palm, my fingers, twisting and shaping my flesh like clay. I have long slender fingers and then violent talons and feathers then coiling tendrils then back to how I started. 

“Interest-ing.”

“If I may ask, what do you plan to do when I’ve finished here?”

I consider it slowly as they work.

“I, would like- to make friend-s with the peop-le, of the town.”

“I figured as much. You do know that, while your father was by and large a terrible man, he was correct that not everyone will be so kind to you as these people. There are other terrible people out there, and they may try to hurt you.”

“Should they, not be, afraid, of me?”

My newfound friend laughs, their simple joy making the air around them ache.

“I suppose you’re right."

~~~

Tomorrow I will leave this house and see what I can make of myself. Tonight, I’m going to break into my late father’s cabinets and make myself my first homecooked meal. 

~~~