What am I doing…?
Franken's hands trembled on the gleaming blade as he stared wide eyed down at the sleeping figure sprawled out on the table before him. The expression on his face was so soft, so peaceful, so… trusting…
You know what you must do, Franken.
"S…Spirit…."
Don't back out now Franken…
"What if he wakes up!?"
He won't. You made sure of that…
"When you say it like that…I feel like a monster…" Who was he talking to… who did the voices belong to… were they his…? They had to be… who else could they belong to…?
CUT
His hands tremble and reluctantly, he started to lift up the fabric of Spirit's pajama top. The older boy's skin was warm… soft to the touch… he could feel every toned muscle, every breath his weapon took caused the skin to tighten and loosen with the rising and falling…
RIP
"Spirit…" Franken could feel his eyes blurring over, a hot wetness started to crawl down the sides of his cheeks.
TEAR
His hands were shaking so badly that he knew he would mess up, he would cut something he wasn't supposed to. But he lowered the knife anyway.
DISSECT
Slowly, he trailed the knife down, watching the blood dribble over his stomach, wiping it up with his fingers. It smelled strong, like copper and shame. His shame.
Why am I doing this!?
He made another incision as the tears came faster now. It hurt… he was cutting Spirit but it only hurt Franken… hurt him in his soul.
Stop crying.
"I…" he sniffed as tears mixed with the blood on the sleeping boy's stomach. "I can't!" he lowered his head so quickly the tears went flying. He curled his trembling hands into fists to steady them. He wanted to throw the knife away, to run and get a teacher to tell someone of what he did…
Look
"I don't want to! I don't want to do this anymore!"
Look Franken
He obediently looked up and instantly regretted it. He spun on his heels, falling to his knees as he vomited all over, onto the floor.
Maggots…
Thousands of them squirming in Spirit's body.
"Spirit!" He forced himself to stand, the scalpel in his grip, still dripping with Spirit's blood… crawling with the maggots from inside him. "Spirit… I can fix you…" He started to cut into him, deeply, his bare hands becoming slick with the maggot infested blood.
CUT
"I can make you all better…" he was laughing with his mouth but crying with his eyes. Blood squirted onto his cheek, into his mouth. He could taste it all over his tongue, it tasted like Spirit. So the real Spirit was in here somewhere… just dissected by the maggots and flies, all he had to do… was put his weapon back together again.
RIP
The voice was screaming now, it seemed to be thriving on the actions of his hands as he tore into his only friend's sleeping body, slicing and rearranging.
TEAR
Why was he still crying…? He had to do this… HAD to… Spirit needed him… needed him to fix what was wrong…
DISSECT
His sleeves had turned red with blood, it was all he could smell. The slick feeling on the hot, viscous fluid against his skin was driving him mad with excitement. He remembered… he fucking remembered this feeling! How young had he been? How long since his hands had last delved into the human body to take it apart and put it all back together like a puzzle of the flesh.
FRANKEN!
That voice…? Who was that…? It didn't sound like the one that usually screamed at him…
FRANKEN WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?
Oh… he realized it now… this was a memory… that voice… that was his father… It had been about six years since he heard that voice… but it was just a memory… a memory of his father's words that were ten years old by now.
"I'm dissecting Papa… I'm fixing what's wrong… just like the doctors in our house…" he recited the same words he had used back then, the words that struck his father more deeply than any knife or bullet ever could. The words combined with the images, that made the calm man lose his cool and actually cry. Franken did not think men cried before that day… the day his father broke…
Let her go… Franken, just let her go…
"But I can fix her…"
There's nothing to fix, Franken! She's gone!
"I can fix her head… just like a real doctor…"
Did you at least find her this way…?
"No… she was hanging up when I found her…"
Dear God… Franken…
Why was he having this dialogue with a shade? His father wasn't here at the school. There was no reason for Franken to reason with a figure that was only in his mind… Plus, it brought up bad memories… really bad memories… memories of his first human dissection… of his home… of his dad's tears… of his mom's smile…
Frozen…
Didn't it feel good…?
That voice was back, the one that was guiding his hands through Spirit's body. He wasn't sure how the voice knew about that… after all, the only voice that lived in his head back then was his own. This voice was still kind of new…
Cutting into her skin…
He couldn't argue with the voice. Then and now… it didn't matter- time didn't matter as long as the scalpel was in his hands.
You're a monster, Franken…
She whispered it in his ear, her words dripping like poison. He did not want to listen to that sort of talk. After all he was doing nothing wrong. How else was he going to help Spirit get the maggots out of him if he did not do it himself?
There's nothing there…
He could feel the words crawl into his ears and hum against his ear canal.
Is there?
He was standing perfectly still, gazing ahead, afraid to look down, afraid that the buzzing noise uttered the truth. He would never have done it if that were true. He was HELPING!
LOOK!
His head jerked downward as if on a string and he felt like he wanted to throw up again. It had all been a hallucination… everything… the bugs, the voices… everything but the dissection of his one and only friend…
He had done it… really done it…
He hurt Spirit! Betrayed him.
With shaking hands he started to sew Spirit back together, fixing some of the damage as best as he could manage. He had gotten some things reversed, but for the most part he had managed to put the red head back together the way he had been before it all started. He wished it had been part of the hallucination, that the red head on the table would vanish into a pool of madness or turn into a dog or a cat… something… anything other than stay the way he was… sleeping, that trusting smile on his face as his meister tore into him.
He cleaned up the mess and carried Spirit back to their room, putting him on the bed, where he rolled over, none the wiser.
Franken stood there, hovering over him, staring at his sleeping form with the same horrified wide eyed expression that had consumed his features since the realization hit. He leaned down, his arms were shaking, tears falling onto his weapon's cheeks.
Spirit…
He slid down the wall, sitting outside of his room.
It's like I said…
He put his face in his hands, letting the tears run full force.
You're a monster, Franken…