Rattlebones (bxbxb)

Electric Eyes

I'm attaching the clamps to Eugene's ears when Iggy comes back into the room. 

"Oh, I thought you were going to put clamps on his nipples," Iggy tells me, sounding relieved. 

"Igor, this is a science experiment, not a cheap porn." I grimace and attach the second clamp. It seemed pretty unnecessary to nipple clamp Eugene when the brain was really the thing that we wanted to get going. "I'm going to need a heart monitor and a couple of things from upstairs," I say, and glance up at Iggy, who's taking a selfie of himself and holding up the peace sign. 

Panic shoots through me and I leap across the counter, slapping it out of his hands. "What the hell are you doing!?" I yell, and the phone goes skidding across the floor. 

"Bro!" Iggy whirls around, his mouth open. "You did not just do that!"

We both stare down at the phone, the screen flickering where it had shattered. 

Iggy slides his hands into his hair and exhales through his teeth. He's pissed, I can tell. "Do you know how many months it took me to buy that phone?" He growls at me. "Do you know how many shifts I had to work at Mcdonald's?"

I feel like shit for breaking his phone, but I'm also relieved. "We can't risk someone seeing Eugene. We could both go to jail, Iggy." I explain to him. "I'm sorry, but it's true." 

Iggy grabs his backpack. His hands are shaking because he's so angry with me. "I'm done with your freaky experiments and all your weird gothy clothes, Brown." He murmurs, "I would tell you to go die, but you'd enjoy that, wouldn't you?" He shakes his head at me and then walks off, leaving me standing alone in the barren kitchen. 

"Iggy!" I shout after him, and drop the clamps, quickly starting after him. "Wait!"

I follow him back out into the hallway. "Look, I'm sorry about your phone. I'll find the money to buy you a new one, okay?" I stand there in the doorway and watch him hesitate. As much as I enjoyed being alone in the darkness with my eternally damned soul, I didn't want to do this alone.

Iggy glances at me and bites his lip, which is horribly attractive. How come when he does it he looks like a Vogue model and when I do it, I look like I just stubbed my toe?

"It's not just the phone." He replies finally. "I'm just worried that this is going to go wrong. I saw enough bad horror movies to know how this goes. We could end up with a monster on our hands. And then what? Huh?" He shifts his backpack on his shoulders. 

"Then we deal with it," I reply quietly. "This is for Eugene, remember?" 

"Right." Iggy closes his eyes for a moment. "You still owe me a new phone." He sighs and then comes back over to me. "Come on, let's do this before I change my mind." 

I lead him back into the kitchen, but when we get there, the table is empty and the clamps are lying there without a body

My heart drops into my stomach.

Iggy comes up behind me and stares. "Did you move him?"

"I can't even lift him. How would I move him?"

I go over to the table and peek underneath it to see if Euegene somehow rolled off while we were gone. Maybe some body spasms had made him move or something.

Iggy starts checking the cabinets and under the sink, as if Eugene had magically squeezed himself into them within the five minutes that we were gone. After that, we spend another ten minutes searching the house, turning furniture over.

He's not anywhere.

I stand up in the living room, sweat dotting my forehead. "This is impossible. He's supposed to be dead!"

"No shit!" Iggy throws up his hands. "Now what do we do?"

I stare over his shoulder, out the window, and suddenly spot a very naked Eugene Wilder stumbling across the yard, towards the woods.

He's alive. He's alive.