Frankenstein's Bastard Child

Volume 2

My mother used to tell stories about young girls going on adventures. Alice and Wonderland was my favorite. My mother told me she was the girl I was named after. Every day she'd play a game or two of poker and as odd as it sounds I enjoyed it.My mother was an intelligent woman beyond her years but looking at her you couldn't have seemed over twenty. She'd always win. She was funny like that, always so dim witted around my father, so lackluster and obedient around him but with me I'd never been able to win. Poker is a game of luck and chance, so the quite obscure truth would seem almost impossible regardless of my age or knowledge of the game but everytime I would only be moments away from victory as it was swept away from me just as quickly with a pair of aces. Her long caramel colored curls fell over her dark chocolate skin, draped in a buttercup yellow dress with white lace fringes. She loved that dress, maybe it was because she had made a matching one for me. I loved to dress up like her, Miss Anastasia Vulcanstein the jewel of my father's eye, whenever he came home the first thing he did was run to his mini bar. Then to his friend upstairs who wouldn't stop screaming whenever he showed up. Theeeen he came to kiss mum good night, it wasn't perfect but she always seemed to smile.

       My father was a different story, I didn't really know him very well but his name was Epstein Vulcanstein, the lead distributor in cosmetic drugs. Most of the information I got about him was from the press so I'd always make all these interesting stories about him and pretend they were real. I remember there was this article saying that a popular actress overdosed on dear old dad's new line of cheekbone enhancing gummies. When I heard that I couldn't help but think daddy's been shoving gummy bears into the cheekbones of actresses. I laughed for practically hours on end thinking of it. He'd never given me anything directly ever except for one, my first ever conversation topic with him. I'm still not too sure on the details but my parents weren't married when I was born so I didn't meet my dad till I was 4 when me and momma decided to move in with him. It had been a few weeks since we'd moved in but I had already fallen in love with a quaint little tree that I could climb and play around in. Momma hated when I did that, said it was unbecoming of a lady but you know said in a non-stuck up white people way.

       But he was there on a smoke break. My father I mean. He had called me down to show me something, he said he had something special for me. A challenge, if I could resemble his fistful of broken machine parts I'd receive a special treat. I spent an entire year working on it. I was so excited to show him but I don't know for certain that he cared.

      "It was a goddamn lighter!" I coughed out practically puking out a lung. Looks like I had fallen quite a ways, definitely nothing anyone could survive. If my blood alcohol level wasn't through the roof I'd probably care more but nada. As soon as my vision came back I began to fumble for my things. "Ok I got my shard of broken glass, the cut on my hand from said glass shard, and of course daddy's little present". The lighter had just barely survived the fall but was still in working order. With a click of the switch it flared to life illuminating what looked a bit like the sterile atmosphere of the infant ward of a hospital.

    "Welp, no point in staying here." I spoke to myself in a drunken stupor beginning to unscrew the ventilation screw not even checking to see if the doors would open. The vents were dank and filled with cobwebs but not completely unmaintained, and couldn't have been more than a few weeks out of use. I should know the rats didn't taste as fresh. The further I got through the vents the more pointless it seemed to keep going. By all accounts I should be dead but this is what I've decided to do with my second chance at life? Stumble around in a dank tunnel, drunk and alone? This is pathetic. But I trekked on anyway.

     "Jeez my watch stopped again, how much longer till the meeting on T-14"? A voice spoke from a metal grate to my left. From what I could see there were two people in white coats talking.

      "About 45 minutes till we have to be there. I know this isn't exactly the most pleasant job but try not to chicken out this time, you're gonna get demoted again".

Wow, spooky.

"I know but is there even really a point to any of this. I mean it's a low effort gig and I enjoy the pay but this can all be done by automated systems just put in some code to pump sedatives into-"

"SHUT UP YOU FUCKING DEGENERATE JELLYFISH, YOU'RE NOT HERE TO THINK YOU'RE HERE TO WORK YOU'RE ONLY HERE BECAUSE YOU WENT TO A GOOD SCHOOL YOU DEAD BEAT DROP OUT!!!"

Daaaaaaamn, bummer. If I wasn't trying to hide I would have offered the loud one a drink.

"I'm sorry."

"Damn right you are. Now come on, let's go, we're needed elsewhere."

They both walked to my left till they were out of sight. Well time to move on. I was able to make that decision just as the grate broke and I fell out of the ventilation system. It knocked the wind out of my chest making me laugh more than any sort of pained noises. But enough of that time to move on. Again. As I moved through the halls moving a lot like a hex bug just smashing into walls and forgetting which way is forward so for every two steps in the right direction I went I took 3 steps in the wrong one. The doors had all these funny labels on them like [Head Neurologist: Jessica Baker] and [Chief of Human Organ Replacement: Gerald Litman]. That last part really hit me. Who the hell names their kid "Gerald". K anyway it's not important what was weird though was that no one was here. I'd been walking for about 15 minutes now and I still haven't run into anyone yet. The building (if the rest of it was designed like this) could've housed thousands of people so why is no one here. My drunk ass couldn't handle the thinking anymore. I needed to be more physically stimulated.

So back into the vents I went.

30 minutes into basically crawling like the rats I just ate in the vents I was getting bored quickly and that was a very dangerous state of mind for me to be in. Until of course Lady Luck smiled at me and granted me a pad locked section of the system. It was still a ventilation grate but everything on the other side looked a lot cleaner, more well kept. Out of sheer curiosity I picked the locks with relative ease. What? I'm an alcoholic street rat and now you're surprised that I can pick locks? Shame. It didn't take long before I stumbled on another interesting grate. After pushing it open I feasted my eyes on the single most worthwhile thing in my life. There's no punchline here. It was a big open room only made purposeful by one singular machine holding something even more intriguing. They looked human but with cement gray skin and missing all four limbs revealing organs that resembled that of a human but the wrong color. Their blood was more of a black than a red and their muscle tissue and bones were mixtures of swampy black and naval blue. Their face was mangled without any hair and a missing eye along with a jaw just hanging on for dear life. Despite every repulsing thing about them I couldn't help but feel my heart drop like someone had openly crucified a puppy. This probably wasn't possible but despite the lack of motion I could swear they were crying. I couldn't tell you why I said this but it just felt so right in the moment almost like I said it more from my gut more than I did from my brain .

"Don't cry you're beautiful"

*BANG*