The Monster’s Corner: Stories Through Inhuman Eyes

Now let it go. Feel it leave you. Feel it being torn from you, like a thousand rusty blades slashing inside of you, yet you still buck and thrust deeper into me, so willing to die.

So willing to be possessed.

So willing to succumb.

And now …

I have you.

Roll over, preacher.

Roll over and hold your wife. She’ll be pleased to know you reached out to her in your final moments, even though she knows you’ve never loved her. She’ll be pleased to know that you had nothing else to reach for.

And all that is left is for me to kiss you …

A soul kiss …

And a breath …

Good-bye.

TORN STITCHES, SHATTERED GLASS by Kevin J. Anderson

A TINY SILVER NEEDLE, sharp point. My large fingers had grown nimble over years of practice and delicate concentration, and I could glide the moistened end of the thread through the needle’s eye on the first try, then pull the strand tight. I completed the first stitches, neat ones, no excuse for clumsy black sutures such as a mortician would use after an autopsy.

The needle dipped into the end of the torn arm socket, then emerged, and I pulled the strong thread through, binding the detached arm to the shoulder. I immediately saw that I should have used white thread, because it would have been less conspicuous. I made certain the ends were neatly aligned and continued my stitching.

I sat in my dim tailor shop in the ghetto of Ingolstadt. Some called the place cramped; I found it cozy. I was accepted here, though I wasn’t Jewish — what religion would accept someone like me? The people welcomed outsiders, understood them, and did not ask awkward, probing questions. It was 1938, and I’d been here for many years. I did not look forward to the day when I’d have to move on again.

I finished stitching around the stump of the arm, then snapped off the thread after tying a solid knot. I turned toward the little girl with rich brown hair and a bright mind who sat watching me. I handed back her repaired rag doll. “There, little Rachel — all fixed.” I propped up the doll, moving both arms with my fingers. “She doesn’t hurt.”

Rachel Schulmann was far wiser than she appeared. “She doesn’t hurt because she’s just a doll, Franck.”The child sounded as if she needed to explain to me. “She’s made, not real.”

“Of course.”

In their insular ghetto, the Jews had been suspicious of me at first — a large man with rough features and a scarred face, like a boxer who had lost too many fights. I kept to myself, showing no warmth or friendship, but posing no threat. I was tired of running, and I had almost given up on humanity because of how people hated things they didn’t understand, how they despised strangers and vented their anger by lighting torches, grabbing pitchforks. But here in the Ingolstadt ghetto, I was patient, helpful, with few needs or ambitions. I became a tailor because I liked to stitch things together, making certain the pieces fit. Ironic, that.

As Rachel took the doll from me, my sleeve accidentally slid up my arm. Normally, I chose to wear bulky jackets with thick cuffs, but now the girl’s eyes widened as she saw the line that encircled my wrist, the still- prominent scars from the old sutures where the hand had been attached — someone else’s hand, someone else’s wrist, the first two pieces in becoming me.

“Does that hurt?” she asked, more fascinated than frightened.

I gave her a quick, reassuring shake of my head. “No, child. It’s just the way I’m made.”

Now that the important work was done — repairing the girl’s doll — I could turn to the other work she’d brought me. Her father, the rabbi, had sent his jacket, a dark old suit that had been carefully but inexpertly patched many times over the years. Given a few days, I could have fixed flaws that the rabbi or his wife pretended not to see, tightened the stitches, trimmed the frayed cuffs and collar. But the damage was more severe, more disturbing. As soon as I looked at the torn fabric at the shoulder, the mud stains, the dried blood, I recalled what had happened. No one could keep secrets here in the ghetto.

The Nazis — three of them — had beaten Rabbi Schulmann in the streets. Laughing, they had pushed him down into the mud, and he had not challenged them, had not cursed them — but he had retained his dignity. Unwise. When the Schutzstaffel district officer, Schein, and two members of his Staffeln decided that the rabbi did not look sufficiently humiliated, they knocked him into the gutter and pummeled him with nightsticks. Some of the people gasped and moaned, helpless, while others watched in horror. Rabbi Schulmann cringed, accepting the blows, and soon enough Staffelfuhrer Schein and his two thugs grew tired of their sport and departed.

“They attack us because we’re different,” the rabbi said aloud to the stunned people who rushed to help him. “To them, we’re easy targets.” He was bruised and bleeding, and they helped him to a doctor.

I had watched part of the incident from behind the smeared glass windows of my tailor shop. The Jews pretended that bad things didn’t happen. They cleaned up all sign of the incident, erased any marks the Nazis left, as if that were the way to survive.

Now I had the rabbi’s damaged and stained jacket. I inspected it, poked my thick fingers through the tear, studied the dried blood. My dark lips formed a smile. “Tell your father I can fix this, Rachel. I promise it will be as good as new by tomorrow evening.”

“Thank you, Franck.” She pulled her doll close to her chest. “When you bring it over, my mother and father would like you to join us for dinner. Tomorrow night?”

“I’d be happy to.” I was genuinely pleased. The people rarely invited me into their homes.

Outside, in the street, I watched the Jews nailing boards across their shopwindows, which had been shattered the previous day when Schein and his entire Staffeln of ten men had hurled bricks at any business they didn’t like — an accountant, a piano teacher, a baker. I knew the shopkeepers had already placed orders with a glassmaker in the city, wanting to repair the windows as quickly as possible. Within a day, the ghetto street would look just as it always had — until the next time. But inner scars did not go away so easily.

How could I not be angry?

As Rachel went to the door to leave my shop, she paused in fear. I heard the rumble of a staff car drive down the street and placed a warning hand on the girl’s shoulder, holding her there to make certain she didn’t run out in full view.

Staffelfuhrer Schein sat in the back of the staff car as his driver cruised slowly down the street; he glared as the people ducked into doorways or drew the shades of their windows. The staff car rolled by, wafting silence along the shops like a hushed breath.

“Why have they come back?” Rachel whispered.

“Because they like you to be afraid, child.”

We watched as the Nazis drove out of sight, but they caused no damage … today.

Ingolstadt was still a small city, far from the rest of the war, with an insignificant Jewish quarter, which made Schein and the few men in his Staffeln all the more desperate for attention. But they wouldn’t get it from me. I had learned long ago not to draw attention to myself if I wished to survive.

When the typical noises began to reappear in the street and people emerged from their shops with a nervous sigh, I let the girl run back to her parents. “Tell your father I’ll bring the jacket tomorrow night.”

In the past century, much had changed in Ingolstadt.

Because I hadn’t come alive the way a normal person did, neither did I age or die as a normal man would. Most children have only dim memories of their early childhood, but I can remember the vivid flood of images and sensations from the moment I opened my dull yellow eyes on the table, surrounded by lightning, to see the face of Victor Frankenstein, my creator … my father … the man who was so horrified by me that he had cast me out.

Victor hated me because I was different, even though he had made me that way. What choice did I have but