Souls of his Feet

Souls of his Feet

I am not Dr. Frankenstein, but it was a shot at reanimation. I ordered the body parts from China. You can do that now, you know. I found out about it on the Internet. I thought about bribing college kids and having them steal me a couple of cadavers, but when I found out about this Chinese thing, well, it wasn’t that hard. I recieved the body in parts: head, an arm at a time, couple of mismatched legs, a torso and so on.

I’ve studied for years and practiced on animals for the most part. I’ve been successful for brief periods of time. My past creations have sputtered a breath or squirmed briefly about. I knew reanimating a human would be the greatest contribution to humanity.

Once I formulated the body parts and got the artificial heart working, my masterpiece finally came alive. I felt the divine elation that Dr. Frankenstein would have felt, had he been real. It’s alive! It’s alive!

My creation was clumsy and awkward, but still he roamed non stop. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t get away to run an errand or go out to eat a sandwich. He wanted to follow me everywhere. Constantly I heard the thunk, thunk, thunk of his heavy steps. It was hard to get any work done at all. I’d grown weary of even looking at him. He was so curious about everything.

I needed to be able to analyze his progress before I released my papers on reanimation. I had to document data and a submit a responsible study before I could let people set eyes on him.

Without my knowing, he followed me out to the mailbox one day.

“Do you have company, Fred?” my observant neighbor asked from her driveway.

“Oh, um, yes, my cousin. He’s visiting.”

"He looks a little pale. You should get him out into the sunshine. It’s a beautiful day.”

“He’s been ill. That’s why he’s staying with me.” Oh yes, Mrs. Johnson, I’ll take the creature who I made with the body parts from dead humans to the beach. Thank you.

He started off down the street during that brief encounter, but I steered him back and quickly shoved him back through the front door. It was getting ridiculous.

I had very important errands to attend to so I decided to nail those blasted feet to the wooden floor in my study.

Within several hours I returned from my business. I was unable to find my creature, but his feet were where I'd left them, still nailed to the floor.