The Mad Scientist's Beautiful Daughter
by George Potter
The mad scientist moved in next door a week before Vic's birthday, and, at the time, he suspected that was intentional. Just another way to be evil and disruptive. The truth was that Vic knew very little about scientists, mad or otherwise. Just what he'd seen on the news.
They don't call them mad for nothing, the pedantic part of himself muttered.
And usually their anger is directed at the universe at large. You don't turn people into wolf creatures or re-animate stolen cadavers or tamper with the space-time continuum if you're basically happy and want to share the love.His neighbour turned out to be typical of the sort: small, hunched, wiry. He was draped in a scarily spotless labcoat that bumped and bulged with strange and complex pieces of equipment. His face was impossible to read below his bright, ferocious eyes, magnified by powerful lenses in tortoiseshell frames. His voice grated and tended toward shrill when excited. He introduced himself as Doctor Werner Winterstroch, and swore he was not to be trifled with.
Vic shook his hand dutifully. "Welcome to the neighbourhood, sir."
His daughter was tall, slim, raven haired and fantastically beautiful. Red lips and eyes just as magnified behind powerful lenses. Her frames were jade, though, and her eyes were bright but not ferocious. At most a little wild, a little hungry.
Her name was Natalia and they chatted, leaned against the side of one of the vans, as the movers grunted by with a parade of the strange and unusual. Most of it went into the basement, where the sounds of work could already be heard:
A great twin columned hybrid of Tesla coil and Van De Graff generator, a squat, heavy looking contraption with a base of tightly coiled copper wire. A pair of suspiciously similar booths, just the size for a man, buzzing with flies. An ominously draped human shape on a huge operating table. The form was hulking, massive and obviously missing a head. Waves of wires and tubes emerged from the sheet to drag along the ground.
And more. It kept coming. Some not so impressive, some simply unidentifiable.
"Goofy old crap," Natalia assured him. "Most of it doesn't work," she added in a lower voice. She was fifteen, the same age Vic would be in a week. She wore it well, with a crown of maturity he might never deserve. It didn't help that she was four inches taller than him, either.
"I'm really into old black and white horror movies, and, like, the good anime," she told him, as if imparting privileged information. "And I'll always talk to you if you bring me chocolate cherries. Those ones that are goo inside. I could make myself puke on those. Disgusting pig me could anyway."
The movers dropped a draped package and several huge spiders scurried out. They seemed to be equal parts biological and mechanical. They chased the workers and the workers chased them, ending up with the spiders giving up for the comfortable confines of their box. The movers were a bit more careful after that.
"The worst thing about being fifteen," Natalia said, "is that you totally know what's what and, like, what you are and what you are about, you know?" She said this very carefully, trying to get it right. "But nobody believes you. They act like they just created you and can tell you what you are and how to be."
"Who?" he finally asked.
"Parents," she muttered. "Teachers." A pause. "Friends." She took his hand, suddenly. "You won't do that will you, Vic? You won't be that kind of friend will you?"
"Of course not," he assured her, wishing he knew what the hell she was talking about.
She kissed him on the cheek, said "Thanks!", and suddenly that shrill excited voice was calling "Natalia! Natalia!" and she was off, smiling and waving goodbye.
He rubbed his cheek, feeling the kiss, feeling his blush, and wondered exactly what he had promised.
In the week that led up to his birthday, Vic spent almost all of it with Natalia.
At home or at school she was crushed up against his side, appearing frightened or at least overtly anxious.
A lot of guys were jealous, because Natalia was so beautiful. If they even tried to talk to her, she would shrink away from them. She only had attention for Vic, it seemed.
Alicia, the girl Vic had been close to before Natalia showed up, took it hard but tried to be friendly. This ended after Natalia bit her and threatened to kill her if she came around her boyfriend again.
Vic's parents just winked and indulged the relationship, perhaps because the couple spent most of their time at Natalia's house, in the cavernous and shadowed living room, watching old black and white horror movies on the huge television.
Doctor Winterstroch was no problem, spending most of his time down in the lab, from which the occasional thud and sizzle emanated. On occasion the Doctor himself would drift upstairs, to fix himself a sandwich and a glass of beer, muttering dark German profanity in a hissing singsong voice.
He paid them no attention.
Bride Of Frankenstein was her all-time favourite and she always cried at the end. Once, just as The Monster says the final line: "We belong dead," she paused the disc, took his face in her hands, stared into his soul with her magnified eyes, and said: "That's the most beautiful line in the history of the world."
Kissing Natalia was an odd experience. She kissed slowly, with very little passion but a great deal of determination. There was something disquieting about the way she kissed, Vic thought, but he couldn't put his finger on exactly what.
And she'd go no further. Vic was fifteen and wanted what every fifteen year old boy wanted. He wouldn't get it from her, though she was willing to slowly and methodically kiss him until his lips fell off.
Two days before his birthday, it began to get to him. It built up like air pressure, invisible but powerful. He was being smothered, and was sick of the whole mess. Natalia had been his girlfriend for three whole days and enough was enough.
She clung to him. At school they were surrounded by gossipping girls and boys who plotted to kill him, or at least paralyse him for life. At home she was even clingier and they had reduced their days to a ritual of movies and making out that was already tiresome.
He finally told her, as gently as possible: "I wish you would just loosen up a little."
She stared at him blankly, those huge eyes unreadable. Then she put her face in her hands.
Oh, no, he thought. She's going to cry. Then she's going to get crazy. He braced himself for explosions, for hysterics. He prepared to flee.
But when she lifted her face from her hands there were no tears. In fact, she was grinning.
Not smiling,
grinning.
"I can loosen up," she assured him in a voice he'd never heard her use. "I can loosen way up." She moved towards him.
The kissing was about the same, but Natalia was suddenly willing to go further. A lot further. So far that by the time Vic looked up to see where he was, the idea of breaking up with Natalia was long out of sight.
"The mad scientist is, first and foremost, a scientist. Like all scientists, he seeks answers to the cosmic mysteries. The main difference is that, being mad, he's probably looking for much stranger answers. That's why my father, a mad scientist, is the person I most admire."
There was a smattering of applause, teacher led, as Natalia finished her presentation.
Most everyone was still staring at her in shock.
It was the day before his birthday and Vic was still recovering from the night before, so he wasn't in shock. He was surprised at the change, though -- and quite certain he didn't like it.
Instead of her usual black jeans, long-sleeved shirts and sweaters, Natalia was now dressed to kill teen-aged boys.
Short shorts showed off long pale legs that caught the harsh fluorescents of the schoolroom and diffused them into something warm and soft and beautiful.
She wore a tank top that accentuated her small bust and led every eye to the line of freckles that ran down her cleavage almost to her belly button.
And makeup, which she'd never worn before. Aggressive and sharp, like her changed manner. Now she was all bold looks and slow smiles and winks to invite further discussion.
As Vic watched, she ran her tongue over her upper lip, while staring down Mr. Gilecki. That left the fifty year old veteran teacher somewhat jumpy.
In contrast to her more animated behaviour, she was paler. Her eyes looked dark and tired. He finally cornered her in the hall between classes.
She presented such a vision of desire that he had trouble staying focused.
"This is loosening up?" he asked.
"Yes," she said. "I'm very loose."
Vic felt tired all of a sudden. "Can't you be a little less loose than this?"
She sighed, and looked even more exhausted. "Probably," she told him. "I could try."
He nodded.
"I just want to make you happy, you know," she told him, so sincerely that he was actually touched. He leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek.
He didn't see her the rest of the day and assumed she had went home early, now embarrassed by her clothes. He was feeling more than a little self-congratulatory. It seemed he had the stuff to handle a beautiful girlfriend and not even make her cry. He walked a little cockier the rest of the day.
He straightened up quickly after school. She wasn't waiting for him at home and his parents hadn't seen her.
It took ten minutes for his knock to be answered at her house. To his surprise it was The Doctor who answered the door. The old man was polite and invited him in with clipped formality. Vic wondered if he'd found out what happened the night before and planned on killing or mutilating him is some horrible, probably experimental, way.
"Natalia is very ill," he finally said, quietly, after they'd had a seat.
"Oh, god," Vic said. He thought of her odd behaviour since they'd met. Her sudden shifts in mood and attitude and demeanour. Brain tumor?
"Partly my fault," the old man admitted. "My technique for flash cloning is quite unstable, but I have yet to find a preferable way to get the same results."
Vic nodded, pretending to understand.
"But you have not helped, with your shallow demands." This was said in the lecturing mode of a teacher, rather than real anger.
"Demands?" Vic asked, truly perplexed.
"Loosen up, indeed," he muttered, and Vic felt a twinge of embarrassment. "The clone-flesh is still too adaptive, still too malleable. It will change and burn itself out in the process."
More nodding, more pretend understanding.
"Can I see her, please?" he finally asked, the question he'd been waiting a polite enough time to ask.
The Doctor sighed. "Yes, she has been asking for you."
He led Vic up the stairs and to her room, where she lay propped in a bed. She didn't look particularly ill, only very tired. She looked as if a night's sleep would sort out all her problems.
She smiled when she saw him and reached out her hand. He was surprised when his heart lifted a little at the sight.
"I'm glad you're here, and I hope all of this isn't freaking you out too bad," she said as he sat by her side, their hands entangled.
"I'm sorry I wasn't able to get it right this time. I'll do better next time."
Pretend understanding only goes so far. He let his confusion show. "I have no clue what's going on."
She nodded. "I was afraid of that. I don't have time. My dad will have to explain."
"But..."
"No time," she insisted. "Let's just talk for a while, ok?"
Vic shrugged. He studied the device on her headboard. It resembled a reel to reel tape recorder. He noticed that it was operating, the wheels turning ever so slowly.
"My memory tape," she said, her voice weaker still. "I want the last to be pleasant, nice, just you and I, talking."
This was all very odd to Vic. But he was an adaptable boy. Spurred on by her interest and attention he kept their talk light and joking. In fact, it was perhaps the most interesting and in-depth conversation that they'd ever had.
But it lasted less than two hours. With no warning, she simply closed her eyes and stopped breathing.
Vic just sat there. It felt like a dream, like something he was almost ready to wake up from.
Natalia's pretty skin rapidly turned gray and dry, and began to flake off.
I'll wake up any minute, he assured himself.
Instead of waking up, he got company. The Doctor walked in, sighed over his dead daughter, and clapped Vic on the shoulder.
"Natalia liked you, my boy. Saw something in you. Was more interested than in any fellow in years."
"Sir?" Vic said, surprised by the topic.
"The accident happened when Natalia was fifteen, of course," the shrivelled scientist began, with no fanfare. "A complete loss, the child was dead on arrival. But I managed to save some decent samples."
The Doctor started to putter around the room. Despite his size and shape he proved quite dexterous in his element. Flicking switches, resetting and copying results from well hidden machines that Vic had not even noticed. The last thing he did was shut off the memory tape. Very carefully, he extracted the reels from the recording apparatus. This he placed in his coat pocket. He gave it an affectionate pat.
Vic's guts were crawling a little. He wondered about a father who could be so pragmatic and matter-of-fact about the death of his daughter.
He's probably looking for much stranger answers, he remembered Natalia saying, voice proud. Very true, he realized.
"So you make...Frankenstein things?"
The Doctor looked a little dismayed. "Golems, my boy. Golems." He arched a brow. "Quicker from a sample and no mucking around with dead bodies. The only way to go, in my opinion."
He scanned the room a final time, in case he missed anything. He appeared satisfied.
"Coming?" he asked as he left. Vic followed.
They headed for the lab. Vic felt almost ashamed that his grief over Natalia seemed postponed, replaced by this confusion.
The main door was a huge affair with multiple locks. The Doctor made quick work of them.
"Mind your step."
They descended a long flight of stone stairs, and found themselves in the brightly lit main room of the mad scientist's lab.
It was impressive, Vic admitted. The Tesla-Van De Graff pulsing and arcing in chaotic patterns, the sheer weight of the outdated technology that packed the room like bad memories, the great shape beneath the sheet revealed at last.
It was a large, human shaped plastic mold, filled with a faintly greenish fluid. The much abstracted shape is what made it appear headless.
Floating inside, a beatific expression on her beautiful face, was Natalia. Vic noted how defenseless she looked without her glasses.
"Golems," The Doctor repeated, admiring his handiwork. "The only way to go. Twenty four hours from drop to viable."
Vic found a seat quickly. He sat down before he fell down. His expression told his feelings: blank and confused.
The Doctor nodded in sympathy. "The original memory tape? It was only luck I had that after the car accident. She had made a recording of herself as a joke. She was always doing things like that, always playing with my equipment." The old man smiled with real affection. "I think she hoped I'd run her recording on some awful captured cosmic beastie, or the like. Which I might have, if I'd ever captured an awful cosmic beastie."
Vic continued to stare. As he watched, Natalia's face grew rosier. Her eyes took on an intelligent cast. They looked eager to be filled with sense and memory.
"The bodies last a year, for the most part. If you don't go demanding
change," he said, letting himself slip back into lecture voice for the last bit. His voice softened, and it was the father who spoke. "It's best to let people change on their own, lad."
Vic finally understood something, and nodded.
"I try to keep the memory tapes as complete as possible, so there's a sense of continuance. That's why it was important to her for those last minutes to be pleasant." He looked at Vic for a long moment. "First fellow she's ever asked to do that."
"I know she can be a -- difficult girl," the old man said. He was near tears now and Vic wasn't sure what to think. "The bodies aren't the only things unstable. Her memory and self-image are patched together and somewhat random. The poor thing."
"But that is my fault as well." He pulled himself together with visible effort. "A failure of my own skill.
She is a good girl. This I know. She just needs a good boyfriend who understands her situation." His sincerity was palpable, and Vic was a little ashamed that he had doubted his fatherly love. "And she likes you, as I said."
He turned and hobbled out. "The memory tape takes a few hours," he said, on the way, as if in passing. "I will run it half speed, to try and get a better take. A few hours."
And he was gone, swallowed up in the shadows of his lab.
Vic sighed. He glanced around. The place was messy, books and papers spilling everywhere. Fairly inviting, though -- with recliners and low short couches scattered about. After a few minutes even the buzzing crackle of the Tesla De Graff was homey and comfortable.
He thought about the clingy, possessive Natalia he first met. And he thought about the aggressive, oversexed Natalia she had turned into. And yes, he thought of how beautiful she was, how desirable and lovely. Those great magnified eyes and that sleek and toned body.
He thought of the intelligent and funny girl who was dying. And the new neighbour girl who had chatted with him leaned against a moving van.
He wondered where in the hell he could find anyone better.
And so, with some time to kill, Vic sat down in one of the recliners, grabbing the first book from the shelf at hand:
The Traps Of The Succubi & Other Trans-Planar Parasites. It was actually interesting material. When he finally looked up, a glance at the clock told him that it was after midnight. It was his birthday. He smiled. So far it looked to be a promising year. He wondered what sort of personality she would have this time. He could never complain that she was predictable.
He sighed and returned to the book, waiting patiently on his girlfriend.
THE END
CHAT! 
Jan 7 2010, 02:48 AM
