The Beautiful Ugly Beasts
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By Stephanie Anne Bacon
This book has been published under Creative Commons License 3.0. The following work may be shared from person to person for any purpose other than commercial gain. Reproduction or adaptation of this work is prohibited except by consent of the author.
Cover Art and Illustrations by Stephanie Anne Bacon
Published in 2016 by Trabex Books
For Sierra and Clayton, thank you for everything.
November 12th, 1859
To Dr. S. T. Coleridge
Dublin, Ireland
My Dear Coleridge,
I hasten to write a few lines which I hope to get by some means into the Bag before the Irish mail is closed. I desperately seek your help in this delicate matter. It concerns a friend of mine, Doctor Sampson J. Ender. He is a brilliant alchemist, awarded by Her Majesty herself for his accomplishments. I fear he has gone mad. He has been holding on to some blasphemous theories and I believe he has made them into a reality. I need your professional opinion. I will do my best to transcribe last night’s events exactly as they happened.
I had made the decision to visit Ender despite the bitter unpleasantness of the winter night. (You recall our unkind London winters don’t you my friend?) The cobbled roads were sheathed in a layer of ice and the promise of snow was not far off, one could taste it with every biting intake of breath. I would have taken a hansom but no decent folk were to be found at that time of night. I was very glad to see the tall, exquisitely crafted gates of Flamel Manor, let me tell you! I pounded the door but no one replied. I was surprised to find that in fact they remained unlocked. I already harbored a good amount of apprehension, (we both know what an eccentric Ender can be.) I hadn’t heard from him for nearly two weeks however, and I was determined to have an explanation. I made my way down into the underground laboratory, for surely that was where I would find him.
Ah! Coleridge, if only you had seen it! The laboratory was in utter shambles! It was as if a pack of rabid hounds had been set loose! There were papers scattered everywhere. Shards of broken glass and bottles had been strewn about carelessly. Chalk scribbles decorated the walls, the floors, and every blank surface! All appeared to be of a mathematical equation the likes of which I had never before witnessed. I passed through this first room and into the far one. It was there that I saw Ender. He was on his knees with a bit of chalk madly sketching out alchemic formulas.
“Ah Will!” He addressed me without even looking up, “Come looking for me at last have you?”
“Ender,” I replied, “No one has seen anything of you for weeks! I was very worried.”
He seemed to be greatly amused by this. Still, he never once looked up from his work. Instead he laughed. “Who needs sleep? Come, you will have a front row seat for the greatest scientific event in human history!”
Naturally I was shocked by this. I was aware of course that he was seeking to accomplish that which is forbidden in the science of Alchemy: the transmutation of a human. After the horrific death of Elias Von Huntsburg, in which the poor man somehow managed to turn himself inside out, I knew that he had been obsessing over the man’s failed theories. I never for a moment thought that he would consider making them a reality.
“Ender, please stop it!” I implored, “You’re mad to continue this project! I won’t be a part of this perverseness any longer!”
For the first time since my arrival, Ender stood up and looked at me. He is a strikingly tall man in his fortieth year with a pale, handsome face and thick black hair which he always keeps carefully sleeked back. His eyes are a bright, piercing blue. At that moment they blazed almost red. His tone, when he addressed me, was uncommonly cold.
“You’re welcome to leave, Will, but refrain from the theatrics. I don’t appreciate them.”
I was stubborn. He was and still remains one of my most cherished friends. I could not bear to see him destroyed by his own arrogance.
“Please tell me you’ll give this up.” I balked. “We alchemists have tried for years to create the perfect human life, playing God and mimicking almighty power, but we’ve always failed! That’s why it is forbidden! There is no way to copy such a complex thing! Not without throwing away your own life. Please don’t do this.”
I could tell that I was aggravating him. He paced back and forth like a caged beast ready to pounce. At last he turned his back on me and said, “There is always a way.” He lit a lantern and carried it with him to the far end of the room. Previously it had been engulfed by shadows so I was unaware of what it held. Above us loomed an enormous structure hidden by a dark cloth. A faint, ethereal light shimmered from beyond it.
“What is this?” I asked. Ender did not answer. Instead he tore away the fabric to reveal a gargantuan cylindrical tank full of what appeared to be green water. It was thick and clouded. I fancied that I could see alien shadows pulsating somewhere inside. Something living lurked in there.
“Elias’s younger brother just buried him. Closed coffin. The poor boy hasn’t a soul in the world now.” I told him in a daft effort to probe his humanity.
Ender gave a sigh of impatience. “Elias was an overambitious fool. His formula was always off, I told him so many times. Patience never was his strong suit.” As an afterthought he added “Stupid man.”
“Perhaps ambition is your downfall as well Sam,” I said.
“Nonsense.” He grunted.
“I beg you to listen to reason. Elias’s brother buried him, don’t make me bury you. I won’t do it. Destroy this monster!” I heard myself shouting near the end. I couldn’t help it, Coleridge, I was concerned for him!
“You won’t be burying me. I wouldn’t allow it.” Ender dropped to his knees and began to rapidly sketch with chalk upon the concrete. With each alchemic symbol he formed he grew more excited. “I grow tired of your whining, Will. Either stay and help or leave me to my work.”
I fell silent. What else could I do? All my urgings fell on deaf ears. How long had we been friends I wondered? Far too many years it seemed. Ender is a genius; perhaps one of the greatest scientific minds of our generation. But he is seized with impossible theories. He lives by the law that nothing is ever certain. Anyone who boasts otherwise was a challenge to be overcome. I admire him, Coleridge, but I also fear for him.
I watched as Ender continued to draw, oblivious to anything and everything but what was in front of him. His transmutation equations were unfinished. As he continued to add to them I could feel the circles tingling with their own energy. They were like raw nerves, reacting to his alchemic potency. Even now, after so many years of studying the science of equivalency, I could easily tell that the sight of it still filled him with awe. He had seen a fair piece of the world, been witness to the Earth’s bountiful wonders and its unspeakable horrors on every continent, but nothing got his blood going like what was present before him in this dark underground basement. This was as close to divinity as man could ever come.
Alchemic equations finished, Ender straightened up and tossed aside the chalk. He wiped his hands on his shirt as he approached the capacious tank. A wooden ladder had been set up against its side and he climbed up to the top to where the receptacle was sealed shut with a thick titanium lid. A small metal trap door allowed the Alchemist to plunge both his hands into the warm greenish slime within. For several minutes he slowly rotated his arms around the inside of the tank as if drawing something towards him. At last he stepped back with a grunt of satisfied exertion. From within the depths of the structure he pulled a large armful of what looked like a clear, gelatin sack filled with water. He cradled it with a new mother??
?s gentle touch as he made his way painstakingly down the ladder. With the utmost care he laid his burden out over the alchemic circles. The glossy luster of the thin outer coat looked to mesmerize him. He stared at it as if it was the loveliest thing he had ever beheld. From within the sack something moved and I saw the blue in his eyes light up.
“You’re almost ready,” he breathed a bated breath. I almost couldn’t hear him. I doubt if he was even aware of my presence.
As if by magic a silver scalpel appeared in his hand. He pricked the vibrating assemblage with its tip. It reacted to the intrusion with an erratic tremble as if it were in pain. He applied greater pressure to the scalpel and a wide seam appeared in the pulpy mass, oozing a saliva-like substance. The smell, let me tell you, was absolutely atrocious. It reeked of rot and bile. Ender did not appear to have noticed it.
“The sperm of a man sealed in cucurbit for forty days inside the heated womb of a horse,” he muttered, “until which time it comes alive and begins to move. Transparent, but with the form of a man,” Ender twisted the scalpel away from the cut in the womb and sliced a deep gash in his own arm. It was with a fevered heat that he gasped at the pain. A dreadful smile curled across his face as though he was actually enjoying the wretched experience. A spray of crimson sprang readily to the surface and he dripped it over the embryonic creature before him. I knew then that there was not an amount he would not spill for the sake of this birth. As the blood trickled into the cut of the transparent equestrian organ it was instantly absorbed into the collection of cells and members that were slowly starting to form.
“Nourished for forty weeks on the blood of the Creator, a child will be born as if from a woman, but the child shall be like a god.”
Inside the womb the blood thrashed and the faintest outline appeared, underdeveloped and primal.
I saw the most ghastly expression appear on his face.
“’And the child shall be called ‘Homunculi.’”
It was at this point, my dear Coleridge that I was unable to watch any longer. I was overcome with the unnaturalness of what had transpired. I do not know if the thing he created what a Homunculus or not, but I do believe that it is a being completely alien to this world. It does not belong here. Its very structure rejects our environment.
I am boarding the next train to Dublin, my good man, and I would be most grateful if you could meet me at the station. Perhaps I could persuade you to accompany me back to London so that you might speak to Ender yourself. I know you have written a good many papers on the subject of creating human life through unnatural means and he might very well respect the word of a man of your standing more than mine.
I must stop, believe me your most affectionately and truly
William Parke
“There is love in me the likes of which you've never seen. There is rage in me the likes of which should never escape. If I am not satisfied in the one, I will indulge the other.”
-Mary Shelley, ‘Frankenstein.’