My Monster (Part 1)

The following is a completely, utterly true story. I didn't even really bother to change the names. 

Part One: 

A misunderstanding here, a misinterpretation there, and suddenly I had some time to myself. Not much of a severance package, really... or going-away party for that matter, but, all-in-all, that's understandable. At least the charges were dropped.

So, I puttered around the house for a few days, decompressing, mostly in the garage. Then, after a few false starts, I built a 6' 2"  monster out of unused and discarded body parts I found around town.

It's right handed, which surprises me.

Maybe technically it's not a monster, and  it seems to get upset when I refer to it as a one, but I honestly don't think it qualifies as human either. It and I will have to learn to disagree on that one, I guess.

Most of it, almost all of it, was built from former townsfolk. We have one hospital, some not very good doctors, and 17 funeral parlors. Things get misplaced. No one looks too hard for them either. 

Ok. Sometimes you have to improvise, and if you need, oh, part of a cat, to make things fit, you use part of a cat to make things fit. But it's human where it has to be. I used human parts. Mostly.  For the important parts, anyway. 

People usually think I'm talking about the heart when I say that. I'm not. Part of its heart is  a chicken breast and cable ties. Its liver and eyes are definitely human. Those are surprisingly hard ones to make.

And while we're at it, yeah, I could have just reanimated a body and called it a day. But I wanted to customize it, make it unique, be godlike. What's the point of just raising the dead and set them walking around? What's different from a week ago? That's why I  was picky with the parts. I'm an artist not a mechanic.

 That attitude made for a rough beginning. It's not a very well-equipped garage, and I'm not a seamstress or a "professional" doctor, but I did my best.

 If you think it's easy breathing life into an inert figure composed of February through June's obit subjects, especially with the tools I had to work with, well, try it yourself.  Things fall off. Things don't fit. It's not really plug and play. 

Anyway, I built it, so I'm its god, right? I don't really require him to call me God, but I think we should both acknowledge an uncomfortable truth. 

"You owe your existence to me," I tell it. 

It retorts, "Do not," so suddenly it's like it's just ready for an argument. 

Apparently, I'm just some guy who made it, and I should go away and do something else now.

It had  a rough start, sure. The first time I got it sewn together, it wouldn't start living. It just stayed a big lump of gunk.  It was starting to seem like a big waste of time. I got frustrated, swore at the universe, yada, yada, yada. 

So, it was a long day. At its end,  I unplugged everything, then I cleaned up, because I knew I wouldn't feel like it in the morning.  I had all these excess body parts laying around. I know I should have incinerated them or something, but I just stuffed them in some garbage bags and put them by the curb. Garbage day was coming up.

But then, just as I was ready to call it a night, I figured things out, plugged everything back in, and blammo…Life.

Boy, did I feel stupid.  Really, I was already thinking of my next project. Bookcases maybe. Or a beef garden. Something simple. But, fortunately, or at least I thought it was fortunate, things came together. 

It just lie there for a while. Blinking.  So, far, you know, it's not really seeming worth the effort. I mean, I'm not sure what I was expecting, maybe some glowing, colored ether indicating the divine presence of a new life, but no. Just blinking. 

"Well?" I asked. 

Its eyes move, then its head until it sees me. It blinks again.

"What is happening?" It asks after a while.

"Oh, I just built you," I tell it. "Gave you life. Brought you into existence, you know. ...Are you planning on getting up soon?"

It doesn't answer but raises its hand to its eyes. Moves its fingers. It really has no sense of urgency about things. 

"All right, you just lie there and do that, I guess. I'm going to bed. It's been a long day," I told it and headed inside. But maybe I was being too impatient, I thought, so I went back to the garage. "I think there's some cereal in the kitchen. Just rinse out the bowl when you're done. Otherwise, we'll get ants. Well, good night."