Rubatosis: The unsettling awareness of your own heartbeat.
On nights when he could not sleep and could not work, Victor would lay awake in bed, listening to the London night: the link-boys and prostitutes hawking their wares, drunken men stumbling their ways home, the occasional alley cat yowling in the distance. But some nights, there was no sound on Verner Street. Some nights, it was just Victor alone in his bed. His mind would wander… to the creature – Gordon – down below in the basement. To Igor in the next room, soundly sleeping, breathing lightly, curled up so small on the bed like he wasn't yet accustomed to having space to call his own.
But on nights like tonight, his mind focused only on his own heartbeat.
The way it rhythmically ticked the time away. His heart pumped blood in and out. What a wonder, the circulatory system! One could damage a liver, lose a kidney, but to lose a heart…! Oh, as much as Victor believed the brain to be the source of all life, he knew that no creature could survive without its heart. He wondered how many others out there appreciated the ebb and flow of blood, like tides, crashing through their veins, keeping them alive. He marveled at the sound of blood in his ears, the ticking sensation that bloomed in his forehead.
Surely he was not the only one who lay awake at night. Surely he was not the first to discover how glorious a heartbeat was.
But he would be the first to make a heart beat after it had ceased. He would be the first to imbue life into dead tissue.
He drifted to sleep, wondering if ever Gordon would know the powerful, vulnerable feeling of hearing one's own heartbeat.
A question he would never have the answer to.