Revenge of the Bride of the Bride of Frankenstein

by Clayton Overstreet 2

The bride of Frankenstein's story continues... .

The Revenge of the Bride of the Bride of Frankenstein

By, Clayton Overstreet

Beauty is only skin deep. But chicks dig scars.

A man named Frankenstein in an ancestral castle of the same name was a doctor, alchemist, and genius. He fought to overcome death. He succeeded, but only just. The thing he created was hideous and rejected by its creator. It rampaged and the lab was destroyed. Horrified that the creature had apparently escaped the people searched for it but never found it. And at the same time Frankenstein too disappeared.

Somewhere in the world the monster, nigh immortal despite its flawed creation, roamed the wilderness. Abandoned and alone. Resentful at being discarded. It would be years before he returned to face his maker and they both eventually ended up in that icy wasteland at the top of the world.

In the meantime the good doctor's experiments did not end. He went on the road, as a traveling doctor in an old gypsy wagon he rebuilt into a portable laboratory. From which he could begin his experiment anew and keep on the move, far away from anyone who knew or suspected his intentions. No more worries about a lack of materials or being caught returning night after night to the same cemetery. Instead he could move from place to place, leaving the curious authority figures and other fools who would interrupt his great work far behind. It would only be later, he decided, tat he would return to his ancestral castle and show those he left behind that his creations were masterpieces of science rather than abominations that spit in the eye of God.

What scientist would be satisfied stopping after such a near success? He refined his skills based on what worked before. Worked harder. Was less sloppy and went from trying out his theories to perfecting his technique. He thought of his creation this time as less an experiment than a work of art.

Ostensibly he was doing it for his lost creation. To build it a mate. But as piece by piece it took form, it would be impossible to imagine that this beauty was for anyone but himself. The tiny stitches. The careful choosing of every piece based on beauty. Was it any wonder that the man would fall in love with his creation?

He made two mistakes. The first was possibly the most horrible. No longer was he satisfied with using pieces stolen from the cemetery, the cold houses where they kept the fresh dead, or even from places of execution. Not for his perfect creation. Not after seeing the hideous monster he created before.

No, our friend Frankenstein was obsessed now with the perfection his last experiment lacked and for that he needed to pick and choose the parts and he needed them to be fresher. Hewn from the flesh of the living. Well the formerly living. He watched and examined, picking out the perfect pieces. The long lithe arms of a Chinese woman he spotted at a railroad worker's camp. The lips of a French whore. The beautiful green eyes of a sailor's wife, and the buxom chest of a young mother.

It was not murder. Not to one who had mastery of life and death. In fact if they knew what he had planned they would thank him. He was making them perfect. Anything not used was just dross. Slag. Leftover bits that even God could not perfect, but that Frankenstein the genius would. The good parts would be up and around again soon enough.

The other mistake was that the genius's vision never went beyond the external. As the saying goes beauty is only skin deep. Internally, what did it matter where the pieces came from, so long s they were healthy and functional. The heat, lung, liver, miles of veins and arteries… even the brain. Even the brain, stolen the very night of a hanging from a young gentleman who had been somewhat less than monogamous with some of the ladies about town to the point that he was about to be the father of nearly a dozen children then the angry fathers of his paramours finally caught up to him.

One could even argue on the disposition of those poor souls. Normally released from the body after days in the ground or cremation. Instead preserved, at least in part, inside the flesh prevented from deteriorating by the doctor's admittedly brilliant methods. The last thought in each and everyone the fear and anger directed towards the one who had stolen their lives and their bodies.

Frankenstein set forth to finish his creation. Stitching the pieces together with the delicacy of a grandmother sewing a quilt for her beloved grandchild. No slapdash methods as he had used the first time, eager to prove his theory and less careful than a barber-surgeon with saws and tar working on gangrenous limbs. Unwilling to risk the hideousness that came before, for he had come to lust for his new creation, even love her. Certainly he intended to bed this newly minted masterpiece. Plus that last nagging doubt about dismembering so many women could only be soothed if he indeed brought them back, so he could no afford to make the same mistakes.

The monster had not been his first attempt after all. Merely the first to rise from the slab.

The second had to be better. Like Eve to Adam. Woman to man. The more perfect beautiful version of the original.

Then on a dark and stormy night for the second time, lightning flashed and Frankenstein, ecstatically declared, "She's alive! She's alive!" On top of a tall mountain with a lightning rod Frankenstein one again bestowed life on the dead.

Unknown to him the thing on the table as it stirred a d looked down at its still twitching smoldering naked body had one thought, though even it did not completely understand the words. "I'd prefer you call me 'it'." It faded away along with the last pieces of the body's previous owners and her mouth could not articulate the words.

This one was much better than the first. She learned fast, going from a mewling confused child reborn in a patchwork body to an articulate and graceful woman. She did not limp or groan. She moved with the grace of a cat and seemed to understand so much so quickly. It was like nursing an amnesiac back to life more than trying to train a child as the last one had been. The doctor had succeeded this time beyond his wildest dreams.

So it was only really a surprise to him as he finally came to her one night in the room he had rented at a local inn, that she awaited him naked in her bed with a knowing grin, that she took a shovel from among the sheets and promptly used it to knock him over the head.

Any other man would have been dead, but like any decent mad scientist Frankenstein had naturally experimented on himself. He had been expecting a long life with his bride after all, something he told her constantly. And like many a man he was unsure exactly what he had done wrong. He had created her. She should have been grateful. Obedient. The perfect woman. Because like many men his idea of perfection was basically a whore who's only fee was the joy of satisfying her man and serving her man in every way. He had built a woman when what he really wanted was a golem made of flesh.

He certainly never considered himself a rapist or that his beautiful perfect woman would see it that way. That she would listen to him muttering about the future, which included plans to keep fixing her, changing anything that displeased him over time. That his idea of perfection was to her a horror story. A lifetime of being nothing but interchangeable parts used for his enjoyment. Destined to never be quite right in the eyes of her maker. No different than his first abandoned accomplishment. Possibly destined to be abandoned just like the thing he called a monster.

Maybe just one of many to come.

When he left the inn his cart was gone as was his woman. Ironically he was forced to stagger out into the world, not unlike his first creation. He would continue his work and eventually return to where he came from and one day face off with that first attempt as they perished together in the icy wastes.

His second creation though, had other plans and another destiny.

McGinnis's Bar, Brooklyn 1914

The room was filled with women. It was supposed to be a basement. A cellar

Where they stored excess booze from the building up top. Instead it had been converted into a second bar, smaller and with a more exclusive clientele. Since Prohibition was not a law yet, drinking was pretty much the only legal thing going on there. What was not on the books as illegal was still something the average cop would take his club to the patrons for doing and no judge would so much as reprimand him.

Women gambling.

Women kissing.

Women in men's clothing.

Interracial couples.

Married women, rings on their fingers, flouting everything marriage stood for.

Smoking, drinking, open and public displays of sexuality. All very good reasons the place, while not officially titled, was known as Abominations. A den of debauchery, at least to the outside world. A place of freedom for those who were members of their select little club. Where they could indulge in things denied them whether it was forbidden loves and lists, to respect and dignity. Where they could do the things women were denied that men took for granted. Among them were not just cross-dressers and beautiful women out to explore their sexuality. There were women with black eyes and bruises delivered by their husbands, either to keep them in line or just on a whim because it made them feel powerful. The drink to help them escape the pain and buck up their courage, as they contemplated whether they could leave or if they would go back for another round.

Could go either way.

Sitting at the bar in a special seat was a very tall woman with short white hair with a single black streak down the left side, slicked back. She looked young, beautiful despite the color. She wore a pinstripe man's suit that was perfectly tailored for her nearly seven foot frame. Her hands had delicate soft looking fingers that were at the same time were scarred and her left was strangely a different color from her face or other arm. Almost Asian. She wore makeup that made her beautiful, but rumor was that under it if you got close enough were more scars. Her face was perfect but if you saw those little imperfections it was like it had been pieced together, they said. Her form under the suit curvaceous and enticing. Like she had been made to be alluring by some mad genius.

There were other rumors. That she had done a lot to things to get this place. Including murder. That the mob backed off. That's he shrugged off bullets and could crush a man's head like a grape and that in the throes of passion her thighs could do the same to a lover. Accidents happened.

She was currently alone, though she had no lack of potential lovers despite the rumors. They called her Tina, no other name. She watched the crowd around her like a lion watched his pride. To her it was all black and white, her eyes colorblind. She often wondered over the last few decades if the eyes she had been given had always been like that or if it was a side effect of Frankenstein's experiments. It had taken her many years to even realize that something was off with how she saw the world and by then her would-be groom (she had never thought of him as her father) was long gone.

She had lots of questions like that. Tina knew what she was made of. A reverse Humpty-Dumpty creation, put together by a madman who succeeded where all the kings horses and men had failed. An unscrambled egg. She had all of her maker's notes and equipment and he had drilled it into her head. Oh yes, the brain he had given her worked well, better than anyone she had ever met. Male inside, female outside.

She traveled far and wide and made a bit of a spectacle of herself as a strong woman. Financing herself with arm wrestling and if a man tried to stiff her or rape her or steal back his money, often a three, she was only too happy to let him drag her off to some dark secluded place from which she would emerge with whatever other valuables he had on him and he would not emerge at all. It was quite lucrative.

Tina was a bit of philanderer, as the previous owner of her brain had been. It came easily and there were plenty of other women she connected with, who either desired other women or also felt like men on the inside. In Europe it had been easy, if you were careful. Germany. Spain. France. So much less prudish about two women being together on the sly than the British Empire or their American cousins. Go to the opera house and you could see women flirting across the audience using special codes with their fans. Entire erotic conversations held in plane sight of everyone in the room.

Tina figured them out easily and soon entered the secret societies and underground clubs where she was welcome with open arms and smooth thighs in the dark.

Unknown to her she while out with a rather erudite young countess in Paris Tina had stopped to give a homeless man a few francs before walking off, barely listening as he growled a thanks. Had she bothered to look at his face she might have recognized the scars. Similar to her own if somewhat larger and more noticeable.

Now decades later she ran her own in the heart of a bustling American city. Women flocked to her. Poise. Strength. Money. Power. Beauty. Reputation. Sexy scars and a thick Romanian accent that drove ladies wild. She had it all. Admittedly it would have been nice if Frankenstein had seen fit to give her a few more boy parts, but she supposed that was never going to happen. Besides she did quite well with what she had.

She caught the eye of a woman who was crying into her beer a little further down the bar. The woman had a black eye, a cut lip, and the joint of one finger, long healed, was still slightly bent. Anatomy was one of Tina's passions for several reasons and she noticed these things.

Sidling over with swagger she put a hand on the woman's shoulder and did not let go even as she tried to flinch away. The woman struggled a little, but it was not in her. Suddenly she sagged into Tina with cries as around them others pretended politely not to notice. Though many shared sympathetic or understanding looks. The world had, in one way or another, kept them all down. Fists were only one weapon in the arsenal. Like Frankenstein there were always plenty of other people who wanted to cut out pieces of a person and replace them with parts they liked better.

"I can get you away from him," Tina whispered. "Another city. Another country. You can start over."

The woman saw the scars on the hand holding her shoulder, looked up into those understanding green eyes and caught glimpses of the faint lines cut into her face and neck, disappearing under the suit. Tina knew what she was thinking. Wondering what Tina had been through that she could be so sympathetic. When even her close friends had not been. He was after all her husband. And nobody else had ever heard that little voice, a child inside her heart screaming, "Why won't anyone help me?"

Tina had a knack for it Somehow she understood all kinds of different people. Maybe because she was ten or twelve very different people all rolled into one.

The woman fainted with relief into Tina's arms. The giantess turned to the bartender. "Send for Raphael have him take her to one of the rooms upstairs. Nobody is to know where she is and she is not allowed to leave. She may try to run back to her husband. Do not let her. Have him tie her up if necessary. The only way she is leaving this place is on a one way nonstop train to the west boast with a single bag of clothes from our reserves and enough money to get started. She will either board that train or I will stuff her ass in a trunk and ship her as cargo."

The bartender nodded her head and smiled, reaching back for the bell rope hanging behind her. This was not the first time.

As the unconscious woman was carried out another lady, in a rather expensive silk dress, came up and linked arms with Tina. "That was wonderful what you have done for her. Reminds me of when I left my husband. I stole his grandmother's silver and never looked back." She purred. "Would you like to see some of the scars he left behind on my back? I hear you have quite a few of your own."

Tina smiled. There was more than one room upstairs. Slipping a hand around the woman's hips and pulling her close she said with a smile, "Certainly. Let's compare. I find licking them soothes the aches a bit."

It went on like that for several years. Until it all came to an end. Tina would often wonder how it would have gone if she had been there. She was strong, fast… deadly. But historically her… family… had not had good luck with angry mobs. Sure they were stronger than humans generally were. They regenerated due to alchemical concoctions used to blend their various unrelated body parts together and perfectionist that he was Frankenstein always added what he could, be it extra tendons, redundant hearts, or spare lungs. Plus the inhibitors in a human brain were not quite as strong, having died, atrophied, and then been brought back. A normal man might tear himself apart doing things she could do easily. And from what the doctor had said she was a lot better put together than his first attempt.

But being five or six times stronger than a man did not help when you were faced with twenty or thirty people armed with weapons, far equipment, and fire. Fire was… bad. Like the mythical hydra it did not matter that you could regenerate if someone cooked the cells. Not that she had ever allowed herself to be burned much, just like any normal person, but Frankenstein had explained.

It was New Year's Eve and as a special treat for her patrons Tina had made a case of special booze. Her creator had known many scientific things and moonshine was one of them. After all scientific research needed funding and even when he had been welcome in his clan's castle they had not exactly been rolling in wealth. Being a genius he leveraged his other skills to make money and being a chauvinistic pig had taught his homunculus woman to do his work for him.

Ah well. In a way it was nice to have some skills to fall back on and running a bar was a lot cheaper when you could make your own drinks, literally, rather than buying them. And in this case, it had saved her life.

The bar… the whole building, was trashed and the regular upstairs patrons had been run out. Probably for the best because when she made her way downstairs she found her special little club had been turned into a charnel house. The door ripped off its hinges. And behind it… blood. Guts. Bashed in skulls and slit throats. Some of the bodies beaten both before and after death with bits scattered all over the place. Teeth. Cut off fingers. One woman had her breast cut off and thrown aside.

It was the work of some very pissed off people. Angry husbands. Parents. Family. Even a few ordinary guys or friends.

Tina had seen things like this before. You reading this may not know this but it was not uncommon to see the occasional lynch mob. It did not get reported much because the authorities were either involved or approved and certainly were not going to arrest the perpetrators for taking care of "a little nigger problem", "Coolies" or "some queers". In this case all of the above. Tina had never discriminated based on race. Given her situation that would have been hypocritical to a scary degree.

Other people however were not quite as enlightened. Tina did not even have to ask what exactly had happened. There was a reason her real bar had been a secret and hidden behind a metal door.

Dropping the booze and not caring when it shattered she stepped inside, her hearts aching. Somebody had spilled the beans. Out loud or simply by being imprudent. It was a small room and had not been much for the little more than two dozen patrons. They had nowhere to run and no place to hide when their attackers burst in and possibly had more who could not fit.

Looked like the first ten or so had just been shot dead by the intruders. The rest had been beaten to death, with fists or hand weapons. Not just murder either, this was them taking out anger on their victims. Tina could tell by the way a lot of the hits had targeted their faces, practically turning them into mush while still alive.

Again Tina did not have to ask why. Girls dressed as men could expect such treatment if caught. Hell, if she had a penny for every woman or girl (Tina had not been too picky about age either) had come in sobbing into her beer sporting a black eye or bruises, she could have opened a second bar. Not to mention regulars who just never came back one day or whose girlfriends and lovers were not drowning their sorrows. And all that was just the natural treatment they got as women. Even when they had sexual desires for other females, it usually took a lot of pretty bad treatment for most women to actually act on that. Social conventions were strong chains, even if the idea actually blossomed in their heads. Most saw it as a crazy impossible idea like climbing Mount Everest or women having the right to vote.

A girl had to be pretty broken to find her way to Tina's doorstep.

And the people that broke them were an unforgiving lot. However they found out about it, they would no longer see these women as human beings, even if they ever had. Family would see them as disgraces. Husbands and boyfriends as a black mark against them, worse than just being cuckolded, for what man could accept that a woman preferred another female to him? Forget his own feelings on the matter, his friends would be merciless.

As a result more likely than not, so would he. How dare she do this to him?

The interracial couples would just aggravate it more. Whole communities got together sometimes just to kill black families. It varied if they just killed them or did far worse, but it was not unusually for them to keep souvenirs, usually body parts, that they could make into fobs for key chains. It was impossible to tell if they had done the same thing here, but Tina would not be surprised. And as the local priest and cops would be part of the group, it would not be something they needed to hide either. Not from the locals anyway. Anyone who thought it was a bad thing would be considered a race traitor and be buried in a shallow grave if they kept it up. Ditto for any "fags" who helped the Sapphic girls buck the system. If all of this had not been a possibility from the start they would not have kept it secret.

All the same Tina walked to the bar and slammed a fist down, tears in her eyes. "Damn it!" This had been her place. She had kept her own secrets for decades. But a little voice in her reminded her of an old saying: dead men tell no tales. Grumbling she reached behind the bar, most of the bottles had been stolen or smashed but a moment later she pulled a remarkably unblemished bottle of rum from a shelf. She popped the top off with her thumb, snapping the glass top off the lid without bothering with the cork. Then guzzling the contents without stopping.

This had been her place, she thought again. Her people. Maybe she could not be entirely herself, but who could? At least these women had something in common with her. Parts of her anyway. And they were in just as much danger of being treated as a monster as she ever was, if not more. As demonstrated.

Eyeing the carnage around her Tina was not surprised an hour later when she had retrieved a few more bottles from the remnants of what she had been carrying and the police still had not turned up. Neither had any of her remaining patrons or staff. Nobody was going to come tot his place and if the cops did not already know about it, the only person who would call them was Tina herself. If she did they were going to figure out what Abominations was easy enough. The murders would go unpunished and Tina would probably be arrested for all kinds of reasons.

Just because she understood that this was how the world worked was not to say that she was not pissed. Guzzling so much alcohol amongst the remnants of the world she had built for herself out of all those different people was a mistake. It was only natural for her in that condition to think upon her own creation. To understand a little her creator's obsession with overcoming death.

To agree with it.

She made a fish, crushing the bottle in her hand still half full, like it was made of sugar. Shard stuck into her hand, digging in but not making her bleed. Absently she began plucking the shards out of her skin and began placing them on the bar, one piece at a time, reforming the bottle sort of like a puzzle. Then she began sliding pieces from other broken glass together with it. Moving them around. Green glass, clear, brown… forming and then rearranging them in shapes going faster and faster until they shifted like sand in a windstorm.

Suddenly her fist came down again cracking the bar and sending the pieces raining around her. One small shard caught in some of the congealed blood and stuck up on its side. She could see her own eye reflected in it.

The people in the neighborhood were the type to mind their own business. It was not the only speakeasy since prohibition started. But even they noticed the strange wagon that looked like an old snake-oil quack's traveling sideshow pull up in front of the bar and that giant woman who ran the place while dressed in men's clothes began unloading weird equipment and come back out with large sacks.

They knew about the attack on the place, though not why the group had done it. The attackers had not been cops. There had been women among them for one thing. Not something you saw on a police raid. Besides, on the way out they had been covered in blood but not carrying any bodies or prisoners.

It was easy to guess what the place's owner was disposing off. Just not what the rest of it was for. Though the few who walked by pretending not to notice could smell fumes from alcohol and rumor had it the whole thing was how she kept her bootlegging still. A good idea for easily supplying a small bar like that and keeping it mobile. The local police were not too focused on shutting it down unless there was a political reason for it.

If they had any idea what was going on down in the basement a lot of people would have been much more interested. Especially not so much in what was in the bags Tina was dumping as in what she kept behind. The missing pieces. Enough to make a whole human by themselves. She had all of Frankenstein's equipment and notes after all. Never throwing them out because it felt like she would be discarding a piece of herself. Besides, who knew what might go wrong? She was an experiment after all, by a madman. Fixing herself seemed like something she might have to do one day, as going to another doctor was a poor idea at best.

She had never before even considered following in his footsteps.

It came naturally to her. She had often felt alone in the world, but her groom's acts had soured her on the idea of making herself a companion. Only in the midst of this tragedy had she taken the chance to fulfill her longtime dream. After all she had not killed them. And she certainly would never force herself on the results.

Though her patchwork skin was enticing. White, black, Chinese… the women in her club had varied greatly and loved finding a place where they could come together with others and talk. With forty of them to choose from it had left Tina with a lot of parts to choose from. Admittedly she made sure to pick a piece from everyone. It felt like the least she could do, keeping them all alive in some way and together. Sewn with delicate stitching that made Tina's own look like they had been done by a drunken aunt doing crochet by comparison. Because after all her hands were not those of a surgeon, but they had been designed by one.

Well not the least she could do. There was something else. But that part would wait. Rotting body parts had a shelf life even with Frankenstein's special preservation techniques and what she had learned of modern medicine and science. Not that they held a candle to her creator's genius, as he often said, but they had discovered a few things that were useful.

Like skyscrapers. No more need for a tall hill, the city had buildings that were hit by lightning in every storm. In fact there was a nice one being built not too far away that would be cleared out during any storms because of high winds and the danger, no it was a certainty, of the girders attracting lightning. So nobody was around to see her park her cart there or climb up like a human monkey to attach the wires to the lightning rods the workers had considerately placed there.

No foot patrols would send the cops out there in the rain. Most ordinary people either. It was a dark and stormy night and anyone sane was inside. Even stray animals had found shelter elsewhere.

So nobody was there to see the lightning strike through the sheets of cold rain as Tina stood silently under the half completed building watching as sparks flickered in the night far above her head and her ears heard the sizzle along the wires. Smelled the burning ozone and sizzling flesh. The memory of the night she was born fresh in her mind. Her face a calm cool mask as the naked body she had spent weeks assembling twitched before her. It was tall, bigger than Tina's own seven foot frame by a good four inches, so there was a lot to twitch. Admittedly she may have gone a little overboard, but there had been some naturally hefty women in the mix and only so many un-cracked bones to work with after the mob had their way.

The chest, one breast white with a pink tip and the other brown with a black nipple, rose and fell. Eyes snapped open, one Japanese with the eye socket circular and golden looking like the spot on a puppy's face rather than a human's, the almond shaped socket holding a dark iris so different from the other dark the other blue and wide. Full lips harvested from an older woman opened in a gasp revealing teeth plucked from different gums whose previous neighbors had their flaws but now were all perfect as any dentist could hope for. That sort of happened when you could pick and choose.

Tina felt a little bad about herself for picking the best looking parts, just as her creator had, but there had been plenty to work with and she had reasoned her own guilt about being shallow was no reason to make the girl any more of a freak than she would be already. There had only been one workable brain in the bunch, the others having been caved in or shot. The young girl in question had been a bit tubby and mannish; something Tina had often heard her complain about. As if her tendency toward manliness was something the world forced on her rather than a choice. And admittedly she would have felt guiltier had she made her own creation intentionally flawed rather than at least trying to work with what society called beautiful. She had over the years ample experience with the world treating her nicer because she was beautiful, despite her affectations. Denying someone else the edge, when she was already going to be strange, would be unconscionable.

And there were flaws. Extra teeth to fit in the mouth. The double spine to handle to excess size. A few more ribs. Not to mention a few odds and ends that did not come standard in a human body. She was good at following directions but this was her first attempt while the doctor had a certain panache that went beyond technical skills and into artistic talent. She was still beautiful, but not exactly normal once you got a close look. Different in ways that went beyond the mismatched parts.

Charged by the lightning the elixirs and potions the parts had been soaked in trembled like water in and earthquake, the edges coming together around the stitches, fusing. She knew from experience it was going to be a long slow process removing the actual stitches, but the scars would heal swiftly and only a slight reminder would remain of their presence, etched as lines in her skin. Though in her case the mismatched skin tones would be far more immediately noticeable. Even her hair was a mixture of colors and lengths. Blond, brunet, redhead, curly, straight… it would no doubt drive a professional hairdresser quite mad. Tina had tried to style it, but dead hair was so brittle.

Now it seemed to shimmer in the lightning, but that could just be from the rain.

Suddenly the body froze and limply fell back on the slab on its wheels. Tina rushed over and placed her hands on the metal top, feeling the electricity still running through it, making her hair stick out in every direction. She barely noticed as she bent over the slack figure drenched in rain.

"You're alive," she whispered.

Suddenly the eyelids, closed for weeks by Tina's fingers, fluttered open by themselves and a smile appeared on the previously dead girl's mixed and match face. Her hands reached out and wrapped around Tina's soaked clothes and in a deep voice the girl purred, "My prince." Then she pulled Tina into a deep kiss. The older monster floundered for a moment, finding herself clutched in a grip stronger than even her own, but then sank into the moment with gusto.

She had no idea how long they embraced, but when she broke it up the girl was asleep in her arms, a contented smile on her face like a reverse sleeping beauty. Hearts beating out of sync in her chest that rose and fell with a strong rhythm that stretched her stitches to a loud creak and popped a few.

That was probably her last mortal thought, Tina mused as she picked up the body and carried it inside. Warm or not she knew would make little difference, but it would be more comfortable when she woke up to be wrapped in warm blankets than still soaked in icy rain and she could spend the time before the girl woke up removing her stitches.

Tina named her Mosaic and as expected the woman had no real memories of kissing Tina, let alone her lives as human beings. Yet just like Tina she learned fast and there were still… not memories exactly but more remnants of her life before becoming a revenant. She learned to walk and talk fast, but did not mimic Tina's accent or gait.

And unlike Tina she held no ill will for the one who snatched her from death. Quite the contrary while Tina held back M, as she liked to be called, was well aware that her body was fully developed and kept trying to use it. She looked on her creator with lust and more than a few times would touch Tina in ways that were deliberately intimate, despite the elder monster's reluctance.

Tina could only hold out so long and six months in she gave into M's animalistic entreaties and the two of them went to bed, which broke to splinters under the assault. She felt no guilt afterwards. M had a fully developed personality, found math that made most men wince easy, and spoke not only words but with tones that expressed a fully functioning mind. Also her strength far surpassed Tina's so not only were they both aware that Tina could not do anything M did not want, but that M herself could have had her way with Tina at any time.

It said something that m had waited until Tina was ready, though from the look in her eyes and the enthusiastic way she took to love making, had Tina not taken her to bed she would not have waited much longer. And as with language and arithmetic, M took to the lessons of lust just as eagerly and skillfully. They both had excellently made bodies fueled by the power of lightning and far beyond mortal limitations.

It was beautiful and while Tina had never before felt the urge for monogamy, it was like being with dozens of women at once. The smell, the taste, the feel of the tiny bumps of the scars running along each other's bodies which felt things far more acutely than any ordinary human could.

Trite as it seemed, the two of them were made for each other. For Tina it was the end of loneliness. She looked young but had grown old inside her soul in a world where she had to carve out her own special place just to take the edge off.

M was new to the world, but her scars ran deeper than Tina's scalped had cut and were less easily healed than the sewn edges of her skin and bone grafts. She did not remember her mortal life, but she still felt the weight that had driven her body's former souls to drink and hide. Maybe even a tinge of the pain they felt in their last moments. She was free now and it felt amazing and light and not only because she could lift a horse. Even hearing the story of Frankenstein and Tina's unhappy if short liver relationship did not dim the burning fire of love and lust she felt for the one who had resurrected her. If anything to felt like she had given a gift to every woman that was part of her.

She had no inclination to chatter as well. Tina was the strong silent type, but M liked to talk. Talk all day, talk dirty, and share every thought on her mind. Tina fortunately found it cute and enjoyed listening to it, while others might have felt the urge to use some spare sewing thread and seal her mouth shut. Maybe it was because most of the prattle was about how great and beautiful she thought Tina was.

"Honestly your eyes are so pretty and your lips soft. I know you think of yourself as male, and you woo me like the princess in a romance novel but I can't get enough of that body and I still think of you like my prince but at the same time…"

All the same though, while they might not be human exactly, both of them had human emotions and both of them hated the ones who had destroyed Tina's club. Tina because well it had been hers. Her people. Her lovers. Her property. A woman could have little enough in the world and it was not as if they had been lurching through town killing villagers or even flaunting their differences in the faces of others.

No, it was them, the so called normal people who had descended on them and wreaked bloody havoc. They had not even come for the only true monster among them, but the girls and women they saw as betraying them. Embarrassing them. By doing things alone out of sight that they had been denied anywhere else. Because no matter how much they cut away, sanded off, or ground down, they had not been able to reach it.

On her way to America onboard a ship Tina had plenty of time to read and there had been a philosophy book. It had spoken of some ancient weapon, passed down through a family. And every now and then it needed a new blade with new etchings, telling the stories of great battles. And a handle, broke time and again, replaced a hundred times. The original blade and a half dozen more turned to rust and dust and the splinters of the handle long gone to firewood centuries past. Yet was it not the same weapon that slew men in a dozen wars and had been passed down from father to son for a thousand years?

Flexing her arm and seeing where muscles crossed under skin of varying shades or listening to the offbeat sound of three hearts in her chest, Tina often lay awake at night in a lover's arms wondering that very thing. Where was the soul of a monster? Had Frankenstein scooped it out and discarded it along with someone's liver or kidneys?

Looking at M that was hard to believe. So vibrant and alive. You could not look into those two-colored eyes shining with love and imagine for one moment that there was no soul in there. And the way she looked back, it made Tina feel like she definitely had something inside beyond sewn together bones and muscle.

M meanwhile hated her murderers more for Tina's sake than her own. "It's not right that they can just come in and take everything and not be punished for it just because more people think they were right to do it than don't. You played the game. Hid everything. Yet they still came into your place and murdered people they claim to love. All for disappointing them in a way that had nothing to do with them."

Tina nodded and spoke in her deep R-rolling Romanian accent. It always made Tina's spines tingle and imagine a very tall gypsy. "Indeed. I would not trade you for a thousand slaughtered friends, but I did not know you then and they did not do what they did to allow me to meet my true love. No more than any murderer spills the blood of the innocent for the benefit of the grass that will grow from their graves or the stonemason who will make his wages carving the stone."

"What can we do?"

"I remember each of them. Their names. The names they sobbed into their drinks." She pursed her... or somebody's… lips. "In my creator's home country there was once a man named Vlad Tepes. When Transylvania was small and weak he kept thee enemy armies at bay. But only by doing things so terrible that he was considered a monster for generations to come." She shook her head. "I tried so hard not to become a monster."

M reached over and put a hand, three fingers in different shades and one still baring a pale band where a wedding ring had rested, because the originals had been broken or actually cut off. "I think a monster is as a monster does. These people thought they were killing monsters. We think they're monsters. It seems like a loaded word."

"So what are you saying?"

"I say… we just kill them all and then go out to a nice dinner. Something Italian."

Tina smiled and laced her fingers with M's. "I could eat."

Six months later shocked and angry people all got letters in their mail informing them that a woman they had thought was dead, at their hands no less, would be getting married. Each was both scared and angry. Not one had brought their victim's body's home with them and they had just been ordinary people. Nobody had chopped off a head or anything completely certain to end a life. No doctor or coroner had ever even seen a body and shown up with the sad news of their deaths.

Could they risk it? Whether it was the idea of people knowing about the massacre (which was technically illegal and not something you wanted the press to get hold of) or what appeared to be a very public wedding between their not as deceased as she should be victim and what seemed to be another woman. Unless they had changed their ways and met a man named Tina. They had committed murder once to stop that sort of thing in a private club. A large wedding in front of God and everyone, well that just could not be borne. Some for fear of their own names, a few because they honestly believed it was wrong.

They could not fail to show. And this time their would-be victims knew they were coming.

Take Thomas and Ester Klein. Parents of six, churchgoers, he was a businessman and she made extra money taking in socks to darn. Their second eldest daughter Eugenia, a young school teacher, had been a patron of Abominations for over a year and having learned sewing on her mother's knee had made herself quite the dashing suit to go dancing in as Francis "Call me Frank" Brown.

Her girlfriend Darlene Parsons was a beautiful black woman who liked to wear the clothes "Frank" gave her, which were finer than a poor girl from the bad side of town had ever worn. Flapper wear. Long stings of beads, fringe on her dress, high heels, and a peacock feather in her hair. Swept off her feat by a white woman that, on the street, she would not bother to spit on if she was on fire. Yet whose bed she shared despite deeply deserved hatred for every white she saw.

Damned if the sex had not been fantastic. The dancing too. She was swept off her feet and Frank made her feel like a princess. Which made it all the harder seeing "him" get her fedora caved in with a hammer while begging for Thomas, her own father, to stop with tears and blood in her eyes. Darlene had been too busy watching her girlfriend die at the hands of her parent to catch a glimpse of her own murderers, even as they took the time to push her face first into the nearest wall and violate her.

She barely gave it a thought honestly. It was not the first time or even the third. A halfway decent black girl in the city. A white man wouldn't marry her but that was as far as decorum went. Hell she'd lost her virginity very much against her will to two of her own cousins.

Instead what hurt in her last moments when they were done and swinging at her body with crowbars was seeing her dress torn from her body and left stained and crumpled on the floor next to her. She imagined the pain in her family's eyes as first they told her that her mother's only child was dead. Then she felt numb because she had to wonder how they would react when someone told them where she died and what she had been doing, sitting in Frank's lap with one hand on her lover's pale white breast, when the door had been torn from its hinges and their murderers had stormed the place.

Would they be upset still that their daughter was dead? Because in her last breath it was so easy to see her father's face in her mind in place of Thomas Klein, sharing that same look of disgust as he caved in his daughter's skull. No black people had been invited to this lynching, except of course the victims mixed in with the other Sapphic lovers. But it would have been a moment of pure racial unity as they joined their white brothers and sisters in their persecution of the queer couples.

Despite the horror and pain of their deaths not one of those who died in Abominations had cried out for a parent, lover, or even God to save them. Spare them, yes, but not to come in and stand up for them. Not one of them believed even desperately that it would happen.

There were several black people in the crowd and one Mexican family there now, having received invitations and knowing what their sisters, lovers, and daughters had been doing at death and from the look of them the dead were right not to have bothered asking them for aid. Ignoring their skin colors and the looks in their eye was no different than that of the people around them. United with their sworn enemies in hatred. People who would never willingly agree on anything absolutely certain that their shameful secrets and the girl they had come looking for were better off dead and buried.

And now on the night before his daughter's supposed marriage even after having beaten her to death Thomas, his wife and eldest son at his side, brandishing his granddaddy's sword from the Civil War had arrived at the church where the wedding was to take place. His son had his youngest boy's baseball bat in his hands and his wife was carrying a rope tied up in a noose. Back home under the watchful eye of their now eldest daughter the rest of their children were waiting patiently for their return, some of them still sporting scars from being foolish enough to ask why Eugenia had never come home and getting a whipping that drew blood as their only answer.

Thomas was not quite ready to burn the church down to finish off the ungrateful atrocity he had somehow fathered, but it was a near thing. As a God fearing man his plan was to wait until morning and kill the unnatural whore before she set foot on the church grounds. If it happened in front of everyone he was sure the courts would be on his side and to be honest they very well might have been. What judge would dare convict them once they explained? What priest would condemn them?

No that they would ever find out. Because as they settled in for a wait, two figures who had been waiting for them struck with what seemed like very little effort. The parents went down without even seeing their attackers. Eugenia's brother had just enough time to see the face with one of his sister's eyes looking back like the wrath of God herself, before he too was knocked into dreamland like a prize fighter with a glass jaw.

When they awoke they were sitting in a pew in church, sunlight streaming through the stained glass windows. A wedding march being played on a pipe organ. Thomas blinked and looked around, his head still ringing. He was not just sitting on the hard wooden seat, as he had every Sunday of his life, he was chained there, manacled in place. He yanked and heard a groan from the side as his wife was yanked by a shared chain into his side, the rope she had been carrying the night before tight just shy of choking her around her neck. Just one seat further down was his son, no sign of the bat but sporting a beauty of a black eye.

"Hey watch it," a voice said from the other side. He turned, though it made his head spin, and saw another man sitting there likewise chained in place and attached to them. Thomas did not know who he was, but he recognized the face from that day, months back when his child's blood had still been drying on his hands.

He almost asked what happened, but over the music he heard more people saying that very thing and craned his neck. There were many more people in the room. It was a big church and not even a quarter of the seats were full, but there must have been a hundred or more scattered around, some trying to get up though if they were secured as well as Thomas and his family it would take some doing. It was a nice church and the pews seemed quite sturdy.

People were calm and quiet, others sobbing, and a few thrashing like trapped animals. It would do none of them any good though. Their bonds were not going to be broken by human strength alone. From the look of things not all of them had been taken down as gently as the Klein family either and a few were still out and a couple might have been dead while others were carefully not trying to escape because it would aggravate a broken arm or leg or cracked skull. One man not too long off was slumped over glassy eyes and with blood dripping from his mouth, but Thomas would guess he had done that to himself trying to escape, from the way he was twisted and the manacles were cutting into his wrists.

Up at a more forward pew a girl was babbling at two figures standing impassively at the front of the room. A tall white haired woman dressed in a man's bridegroom suit. She looked dapper and was pointedly ignoring the sobbing girl.

"I'm so sorry Tina you have to believe me I didn't want to tell them about the club or show them where it was, but when Georgia broke up with me I was so heartbroken I couldn't hide it and I told my sister. I didn't know! I swear I had no idea what they would do! They made me tell. You have to believe me." She was a pretty enough girl, if you wiped away the snot and tears dripping down her face.

Thomas had been told about the club and the impromptu raid by a neighbor, who had heard from another friend that Eugenia was there and what she had been doing. He had in some way expected it to be a lie. He had gone hoping to be wrong or to find that his daughter was just drinking with some of the other girls. Maybe take a switch to her, grown woman or not.

Instead being one of the first through the door he had found her on a barstool in men's clothes with her hands up the skirt of some black trollop. His love for his daughter had blown out like a candle and was replaced with the cold certainty that this thing in front of him needed to die. That his wife, waiting outside, would never see the thing that had somehow spawned from her loins like a punishment from Satan himself. That if possible he would make sure nobody outside that room would ever recognize what was left of her as ever having been called his daughter.

The deadpan woman ignoring the begging of the traitor was certainly not her. Thomas was a little sickened at the way the girl was going on. If they had not been in church he might have asked her what she was doing there, with so many others, if she was so uninvolved. It took no great leap of thinking or Sherlock Holmes deduction to imagine that having thought they eliminated the witnesses to the girl's own indiscretions; the thought that someone might be back had been too much to bare. Whatever sniveling excuse she might give.

It sounded like her betrayal of the other freaks that had no doubt corrupted and defiled Thomas's daughter had been based at least partly on spite for being dumped by a lover who had clearly not expected retribution. The first rock in a rockslide. As desperate to save herself now as she was before to ensure her lover paid fro leaving her and ensure that those who knew would never tell.

Turning around Thomas too ignored her frantic babble and looked around Was Eugenia even there? Had he been lured into a trap? It seemed this Tina, a great beast of a woman standing next to a priest, another face Thomas was pretty sure had been in the club that night, and who had now been chained to his pulpit, may even have been some sort of ringleader judging by the way the girl was groveling. If she was not then she certainly seemed to be in charge now because unlike everyone else she was free of chains and seemed far too calm to have been abducted. She also struck him as being extremely difficult to knock out if only due to not being able to easily reach her skull.

Then he caught sight of a woman in white beginning her walk down the aisle. From his seat and the slope of the floor it was hard to tell anything. The figure might as well have been a ghost as she walked with one firm step after the other, the only visible color on her a bouquet of red roses clutched in gloved hands. The woman at the front of the room smiled finally and around him Thomas could see others watching the bride, confused and peering close, looking for some sign that they knew this person.

Which was impossible, he realized as she walked by. She was even taller than the other woman, totally the wrong proportion. It was hard to imagine this giant emerging from the womb of any human woman. If it even was a woman under there.

So why did it feel like if he pulled aside he veil, he would see his daughter? He could practically see her under the lace. And he was not to only one,. Waves of confused recognition went through many others, who could not understand why a certain move or tilt of the head seemed to remind them of somebody they knew. Worse, somebody they knew should be dead.

The oversized figure made it to the steps and joined the other woman and the priest on the raised area in front of them as around the room the firmly trapped people watched in silence. It was becoming clear even to those suffering concussions that their fate was in the hands of these two who were fully aware that everyone in the room besides them had a hand or at least condoned what had happened in that basement room. Righteousness aside, sympathy from either of them was going to be hard to come by.

Thomas prayed inside for release. To have god free him from his chains that he might either strike down these two or at least run for help to any proper policeman who would descend upon the church with truncheons in hand to beat them down and rescue the people around him, especially his wife and son.

But God was apparently not answering prayers this day and the chains remained in place and they all remained silent as the woman chained to the organ stopped playing. None of them wanting to attract attention to themselves or the people at their sides. Except for the sobbing girl at the front, who had at least stopped talking. Judging by her mewling she had given up any hope of being spared.

The priest began to speak, though his words were a bit off the usual rhetoric. "Deeply detested, you are gathered here today to bare witness to the joining before God of these women…" It did not get much better from there.

The audience listened and shifted uncomfortably. Some terrified. Others getting angry as their captors defiled a house of the Lord. The one in the man's suit shared her vows first and the fact that she was clearly a foreigner on top of everything else made Thomas clench his jaw. He would gladly cut off her blasphemous words of so called love if he could wrap his chain around her throat.

He got even more angry as the other woman spoke, her voice clearly not his daughters. He had been fooled after all. Worse the woman would not shut up, describing the other one like a teenager with a crush combined with a college professor giving a lecture. Calling her things like "My Goddess" and "My maker" that made no sense. Not that he was really listening much to the words themselves. He was seething that they had dared used Eugenia to lure them into this and forced them to watch their perversion in church no less, with witnesses.

He looked from side to side, wondering how many of these people might recognize him. Who would one day see him on the street and know that his daughter was an abomination and that he was her murderer? In the heat of the moment it had been a mere glance they had shared before, but chained in place all this time he knew there were many faces he would recognize again the next time he saw them. If he ever saw anyone again.

Speaking of which the seemingly endless diatribe of pointless flattery finally came to an end and the priest asked for the rings, which the one on the dress held behind her flowers and the other pulled from a pocket.

Then the veil was lifted and the silence in the church broke as around the room people screamed or swore including Mrs. Klein and the suddenly pale priest. The woman under it was beautiful in her way but to the onlookers that just made what they saw worse. Human sized teeth, far more than there should be, were in the mouth. Her face a horror show as dark skin merged with light or tab, one ear golden skinned while the other was dark and a small Japanese eye saw across from an all too familiar blue one with a pretty snub nose between them while the jaw was split in the middle between light and dark. Even her bosom, now uncovered near the top, came in brown and white and God only knew what was under the dress.

As if to underscore that last point the "groom" reached over and removed to bride's glove so that she could put the ring on her finger, revealing that the fingers too were mismatched. Slender looking, but as big as sausages, sewn together from parts of others to be big enough to fit on the large hands. The mix of beauty and the discrepancies were at the same time gorgeous and revolting. The beauty undeniable and yet instinctively wrong.

They could see it in Tina now too, though she had not smiled as much or been as obvious. Her hands were in gloves and she was too far away for the scars to be seen easily. Oh there had been something off about her, but being knocked unconscious and awakening attached to one another had been more than a bit distracting. The other one however was so obviously what she was that it could not be glossed over and ignore.

One black woman sobbed, "My baby!" Recognizing something in the bone structure or some other clue that made her realize, just as Thomas did seeing that beautiful blue eye, what the thing in front of them really was. He remembered hitting at that eye's lost twin, over and over again until it had been pulped like a wine grape and the other had stared vacantly up into the ceiling, never to see anything again.

Or so he thought.

Thomas bent over and threw up, splashing his shoes as well as his wife's. Others cried and wailed and gnashed their teeth as the truth hit them. That the women they had murdered, who had killed the love they felt, were somehow walking around in front of them as an amalgamation of parts, sewn together like grandma's quit in the attic. Dragged from their bloody graves and pieced back together. Was that a glimmer of recognition as she flicked her gaze out over the horrified audiences being forced to witness this unholy union, or was someone or possibly something else looking out at them from behind those eyes?

"Does this count as bigamy?" He heard his son ask, the only coherent thought in his head.

The smaller one in the suit slid the ring into place and said, "My love, I know we're fifty or sixty very different people, but I promise with this ring to love you forever, as long as we both walk this world and beyond."

Smiling in a way that made Thomas ill again as the patchwork colors scrunched up the bride of the bride did the same with the ring she held and said, "At death do we start, my dearest one."

The preacher, clearly reluctant but too scared to do anything about it, said, "Then I declare you married in the eyes of… of God." The two kissed feverishly and when they broke up finally turned to address the audience, hand in hand. The bride threw her flowers and it landed in one woman's lap who screamed and flinched, letting them fall to the floor in a rattle of chains.

"We're so glad you could attend the ceremony," Tina said. "Since you brought us together."

M interrupted, "Actually dearest, you brought me together, using a sewing kit."

Tina chuckled. "Close enough. And since we are very grateful that you in your belief that we had somehow violated God's decree gave your girls the chance at resurrection in the form of my girl here. Enjoy the reception."

"In Hell," Mosaic finished in her thick Brooklyn accent. She reached over to a stand where three candles had been burning almost imperceptibly in the daylight and tipped it over. From the way the red carpet immediately went up either it was extremely flammable or they had poured something on it to help the fire spread. "I think that maybe the women who make me up had a great hope that they could somehow inspire love in each of you, but you proved them wrong so I suppose we'll just have to stick with fear. My bride and I will be outside watching the place burn. Enjoy your last moments of pain and terror knowing you deserve every bit of it, ya mooks."

Arm in arm the two walked to a nearby side door and out into the daylight, not even glancing back at the quickly spreading flames. People screamed and struggled as the room began to fill with smoke and the door closed behind them, but to no avail. No help was coming, certainly not in time, and the figure of Jesus above the priest who was on his knees crying, seemed to have no mercy in its eyes either. Siding instead with his fellow resurrected.

Outside where they had parked across the street in a hearse carriage borrowed from the local cemetery, the two revenants watched as the flames flowed up the steeple of the church as it began to collapse. Tina held the horse's reins, keeping it from bolting. There were no screams. By now the smoke had gotten everyone inside. Just the crackle of flames and the crashing as the church began to fall in on itself. The clang of the heavy bell falling through four stories to the ground was especially satisfying.

Soon though they heard the clang of an approaching fire patrol vehicle. Someone had reported the fire and the fight fighters would be there soon. It was a church after all. The two women got in their carriage and flicked the horse forward, finally letting it gallop away from the blaze so they would be long gone when help arrived far too late for the people inside the burning ruins of the church.

At least their bodies would be recovered and properly laid to rest, M thought as her hand, unbidden by her own thoughts, gripped part of the carriage until the knuckles turned white and the wood creaked.

"Where to now my dear?" Tina asked her.

She shifted uneasily. "Well darling, I know it's a little strange, but I have this strange urge to see your homeland. Especially Castle Frankenstein. To start with at least."

Tina hated to admit it, but she had the same strange urge she did not quite understand. As if her ancestral lands were calling her. The castle was a ruin, the man who created her long dead, and she had never personally set foot in the place. But somehow she felt she needed to go and visit. Drawing her like violin music half heard in the distance. An unheard siren's call.

Not wanting to admit it she said, "If that's what you want." She leaned over and kissed her bride on the multi-toned cheek as their carriage continued down the cobblestone street.