"Don't worry," Adam said gruffly, "I'm not the monster you should fear."
"Why," Karim croaked out, "why'd you do this to me?"
"Frankly, I had no choice," Adam responded.
"How can you have no choice in the matter?" Karim asked nervously. The sun was beating down on him, and speaking to this fiend, this coherent, almost rational seeming fiend made of dead flesh and stitches, was the only thing that made the searing heat seem a little less aggravating.
"Victor Frankenstein," Adam said contemptuously, "That lunatic has a cast iron control over me. My life, this damned mockery of life, can end on a mad man's whim. Even this foul shell of a life is too great to simply cast aside in the name of mere principle."
Karim stared at the monster built by this Victor Frankenstein, his voice stilled by the frightening words spoken to him. The silence was fairly awkward, even considering the fact that a golem of grave plucked corpses was trying to convince a vagrant lycanthrope of why he had to abduct him from the streets of Cairo for an insane scientist neither of them really respected. No, the only thing both monsters shared was a fear of Victor Frankenstein. Eventually the silence grew too heavy, and Karim stammered out a few more syallables.
"That sounds terrible," he said weakly.
"It is as miserable as you'd expect and many times worse," Adam replied after a while longer of uncertain silence.
"Even the British grant me more freedom than this Victor Frankenstein has given you," Karim continued, still very nervous under the circumstances, "I suppose that freedom isn't something to be granted by others though, but that's more philosophy than anything else."
"Freedom is never granted by others," Adam replied with a vile snort that resembled a crackle of electricity, "It can only be stolen by others. Others like Frankenstein who stole my freedom. First he granted me life only to steal that which makes it worth living."
"Every life seems to be a tangled mass of unfair contradictions," Karim replied in a mumble, "At least in my experience."
"Agreed," Adam said simply. After that, much of the tension between the two creatures eased up somewhat, their would be masters unaware of their discussion, "The madness of Victor Frankenstein is sickening. His immorality is stunning in light of any way you look at it. And that he would drag others into his self imposed hell of sin and spitting in the face of creation, it burns me inside. I want nothing of his experiments, I just want to live!"
"You seem alive to me. Had you not mentioned that you weren't alive, I would have continued to believe your heart beat as mine. How is it possible that you are not alive when you draw breath and feel the passion you do?"
"Life is more than heart beats and breath. I walk as a man, but so long as Victor Frankenstein lords his power over me, I'm but an animal. No true man can be said to be so thoroughly enslaved as I, no true life can be constrained by the whims of another. And what's more, he would never consent to let me truly live, and as long as he holds my life on his wrist, I will never escape the state of waking death you see me in now."
There was another tense silence following Adam's diatribe. Karim reached his body out and forward from the cart to try and see the figures ahead of him riding on horses. The unforgiving sunlight and the haze of loose sand flying about in the noon day winds made getting a decent look at them impossible. Adam's decayed lips twisted into a frown as he gazed forward as well, sinking his attention into his task rather than the reason he was doing it. It wasn't much longer before he chose to break the silence and take what little relief he could from conversation.
"Do you have any idea why Doctor Frankenstein of this Professor Mrad would have you tranquilized and dragged out into the desert?" Adam asked.
"I honestly can't say," Karim said with a shake of his head, "But knowing my luck as of late, it probably has something with this curse I bear."
"What curse do you suffer that might draw the attention of those mad men?" Adam said, chancing a glance at Karim.
"The curse of the man who runs as a wolf. I think the Europeans call it lycanthropy, but such a cold term doesn't do the affliction justice," Karim said timidly with only a hint of indignation directed towards whatever forces manipulated fate.
"The curse of lycanthropy? But there are werewolves across the world, what in the world make you any diff... blasted manic mind of Victor Frankenstein, I could never hope to understand it. But I know nothing of this affliction of suffer. Perchance you could enlighten me about what it entails?"
"It's terrible," Karim said, inhaling a deep breath of dry desert air to calm his nerves, "When the moon rises, well, whenever the moon's light shines down on my, there's... a... I don't know what it is, really, but it doesn't really matter what it is. Either way, no matter what I do, no matter how much alcohol and smoke I ingest, no matter how many times I pray, I still lose control."
"Lose control of what?" Adam asked, seemingly intrigued by this line of conversation.
"When the wolf within takes over, I'm no longer myself," Karim said, averting his eyes from the corpse golem as he lied to the creature, "And when the wolf is in control, I'm as an animal, with no mortals or self control beyond base survival. Sometimes that, well, it spurs me to murder others.
"Everytime I succumb to the wolf, it seems as if someone has to die," Karim continued, steadily growing more afraid in his tone and posture, "Maybe I'm wrong about how often I kill others, but when the wolf takes control, I have no power to influence, it runs around as it pleases, never accountable or controllable by any force of nature, divine and otherwise. Survival is all that matters, and if the wolf deems that I must murder others to survive, then I find myself compelled to agree with it. It all seems so natural until I wake up in strange place while soaked in blood the next morning."
"You mean to say that this... curse," Adam said gravely, as though even he could be frightened by the prospect of uncontrolled bloodlust Karim was speaking about "of yours induces you to slay others by overpowering your will entirely?"
Karim only nodded, his face a mask of bewildered sorrow.