FOLLOWING FRANKENSTEIN


Chapter 2: Embarkation


She was going to kill him. She didn't know how someone went about killing the undead and immortal, but as Big Ben was her witness, she would find a way to end her creator. Why, of all the places on earth, would he send her to a place it rained all the time? She nearly screamed in surprise the first time she felt water from the shower - let alone from the sky. She supposed it must rain in Chad, at least some of the time. However, when one has only existed for four years and nearly ninety-nine percent of that existence has been spent under the ground in a concrete bunker that could probably survive a nuclear bomb, it's hard to know much about local climate conditions. She knew it got as hot as an oven outside 'cause she'd been outside a handful of times and realized that shoes were a necessity for those little adventures. However, she had never seen water anywhere except in the basin she used to wash herself and the Others.

It's not like she could just walk up to a random Londoner and ask, "Hey, what do I do when water falls from the sky? Am I waterproof or will I melt?" Well, she might have asked someone that. Once. In not so many words. By their aghast expression, she decided she better not try that again. But there was only so much she could learn from Google... and Google required the internet and knowing how the plug in her damn computer and where did they even get their power from in this strange and sunless place? She didn't see solar panels anywhere.

Ok, no, she saw a couple. On roofs. But she had yet to see the sun and she thought that part might be kinda important. Seriously. Two weeks straight without a single ray of sunshine or a reprieve from the water droplets falling from the sky. It was wet. Everywhere. She did not like the rain, she decided, when she couldn't escape it, no matter where she went.

Then there was the whole "cold is cold" life lesson. Jackets, it turned out, were worn for more than aesthetic appeal and she rather wished she owned one when she first arrived…you know, until she figured how to buy one…cause that took nearly a month. She liked the cold even less than she liked the rain.

Then there were the people. Hundreds of thousands of people. Millions of people. Why couldn't he have sent her to a place like Sunnydale- population 38,500? Surely, that wasn't so much to askm

Of course, she knew these things in the abstract. She had seen crowds and showers and snow and jackets in movies... but seeing them from the other side of a screen was entirely different from experiencing them in full sensory detail. She didn't know that a crowd of people could, you know, smell like a crowd of people. She also couldn't just press "pause" or "exit" whenever it got too much. No, she was thrown in the deep end and now one of millions wandering the teeming streets of London, with absolutely no idea how to pull of this whole "human" thing, other than following everyone else around and pretending she knew exactly what she was doing. Confidence could be both a weapon and a shield and she would wear it as diligently as she wore her jacket (once she finally got one).

Sadistic vampire. He was lurking somewhere in his lair, gloating over his revenge, even now. She just knew it. So, she filled three pages in her notebook with all her complaints and curses and verbal fist-shaking fury, and she decided she would type it all up, someday, and email it to him.

Except he never checked his email. She knew that better than anyone.

Besides, why would she want to contact him, for any reason? She was free from the selfish, sadistic bastard and she should place memories of him firmly into the "do not resuscitate" file in her mind and never think of him again.

What could be better than being locked in a catacomb to watch the gruesome deaths of hundreds of mute clones of herself? Basically anything. Anything and anywhere in the world was a step up from where she started, so she couldn't complain too much.

After all, London had its benefits. She wouldn't deny that. For one thing, there were entire buildings full of stuff. Just for her to buy. Like jackets. And umbrellas. She nearly wept with happiness when she first visited the supermarket and found aisle after aisle of more kinds of food than she ever knew existed... and fresh fruit? Wow. She had not yet learned to live till she bit into a peach and felt that sweet juice dribble down her chin and all over her white shirt. She might have moaned out loud. Publicly. She definitely wore that peach juice stain on her shirt with pride for the rest of the day. Ok, she had been on a long Tube ride from her flat at the time and so she didn't really have an extra shirt or a choice in the matter, but she if she wore the stain like she meant for it to be there, other people would believe her.

Confidence. It was all about the confidence.

When she got over the whole "I'm scared to death and so socially awkward you might be just as scared as me" thing, she found she enjoyed people. Ok. She didn't enjoy them all the time, but a lot of the time, in small doses with lots of recovery breaks in between, she did like to be around other human beings. None of the ones she met chewed on the furniture or watched her when she slept or devoured their mates or tried to smell her hair when she wasn't looking (with the exception of that one guy on the Tube, but there was a lot about that guy that wasn't really standard). The people she met, well, they ate food. People food… not people as food. They went to work. They slept… sometimes even on the Tube or on park benches. She never quite felt that same freedom in her own sleeping patterns, but, then again, she'd never really slept easy. Not after that first time she woke to find a pair of red eyes staring into her soul and noted the venom pooling from the maniacal grin. Yeah, she still dreamed of that, sometimes, and, worse, she discovered she talked in her sleep... without a filter. After that time on the plane, she made sure she never fell asleep in public again.

Her new flat was on a posh side of London... fully stocked, furnished, and paid for. She liked that. She may not have liked Edward's taste in cuisine, but she did admire his taste in flats and, most especially, his taste in flat screen TV's. It had taken her nearly a week to figure out how to make the damn thing work… and an excruciatingly longer time to figure out how stream movies, but when she did figure it out, she decided she would never leave her flat again. With an unlimited supply of the latest movies from around the globe, the likes of which Chad had never seen, why would she leave?

Afterall, she wasn't responsible for keeping anyone alive (except herself) and she wasn't responsible (directly or indirectly) for anyone's deaths (that she knew of). She rather liked that. A lot. If she wanted to stay in her home all day and not talk to a soul, she could. No one would die from her glut of introversion and she could even go on a holiday for two weeks without a thought to anything but her mail (which there wasn't a lot of). She was free.

Oh, it was glorious and she vowed she would never sleep again. Well, until she fell asleep in her popcorn bowl and woke with butter smeared all over her face. She couldn't quite differentiate between the end of the movie and her dream of a guy in a tuxedo shooting at aliens, but somehow, she knew that beautiful man smelled like popcorn… or maybe it was the aliens? It all fumbled together in her brain, but she knew that both the popcorn and the movie (and possibly her dream) had been awesome.

In the light of day, though, when she woke realizing she needed to brush her teeth and she couldn't eat more popcorn without going to the market to buy some, those were the moments she had to reflect on her life with more honesty. Just opening her front door and facing Mrs. Smith's poodle was enough to exhaust her for the rest of the day and movies provided companionship, adventure, and excitement, all without forcing her to actually interact with anyone.

There were days when she walked down Park Lane and watched the throngs of people pass her by. There were so many different shapes and sizes and types of people and she so rarely saw the same person twice. They went here and there, always in a hurry, always moving, always going, and she never did know their names. And she felt like she was back in Edward's Temple, all over again, and that she was just another voiceless, nameless, meaningless clone among so many others. So easily forgotten. So easily disposed of. No one would notice if she failed to leave her flat for a week at a time.

Despite the days and weeks and months she spent in London, she still could not figure out how to be human.

Finally, after two months of wandering London by day and watching movies by night, she decided to make a change. To fully immerse herself in the "human experience," she needed to become like all the other Londoners and she did the unthinkable.

She got a job.

It's not that she needed the money as much as she needed a means to integrate herself into the cacophony of urban life. She needed a routine and a reason to leave her flat to brave the "real world" out there in the "wild." She needed to do something she never had the chance to do in Chad.

Well, she had a "job" in Chad, but not one that she chose… or got paid for. No, that was a job she had been bred and birthed for. This job, she chose for herself… and it did not require eternal servitude or possible damnation.

She got a job at the cinema sweeping the theatre between films. Alright, so, this particular occupation just might have given her unlimited free movies and popcorn, but it also paid her to watch people and it forced her to leave her house. She could watch people from afar and smile at them and not have to talk to them except in the most shallow and polite of ways and so she was no longer completely alone all the time. She liked that. Besides, there was an unending supply of free popcorn that she didn't have to make herself. She couldn't imagine life getting any better...well, maybe she could, if she imagined life in the sun, but she knew better than to wish for the impossible.

She got better and better at the whole "life in London" thing, especially when she learned to translate British slang and how to annunciate words so people could understand her better. (She really wished she had watched more BBC back in her formative years… it would have helped if she knew what a "queue" was right at the beginning.) She even met up with "real" people, from time-to-time, to share stories over drinks or to wander through a clothing store or watch a football game. She prided herself on making them believe she was like them – normal – and not the freak science experiment she was. She knew which topics were safe to talk about, such as movies, the weather, and if all else failed, chhese. She avoided discussions about her parents, childhood traditions, and most especially, vampires. Nothing good came out of talking about vampires. She even got better at keeping her mouth shut and asking the right questions so that people forgot whenever she fumbled or didn't know something she should have known or behaved in an otherwise socially awkward manner.

She even made "friends". She took weekly walks with her neighbor and cooked dinner for her band of coworkers on Tuesday nights. She even joined a live, in-person book club.

Still, there were days when just opening her front door felt like scaling a mountain and nights when she much rather would have watched movies all night rather than face another dream… another memory… another round of deep and morbid and inconvenient thoughts.

The best remedy she found on those days was a visit to the British Museum. It smelled like floor cleaner and dust and old paper. From floor to ceiling, glass shelves were lined with artifacts from around the world and people milled through them, gaping at whatever ancient and precious thingamajig was in front of them. She wasn't sure whether it was the Grecian statues, the Egyptian sarcophaguses, or the Chinese jade, something about it made her feel at home.

Perhaps it was that each of the items within were "treasures" gathered from across the globe. They were eccentricities, objects of distinction and unique, just like her. Other times she thought it was the fact that no matter how many times she walked through those halls, there was always something new to notice, something new to learn. Considering her entire canon of world history consisted of what she gleaned from Youtube videos, she realized there was an entire ocean of knowledge that she knew absolutely nothing about. No, if she was honest with herself, she liked the museum because it made her feel "normal." When she stared at the Assyrian relief of a lion hunt, each lion shown dying a grisly death with arrows protruding from its body, she found a sense of familiarity rush over her and she wasn't sure whether she should find that comforting… or disturbing. There was just something about a king who liked to pile decapitated heads on display that made her feel so at home. Then there were the Egyptian cat mummies, Japanese erotic art, and halls of taxidermic animals… after that, the living clone of a dead woman could really fit right in.

She tried her best. She really did. Most days, she imitated the habits and phrases and ways of those around her and she tried to find purpose in it. Most of the time, she thought she did pretty well. On the days she didn't, well, what else was there that could cheer her up as much as staring at the furious face of Kali, her hands dripping blood and her neck adorned with skulls, while she trampled over the prostrate form of Shiva? Well, that and curry. A good coconut curry really could make everything better. Add in some mango lassi, and all was right with the world again, at least until the next time she got lost or her bathroom pipe broke or a friend forgot to show.

Over and over again, she reminded herself that if Badiyah could do it, so could she. After all, they were the same person, essentially. At the reminder of her sister clone, she always felt a mix of profound sadness and a renewed determination to succeed. She would keep opening that front door and going out of it, because she could, and she owed it to Badiyah. Afterall, she had promised her Paris and to Paris she would go. She survived London on a daily basis. How hard could another giant city be?

At least, now she had a phone connected to the internet… and a jacket… and she no longer feared the rain. She could do this.

In only a matter of months, she was eating a hot, chocolate croissant at a sidewalk café overlooking the Seine.

"Here's to you, Badiyah," she whispered to the river and she held her café crème up in a one-sided toast. "Tomorrow, we'll conquer that pretty little tower you always wanted to see."

She opened up her blue dolphin notebook to the front cover. There, scribbled in green pen, she crossed item number four off her list. Then, she wrote a consecutive series of numbers at the bottom and beside it, she drew a little flower before writing "learn to dance." Below this, she added, "go to Rome" and "milk a cow." She bit the top of her pen and let her mind wander. She crossed off an earlier entry, edited another, and then ended with "email Edward photograph of statue of Kali." She thought of his face when he opened it... how uncomfortable it would make him. Then then she frowned. She crossed it off.

If she ever heard from him again, it would be too soon. She had a chance to live and live well and that was more than any of the Others had. She doubted he even remembered that she had once existed. She definitely hated him... even more than she hated spiders.

She took up her pen and pressed it onto her notebook again. "Go on a date," was left in its wake.