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Why This Monster?
The experiment began, the lightning-rod was raised into the heart of the storm and the iron rod flashed blue flames.
Upon the raised platform her body lay, wrapped in fine, copper wire: a burnished cacoon within which existed an abomination.
Dead but recently alive her body-heat had barely left her and the last breath had caught fast beneath her stiffening breasts.
And though the delicate pulse had escaped them, her pale wrists shimmered like two slices of moonlight in the darkened chamber.
Ponderously, the heavy-beamed mechanism upon which the cadaver lay winched itself higher, upward through the gaping skylight.
Snakes of lightening curled and chased up-
and-down the iron pole, the web of copper
flashed and glowed red, then white.
A crack and the bite of ozone in the air, bitter and alive; A bolt of cold fire caught up her corpse in it's electric hands.
A heartbeat of time as the immense energies
washed her body clean of death and coaxed the ruddy glow of life back to her flesh.
Then the platform folded like an accordion
and the iron rod returned to it's sheath and the ceiling closed itself against the storm.
In the crackling, luminous silence two supple wrists moved and two hands fluttered like
pale moths on the glowing air.
Climbing from the tangled, copper webbing
the resurrected woman stared at the smoking platform and the crackling wires and tubes.
The uncertain glow lit her face and body then flared bright and in that moment
the sudden light offered up a monstrosity:
The flesh of her head and face was seared and had peeled back revealing grinning teeth and bits of her bone laid bare and her eyes.
The electrodes that had been planted in her body were still in place, one at her left ankle and another driven into the base of her skull.
As the sharp tang of electricity thinned,
another odor replaced it: sweet and ripe and unpleasant, the scent of death and decay.
How easily we run from this livid scene, down the stairs and across the huge dining-room and out the enormous doors we flee.
And how desperately I've strived to paint your comliness as a corpse (that's come alive) and taken on the aspect of a phantasm.
Because I could never leave you looking
as lovely as you do, so I worked a little poetry and made a monster out of you.
© W.G. Myers
Upon the raised platform her body lay, wrapped in fine, copper wire: a burnished cacoon within which existed an abomination.
Dead but recently alive her body-heat had barely left her and the last breath had caught fast beneath her stiffening breasts.
And though the delicate pulse had escaped them, her pale wrists shimmered like two slices of moonlight in the darkened chamber.
Ponderously, the heavy-beamed mechanism upon which the cadaver lay winched itself higher, upward through the gaping skylight.
Snakes of lightening curled and chased up-
and-down the iron pole, the web of copper
flashed and glowed red, then white.
A crack and the bite of ozone in the air, bitter and alive; A bolt of cold fire caught up her corpse in it's electric hands.
A heartbeat of time as the immense energies
washed her body clean of death and coaxed the ruddy glow of life back to her flesh.
Then the platform folded like an accordion
and the iron rod returned to it's sheath and the ceiling closed itself against the storm.
In the crackling, luminous silence two supple wrists moved and two hands fluttered like
pale moths on the glowing air.
Climbing from the tangled, copper webbing
the resurrected woman stared at the smoking platform and the crackling wires and tubes.
The uncertain glow lit her face and body then flared bright and in that moment
the sudden light offered up a monstrosity:
The flesh of her head and face was seared and had peeled back revealing grinning teeth and bits of her bone laid bare and her eyes.
The electrodes that had been planted in her body were still in place, one at her left ankle and another driven into the base of her skull.
As the sharp tang of electricity thinned,
another odor replaced it: sweet and ripe and unpleasant, the scent of death and decay.
How easily we run from this livid scene, down the stairs and across the huge dining-room and out the enormous doors we flee.
And how desperately I've strived to paint your comliness as a corpse (that's come alive) and taken on the aspect of a phantasm.
Because I could never leave you looking
as lovely as you do, so I worked a little poetry and made a monster out of you.
© W.G. Myers
