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Link to Chapter 6 (plus chapters 1-5), Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9
And, finally, here is the last chapter of the story:

10

‘Goo’byee, Moffer’

             By the time Lucille and the posse
got to Copper Acropolis, the first faint light of dawn was creeping over the
eastern horizon.  When they came to the
big double doors, Lucille turned around and faced the posse.

            “You’ve got to let me go in there
alone,” she said.

            “Why,” shouted Guy Maddox, “so you
can build another one of those things?”

            “No,” said Lucille, “I’ll never
build another creature as long as I live. 
But if we all burst in there, she’ll kill some of you.  You don’t know how strong she is.  I don’t want any more dying.  I’ll go in there and end the job I started.”

            “Okay,” said Constable Maubery,
against his better judgement.  “We’ll
give you  ten minutes, then we’re coming
in there blasting at anything that moves.”

            “Agreed,” said the Doctor.

            She began to open the double doors.

            “Doctor Dewar?” It was Art
Schprengel.  On the way from the lake to
the mansion, he had been told that it would be impossible for his daughter to
live in a bucket of goop, and now was resigned to the fact that his daughter,
what was left of her, must die.  “Before
you kill them, her, would you tell my Pristle that her mother and me love her a
whole lot.”

            Lucille found she couldn’t look at
the man.  “I will,” she said, then, “I am
truly sorry about this, Mr. Schprengel.”

            “Just tell her,” came the reply.

            Lucille opened the doors and went
inside.  Once in, she shut the doors and
quickly bolted them shut with a large piece of metal that slid into its sheathe
across the doors and the door frame.

            “What’s going on in there?” yelled
Constable Maubery, trying to open the door upon hearing the sounds of metal.

            “I’ve locked the door,” yelled
Lucille, back out the door. “I must do it my own way.”

            She heard Constable Maubery order
some of the men to run down to the Afton Road General Store to get a battering
ram.  That should give her enough time,
she thought.

            Lucille walked up the three flights
of stairs to the door of the laboratory. 
It was open, and inside the domed laboratory she could hear voices.  She carefully entered the room and saw her
creation, her daughter, their daughters, pick up one of the medical machines,
and heave it across the room.  It crashed
heavily, smashing into bits.

            “What are you doing?” asked Lucille.

            Newgirl turned around quickly,
flinching as if expecting some sort of gunshots. There were none.  Once she saw that it was only her Mother,
Newgirl began to laugh.  “So, Mother has
come for her little daughter.”

            “You know you have to die.”

            “Do I?  You know, it’s always so sad when a child
dies before her parent.  I’d rather that
didn’t happen.”

            “Who am I talking to?” asked
Lucille.  “Is this Amalga– Newgirl?”

            “Yes.  Who else?”

            “Well, I thought that maybe that
vain little heart of yours would be yapping at me some.”

            “I’m here, Doctor,” said
Pristle.  “Don’t let Newgirl fool you
into thinking she’s in control.  I’m the
one with all the power.”

            “Really?” said Lucille.  “Don’t you think the orphan brain has all the
power?”

            “See,” said Orphan Brain.  “She thinks I should be in charge.”

            “No,” said Lucille, “I think you
should be dead.”

            “We’re not going to die for you,
Mother,” said Newgirl.

            “Well you can’t live like this, can
you?  Three silly girls trying to beat
the others to the controls.  Don’t you
see, none of you will ever have complete control.  Ever. 
Maybe if I hadn’t used that stupid orphan’s brain.

            “I’m not stupid,” shouted Orphan
Brain.

            “I wish you didn’t use her hair at
least,” said Pristle.

            “Why, don’t you like her red hair?”
asked Lucille.  “I like it.”

            “No, I hate it. I’m going to get it
dyed.”

            “You can’t dye red hair,” said
Lucille, dismissing the idea.  “It would
just turn green.”

            “How do you know that?” asked
Pristle.

            “Because I tried to dye your red
hair before I brought you to life, and the dye job didn’t work.  It turned your hair green.”

            “Where?” screamed Pristle, panic
coming into her voice.  “I don’t see any
green hair.  Where did you dye the hair?”

            “Well,” said Lucille, “let me just
advise you not to look at your pubic hair anytime soon.”

            Pristle screamed.  “My pubic hair is green?”

            “And red,” added Doctor Dewar.

            “Green and red?” shouted
Pristle.  “I’ll never find a man who’ll
marry me!”

            Newgirl’s heart began to beat faster
and faster, as Pristle began to contemplate her dire future with green and red
pubic hair.

            “Don’t listen to Mother, Pristle,”
said Newgirl.  “She’s only trying to
trick you.  Get you worked up.”

            “Shut up, Newgirl,” screamed
Pristle.  “Don’t you understand?  I’ll never get a man with an ugly red and
green muff!”

            “Not that you ever would have,
anyway,” said Lucille, “not with an orphan’s brain as your brain.”

            “What’s that supposed to mean?”
asked Orphan Brain.

            “Just that everyone knows that no
one would ever marry an orphan.  They’re
too dumb and you can’t trust them.”

            “You know I’m not dumb,” said Orphan
Brain.  “You even told me so, the night
before you killed me.  You said I was
brilliant, just like you.”

            “I lied,” said Lucille.  “Remember I’m an orphan too, and you
shouldn’t have trusted me.  I really
think you’re dumb.”

            “I am smart,” yelled Orphan
Brain.  She was beginning to get
agitated.

            “You can’t be smart,” said Pristle,
“if you like red hair.  I agree with
Mother.  You’re stupid.”

            “Yeah, well, you’re vain and
stupid,” said Orphan Brain.

            “I am not vain!” shouted Pristle.

            Pristle began to pump her heart in
such a way that the flow of blood to the head increased, putting undo pressure
on the brain, causing severe pain in Orphan Girl.

            “Cut it out, Pristle,” shouted
Newgirl to no avail.

            The only retaliation that Orphan
Girl could do was to send brain signals to the heart, telling it to beat
faster.  While Orphan Brain knew that
this course of action would probably make her brain explode, it would also
cause a massive heart failure in Pristle’s heart, and without her heart,
Pristle was nothing.

            “Stop it, the two of you,” screamed
Newgirl, as her body began to writhe in pain, ‘you’re killing us!”

            Lucille ran over to Newgirl, who was
now oblivious to her surroundings.  She
grabbed the helmet that was used to send energy pulses through Newgirl’s body
and placed it again on Newgirl’s head, strapping it on.      

            When Newgirl felt the helmet go on
her head, the internal fighting stopped, as all of her wondered what had
happened.  Both Orphan Brain and Pristle
had suffered extensive damage in the melee.

            “Whush goan awn?” asked Newgirl, her
voice now slurred from brain and heart damage.

            “What’s going on?” repeated Lucille.
“I’m about to flip the switch that will kill you.  All of you.”

            In the distance, downstairs, a
battering ram could be heard starting its work against the front double doors
of the house.

            “I doan wanna die,” said Newgirl.

            “You must die, and I must kill you,”
said Lucille.  “After all, I created
you.”  The pounding on the door
continued.

            “Ah try ta be khoot,” said Newgirl.

            “I know you tried to be good,” said
Lucille. “But it’s impossible to be good when you have an orphan for a brain,
and a vain, self-centered heart.  And for
that you have me to blame.  I am sorry.”

            Newgirl looked at Doctor Lucille
Dewar with her right eye, the left, Pristle’s being now blind.  “Goo’byee, Moffer,” she said.

            “Good bye, Newgirl,” said
Lucille.  “Oh, and tell Pristle, if you
can, that her Mother and Father love her so.”

            Newgirl farted.

            “Good,” said Lucille.  “No one will forget you, I’ll make sure of
that.”

            The banging on the double doors
finally ended, as the battering ram burst through, and the shouts of men could
be heard.  They were slowly beginning
their search of the old house.  She had
only a few minutes left.

            Lucille pulled the switch on the
Energy Conversion Unit, causing the residue energy still inside to  pulse through Newgirl’s body.  The extreme power of the pulses caused the
brain and heart, already damaged heavily, to stop altogether.  Newgirl was dead.

            “You won’t be forgotten,” said
Lucille to her dead daughter.  She walked
over to the desk where Yune Mune’s torn, shredded body lay, pulled some paper
and a pen out of the drawer, and sat down to write.

            She could hear the voices of the men
getting closer.

            She wrote, ‘The woman lived just where the Afton Road main road dipped down into a
little hollow, fringed with alders and traversed by a brook that had its
source-’ before Constable Maubery burst into the room.  She calmly put her pen down and thought,
“I’ll finish my novel in jail.”

            Constable Maubery escorted Doctor
Lucille Dewar from Copper Acropolis and had the Mount Stewart Fire Department
burn the building, and all of its contents. The copper was salvaged, however,
and used to make a monument in memorial to the five girls from Afton Road who had
all died of pneumonia in the same year. The people who knew about and were
involved in the going’s on in and around Copper Acropolis that night had
decided to keep quiet, and let the world sleep soundly for a little while
longer.

Chapter 9 of the saga:

9

‘A Volatile
Combination’

             Through the
telling of her story, the creation of a new girl,  Lucille was able to see clearly the error of
her ways. Hindsight has perfect vision and by the end of her story, she knew
what she had done was wrong.  She said
she was sorry.

            “So, let me
get this straight,” said Art Schprengel. 
When the Doctor was telling her story, when he first realised what she
had done to his daughter, he was furious. 
It took all his willpower not to shoot her there, on the spot.  But, as she continued, and told of why she
did it; because she wasn’t loved as a girl after her parents had died; because
she never had any friends; because everyone made fun of her; because no one
cared for her, some of his rage died as he heard her sad, eloquent story.  “You took all of our daughters, spliced them
together, and got a brand new daughter?”

            “Basically.”

            “And why was
that?”

            “So future
children could be manufactured the same way as this one was, created in such a way
that they would always have the love of the various individuals within them to
keep them happy.  They would be love
self-reliant.”

            “But you
think something went wrong with your, what did you call her?” asked Constable
Maubery.

            “Amalga-Girl.  Yes,” 
said Doctor Dewar, “I realise now that the orphan brain that I used must
have been too much of an unstable entity in comparison to the relatively stable
upbringing the other girls had.  That
stability was why I came back to the Island to
conduct my experiment.  I knew that there
were hundreds of communities here that had well nurtured and loved
children.  But when I got the orphan
brain, well, she just reminded me so much of myself, and I thought that maybe I
could save her.  Give her the lack of
need for love that I never had.”

            “Did you
ever consider adoption,” came the voice from up the lake.  It was Newgirl, on her way back to the
mansion.  The speaker was Orphan
Brain.  “It would have been a lot easier
on all of us.”

Everyone looked in the direction of the voice. They
could all see that Newgirl had her arm around Dr. Yeo, who went up that way to
have a pee, using him as a shield.

“Amalga-Girl, drop that man!” screamed Lucille.

            “Don’t call
me that stupid name,” said Newgirl.  “My
name is Newgirl.  And if any of you come
any closer, I’ll kill this guy.”

“I’ll kill you dead girl,” said Guy Maddox lifting his
shotgun and shooting in the direction of the voices.

            “Don’t
shoot,” yelled Art.  “My daughter’s in
that girl.”  Hearing the absurdity of
that sentence, Art felt he needed to add a more reasonable reason as well.  “And, besides, you could hurt Dr. Yeo.”

            “Daddy?”
yelled Pristle, out of Newgirl.  “Daddy,
I have red hair!”

            “Pristle!”
shouted Art.  “Don’t you worry,
Pristle.  Daddy’s going to get his little
girl out of there.  I promise.”

            “You can’t
get me out of here, Daddy,” said Pristle. 
“I’m a part of Newgirl now.”

            “Yes we
will,” said Art.  “We’ll take out your
heart, and all the other stuff of yours that’s in that girl and we’ll put in a
bucket of goop, or something, keep you alive that way!”

            “I’d look
ugly in a bucket of goop, Daddy,” Pristle said. 
“Just get me an appointment with a hair dresser who knows how to dye red
hair.”

            “No one is
going to dye my red hair,” said Orphan Brain. 
“It’s the hair that I was born with, it’s the hair that Mother chose for
us, it’s the hair that’s going to stay.”

            “I’ll let
you pick the colour of the goop,” said Art, trying to entice his daughter’s
heart.

            “No, I’m not
going to live in a bucket,” said Pristel. “I’m going to live here, as part of
Newgirl, and we are dying our hair.”

            “You’re only
staying as part of me,” said Newgirl, “if you promise to let me have complete
control of me.”

            “I am going
to keep complete control of this body,” said Orphan Brain.  “The brain should always be in control.”

            “But I am
the soul of me,” shouted Newgirl.  “I
should be in control.”

            “Well,” said
Pristle, “what about the old saying ‘follow your heart’?  I say I should control our life.”

            “No one is
going to control your life,” said Doctor Lucille Dewar.  “Because you will have to die.”

            “Excuse me?”
said Pristle.  “But that is not an
option.”

            “You can’t
live,” said Lucille.  “none of you,
either alone or as a whole.  You’re too
volatile a combination.”

            “But if the
soul was in charge,” said Newgirl, “sort of keeping the rest of me in check—“

            “No, it
wouldn’t work,” said Lucille.  “The
orphan’s brain is to unstable.  It could
never get used living as part of such a close knit family.”

            “Oh, no,”
shouted Orphan Brain, “don’t blame all this on me.”

            “I don’t,”
said the Doctor.  “It’s my fault,
entirely.  I should have never used the
orphan brain.  I should have let her
continue to live her miserable orphan life, never allowing herself to trust
another individual enough to love them, or let them love you.  It’s my fault I made you this way, and
there’s nothing I can do to change it. 
I’m sorry, but you’ll have to die. 
For the betterment of society.”

            “Yeah?” said
Newgirl.  “Well, I don’t know about my
sisters, but I know I don’t want to die, so screw you, Mother.”

            “I’m with
her,” said Orphan Brain.

            “Let’s get
out of here,” said Pristle.  “I know
where we can get some nice black hair!” 
With that, Newgirl threw down Dr. Yeo, and took off running.

            Newgirl ran
past the posse and Doctor, into the darkness of the night, before any of them
could get a shot at her.

            “Damn,” said
Constable Maubery.  “She got away.”

            “I know
where she’s going,” said Lucille, calmly.

            “Where?”
said Constable Maubery, checking the ammunition in his revolver.

            “Copper
Acropolis.”

————————-
Next, the final chapter:  Chapter 10 – “Goo’byee Moffer”

When I was in my young, formative years, I was fortunate enough to be introduced to some great music. Mostly punk and new wave bands from the mid-to-late 70’s. They had a profound impact on me, and helped shape the person I am today.
One of those great bands was The Specials. I absolutely fell for the ska rhythm and the “black and white together” message behind the music.
For those interested in knowing more about what a Rudy is, click here.

Here’s Chapter 8.
You can find the other 7 chapters within the archives.

8

‘The Long
Dark Truthful Mirror’

 

            Newgirl
awoke, three hundred yards up the bank of the lake from the body of Birt Gill
about two hours before Doctor Dewar began her tale of woe and regret.  She was feeling much better, rested, and
quite in control of herself.  She hoped
that Pristle, nor any of the other girls that were part of her would surface
ever again.  Newgirl got up and began
walking, to where she did not know.

            After about
an hour of trudging through the brush and woods, creeping through open fields,
trying not to be spotted by anyone, Newgirl came upon an old shack.  She was starting to feel tired again, and
figured she had better rest.  She began
to walk towards the shack.

            “I know that
place,” she heard herself say, although she couldn’t imagine how she’d be able
to know it at all.  She made it to the
door and knocked.  After hearing no
response, she went in.

            The inside
of the shack was sparse.  Light from the full
moon shone in through the only window, providing just enough light to see
shapes and shadows.  There was an unmade
bed to one side of the single room.  On
the other side was a table and two chairs. 
On the back wall of the shack was a mirror.

            Newgirl
realised that she had never seen her image before and now wanted to.  She was scared that she wouldn’t like the way
she looked.  “How bad can I be?” she
said, and walked slowly to the mirror, her head down.  There she stood, head down, in front of the
mirror, preparing herself for the visage that awaited her.  The reflection of her face.  She breathed in deeply, closed her eyes and
lifted her head.

            “Well,
well,” came a male voice, from the direction of the door, “it looks like yet
another of my students has come for a little late night tutoring.”

            I know that voice, came the thought to
Newgirl, from somewhere inside her.  How? came a thought from somewhere
else.  It was the voice of Mr. Long, the Afton Road
School teacher.  How do
I know him? asked Newgirl of herself. 
Because I love him, answered
Pristle, as Newgirl turned from the mirror to face Mr. Long.  The moon’s light hadn’t penetrated  far enough into the room, and the remaining
darkness afforded Newgirl’s face the chance to remain hidden from his view.

            “It is a
little late for educating you,” said Mr. Long, buttoning up his fly, for he was
coming back from peeing in the woods, “and I’ve already taught a girl
tonight.  She had a long lesson in love.”

            Newgirl
could feel the rage and jealousy build inside her, could feel her heart beat
faster and faster, pumping the blood of flaming anger from Pristle’s heart to
the rest of her body.  Suddenly, Newgirl
felt the rage that Pristle had felt and understood its cause.

            Pristle had
been secretly dating Mr. Long for a whole year. 
He had told her he loved her and that she was his only lover.   She believed him because she loved him.  Now, she was hearing the truth and it made
her mad.  Newgirl could feel Pristle
trying to gain control of the body.  She
could also sense all the other girls feeling sympathy pangs of the rage, the
jealousy that Pristle was experiencing. 
Newgirl decided not to fight Pristle. 
Hell hath no fury like six women scorned.

            “You’’re too
tired for a little more extracurricular activity, Mr. Long?” asked Newgirl,
with a disappointed poutiness in her voice. 
It was not the voice Newgirl had expected.  Pristle had taken over.

            “Who is
this?” asked Mr. Long.  He took a step
forward to try a catch sight of her face.

            “No,” said
Pristle, “stay there.”  Mr. Long
stopped.  “I will come to you.  I’m a brand new girl about to enrol in your
school.  I heard I could get good marks
if I came by and helped you with your homework.”

            Mr. Long
liked the sound of this girl’s voice.  It
was deep and sultry.  Different from so
many of the girls that lived around the area. 
Suddenly he wasn’t feeling so tired. 
“I’ve been known to raise the odd student’s average by asking them to
come by for a little one on one tutorial. 
You say you’re new here, eh?  How
‘bout I administer an oral exam on you to see how smart you are.”

            “Well,  Mr. Long,” said Pristle, slowly advancing
toward him, taking care to stay out of the moonlight,  “I can guarantee that I’m the oddest student
you’ll have, yet I am truly average.  And
as for being smart,” she said, entering into a beam of light, exposing her
face, “I’m smart enough to know that you’ll not live through the night.”

            When Mr.
Long saw Newgirl’s face, he screamed and turned to run.  He ran into the closed door, then frantically
tried to open it.  However, upon his
return from his call of nature, he had locked the door, and now it wouldn’t
open.  He turned so that his back was
against the door and he faced her.  “Who
are you?” he yelled, looking again at her face. 
“What are you?”

            “I’m your
lover,” screamed Pristle.

            “What?” said
Mr. Long, cowering.

            “I’m your
one and only, remember?” yelled Pristle, moving closer to the man.  “That’s what you called me.  ‘You’re one and only.’  Only you lied to me.”

            “I don’t
know you!”

            “No,” said
Pristle, her face a foot away from his, “I don’t know you!  Now admit to me you’re a two timer.”

            “A what?”

            “A
cheater!  A seducer!  Look me in the eye and admit it!”

            Mr. Long
looked into Newgirl’s eyes.  In her left
eye he noticed a familiar twinkle.  He
knew a girl whose eyes twinkled like that.

            “Pristle!”
he gasped.

Newgirl grabbed Mr. Long by the throat.  “Admit it!”

“Pristle, I don’t know – “ was all he could say before
Newgirl began strangling the air out of his body.

“Say it,” she growled.  “Tell me you cheated on me.”

            “Alright, I
admit it,” gurgled Mr. Long.  “I’m a
cheater!”

            Newgirl let
go of Mr. Long’s throat as Pristle said calmly, “See, that wasn’t so hard, was
it?”

            Mr. Long
shook his head as he tried to get air into his lungs.

            “Now, give
us a hug and make up,” said Pristle, putting her hands around the man and
squeezing.  “And I’ll give you a hickey,
because you told me you like them.”  She
bit and bit deeply into his neck, her teeth slicing through arteries and
veins.  At the same time she squeezed
around his waist with all her might, until she heard his back snap.  She let go of him and he fell to the floor,
whimpering, wriggling and jiggling.

            “Now, where
was I?” asked Pristle.  “Ah, yes, the
mirror.”

            She turned
and began to walk back to the mirror.  On
the way to the mirror, Newgirl attempted to regain control of the body, but
Pristle didn’t want to give it up quite yet.

            The body
with the girls in it stopped just out of reflection of the mirror.

            “Pristle,
we’re stopping you!” said Newgirl, “You’ve had your revenge and we’ve all
enjoyed it, but it’s time to give control back to me.”

            “Not yet,”
said Pristle.  “I just want to see what
I, what we look like.”

            Newgirl
sighed.  “You can do that as a part of
Newgirl.  Now, come on, everyone’s
waiting.”

            First Girl
Killed, whose stomach was being used as part of Newgirl, grumbled in
agreement.  Third Dead Girl, who had
grown quite attached, both emotionally and physically (part of her was
Newgirl’s anus), to First Girl Killed, farted her vote in favour of Newgirl.

            “No,”
demanded Pristle, stomping her foot, the left one, down.  “I want to see, as Pristle, what we look
like.  I want to look through my own
eye.”

            “I can’t
believe you’re so vain!”

            “Who said
that?” asked Pristle and Newgirl together.

            “I did,”
shouted the Orphan girl, “Me, up here.”

            “Oh, don’t
tell me Brainiac is going to get her tits all tied up in a knot now,” said
Pristle.

            “They’re not
my tits, Pristle,” said Orphan Brain, “they’re yours.  And they were put on crooked.”

            Everyone who
could look at or sense Newgirl’s chest did so.

            “They are
not crooked,” screamed Pristle, punching Newgirl in the head.

            “Hey, hey,”
shouted Newgirl, “knock it off, or you’re going to knock us out!”

            “Yeah,” said
Orphan Brain.  “knock it off.  I’ve been sitting up here in the head, trying
to figure out why you’re so vain, and I can’t for the life of me figure it
out.”

            “I am not
vain!” pouted Pristle.  “Now let me look
at our face.”

            “Pristle,
will you give me back control of us if we let you look at us in the
mirror?”  It was Newgirl.

            “Yes.”
Pristle.

            “Well, what
do you say, girls?” asked Newgirl of herselves. 
“Should we let the big baby have her peek?”

            There were
grumblings, farts, belches, fluid sloshings and knuckle-cracks as the rest of
Newgirl debated the question. “Great,” thought Newgirl, shaking her head, “I’ve
become a democracy.”

            While the
others decided how they’d vote, Pristle took advantage of the lapse in
attention and leaped in front of the mirror.

            The only one
who noticed was Orphan Brain.  “Watch
out, she’s going to look.”

            Dead Girl
Number Two slammed shut the right eye, her former eye.  But Pristle had full control of the left eye
and left it open.  She gazed upon their
reflection in the mirror.

            Immediately
she screamed in horror.

            “What is
it?” everyone wanted to know.

“Are we ugly?” asked Newgirl.

“The face is not so bad,” said Pristle, gulping,
trying to recover from the initial shock of the sight.  “It’s a little swollen and bruised, but that
can be expected after major cosmetic reconstructive surgery.  But that’s not it.”

“Then what?” asked Orphan Brain.

“It’s… it’s the hair,” whispered Pristle.  “It’s red. 
Flaming red!”

“And what’s wrong with red hair?” demanded Orphan
Brain.  “That red hair happened to belong
to me, you know.  I liked it.”

“Red hair is awful,” cried Pristle.  “You can’t do a thing with red hair!  It’s wiry and awful!”

“Alright,” said Newgirl, “you’ve seen us, now give
back control to me.”

“Never!” exclaimed Pristle.  “I want to die!  I can’t live with red hair.  I’ll kill us all rather than have red hair.”

“Well, if she won’t give up control,” said Orphan
Brain, “then neither will I.”

“What are you talking about, Orphan Brain?” asked
Newgirl.  “You don’t have any control.”

“I’ve always had control,” said Orphan Brain.  “I’ve just been doling it out to the rest of
you.”

Pristle laughed. 
“Prove—“

The body of Newgirl crumpled to the floor.  It lay there motionless for a minute, then it
began to move.

“What was that?” asked Newgirl, as their body slowly
stood up.

“That was a brain aneurysm,” said Orphan Brain.  “I could have let it kill us if I wanted it
to.”

“I wish it had,” said Pristle.  “Better dead than red.”

“I’ll give you a massive heart attack if your not
careful, Pristle,” said Orphan Brain.

“I’ll cut off the blood flow to your ugly brain.”

Newgirl whistled loudly, getting everybody’s
attention.  “This is ridiculous!  We can’t go on like this, the three of us,
cooped up in this one body.”

An objectionable fart rang out loud.

“That’s right, Third Dead Girl,” said Newgirl.  “It was 
remiss of me to leave you other girls out of the equation.  I apologise.”

Third Dead Girl let a thin, odorless one go.  Apology accepted.

Newgirl turned her attention back to the matter at
hand.  “We’ll get nowhere, each of us
wanting control. None of us giving it up. 
We can’t solve this ourself.  Now,
here’s my plan.  Both of you, Pristle and
Orphan Brain, allow me enough control of our body to get back to Copper
Acropolis.  If we haven’t killed Mother
back at the house, then we’ll ask for her advice.”

“What can Mother do about this ugly red hair?”
screamed Pristle.

“I don’t know?” shouted Newgirl, losing her
patience.  “Maybe she could dye it?”

“Oh, no,” said Pristle. “Dyeing red hair is
tricky.  If it’s not done by a professional,
it’ll turn green.  I read that in a
book.”

“Well, maybe Mother’ll take us to the hairdresser,”
said Newgirl.  “Would that be acceptable
to you, Pristle?”

“I’d like to be pampered,” said Pristle, conceding.

“Orphan Brain,” said Newgirl, “will you allow me to
take us to Mother?”

“I have nothing against you, Newgirl,” said Orphan
Brain.  “It’s your rotten, stinking, vain
heart that I don’t trust.”

“Pristle is your heart, too,” said Newgirl to Orphan
Brain.  “You’ll have to trust her.”

“Yes, Orphan Brain,” said Pristle in her sweetest
voice, yet in a mocking tone, “I’m your heart. 
Trust me.”

“Give me a chance and I’ll stick a stake right through
that heart,” said Orphan Brain.

“Yeah, well I’ve got my eye on you, too,” said
Pristle.

“Are we agreed, then,” asked Newgirl.

            There was a
pause as Third Dead Girl made a fart.

            “Thank you,
Third Dead Girl,” said Newgirl. 
“Pristle?  Orphan Brain?”

“Agreed,” said Pristle.

            “Agreed,”
said Orphan Brain.

            “Well,
then,” said Newgirl, putting a false smile on her face, “let’s go and find
Mother.”

——–
Next time:  Chapter 9 – “A Volatile Combination”

Here’s Chapter 7.

 7

            Doctor Dewar
awoke under the autopsy table two hours after her creation had knocked her
there, leaving her for dead.  When
Lucille tried to get up, she needed the support of the table to assist the move
and was feeling very unstable, physically and mentally.

            After a few
minutes of dizziness, she was able to stand by herself.  It was then that she began to reflect on the
miracle that had occurred earlier in the night. 
She had created life! Her experiment was a success.  Yes, the experiment, the new life, had tried
to kill her and was probably now running, confused, around the countryside, but
it had been a success.

And the success was far greater, and more immediate
than she had dreamed it could be.  She
expected, at the most, subtle indications that the creation was alive.  A faint pulse; weak, steady beeps on the
heart monitor; reflexive movement to pin pricks; those sorts of things.  But this girl was immediately and fully alive
and hyper aware. She had expected great strength, but not so soon.  The way she just picked up the heart monitor
and threw it at Yune –

            Yune!  Where was he? 
Lucille began looking around the laboratory.  She yelled his name.  She remembered their hiding place, and when
she glanced in that direction, saw a pool of blood coming from under the
desk.  She slowly walked over to the
desk, walking on her tippy-toes to keep the rather copious amounts of blood
from getting on her shoes.

            When she
looked behind the desk, she found Yune Mune. 
His body was mutilated, ripped apart, torn limb from limb, and left in a
heap.  “My God,” was all the doctor could
say before she vomited.

“I must find her,” was what she was thinking as she
was vomiting.

Deep in her brain, Doctor Lucille Dewar was starting
to form the seeds of doubt about the morality of her experiment.  In her attempt to make a being that didn’t
need love from others, had she inadvertently created a killing machine?  But that thought was deep in her
subconscious, slowly percolating.  In her
conscious mind she could still, and did, justify all the death, even Yune’s, as
being for the greater good.  Even her own
death, thought Lucille, would have been worth the manufacture of a new creature
that didn’t need love.

“I must find her,” she said.

When Lucille left Copper Acropolis to search for her
‘daughter’, she took with her a shotgun and an axe.

 

            It was some
time later that night when Lucille stumbled upon the bed of crushed grass where
Birt Gill was loved to death.  His limp,
partially naked body was still lying there, just as Newgirl had left it.

She put down the shotgun and the axe and went to the body to
inspect it.

            It was quite
obvious to Lucille that this boy had been in the middle of sexual intercourse
when he died. The boy had suffered his Big Death before he achieved his Little
Death.  The evidence was standing
straight up, looking right at her.

            After her
cursory inspection of the body, Lucille looked around the field of grass,
hoping to see her creation lying asleep somewhere, but she saw nothing.  Of course, she knew that her Amalga-Girl
could not have done this killing because Amalga-Girl does not need love.  It must have been the boy that tried to force
himself on her, and she killed him in self defence.  That must have been the reason. Although that
is what she tried to believe, she knew, somehow, that that was likely not the
reason.  The seed of doubt that had
earlier percolated in her subconscious was now starting to bubble up into her
consciousness.

There, leaning over the dead innocent boy, Doctor
Dewar had, for the briefest of moments, her first conscious thought that she
had done a very bad thing. But Lucille pushed the thought away, and focused her
attention on what to do now, her next course of action.  Lucille decided she had better get rid of the
evidence, the body of the boy, until she figured out a better plan.

            She picked
up the axe, and swung it at the boy, attempting to cut the body into smaller
pieces.  The axe hit his wrist, severing
the hand.  The force of the blow caused
the hand to fly up and hit Lucille in the groin.  The pain caused her to lose her
concentration, and again the bubbling grounds of doubt ran through her
mind.  She began to cry, and once she
started, it quickly erupted into wild screaming, mad at herself for even trying
such an immoral experiment, and mad at herself for possibly failing at it.  She needed to hit something.  She raised the axe above her head, to swing
at the body again.  Tears were streaming
down her face.

            “Freeze!”
came the voice of authority through Lucille’s screams.  It caused her to stop her swing.

            “Freeze, or
I’ll shoot you right here.”  It was
Constable Maubery.

            Doctor Dewar
saw the Constable, standing about thirty yards away, pointing his revolver at
her.  Behind him stood Art Schprengel,
Guy Maddox, and about five other men, all with weapons.  There was also a boy.  It was Cecil McNeill.  He had been the one who saw Newgirl with Birt
Gill, and had run off.  He ran to get
help, hence this posse.

            Lucille
dropped the axe, and fell to the ground, unable to stand.  The strain of her emotional and moral
collapse had caused this physical one.

            “Is that the
one you saw?” asked Constable Maubery. 
The question was directed at young Cecil.

            “It coulda
been,” replied Cecil.  “It was kinda
dark’n’all.”

            “Well, is
it, or ain’t it?” yelled Art Schprengel.

            “Yeah, I
guess it is.”

            “Alright,
Cecil,” said the Constable, “you run along home, and mind yourself.”

            “Yessir,”
said Cecil, and he ran off.  He didn’t
like being there, near that death, the strange death he had witnessed, and he
didn’t need to be told twice to go.

            Constable
Maubery looked at the woman on her knees, over a dead boy.  He couldn’t quite see who it was at that
distance.  “What’s your name?” he yelled.

            “Doctor
Lucille Dewar,” came the quiet reply.

            The posse
began murmuring at that news, but the Constable quickly quieted them down, although
he never took his eyes off her.  He
returned his attention to her.  “I’m
coming over there,” he stated.

            The Constable
carefully walked towards Lucille and the body. 
Lucille never moved a muscle as he approached.  He stepped over the boy’s severed hand, which
was lying palm up on the trampled grass, reached down and grabbed the axe.  He threw it over in the direction of the
posse.  He then grabbed Doctor Dewar by
the arm, lifted her to her feet, and moved her away from the dead body.  She didn’t resist.

            They moved
down by the lake and sat on a log. 
Neither of them said a word for about two minutes, as the rest of the
posse moved as a unit, first over to look at the body, then down to the two by
the lake.

            Finally,
Doctor Lucille Dewar spoke.  “I caused
that boy’s death.”

            The
Constable looked at her.  “You’re
admitting that you killed Birt Gill?”

            “No,” said
Lucille, “I didn’t kill him, but I caused his death.”

            “If you
didn’t kill him,” said Art Schprengel, “then who did?”

            “I’ll bet it
was that yellow fornicator what was always hangin’ around her,” yelled Guy
Maddox.

            “Shut up,
boys,” said Constable Maubery.  “I’m
doing the interrogating here.”

Constable Maubery sounded like he was madder at the
boys than he was at the woman that caused the death.  The boys didn’t think that was fair.

            “While
you’re interrogatin’ her, Constable,” said Dr. Yeo, walking down to the lake
having finished his preliminary scan of the body, “ask her if she knows who all
raped that boy.”

            Constable
Maubery looked at the Doctor Yeo.  “You
don’t think someone raped that boy, do you, Doc?”

Of course, the Constable knew that the doctor did think
that, he wouldn’t have said it otherwise. 
Still, the information had shocked the stupid question out of the
Constable.

            “No, I don’t
think some one raped the boy,” said Dr. Yeo. 
He was from Mount
Stewart.  He was helping the Constable in the investigational
autopsy of the remains of the murdered girls when the Constable asked him to
join the posse.  “By the looks of that
boy, the amount of fluids on and around him, I’d say he was gang raped.  That’s what killed him.”

            “So, what’re
we after, then,” said Art, cocking his rifle, “a wild gang of homo-sexuals?”

            “It wasn’t
men who raped him,” said Dr. Yeo.  “I’d
say it was women.”

            Everyone of
the men, including Constable Maubery, looked at Dr. Yeo.  For a moment, it was quiet, as each of the
men imagined themselves as the victim of a sexual attack by a gang of wild
women.

            “It wasn’t
women,” said Doctor Dewar.  “It was
girls.”

            Everyone
looked at her.

            “What
girls?” asked the Constable.

            “My
daughter, for one,” said Lucille, looking at Constable Maubery.  “For one, and for all.”

            “You have a
daughter?” he asked, surprised.

            Doctor
Lucille Dewar looked at each man in the posse, then said, “I have all our
daughters.”

            She then
began to tell the long sad regretful story that was her experiment, her life,
and that had culminated in Birt Gill being gang raped by one person, several
beings.

——————————
Next – Chapter 8 – “The Long Dark Truthful Mirror”

18 questions to determine which party’s policies you are in tune with.

I have no idea who is responsible for this quiz, whether it’s slanted in one or another way.  Some of the questions are kind of slanted a bit too much towards or against various party-specific issues, but I took it and scored 100% in compliance with Jack Layton and the NDP policies.
I scored 77% in step with Paul Martin and the Liberal party.
For both the Bloc Quebecois and Conservative party I scored 55%.

This link will give you links to the first five chapters.
This is Chapter 6

6

‘The Lake of Shimmering Waters’

             The newly
born girl ran and ran. She didn’t care or think about where she was going.  She was just glad to be alive.  While she was in the mansion, her mind and
body were masses of confusion, acting as if on their own, independently of one
another.  But now that she was in the
fresh air, outside, she was feeling better. 
When she tried to think about what had just happened, it didn’t make any
sense.

What did make sense, and what felt good to the girl
was being alive again.  Alive,
again?  Feeling was once again coursing
through her body, this strange body, and the sensations were electrifyingly
sensual.  Her hands, whose hands?, felt
like they were buzzing.  It was as if she
could feel every cell in her body breathing, every ounce of blood moving
through her veins.

As she ran, the mind of the new girl started to
comprehend the miracle of what had happened. 
It understood somehow that each piece of her body came from different
parts of different girls. In her mind, she could sense each of the girls’ own
personalities in the different body parts of this new body, and could sense
those personalities gradually dissipating as the blood and fluid’s of five
girls intermingled throughout the body. 
The new girl’s mind could even sense its own awareness of a new self, as
a new girl, growing.

Eventually, by the time she stopped running, all the
independent parts began to move, under the thoughts of the mind, as one fully
integrated mass of body parts and fluids, and began thinking, not as an
aggregation of parts, but as her own new self. 
The woman in the mansion had called her Amalga-Girl.  She did not like that name. She would call
herself Newgirl.

            After
running, aimlessly for about twenty minutes, she came upon a clearing and
stopped to more closely experience the rush of her return to life.  She felt strong and healthy.  Despite running such a distance, she was
hardly out of breath.  Her only complaint
was that she was feeling very hungry. 
“After all,” thought Newgirl, “some of me hasn’t had anything to eat for
nearly a year.”  She laughed out loud at
the absurdity of this thought.  When she
had finished laughing, she thought she heard singing.

            Carefully,
without making a sound, she moved in the direction of the song.  She came upon a lake.  Inexplicably, the storm, the wind and rain
had stopped.  The dark, ominous clouds
had disappeared, unfurling a bright, full moon. 
The light from the moon cast itself upon the water of the lake, causing
a beautiful shimmering affect.

            Silhouetted
against this lake of shimmering waters, she saw a boy, sitting on the
bank.  She judged him to be approximately
eighteen years old.  He was singing a
song about soft ice cream.

            Of the five
girls that made up Newgirl, only one of them, Pristle Schprengel had ever
tasted soft ice cream.  Newgirl could not
get a strong enough sense from Pristle’s heart, breasts and other things, to
grasp the whole concept of soft ice cream. 
It sounded heavenly divine, thought Newgirl, almost at the same time
wondering which part of her used to talk like that: heavenly divine.  Newgirl wondered if this boy had any soft ice
cream that she could try.

            Quietly, she
made her way to just behind where the boy was sitting, facing the water.  He had a beautiful voice, she decided.  “I wonder if he’s cute,” she heard herself
think.  She wanted to make contact with
him, but she didn’t know how he’d react to her. 
She didn’t really know what she looked like.  She felt like she might be pretty.  But then again, she’d just gone through some
major surgery, so she might be pale.  “I
wish I had some blush,” she thought.

            That sounds
like Pristle Schprengel, said Newgirl to herself.  Newgirl figured that because Pristle’s heart,
a major organ, was used, her personality must still be lingering, pumping
itself through the body.  “I hope that
doesn’t last long,” thought Newgirl.

            “Pristle
Schprengel sounds like she was vain.  I
don’t think I would have liked her.” 
This time the independent thinker inside of Newgirl was the orphan girl,
the brains of the operation.  Newgirl
quickly shushed herself.

            What was
going on? Newgirl decided that the orphan’s brain and Pristle’s heart must be
taking longer to assimilate due to their relative importance in the scheme of things.  She figured their personalities would
eventually die and, then, she would be fully Newgirl.  Newgirl concentrated and tried to think for
herself.  For the time being, at least,
that seemed to work, as she stopped hearing the other voices.

            Newgirl looked
at the boy again.  He was still sitting
there by the water, singing, oblivious to the fact that just five feet behind
him stood the world’s first mechanically produced human.  She decided she would risk the consequences
and make contact.

            “Hello,” she
tried to say, but the voice got stuck in her throat, and it only came out into
the world as a murmur.  Newgirl realised
that she hadn’t spoken since becoming undead. 
She cleared her throat and tried again.

            “Hello.”  It was said loudly, clearly.  Newgirl liked the sound of her voice.

            It made the
boy jump.  He quickly turned around,
looking left and right, panicked. “Who’s there,” he yelled.

            “Don’t be
afraid,” said Newgirl, impressed with the quality of sincerity she achieved
with only her second sentence ever.  “I
won’t hurt you.”

            “Who are
you?” asked the boy, still sounding scared, but less so.  “What do you want?”  He was looking in her direction, but not
directly at Newgirl.

            “I’m just a
girl.  I just wanted to say hello,” said
Newgirl, trying to answer the boy’s questions. 
“I heard you singing.”  She had
noticed the boy’s lack of eye contact. 
“Are you blind?” she asked.

            “Yes,” said
the boy, getting up.  “I don’t recognise
your voice.  Are you from around here?”

            “I am
mostly,” said Newgirl.  “You wouldn’t
know me, though. I’m a new girl.”

            “A new girl,
eh.”  The boy smiled.

            “Very.”

            He’s not bad
looking.  The thought came from somewhere
deep within Newgirl.  “I heard you
singing.  You have a lovely voice.”

            “Thank you,”
said the boy.  “I like to come down to
the lake, especially after rains, bring a picnic, and sing here.  The water and the surrounding trees gives
one’s voice a magical quality.”

            “What are
you doing here so late, and in the dark?”

            “It’s always
dark for me, so it doesn’t matter,” said the boy.  “I could ask a young girl the same question,
though.”

            “Oh, nights
like this one seem to restore my health,” said Newgirl.

            “My name is
Birt,” said the boy.  “Birt Gill.  I live in that house up there.”  He pointed in a generally Western direction.  “I have some food, if you’d care to join me.”

            With the
mention of food, Newgirl suddenly remembered how hunger she was.  “Yes, I’d love to,” she said, trying not to
sound as urgently hungry as she was.

            Birt bent
down to pick up a cloth bag.  As he did,
Newgirl’s left eye noticed, approvingly, Birt’s nice, tight bum.  Her glance at his bum took her totally by
surprise, and she wanted to quickly look away the second she caught herself
staring.  She managed to look away a
couple of seconds later.

            “There’s all
kinds of food in my bag,” said Birt. “Help yourself.”

            Newgirl
reached in and felt around.  She grasped
two long, hard cylindrical objects. 
“What are these?  Carrots?” she
asked, pulling them out of the bag.  They
were carrots, and she devoured them quickly.

            Birt and
Newgirl sat down by the lake and ate and talked.  Newgirl did most of the eating, and Birt did
most of the talking.  After the food was
all gone, and the cold settled down upon them, Birt and Newgirl found
themselves inching closer and closer together. 
Newgirl really liked Birt, and she felt that he liked her.  He was being really open, honest and sincere
about all manner of topics.  It was
obvious to her that he was intelligent.

            “May I touch
your face?” Birt asked at one point.

            “What?”
replied Newgirl, not understanding the question.

            “May I touch
your face?” Birt said again.  “It’s how
blind people see.  By touching.  I want to see if you’re as beautiful as I
imagine you to be.”

            “I would
love you to touch my face,” said Newgirl, closing her eyes.  When her eyes were closed, she could feel
something building up inside of her.  It
was as if she were hungry again.  But
that can’t be, thought Newgirl.  All this
food has satisfied that urge.

            At the
moment his fingers gently caressed her cheek, then quickly pulled back as he
felt the scars, and swollen puffy lips, Newgirl understood what this new urge
was, and before she could stop herself, she acted, fully and without thought,
on it.

            Lust had
overcome her. Pristle Schprengel’s heart had once again taken momentary control
of Newgirl. She jumped on Birt and began to smother him with kisses.  At first, he was terrified, not knowing what
was happening.  But as he quickly began
to understand what she was doing, kissing him passionately, grabbing him in
places he’d only dreamt of being grabbed, he more than eagerly went along with
it.

            Newgirl
tried to put a stop to the heavy petting. 
She tried to gain control of herself, but was losing the battle.  She could sense, as she was thrashing about,
ripping the clothes off a blind boy, the other individual parts of her rising
up to their own consciousness.  Soon, she
was not trying to control just Pristle’s wild lust, but the teenage lust and
curiosity of each and every girl that was Newgirl.  Only the orphan, the brain, refused to join
in the frenzy.  Newgirl felt like it was
feeding time in a pool full of sharks, each shark fighting for the biggest
piece of meat.  What else could she do
but join in?  Although there were only
two bodies rolling around by the lake of shimmering waters, six individuals
were having the orgy of their lives.  One
individual, the one that made up Newgirl’s brain, simply watched.

            When it was
over, Newgirl, lying on the matted grass, now back in control of herself, more
or less, was exhausted.  Birt Gill, lying
there beside her, was dead.

            After a few
moments of quiet, not quite understanding how this terrible, terrible horror
could have happened, Newgirl heard some rustling in nearby brush.  She sat up to investigate, and saw a young
boy running away fast, heading in the direction of town.  Newgirl got up and too tired to chase him
down, proceeded to lope off along the bank of the lake in the opposite
direction.  She got only three hundred
yards away when she passed out and collapsed, falling into some dense brush.

————————————
Next time:  Chapter 7 – “Exultant Regret”

It’s been a see-saw battle in my NFL pool, between me and reverseflash.  Last week, he went 3-1 to take a one-game advantage.  This week, I went 3-1 (lost on those stupid Colts) and regained my one-game advantage from two weeks ago.
Only 3 games remain.  I bet this is the most exciting event you’ve ever considered, eh?

Many have probably seen the Ping Pong Matrix video, but this is another along the same lines. It’s pretty funny too.

Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4

And this is chapter 5

‘Amalga-Girl,
Hello’

             “An
orphan?!”

            That is what
Doctor Dewar said when she first saw the child. 
“You brought me an orphan?”

            Yune was
amazed.  He hadn’t said a word about the
girl.  “How did you know she is an
orphan?”

            “Look at
her!” shouted the doctor.  “Dark rings
under her eyes, sallow complexion, a smile that so obviously hides the pain and
turmoil of being all alone in the world. 
I see that smile every day in the mirror, Yune.  Of course she’s an orphan.”

 

            At first,
Lucille was dead set against using an unknown waif’s brain as such a crucial
part of her experiment.  The brain, the
most intricate piece of the puzzle, the piece that would ultimately meld all
the other limbs and organs together, had to be a brain of a girl from a stable
background, of that she had been adamant. 
An orphan’s brain had too many untold influences thrust upon it, of that
she was certain.

            “Send her
back,” said the doctor.

            “Well, now,”
replied Yune, “why do not you get to know her. 
Maybe she will be okay.  After
all, there really are no other brains available.  Maybe her brain is a good brain.  She did tell me she was smart.  And on the way back from the train station
she was asking me all kinds of curious questions.”

            Doctor
Lucille Dewar was in a tough situation. 
She knew when she began the planning for her experiment that she would
have to make sacrifices and this might very well have to be one of them. “I’ll
give her a day.  If her brain doesn’t
seem acceptable, she’s out.  And I’ll use
your brain instead of hers!”

 

            All the next
day, Doctor Lucille Dewar spent time with the orphan girl, to find out all she
could about the girl, her history, her intelligence.  All but the final, last moment tasks of the
experiment had been taken care of. 
Doctor Lucille thought it might actually be advantageous to be diverted
from the experiment for a while, to rest before its culmination so she would be
fresh and alert.

She had to admit, the girl was a sprite.  This girl reminded her of a young
herself.  The girl had much in common
with Lucille, in fact.  While both were
orphans, and lived with many foster parents, they both excelled in
education.  They both were fiercely
independent thinkers.  They both had low
self esteem, although both imagined themselves in the future as great
successes.

Lucille had made a full 180 degree turn in her
decision to use the girl’s brain for her experiment.  Now, deciding that it must truly be Fate’s
hand that delivered such an identical being to her, such a kindred spirit, she
exclaimed (to herself, so as to not upset the child) that no other girl’s brain
would do.  It must be this girl’s brain
that was used in the experiment.  “This
girl’s brain will make the experiment,” she told Yune, who was just happy that
his brain wouldn’t have to be used.  The
doctor so loved the look of the girl’s fiery red hair, that she decided to use
it, instead of Pristle’s black, curly hair that she was planning to use.

At the end of their day of bonding, Lucille looked at
the girl, who was getting ready for bed and thought, “This girl, through her
brain and red hair, will live forever, and will become the most famous person
of all time.” Lucille kissed the girl goodnight, the first kiss she’d given
anyone since before her parents’  deaths
all those years ago.  As she closed the
door to the guest bedroom, Lucille said to herself, “Correction.  She’ll become the second most famous person
of all time.  Second, after her creator,
Doctor Lucille Dewar, that is.”

            On the next
morning, the morning of the night of the experiment, while the girl was still
sleeping, Lucille and Yune crept into her room and slit the girls’ wrists,
carefully draining the blood into sterile milk bottles.  They then carried the bloodless body, and the
bottles of blood up to the laboratory and put it all into the large
refrigeration unit which she had bought from Yune when he sold off his kitchen
supplies from the restaurant.  Doctor
Lucille Dewar then shushed Yune Mune out of the laboratory and told him not to
come back until eight o’clock
that night.  For the rest of the day, she
remained, locked up, in the dome, performing the crucial final stages of what
would soon become her greatest triumph. 
Yune spent the rest of the day polishing the tarnished dome and shutters
on the outside of the house.  He wanted
to finish before the rains started, as clouds were moving in from the North.

 

            It was a
dark and stormy night, that night, and at eight
o’clock, Yune knocked tentatively on the door of the laboratory.

            “Enter,
Yune!” yelled the doctor from inside the room.

            Yune opened
the door.  The first thing he saw that
was different about the room was the placement of the autopsy table, which had
previously been stored in a corner.  It
now had total prominence in the centre of the room.  All kinds of wires, tubes, and such were
coming from it, leading to various other medical looking machines which
surrounded the table.  On the table was
some obviously large mass, covered over by a white silk parachute cloth.  Areas of the cloth looked like they were
stained with blood.  The next thing he
noticed was that it was raining in the room.  That was because, he discovered when he looked
up, a large section of the domed roof had been retracted, and a large metal
pole, connected to the table, now emerged from the room, through the hole, and up
into the night sky.  Flashes of lightning
could be seen cracking through the hole. 
He didn’t like lightning.

            “Here,” said
Doctor Lucille Dewar, handing Yune a notepad and pencil.  “I want you to document everything you are
about to see and hear.”

            Yune noticed
how calm the Doctor seemed, on this, her night of nights.  Yune himself was nervous, yet excited.  He began to write in the pad, describing the
room.

            Doctor Dewar
walked over to one of the medical machines, turned a switch, and a low humming
sound permeated the room.  She then
trotted to the autopsy table, grabbed a corner of the silky cloth, and said,
“Behold!  Science is about to leap
forward one hundred years this night. 
For I, Doctor Lucille Dewar, present the world with a creation of my own
device.  A creation that will no longer
need the externalised love of parent, the affection of friend, the kindness of
stranger to survive.  For it will find
the love, the companionship, the camaraderie that all people need, within
herself.  It will never experience the
pain of losing a loved one, for all her loved ones shall be contained within
herself.  She will never be without a
chum with which to play, as she can play with herself.  Nevermore will she be teased by her
classmates, for she is her own school.”

Lucille grabbed tighter the sheet.  “I present to the world, Amalga-Girl!”  Lucille pulled the sheet from off the table,
and for the first time ever, another human being gazed upon the result of
Doctor Lucille Dewar’s life work.  Yune
Mune was mightily impressed.

Amalga-Girl, Yune Mune figured, was about five feet
seven inches in height.  She was wearing
a very plain, khaki green frock, which covered her torso, down to her
knees.  Her arms and legs had scars over
them, some healed over, some fresh. 
Areas of the skin on her arms and legs had different pigments of colour,
indicating that they were taken from different girls.  One foot seemed bigger than the other.  Her face was bruised and slightly swollen,
scarred, but strangely pretty.  Her hair,
of course, was fire red, having been taken, along with the brain, from the
orphan girl.  Yune Mune liked red
hair.  The woman who ultimately cost him
his restaurant had red hair, but was not, Yune reminisced, a natural redhead. 

Over the top of her head was a metal helmet, and
attached to the helmet were all kinds of wires which went to all kinds of
machines of all sorts.  Yune Mune had to
admit that, while he oftentimes doubted his employer’s ability to pull it off,
it seemed that she had created something truly marvellous.

            “I must
applaud your genius, Doctor,” said Yune.

            “There’s no
time for congratulation,” said the Doctor, making last minute checks and
changes to the instrumentation of some of the machines.  “For the moment is at hand.  The tide is high and the time is nigh.”

            Doctor Dewar
ran up to the machine that housed the base of the metal lightning rod that went
through the hole in the roof.  She
flicked a switch, ran to the middle of the room, beside the autopsy table that
held her lifeless Amalga-Girl, and looked up to the sky, through the missing piece
of dome, and waited.

            She stood
motionless for about ten seconds.  Yune
Mune was looking up into the rainy, stormy sky as well.  He jumped when the Doctor screamed, “Now!”
and a second later a magnificent, deafening crack of lightning raced overhead.  Lucille clapped her hands together and
laughed.

            “How did you
know it would lightning, Doctor,” asked Yune.

            “Because,”
said Doctor Dewar, “I am not only creating life tonight, but also lightning.”

            “You’re
causing the lightning?”

            “Yes.  Lightning will recur in five minutes and
twelve second intervals.  And we must be
ready when the sheet of lightning that will hit that lightning rod gives me the
juice to jump start my experiment.”

            “How can you
guarantee that any lightning will hit the rod at all?” asked Yune.

            “Well,”
replied the Doctor, “if you did a good job of cleaning the tarnish off, and
polishing all the copper I asked you to, then the lightning will be drawn to it
like flies to honey.”

            “Ah,” was
all that Yune could say.  Inside he was
hoping that he did a good enough job. 
The Doctor would kill him if the experiment failed because of his poor
workmanship.

            “Now,” said
Doctor Dewar, flipping the switch on a machine, “I turn on the Energy
Containment Receptacle which will store the energy from the lightning.  The potent energy will then travel down these
wires,” said Lucille, following the course of thick wires, which led to
another, smaller, machine, “and be received by the Energy Conversion Unit,
which will convert the energy from its raw, deadly form.”   She flipped a switch on the Energy
Conversion Unit and the machine began to hum. 
“Once converted, the energy then make its way to the helmet, and from
there, it will enter Amalga-Girl’s brain, and course through her body,
regenerating and rejuvenating all the various organs, tissues, fluids,
etceteras.”  Lucille had moved to the top
of the autopsy table and was stroking Amalga-Girl’s cheek.  “Then, once the energy dissipates, Amalga-Girl
will be left to her own devices.  She
will be alive and free thinking, never to rely on the love of others!”

            Yune Mune
applauded the Doctor.  He was truly in
awe of her genius and forward thinking.

            Doctor Dewar
looked at the clock on the wall.  “Come,
Yune,” she said, grabbing him by the arm, “Our work is finished here.  All there is to do is wait.  We will watch from the corner.”

            Doctor
Lucille Dewar and Yune Mune ran to the corner and crouched down behind a
desk.  From this vantage point, they
could see the whole room.

            They waited
a few moments, then the Doctor shouted, “Now!” as she had done before.  Right on cue, a flash of lightning and crack
of thunder roared over the open roof.  It
had missed the lightning rod, however, and all that was heard was the rain
falling, outside and inside the dome. 
They waited through two more blasts of lightning, both missing.  Yune Mune was starting to doubt his copper
polishing.

            The next
crack of lightning smashed into the rod, causing the whole room to light up,
blue and white, as if it were midday
in a snowy field. “It has begun!” shouted the Doctor, although no one, not even
herself heard her, due to the incredible noise of the lightning.  The lightning, the electricity could be seen
travelling down the lightning rod, humming and buzzing blue as it went, into
the Energy Containment Receptacle. 
Finally after ten seconds of electrical buzzing, the last of the power
from the lightning made its way into the Receptacle.

            Once again,
all was quiet, except for the rain.

            “Why has it
stopped?” asked Yune.

            “The energy
is travelling through the wires to the Conversion Unit. It will begin to whine
as it begins to convert the raw electrical energy into tiny but powerful
electrical impulses”

            As if on
cue, the machine started making a high pitched whine.  With every passing moment, the whine got
louder and higher pitched, until Yune was forced to cover his ears.  Then the whine levelled out and the wires
going from the Unit to the helmet on the Amalga-Girl’s head started to jump in
regular intervals.  What’s going on,  Yune was about to ask.

            “It’s the
electrical impulses travelling to the helmet, and throughout Amalga-Girl’s
body,” said the Doctor, anticipating Yune’s question.

            After a
minute of once-a-second impulses, they began to occur more rapidly, until
finally, the wires were jumping all the time, all over the place.  Then, all at once, they stopped.

            Doctor Dewar
stood up from behind the desk.  Yune did
the same.  He noticed that he now did not
hear the rain, as he expected in this quiet. 
He looked up through the hole in the dome and saw that the rain had
stopped.  When he looked back down, he
saw the Doctor carefully approaching the autopsy table.  The creature on the table had not moved a
muscle.  Yune Mune decided to stay where
he was, behind the desk.

            Doctor Dewar
made her way to the table where her creation lay still.  She glanced at the hospital equipment around
the table, the heart monitor was silent, none were showing any signs of
life.  The power must have knocked them
out, she decided.  She leaned over the
table and surveyed the body, the feet, legs, torso, the head.  Everything was in the exact same position it
was in before the impulses coursed through its body.  The body had not moved an inch.  “Maybe I failed,” Lucille heard herself
think.

            Yune saw the
twitch of the sewn-up leg, and saw that the Doctor had missed it because she
was looking at the creature’s head. 
Before he could yell to her, however, the creature sprang to life,
jumping off the table, wildly flailing its arms around, knocking into the
medical equipment.  It was as if she were
trying to move in six different directions all at once.

            “It’s
alive!” yelled the Doctor.  ‘Amalga-Girl
is -“

            The creature
turned towards the Doctor’s voice, and before Doctor Dewar could scream her
second “Alive!” the creature grabbed the doctor’s throat.  It was strangling the doctor.  The creature punched the Doctor in the head,
knocking her unconscious.

            Yune Mune
threw a book that was on the desk toward the creature.  “Amalga-Girl stop!” he yelled.

            The creature
turned to look at him, not letting go, nor loosening her breath-restrictive
grip on the Doctor.

            “Let go of
her,” yelled Yune.  “That is your mother,
Amalga-Girl, let her go!”

            Amalga-Girl
looked at the woman.  Doctor Lucille
Dewar was not moving, she simply stood limp in her creation’s grip.

            “Let go of
her you stupid creature,” yelled Yune, feeling totally helpless.

            Amalga-Girl
let go of the doctor, her ‘Mother’. 
Doctor Dewar fell to the floor in a heap.  She didn’t move.  The creature turned to look at Yune Mune, and
began walking towards him.  She looked
angry.

            Yune Mune
began to panic.  His heart was pounding
very fast.  He was short of breath. He
tried to back up but quickly found the wall impeding his retreat. The creature
was getting closer and closer.  As she
reached out to grab him, Yune screamed and grabbed at his chest.  He didn’t know it, but he was having a heart
attack.

            The creature
didn’t know it either, and if she’d known, she wouldn’t have cared.  She reached out, grabbed Yune Mune by the neck,
and twisted his head from his body.

————————–

Next time, Chapter 6, “The Lake Of Shimmering Waters”