Monstrous creation and merciful destruction - do such things exist? I would know, having witnessed both of those things. There is no simple explanation for the events surrounding Temple Hill or what happened on Ted's Wednesday. I doubt anyone outside of the HOA has even talked about it.
I just need to put it all together, because I learned something, some Ted lesson. I used to go to church with his family. Jesus loved that man, just as much as Jesus loves innocent babies. I've never made any sense of that church's ideas.
What is love anyway? Do we love what we create? Does our creation love us?
It's not so simple.
I remember looking through the Frankenstein's Diary and wondering how such a thing could even be possible. I'd heard in church that God was the sole creator of Man, the only giver of life. It took the form of a spiral notebook with all of Ted's scientific and religious notes.
"Just watch." Ted talked.
Whenever Ted was talking - we were listening. Nothing evil or hideous could come from one of Ted's little talks. Not one word said on his stage was a lie. It was better than church. Ted's talks were reality, while God was just a golden lion from Narnia.
Winter was coming and Ted led us over the river and through the woods. We had never seen a dead body before and we certainly hadn't seen a naked woman before. Somehow, he showed us both of those things at the same time.
The others ran away screaming while I just stood there shaking. It was cold but I was too bundled up to feel it. Yet the chill I felt came from within, started in my bones and froze my muscles. I was terrified.
I watched Ted climb onto the corpse, before I turned and threw up Mrs. Beverlim's pie. We'd stolen it and split the pie.
"Cherry pie." I heard myself name the red mess that smelled of vomit and sweetness.
"Do you feel better?" Ted asked me. He'd gotten off of her and come to check on me.
"Do you?" My head swam dizzily. "I've got to go."
"Don't be scared." Ted laughed. "She doesn't have to stay dead. I just like her better this way."
I trembled in terror. I asked: "Did you kill her?"
"I just told you, she's barely even dead. Trust me. They get way more dead than this."
"Uh." I coughed. I couldn't think of what to say. Ted's eyes were wild and scary and I was all alone with him in the winter woodlands. I could hear the wolves howling.
"I can prove it. All those missing pets are like her and in my shed. We'll bring one back and then you'll see."
I didn't want to. I was too scared to say no. We returned to Temple Hill where we got Ted's friend, the mysterious dark figure in the raincoat. I shuddered as I went between them to the garden.
We were in the garden and talking about life from death. Ted was talking. I was listening. Then Victor, Ted's weird older friend, opened the tote. Inside were the desiccated remains of all sorts of animals.
"Leftovers." Victor told me, smiling evilly. I was scared. I didn't want to see what they had made with the rest of it.
"It's my day." Ted said strangely.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
"Ted's day." Victor assured him.
"It's just a Wednesday." I objected. I regretted skipping classes.
"No, it is my day." Ted smiled. "Today I am God. Today I choose who lives and who dies. I can even bring back the dead." Said Ted. He opened up a graphic novel with an incantation encased in a necromancer's speech bubble and read it aloud.
Victor just smiled as we waited. I looked over at the steaming bulges under the towel, sitting in the shaft of light from the window over the toolbench. It started to move.
"See? We sewed up all the parts of the missing pets throughout the neighborhood." Ted told me.
"What about Wannamingo?" I asked, dread evident in my voice. Wannamingo was Donovon's rottweiler. The headless body had appeared on his front lawn.
"Our beast needed a head." Ted grinned.
The thing on the table rose up under the towel with the brown bloodstains. I wanted to scream and run but I was unable to look away or breathe. I prayed to Aslan to save me from the devil in the shed. God never answers the phone. I guess that is why we invented 9-1-1.
I staggered through the snow and stopped as Victor fell over beside me. Blood was spurting from his rent flesh and the part of his face that was bitten off was hard to look at.
"Help me." Victor begged. The creature made its wheezing noise that was its growl and got his remaining foot and dragged him back into the shed from beside me in the snow. I turned and looked at the drag mark of blood and crushed snow.
"Down! Down I say!" Ted commanded his monster. His creation.
I got to the phone and started talking about the resurrection of the dead animal. I concluded with: "I mean - it is Ted's Wednesday, after all."
I hadn't called 9-1-1. I have no idea who I dialed that day. Someone else called the police, hearing the screaming and such, and I don't know what they said.
I was walking along the sidewalk and the sun was coming out. I felt better, after getting away from Ted. I wondered what the other kids were all doing. Probably building a snowman or something cool like that. I hated being with Ted all the time. Everything was always so horrible and scary.
The Temple Hill Police Department were cruising by when I heard Ted screaming in terror. I'd never heard Ted scream in terror so I didn't recognize the sound. I actually thought it was a little girl until I turned and looked.
Ted came running out of his backyard with torn clothes and blood all over him. The creature he had sewn together from murdered pets came running along behind him. It wanted revenge, all of its revenge. Each part of it wanted a piece of Ted.
The head clamped down on Ted's heel and jerked him to the ground. There it set about tearing him to pieces, with the help of its various other animal parts.
"I gave you life!" Ted was objecting to his own murder. Then his voice was just a red, wet, gurgling noise. Then he was just the stuff getting crunched and torn by the monster.
"Jesus and Aslan, dear...dear...me." I said, not really saying anything. Those were my choice of words, though, at the sight.
I looked around and saw that little old ladies of the rotary were coming out onto their porches and overweight deadbeats opened their windows to absorb the moment. The midday HOA was all witness to the event.
The cops went into reverse slowly and arrived parallel to the splattered, crimson, cherrypie all over the fresh white canvas of winter. I just blinked, barely able to accept the details I would spend the rest of my life correlating into a coherent memory. The cop just sat in his car for a long moment before he got out; he was holding a shotgun.
Wannamingo had no more fight in it. The damned thing limped away, whimpering pathetically. It somehow was a nightmare chimera of dead animals and also it was everyone's pet. After it had destroyed Ted it was no longer menacing.
It just waited pathetically for the cop.
Even from where I stood I could see tears in the cop's eyes as he raised the shotgun and aimed it at the broken creature. I felt sorry for it and felt my eyes watering also.
"Wait!" I yelled. The cop looked up from his trembling weapon and saw me approaching.
"Don't come closer!" He told me. "It's dangerous."
"No." I protested. It was all I had to say. Everyone's instincts told them that Wannamingo was finished. It had no more anger or violence left in its mismatched bones.
I hugged the creature, noting that it had the odor of a thousand petstores, but not one whiff from the grave. Wannamingo wasn't evil, it wasn't.
"You're still a good boy." I told the creature. It whimpered as I got up and backed up behind the cop.
"I'm sorry." He said as he chambered a shell in the gun. Then he shattered the creature's dome with a thunderous blast. A second shot rang out and the remains of the sewn horror disintegrated.
I still go to church. I still love Aslan, my golden lion god. Jesus can keep Ted, if he loves him so much. The only thing I ever pray for is to one day know what that final peace is like: when a monster destroys what made it.
A monster's creator.