The Curse of Frankenstein

[Steven Hunley]

The Curse of Frankenstein
by
Steven Hunley

In fifty-seven when I was ten my ‘other’ family took us to the drive-in movie and we saw the first color Frankenstein movie. I say ‘other’ because I had two families at the time. Long before I was old enough to remember, I had been one of Solomon’s babies, divided up. I lived with one set of parents and on alternate weekends, visited the ‘other’.

It was a bad setup, and if I’d had my way, the judge in all his wisdom, should have been shot or forced to read 1 Kings 3:16-28 , write it on the board, and made to wear pink, a much less serious color than his usual somber robes, to mark his twisted sense of humor.

The effect was that I felt comfortable with one set of parents and not with the ‘other’. As far as I was concerned, one knew me and the other one didn’t. While with the ‘other’ I either felt I was on display, or worse, separated or cut off. After I’d gone to college and learned five years of English lit and sophistication I referred to it as the Sylvia Plath or ‘bell-jar’ effect.

From two to eighteen I was ‘the boy with two lives’ and didn’t much care for one of them. After eighteen, I abandoned the ‘other’ one, and by twenty-two the set I loved and lived with had jumped ship and abandoned me. My mother took the lifeboat, or I should say deathboat, of Cancer, and in her way steered clear of me, and my dad jumped on the leaky boat of cerebral hemorrhage for his bloody way out, leaving me, a wreck of unconsciousness, slowly sinking inch by inch into the depths of forgetfulness as icy and numbing as the North Atlantic.

I mean to say that fortunately or unfortunately, by that time I’d discovered Valium, and as a result, don’t remember one second of either of their funerals. I’ve never done public death well. I’ve never taken notes and memorized what polite thing to say, or how to feel. You’re never much good at consoling, when you’re expert at loss. You’re just not made of the right material.

I should have scrounged a dog-eared a set of Cliff’s notes on death and dying, or boned up on Elizabeth Kubler Ross, but it’s too late, and, as Robert Graves once said, 'goodbye to all that' for now.

http://filavaria.punt.nl/_files/2010-11-17/salomongiuseppe-cades.jpg


We piled into the car, my step-sister Edna, and my dad John and his new Canadian wife. The drive in was a free-for all eating situation too. You could bring anything you wanted. Not just sneak in a candy bar or sandwich like today at the theater, but rather sodas and fried chicken, liquorice twists both red and black, and popcorn fresh and hot from the concession stand drowned in oceans of butter. Kids my age would wear their pajamas and bring their favorite pillow. The South Bay Drive-in was showing a double feature, The Curse of Frankenstein, and a black and white B picture, X the Unknown. It would stay unknown too, due to my stomach and scare-factor, but more of that later.

The real X-the Unknown wasn’t on the screen, it was out in the audience. It was me in their family, the odd chipped piece, the one that didn’t match, and the one you hid in the back. The tag along, week-ender.

I know it seems harsh, but that’s how I felt. Kinda second-rate, kinda outsider-like, kinda not quite right.

But there I was in my PJs, trying to fit in, doing my best, pillow in hand, jolly good show, stiff upper lip, doing my best to glean what was expected.

I had no pre-conceptions, and hadn’t seen the original Frankenstein. So here’s this Hammer film, Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, and Cushing’s a doctor, and it’s supposed to be a long time ago, and certainly not in San Diego, I can tell by the way they’re dressed. It’s not as long ago as Robin Hood, but they talk much the same, so I figure they’re in England. But now it’s getting scary! Oh my goodness, real scary, and I stop biting my chicken leg just long enough to watch Frankenstein unfold a cloth on the laboratory table, and what’s those two squishy things there, see em’?

It’s a pair of eyeballs the crazy doctor Victor stole somewhere!

His helper doctor dude is shocked! I am too, and a mouthful of fried chicken bites the rubber floor mat in the back seat, as my jaw falls uncontrollably open in awe.
Oh, now I’m primed and as on edge and any razor by Somerset Maugham.

Now the crazy doctor is robbing a brain and after he plunks it into a jar he drops the jar and glass splinters go into the squishy-soft tissue. It reminds me of liver and onions, which reminds me of my mother at home, and how far away that is, and how I can’t wait for Sunday afternoon when I get to go home, even though it’s Saturday night, and that snaps my elastic brain of consciousness back to the present, and my eyes back to the screen. Now there’s a body all bandaged up, with all sorts of tubes attached, floating in a gigantic aquarium. It’s like a mummy floating in a glass sarcophagus. I didn’t care much for mummies; they didn’t talk enough and made me nervous. When we watched Boris Karloff in the Mummy two weekends ago on Shock Theater, I had nightmares for weeks.

I’ll say right now that was the usual pattern. I led a sheltered life, but only on Arizona St. where I grew up under my mom’s care. In National City I was subjected to good times and bad, and whatever the outcome, would take it home with me to my mother. The repercussions went with me wherever I wandered, and trailed far behind, except the ones that stuck with me, which I’m still ungluing today. I shook free of as many bad repercussions as I could, but a man has only so much energy, and uses most of it up on everyday battles. Life is a constant struggle to attain and break free. Our egos suppose we choose what we like, but life is more simple and sometimes gives you no choices, no good ones anyway.

But right now my ten-year old tummy is stuffed with all sorts of goodies, and it’s getting tense. The fried chicken and licorice whips and popcorn and French fries are conspiring together for an evil effect, and the bubbling soda, let's not forget that. Mad doctor Victor is messing about in the lab and starting the mechanism up. But he can't do it alone and leaves to go get help. The body floats alone in the aquarium with all sorts of tubes of blood and who knows what else hooked up to it as a storm wildly rages outside. My little-boy stomach is squeezing with tension. I look at my dad and his new Canadian wife sitting in the front seat. They don’t see my strained expression; they’re turned towards the movie. Edna can’t see me either; she’s transfixed by the film. So I look to see what’s so interesting when suddenly comes a Boom! from the loud speaker that hangs in the window. Lightning has bolted through the window and started the mad doctor’s machinery without him. They show a close up of the monster’s bandaged chest, and it’s moving, oooh, it’s moving, see that?

CRASH! Double CRASH and SHATTER!

‘Uh-oh, the aquarium broke,’ I figure, and my stomach tightens further.

Crazy doctor Victor and his helper are up the stairs and in front of the laboratory door. They open it up. Standing there, towering over them like the Colossus of Rhodes is a guy wrapped in bandages head to foot. Oh My God!

He grunts like a gorilla and grabs at his face and rips the bandages off his ugly mug. OH MY GOD!

He’s all squishy and shriveled and stitched up and his eyes are crooked and he’s green, do you see that? GREEN! OH MY GOD! The ugly towering giant guy is GREEN!

Right here the music gets loud, my stomach rumbles, and I lose my cookies.

Fortunately for all concerned the back window is rolled down. My head appears and I grimace and bellow likes an MGM lion that’s just been poisoned. The couples in nearby cars are scared to death, and not from the movie. My suffering face the real thing, and it’s 3 D too, and in Technicolor, don’t you forget, because they never will.

I’m embarrassed. So is everyone else. Edna hands me a stack of napkins. By this time I feel better, but it’s too late. With his face a paragon of determination John Simmes pulls the car out of the space, goes the end of the row, turns left and follows the wall to the exit. I look out the back window and X the Unknown is starting and it’s black and white.

The people in our car are black and white too. They all have granite faces, three rock faces of disappointment, let-down, and loathing. No one speaks, not even a whisper. The car rolls down the street stuffed with silent meanings and none of them good. I understand and am ashamed. I spoiled their night out, a trip to the drive in, and a good meal of junk food destroyed, all in one fell swoop.

I’m a disaster, an unknown quantity, the unknowable symbol, the real X the Unknown, a B picture person, a cheap imitation, a piece of the puzzle that just doesn’t fit ‘cause I wasn’t cut out properly. And folks, that was just the beginning. The psychological crap hit the fan later.

©Steven Hunley 2013

http://youtu.be/qEz02uxCPOM
to be continued...

[Gilliatt Gurgle]

...You’re never much good at consoling, when you’re expert at loss. You’re just not made of the right material....

I'm not trained in the art of literary speak when commenting on others writing, other than to say well done when I believe it to be so.
Well done, so far - looks like there is more to come. The line above struck a personal chord with me having gone through a period of death among several family members in a short (3 year) span.

[Steven Hunley]

Like I said, whatever it was would be brought home to my mother. But mothers know quickly, or within a few days, if a child that was out of the nest comes back with a cold, say, or an avian virus. A few days later her child comes down with symptoms. Not so with psychogical diseases, which are much more deeply hidden in the mind of the child, and have no demonstrable diagnostic pain, unless they are manifested closer to the surface through actions. And even actions can be misdiagnosed as to what causes them.

So here I am, picked up a little of what they call nowadays ‘baggage’ and can’t tell Mom to help me unpack it and iron things out. I wasn’t articulate at ten, and didn’t want her to find out, as she’d be upset. Upset at them, me, the whole nine yards of an emotionally-laden gridiron that dotted the playground of her ex-husband’s infidelities.

The first thing I decide to do, I don’t know why, is dig an old teddy bear out of the closet. You figure it out.

‘Oh, there he is, look! He’s as warm and fuzzy as I remember, and he’s just about my size.”

Yeah, right. He was one quarter my size and his leg was nearly ripped off and he stank.

“Don’t worry, Boy, I’ll sew you up!”

I got out a needle and thread. Nobody’s looking. It takes me fifteen minutes to thread the needle. I do a field-hospital job, but I figure my stitching is no worse than Frankenstein’s and Teddy is tough. He doesn’t squeal, not once. I have plans for T.R. T.R. is someone you can depend on to carry a big defensive stick.

It’s late afternoon, and my bedroom is in the back of the house facing the sun. Where the shade doesn’t reach the edge of the window, bars of sunlight shine across the bedroom and reflect gold off the waxed wood floor. I sat down and pulled a pencil sharpener out of my desk drawer and a new pencil. Small spirals of wood with yellow edges appear as I twisted. Once it was as sharp as a Saracen’s dagger I stretched over the bed with my head against the wall just under the window and put the pencil down on the floor next to the molding. I withdrew my hand and reached down again with my eyes closed to see if I could find it by touch.

Next I put T.R. in the bed on the outside, next to my pillow so he’d be the first to go. I pulled the blanket and sheet as tight as possible over him and tucked it in.

Now for the test.

I took off my shoes but left on my red and black striped socks. Lying on the bed flat on my back in the center, I put my feet in first, toes up like normal.

No good.

I realized that if I was on my back, my toes stuck up and untightened the blanket. So I turned each foot outward, one extreme left, one extreme right, and flatten myself like a cardboard gingerbread man looking as stupid and hieroglyphic as Ramses the Second.

“So what if it’s summer? Didn’t Mom just take me to see Land of the Pharaohs? I’ll imagine I’m an Egyptian between some lines of hieroglyphics stuck on a wall and I could be, as it’s getting mighty hot.’’

So slowly, thoughtfully, carefully, I scooted down inch by inch, into the bed, like bread sliding into a toaster slot. My reason was simple and I considered it while looking at the closet door across the room.

“If the monster comes out of the closet, it will be dark. He’ll grab at old Teddy first. It’s so tight in here he’ll have a hard time getting him out. By the time he does, I’ll get the pencil and have it out with him.”

I reached down and felt for the Saracen dagger pencil.

“I’ll fight him tooth and nail.”

My life had turned from urban romanticized childhood to Kipling’s Jungle Book in a single dark night at the movies.

What was it Mogli said? Oh yes, “A tooth, a tooth! Now I can kill the tiger.”

So yes, I was a California child influenced by movies. I had imagination to spare and images I’d seen, for good or for bad, haunted me forever. My mother knew this and understood. An example of a bad idea in her decision making was Land of the Pharaohs, but she balanced it later with The Ten Commandments. Scary movies weren’t even worth considering to my mother, and The Curse of Frankenstein would have been way out of bounds. Better secrecy than a mother’s wrath I figured at the time. That very fact worked against me being able to talk to her about it later. Like John Wayne, I was keeping a secret too dangerous to reveal.

Kids with imagination don’t need scary movies, the world is scary enough. Come to think if it, no kids need them. Let them make up their own minds about what’s scary and base it on a world gestalt made of their own experiences.

I was prepared, like John Wayne was prepared in Back to Bataan, but it’s easy to prepare when the sun is shining, and it’s late on a summer afternoon and everything is accounted for.

The night would be the challenge, where shadows rule and noises are hesitant to give up their sources, and a ten years olds’ imagination is given free reign.


©Steven Hunley 2013

to be continued....

http://youtu.be/g9mgHN26V_o Back to Bataan

[AuntShecky]

Not sure it can be categorized as a short story, but as a memoir it's absolutely splendid, just as evocative as the writings of our beloved Jean Shepherd. Most of your allusions and references are appropriate, except I'd drop the Razor's Edge. Maugham's use of the term in his title was strictly metaphorical. Also, check the spelling of poet Sylvia's last name.

I've typed this line before, but I'll never tire of saying that you're one of the LitNet's most original and enjoyable writers. Thanks for posting this, Steven.

Your fan,
Auntie

[Steven Hunley]

Night was always a challenge. And the fear gained from the night at the drive-in movie had the nerve to invade my prayers. That was the first thing it messed with, your faith. Up until then my prayers had been a simple “Now I lay me down to sleep, and ended with “I pray the Lord my soul to keep,” The Standard Rendition.

But on this night, I decided to bless my parents. With a six foot monster mucking about in the shadows, God knows they needed it. And that was night one. By night two the other parents were included and my stepsister too. Each night another person was added, like my aunt Eileen in Missouri, and blessed, and then after a few nights more they somehow needed more blessing each, and my prayer, originally a sprint at thirty-two seconds, had turned into a Marathon of twelve minutes.

At the end, instead of me crossing myself once in true Christian fashion, the number increased to five and then ten. If I had been crossed with swords instead of fingers, I could have been Errol Flynn, God rest his alcohol sodden soul.

I was obsessed with ‘getting it right’ and compulsive about “getting it done.”

Maybe I was a getting a bit obsessive-compulsive.

Does getting up and checking and rechecking the door you just locked and twisting the knob to make sure ring a bell?

How many times is compulsive anyway? Three times? How many more times than once is compulsive?

Does re-reading whole pages of Uncle Scrooge comic books count? How about Donald Duck? How many times for how many pages? When reading Tom Sawyer, how many times do you need to go down the Mississippi, how many pages re-read, how many times until it qualifies as obsessive-compulsive?

I’m getting carried away here, for the simple reason I was getting carried away at the time.

Three weeks later I’ve been sleeping with Teddy every night. The summer is baking outside in true southern California fashion. My parents are having friends over to play a card game named Canasta. I never hear of anyone playing Canasta nowadays. It’s hot even after dark, so my dad is setting up a card table outside on the patio, right below my bedroom window. I go to bed, and when I look out, I see my mom putting cards and ashtrays on the table below, dressed in a fancy Spanish-inspired skirt and a frilly peasant blouse off one shoulder. She’s smoking a Marlborough, and pushing a bobby pin in her red hair.


Me, the little wild-child upstairs, sweating like toast, has been contemplating the shadows a bit too often.

I yell through the screen, “Hey, Mom!”

She looks up.

“If you hear me start screaming, come up and save me. I won’t be kidding.”

The look on her face is puzzled, but that doesn’t stop her from making a decision.

“O.K. Go to sleep,” were her orders. She used to be a master sergeant in the WACS, no kidding.

She never asked me a thing about it.

Did that sound a little crazy? Looking back I think it sounds a little crazy. I didn’t put the pieces together until a few years ago when I heard about Howard Hughes. Leonardo played him in the Scorsese movie The Aviator. He’d line up bottles of his pee-pee on a shelf to keep track of them. He liked order in his life. One of his original traumas was when there was a soldier’s riot outside on the street and his mother hid him out in a closet. Later he took great comfort from his public life in darkened rooms. Shadows became his citadel. I think I wanted more order in my life too. I still do.

In the original Frankenstein the monster is pathetic. He’s too large and too ugly for most people to stomach. But that’s not his real curse. His real curse, dear reader, is that’s he inarticulate. Boris Karloff played this aspect of him with certainty. Because the monster can’t communicate and make his needs known, he’s alienated from the rest of mankind. He moans and yearns but no one understands. He gestures, but no one can make out his meanings.

That’s why children are referred to as ‘little monsters’, and live in a world apart.

That’s why I call my affliction the Curse of Frankenstein, and why writing, to me, is downright therapeutic. It’s my way of getting my personality out of the citadel of darkness my childhood built and thrusting it headlong into the blinding light of day.

I have met my monster and I am him.


©Steven Hunley 2013

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nur4g4r1LN4&feature=share&list=PLE7D31BBA24A6F75D Frankenstein 1931

[kaybaily]

You know Steven, as I have told you, I think this is such a beautiful piece of work...maybe even my favorite so far. For me, memoirs are my favorite because readers can usually connect to the human experience pretty well. As I did here. I cried a bit for you. Its a shame as children we buy into the idea that we should be afraid to tell our parents the things that hurt us. I bet your mom would of had your "other" family's heads but would of soothed yours with her love.
Wonderful piece!!

[Steven Hunley]

The Curse of Frankenstein Revisited
by
Steven Hunley

Some trauma, not of your doing, happens to you when you’re young. It could be psychic, it could be physical. In response, you become manic compulsive, trying to reestablish control. After a while you may notice you’re a little weird, maybe not. It’s hard to diagnose, children are wonderfully weird from the get-go. The original wound, with time, may stop hurting. So after a while you think you’re healed, when in fact you’re not. The scar remains.

After a few years you’ve outgrown checking the door knob fifteen times to see if it’s really locked, or reciting marathon prayers. Instead, you take control of your emotions, your love affairs, your environment, any aspect of your life that appears edgy, anything that might go wrong. You cannot bear to share these decisions. Trust in others is the first thing to go, and not with a wiz and a bang, but so slowly you never see it coming. Mistrust is a cup that gets filled one drop at a time.

So now you’re an adult and it’s you and no other in complete control. The weak point of this philosophy is when life throws you a curve ball and things go amiss, you blame it on yourself. When bad things happen they’re your fault. After all, whose fault can they be? You’re the one in charge and it happened during your watch when you were fully conscious.

There’s no one to complain to, no one to share the guilt of a bad decision, no one to face the music but you.

I have no answers; I only share the problem. The problem is a vigilant monster. Right when I think I’ve healed, life comes along and reminds me I’m not. I realize at that moment, as if I was shot with a crystalline bullet, that I’m only another one of the walking wounded, a casualty of an indifferent universe, and the fortunes of a war that never ends.

It’s a never ending Crusade for Sanity and Relevance to the Past without Guilt.

Sh*t, I should be Richard or Saladin. Maybe, with luck, I'll be my own hero.


©Steven Hunley 2013