The Monogram Monograph: Part VI

Dr. Brewster, as the tall, strong man had called himself, didn't wait for Kessler to answer his question. He hurled Kessler backwards and through the pain of impact, Kessler heard the sound of breaking glass. He hated broken glass, and the thought of it in his back now was making him panic. It didn't help that now he sprawled directly next to the mutilated body of Dr. Dexter, which Dr. Brewster had evidently retrieved. Kessler was positive that Dexter had not been here when he had first awoken in the house. He was struck with an image of the massive Brewster hounding Dexter through the night like an animal.

So Kessler couldn't stop his voice from splitting as he called out: “Don't kill me! For the love of God!”

“I won't kill you quite yet. First I have to prepare you.”

Kessler blinked now, and Brewster's words became distant. Long ago, he had heard that Dr. Dexter had used his experiments to transform himself into an ape. But it seemed as though Brewster, who was identical to Dexter, was the true subject of the legend—though it was still clear that he was a twin to Dexter, Kessler now saw in better light his arms were stretched out long beyond his sleeves, and were covered with thick swampy hair. The thumbs were simplified but the fingers wider and stronger. And what seemed to be a weird or grown-out hair was actually swatches of fur beginning to overtake his face.

Kessler couldn't speak, a too-often occurrence. He couldn't fight back as Brewster picked up and slung him over his shoulder, carrying him with little regard to the blockage in his way. At once, they were in Dexter's sanctum, or rather, what was a clear counterpart of it. There had been much in the space Kessler had only just visited, but he would have noticed if a man-sized steel cage had been among them. He was impressed that with his hands warped as they were, Brewster could still operate the key that locked him inside.

“I need you to tell me,” Dr. Brewster said, in an oddly gentle voice, “why all the people of this world disappeared when you arrived.”

Kessler still couldn't talk. He wanted to, but he was terrified. He knew he would screw up what he needed to say when he spoke, and Brewster would then kill him.

“I should have suspected, after making my findings, that there would someone out there like me, with my talents, who would cross the threshold with a Gateway,” Brewster mused. “The Divide couldn't last forever. The Walls had to come down; the sleepers had to awake. But now that they have...what terror have they wrought?”

Kessler's mind conjured up the notion that Brewster's slow transformation into a simian form was an agonizing process. His bone structure was shifting, his muscles and skin distorting—plus the mental effects, if there were any. The voice was human, but only just. It strained. Everything about him was straining.

But he was in control for now. “Forgive me. If you don't know why you have devastated my world, I will determine it for myself, after I extract your spinal fluid as to ease my transformation.” He looked around, as if expecting to find something in a familiar place. “Embarrassingly, however, I seem to have mislaid the tool that allows me to do this. Do not worry—I'll be back, and the act will be quick. Lethal, of course, but quick.”

“How does one extract spinal fluid, exactly?” Now Kessler was able to talk. And he had said the exactly wrong thing.

But Brewster was assuredly amused. “With a long needle, of course,” he said, with a slight grin.

Then he left, and for the first time Kessler realized how cold it was on this world.

“On this world.” Ridiculous. He was still on Earth. Another planet couldn't sustain life, nor could it imitate his memories of Earth so perfectly. Unless it wasn't a planet, the conclusion of a scientific analysis—maybe it was another plane of existence, like that which was said to house ghosts. Dreams, too, were sometimes said to take place in a separate realm.

He couldn't even tell if this was a dream anymore, even though he knew that that was often the commonly the case with dreams. Maybe if he tried to analyze the situation at hand through dream-logic, he could discern what was happening. Months of reviewing his dreams with Dr. Dran had given him good skill at interpreting dream-symbols. Even if they hadn't figured out what the Monogram was.

Assuming that Brewster was his dream, then. Men and apes had an interesting relationship in the popular mind—even if humans didn't descend directly from what most people would call “gorillas,” there was still the belief as circulated by folks who didn't like the idea of evolution that that was what the theory said. So maybe deep down he was afraid of regressing into some sort of atavism—a thing turned backwards on evolution. That could mean he was afraid of losing skills, like being able to manage his life. Well, he'd lacked those skills since childhood, so that was an obvious enough fear. Perhaps the fear was racial, too. He was loath to consider it but there were many people who referred to non-whites as “apes”—perhaps this was his mind's way of manifesting that way of thinking. A fear of evolution by way of the so-called scientific racism. He thought back to the Black Dragon Society from his dream where he was known as Colomb: a group of insidious Asians right out of those foully bigoted Sax Rohmer booklets. That hardly painted a comfortable picture of his psyche to himself.

Uncomfortably scraping to away from these thoughts, he thought also of Jekyll and his brutish, simian Hyde. Hyde was sometimes said to be Jekyll's evolutionary or racial fears, too, in the mind of the 19^th Century person. He was also said to represent Hyde's fear of “libertine thinking” or homosexuality. Kessler was pretty sure that he was attracted to women. And he knew despite what a lot of the people he read about or talked to said, there were such things as bisexuals. Somehow that did not fill him with as much dread or guilt as his thoughts about race. He had to admit that he knew few non-white people...⁷

Gaining a little strength, he strained against the bars and shook them hard. No, this was meant to contain the sort of creature that Brewster was apparently becoming. There was no way out without the key, and the key was most certainly not within reaching distance. For many long minutes, perhaps hours, Kessler waited.

Eventually, however, Brewster returned. Kessler squeezed his eyes tight when he heard the footsteps. The doctor made no noise as he worked at the cage, evidently having his long syringe close at hand. He heard the cage door yawn open, but the expected hand seizing him did not come. Several long moments passed, and the cage door hung open wide with nothing outside.

Kessler opened his eyes. No, it wasn't nothing outside. The man who'd unlocked the cage was still standing there. It was Mr. Marvel.

Once more, Kessler found himself unable to ask, “What are you doing here?” It came out as: “Who are you?”

Marvel was grinning. He had likely grinned when he had walked in the room, and when he'd unlocked the cage, too, even though it was the dead of the night in a madman's house. He leaned close to Kessler's face.

“I'm the author of this story. Screwy idea, wasn't it?”

Kessler looked over Marvel's shoulder. Behind him was freedom. He took his chances with freedom rather than with the lunatic.

He was out in the night once again, and Marvel was only a faraway memory. There was no Virginia leading him into the night, but there was a desire to end this madness. He was soberer this time when he reached the city, but that sobriety only drove home how direly empty the streets still were. Nonetheless, he wanted to go home, even if it wasn't his home but a pale facsimile duplicated on another world.

He came into the apartment quickly, and by the time they laid eyes on each other, it was too late for either to react properly. The furniture arrangement of this apartment was different here even if it was the same room; a table caught his ankle and threw him down onto the couch. The man who staggered away with surprise was the murderous Dr. Melcher.

<< Part V                                                                                                                             Part VII >>

---

7. Mr. Kessler's examination of the various ways in which ape symbols are interpreted in dream-psychology are notably astute (albeit unfocused) for someone of his apparent educational level. Indeed, it is clear that he absorbed much while working with Dr. Dran.

At the Institute, as I said, a trinity made of Dr. Dran, Vivian, and myself often got into adventures of some variety. A man very similar to Mr. Kessler in a lot of ways whom we all mutually befriended was Dr. George Zabor. He was originally a member of that comedy club that Oliver and Vivian insisted on attending led by Professor Ritz. Ritz and Zabor worked together to make fun of amateur films they had collected or created over the years, utilizing the Institute's theater on a regular basis to this end. I came to one meeting and found the way that the audience was overwhelmed by the feeblest of jokes to be an embarrassment, especially as it caused Vivian and Oliver to cringe into one another as their bodies rocked from joviality.

Zabor—I never felt comfortable calling him George—was also working on this second doctorate in veterinary medicine. For all the disciplines that were linked and created at Old Spooky I never understood trying to weld film studies and veterinarian work. Zabor, however, evidently stumbled upon some discovery while tinkering on the imaginal energies that come with any sort of multi-dimensional experimentation on media. These energies are unpredictable but we never suspected that they would bestow upon him the same sort of transformation that Kessler's figment-fictional “Brewster” apparently endured. That is to say that he became a gorilla.

Vivian and I were the first to learn of it. We were leaving the library late one night with a romantic full-moon over us, her hand holding the outer edge of mine as we walked back to the dormitories. Vivian squinted as she looked across the spring lawn. “Is that a gorilla wearing Dr. Zabor's class tie?” she asked.

I, in turn, strained my eyes. There was indeed a simian figure galloping towards us, with the only thing between he and us being a strolling figure who I recognized as a robotics professor that Oliver had last semester named Von Housen. A bit weak in the head, according to Oliver. All the same, not someone whom one would wish death or horror upon. Poor Zabor—in that moment, he lost his position with the Institute, and I doubt he ever worked in an academic setting again. He and his rotten club were disbanded even with Professor Ritz. Professor Von Housen, however, lost his life. The ape wearing Zabor's tie seized Von Housen and snapped his neck. We would only learn later that Von Housen had slighted Zabor on some essay or another a few years prior. Poor Zabor had a whole list of staff whom he wanted to annihilate for some reason or another. It had been no lab accident that had changed him into what became that day.

The list was never fully published, however, so I have no idea why Zabor tried to kill Vivian. She was, after all, my girlfriend, and the lonely Zabor viewed me as a true friend, for all that meant. When she saw that he quickened his pace in his charge for her, she screamed, and we began to sprint to the nearest building, the cafeteria.

Here, Oliver worked as a janitor—or janitorial supervisor, more properly—to pay his tuition. He was surprised to see us come in this late even though he was fond of leaving the doors unlocked for us to sneak in and see him. I released my grip on Vivian to let her cry on the shoulder of Oliver, who cradled her in a brotherly fashion as I desperately explained what was going on. Oliver was evidently closer to Zabor than the two of us and was able to confirm that something involving gorillas and turning people into them. As he spoke this, the emptiness of the mess hall clattered as the beast tore open the aging wooden doors. It was a large space, enough for us to hide in, but there was also no one to help us...and an escape attempt could attract Zabor's attention.

We decided to duck behind one of the far counters in the back of the kitchen. We heard the heavy weight of Zabor's body as he first searched the obvious hiding spots, climbing between the different floors and knocking over tables. Vivian was still pulled close to Oliver. “Are any of your boys still around?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Closing was done. I was just doing the last manager tasks for the close.”

At this, Vivian pulled closer to him. Above me, I heard Zabor pause his steps, only to let out a loud and horrible yell. I lost some of my nerve in that yell, and I began trembling, wishing weirdly for some to pull me close and take away my fear. It was strange because the love of my life was right there beside me. As Zabor came back down—apparently having remembered the existence of the cafeteria's kitchen—I reached out to Vivian, to touch her shoulder. I had no issue with she and Oliver being personal with one another, and this was the first time I tried to break their contact.

When I touched her shoulder she pulled away.

It's odd to write that. Sure she didn't, and I'm misrememberi

In any case, it was not long before we were cornered by Zabor. We tried to hold our breath but to no avail. Gorillas are creatures of the forest, and they can hear heartbeats if they try. His panting form had nearly dragged itself to our counter when we heard another set of slow, heavy footprints. The pace of these steps quickened, and with a single gesture implied only by shadow and a loud thwacking sound, Zabor dropped to the ground, unconscious. We all nearly fainted, and laughed with relief.

Our savior was one of Professor Von Housen's robots. He had programmed the ones he had successfully completed to identify his killer, were he ever to be murdered, and track them down to lay revenge on them. The awkwardly-standing boxy metal thing seemed to have pride on its crude face of dials and welded-on bits of angled steel; even though the one who had brought it into this world was on the campus lawn, with his neck broken.

Zabor, as I implied previously, was discharged from the Institute after his treatment was reversed (it took four Dean-Clerics from the College of Imaginal Studies to counteract Zabor's treatment from his notes, which I was able to assist with). Vivian was traumatized by the experience, and I was unable to visit her during her stay in the infirmary due to my upcoming finals. During that time, Oliver must have been busy too, for I saw little of him.