The Parts He Took

[Description]

Dr. Voss took pieces of Clara to build his perfect creature.

Then the creature killed him.

Now Clara is free, her captor is dead, and the enormous stitched man watching her seems far more interested in protecting her than hurting her.

But the longer he looks at her, the harder it becomes to remember she should be afraid of him.

[Tags]

#thirdperson #gothichorror #madscience #monsterromance #monsterhuman #frankenstein #stitchedmonster #hurtcomfort #sizedifference #inexperiencedmonster #dangerousattraction #captivity #medicalexperimentation #octoberspectacle #halloween #stitches

By the fourth day, Clara stopped calling for help, it hurt too much.

Her throat was raw, her lips split from thirst, and no one had answered anyway. Not that there was anyone to answer, Dr. Voss had always been the only other person in the house.

Clara sat beneath the barred window with her knees drawn against her chest and stared at the thin blade of evening creeping across the floorboards. It had reached the leg of the bed. By dark it would be gone, and she would have another night to endure.

Her stomach cramped and she pressed an arm against it.

There had been half a heel of bread left when Dr. Voss stopped coming. She had made it last two days. The pitcher had lasted longer, although she had begun rationing that too before realizing how ridiculous it was—if he did not come back, she was going to die here. The thought no longer frightened her as much as it had yesterday.

Clara lowered her forehead to her knees. Her hands throbbed. Three fingernails had torn below the quick trying to pry loose the iron grate over the window. Her palms were striped with cuts from the broken washbasin she'd used against the door until she'd been too weak to swing it anymore. Her shoulder had turned an ugly purple where she'd thrown herself against the wood again and again and again.

Dr. Voss had built his little prison well.

A laugh scraped from her throat. Excellent craftsmanship, Doctor.

Something moved in the corridor. For one wild, glorious instant, relief surged through her so violently she nearly sobbed.

Then she listened.

Thump. Silence. Thump.

Her relief vanished... those weren't Dr. Voss's footsteps.

Clara slowly lifted her head.

Another step, heavy enough that she felt it faintly through the floor. She crawled backward. The bed caught against her spine.

Thump.

"Hello?" Her ruined voice barely carried beyond the room.

The footsteps stopped.

Clara stared at the door. Her heart began beating harder. "Is someone there?"

The floorboard outside her room creaked. Clara's breath stopped. The handle rattled but the lock held.

Then something struck the door.

She screamed as wood cracked around the hinges. Clara scrambled sideways, one bloody hand slipping against the floorboards.

Another impact. The upper hinge tore free.

"No!" Her voice broke. "No, please!"

A hand appeared around the edge of the door.

A man's hand.

Enormous.

Pale fingers curled around splintered wood—then pulled. The lower hinge screamed away from the frame. Clara stared at the man standing on the other side.

At least, for the first terrible second, she thought he was a man.

He had to bow his head beneath the doorway. Black hair hung untidily across his forehead. A white shirt strained over shoulders so broad they nearly filled the frame, its collar hanging open against a chest traced with dark, uneven lines. No, not lines—stitches. More crossed his throat, one disappeared beneath his jaw. His left hand was darker than his right, and there was blood on his shirt.

For several seconds, neither moved, then his gaze dropped. Clara followed it to her hands. Her fingers were curled against the floorboards, nails torn and rimmed with dried blood. Bruises mottled both wrists. Beneath the sleeve of her nightdress, the edge of one of Dr. Voss's bandages had begun to peel away.

The creature looked toward the shattered door, then back at her. He stepped into the room.

"No." Clara scrambled backward. "I said stay away from me."

He did not.

Panic lent her strength that starvation had taken. Clara caught the bedframe and dragged herself upright. The room swayed. She clung to the post until it steadied. She couldn't let him corner her.

Clara lunged for the door.

Her knees folded beneath her. She never hit the floor—a hand caught her around the waist.

Clara screamed. Cold, he was so terribly cold. Five enormous fingers spanned her ribs, easily holding her upright. Something uneven pressed against her through the thin cotton of her nightdress, stitches crossed the heel of his palm and disappeared beneath his cuff. "Let go of me!"

The creature looked down at her with that same awful concentration.

Clara shoved against his chest. She might as well have pushed against the house itself. "Please."

Something flickered across his face. His hand shifted. For one hopeful instant, Clara thought he meant to release her. Then his other arm slid beneath her knees.

"No." The floor disappeared. Clara gasped and seized fistfuls of his shirt as he lifted her against his chest. "No, put me down. Put me down!"

He carried her through the doorway.

Clara's next protest died in her throat.

The corridor.

She stared at it over his shoulder. Faded paper. Dark floorboards. The little brass lamp on the opposite wall. She knew every inch of it. She had seen it through the narrowing crack whenever Dr. Voss entered her room. Dreamed about reaching it. Crawled bloody-fingered back to her bed after failing to reach it.

Now the ruined door lay across its floor.

Clara twisted in the creature's arms to look behind them. Her prison receded with every step.

A strange sound escaped her.

The creature stopped. His attention dropped immediately to her face. Clara pressed her lips together. "I'm fine."

He stared at her. It was absurd how thoroughly his expression conveyed disbelief. Then her stomach cramped. Clara folded around the pain with a whimper.

His arms tightened.

"Food," she managed.

The creature went very still.

"Do you understand me? I need food. Water."

His eyes moved over her face. Then he turned and carried her toward the stairs.

The next several minutes passed in a bewildering blur of water and food. He carried her all the way to the kitchen and set her in one of the chairs. Clara barely noticed. There was a pitcher on the table.

She reached for it with both hands.

The creature reached it first and poured. Clara drank too quickly, choked, drank again. Bread followed. A heel of cheese. Something cold left from a meal prepared who knows when. She ate whatever he put in front of her, too hungry for dignity and too exhausted to wonder why the monster who had torn her door from its hinges was now standing over her making certain she had enough.

Only when the worst of the trembling had eased did another thought penetrate. "Where is Dr. Voss?"

The creature simply stared at her.

Clara swallowed the bread in her mouth. "The man who lives here. Where is he?"

His expression remained strangely vacant. Not confused necessarily... he simply watched her, those mismatched eyes fixed on her face without any sign that the name meant something. A chill crept across Clara's shoulders. "Dr. Voss," she repeated.

This time, something changed. His gaze sharpened. His head turned slightly toward the corridor, toward the darkened passage leading deeper into the house. "Dead."

Clara stopped chewing.

The word was rough, dragged from a voice deeper than she expected.

She stared at him. "Did you kill him?"

His gaze returned to hers. "Yes."

Relief hit her so hard she nearly laughed. Clara clapped a hand over her mouth. For one awful moment she thought she might actually do it. Laugh until she cried, or cry until she was sick, sitting at Dr. Voss's kitchen table with crumbs in her lap and his murderer standing over her. "He's dead?"

"Yes."

Her eyes burned. Good. The thought came without shame. Dr. Voss would never open that door again. Never buckle the restraints around her wrists. Never lay out his gleaming little instruments while explaining, in that patient voice of his, what he required from her this time.

Clara looked down at her battered hands, then slowly back up at the creature. "Where? I need to see."

He pointed toward the corridor. Then his gaze dropped. For a moment Clara thought he was looking at her hands again. Then she realized his attention had settled higher, on the strip of puckered skin showing where her sleeve had slipped from her shoulder.

One of Dr. Voss's scars.

Something tightened in his face.

He looked back at her.

Then nodded.

#

Dr. Voss was dead.

Clara stood in the doorway and looked at what remained of the man who had kept her prisoner for weeks.

She had imagined his death more than once. In those imaginings, it had always brought satisfaction.

Her stomach rolled and she turned away.

The creature stood several paces behind her, watching.

"Let's go."

Clara made it halfway up the stairs before her legs began to shake again. A large hand closed around her arm. She startled, but this time she didn't pull away. "I'm all right."

He didn't release her. Clara was beginning to suspect her opinion carried very little weight once he'd reached his own conclusion.

She let him help her the rest of the way. It should have been comforting, having something so solid beside her. Instead every place their bodies touched leeched warmth from her. Even through his shirt, the creature was cold. Not the chill of someone who had been outdoors.

The cold of something that had never been warm.

By the time they reached the sitting room, Clara was shivering. "I need a fire," she said.

The creature looked toward the hearth.

"Yes," she said. "Fire."

He released her. Clara sank gratefully into the nearest chair while he crouched before the grate. Only then, with several feet safely between them and the first flames beginning to lick through the kindling, did she really look at him.

She kept thinking of him as a creature, but he wasn't really. He was a man... or something built very deliberately in the shape of one.

He was enormous.

Crouching only made the breadth of him more apparent. The white shirt stretched across a back that would have belonged to an exceptionally powerful man even without the knowledge that those arms had torn an oak door from its hinges.

Voss had not merely made something alive, he had made it beautiful. The realization made Clara uncomfortable. She watched him straighten; his face was almost too precisely formed, strong-jawed and severe beneath the fall of black hair. One eye was dark brown. The other was lighter, almost amber. There were differences in his complexion too, subtle until she noticed them, one shade becoming another where a fine seam disappeared beneath his collar.

Her gaze followed it.

Across his throat...

Down...

The shirt hung open at the neck. Another scar crossed the hard plane of his chest before vanishing beneath white linen.

Clara wondered how far it went.

The creature looked at her.

She jerked her eyes upward. "What?"

"Nothing." His voice still sounded unused. He glanced down at himself, then back at her. "You look."

Heat crept unexpectedly into Clara's face. "I was trying to understand what you are."

His head tilted. Clara wished immediately that she had chosen different words. "I mean..." She looked helplessly at the seams crossing his throat. "Dr. Voss did this to you."

His fingers rose to the nearest scar. "Yes."

Clara's embarrassment disappeared. "You remember?"

"No."

That stopped her.

Behind him, the kindling caught with a soft crackle. He watched it for another moment, then rose from his crouch. Clara watched him lower himself into the chair opposite hers, huge knees spreading simply to accommodate the furniture that had never been intended for a man his size.

Her eyes dropped. Then she looked hastily back at the flames as her face prickled.

"You look," he said again.

Clara pressed her eyes shut. There seemed to be no dignified answer to that. After a moment, she opened them again.

He was still looking at her. Clara folded her arms across herself. "It's rude to stare."

His head tipped slightly. Whatever he made of that, it didn't embarrass him, his gaze remained steady on hers. Then lowered.

Clara went still. He studied her with the same unguarded attention she'd spent the last several minutes giving him. Her face. Her throat. The bare slope of one shoulder.

Heat stirred beneath Clara's skin. Her nightdress had slipped sideways beneath the loose robe she'd dragged around herself in the kitchen. The movement exposed one collarbone and, beneath it, the beginning of a thin red scar.

The creature stared at it.

Clara pulled the robe closed.

His eyes lifted immediately to hers. "Voss?"

Her fingers tightened in the fabric. "Yes."

Clara looked at the seam crossing his throat. Another disappeared beneath his shirt. A third divided the back of one enormous hand. She thought of Dr. Voss's instruments, the bowls he carried from her room covered with white cloth.

"That's what he was doing." She felt suddenly cold despite the growing fire. "All those things he took from me." Her eyes traveled over him again, but there was no embarrassment in it now. "He was making you."

His expression gave her nothing, perhaps he hadn't known either. Then his gaze dropped once more to her collarbone. He rose.

Clara stiffened.

He crossed the small space between them and crouched beside her chair.

His hand lifted.

"Don't."

He stopped, his fingers hovered inches from her skin. Clara looked at them, then at the matching scar running across his wrist.

Slowly, she loosened her grip on the robe. "... all right."

One cold fingertip touched the scar beneath her collarbone. Clara shivered and his eyes flicked to hers.

"You're cold," she whispered.

His attention returned to the scar. He traced only the small portion visible above her robe, following Voss's mark with extraordinary care. Clara's pulse beat hard beneath his fingertip. Not fear. Or not entirely, she wasn't ready to examine that.

His hand fell away and Clara found herself strangely aware of its absence.

He remained crouched beside her. Close enough that she could see the individual stitches beneath his jaw. Close enough that the fire threw warmth across one side of her body while the other still felt the strange chill of him.

His eyes had settled on her mouth. The attention made her wet her lips. His gaze followed the movement. Something low in her stomach tightened. "What?"

He didn't answer. His hand rose again.

This time Clara didn't tell him to stop. He touched her hair. A strand had fallen loose across her shoulder. He caught it between two fingers, rubbing it slowly between them as though testing its texture.

Clara watched his face. There was no uncertainty in it. Only concentration. Curiosity. His fingers traveled higher, disappearing into the loose hair beside her neck.

Her heart beat harder. She should move. Instead, she lifted her hand. The creature watched as she touched the seam at his throat. His body went utterly still. Clara traced it lightly with one fingertip, following the dark thread down until it disappeared beneath his collar. Then she flattened her palm against his chest.

Beneath her hand, a heartbeat struck, slow and heavy.

His eyes changed—Clara couldn't have said how. The curiosity was simply gone. Something far simpler had replaced it.

Want.

He rose without removing his hand from her hair. Clara's palm slipped down his chest before falling away. Her gaze followed it. The front of his trousers had changed. Heat flooded Clara's face. She looked quickly back at up him. He showed no embarrassment whatsoever. Apparently embarrassment was one more thing Dr. Voss had neglected to build into him.

His gaze dropped to her mouth again. The hand at her neck shifted, fingers sliding deeper into her hair as his palm came around her jaw. He tipped her face up, his thumb dragging lightly at her lower lip.

Clara drew a soft, startled breath.

His eyes flicked to hers, then back to her mouth. His thumb moved again, tracing the curve of her lip.

Another breath escaped her—softer this time, and, mortifyingly, Clara found herself leaning into his hand.

His eyes sharpened. She felt the change in him immediately.

His palm settled more fully against her cheek.

"You want me," she whispered.

"Yes." No hesitation. No embarrassment. His thumb passed over her lip once more.

Clara's eyes fluttered. When she opened them, he was watching her with an intensity that made her pulse jump.

"And you?"

#

Clara had answered him.

After that, there had been remarkably little left to be frightened of. Not because the creature had become any less enormous, or any less strange, but because every time uncertainty found her, those mismatched eyes returned to her face. He seemed to understand remarkably few things about the world, but he understood her answers.

By the time the room finally grew quiet, Clara had stopped wondering whether she had made a terrible mistake.

For a while, she could do nothing but breathe. Her limbs felt emptied of strength, too heavy even to tremble. Every part of her seemed to be making some small complaint: the pull of exhausted muscles, the ache of bruises beneath his hands, the deeper tenderness left by everything her body had just endured. She was damp and uncomfortable and vaguely aware that tomorrow she was going to hurt considerably more than she did now.

Clara couldn't bring herself to care.

The creature's grip loosened around her wrist. His hand slipped from her hip, and as the last of his weight withdrew from between her thighs, Clara sank bonelessly into the mattress.

The creature began to shift away, but Clara's hand closed around his arm before he could.

He stopped.

She hadn't meant to do that. Apparently her body had one final betrayal left in it. "You're cold," she murmured. He looked down at her hand. Clara tightened her fingers anyway. "I didn't say move."

The creature settled back onto the mattress. Clara dragged the blankets over them both and curled beneath them, hesitating only a moment before resting her head against his chest. She could hear the slow beat of his heart beneath her ear.

For weeks, Clara had dreamed of escaping this house. Of roads and towns and other people. Of anywhere that wasn't here.

She could think about all of that tomorrow.

Tonight, she was tired.

Across the room, the door stood open.