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I do not know what exactly changed in my once dear friend Herbert West. Looking back now, with the benefit of hindsight, perhaps much less than I once thought. For the longest period of my life, beginning from our first meeting in grade school, I had always looked upon him with nothing less than blind adoration. That he was nothing less than an unrecognized genius—a collected, stoic, fiercely logical youth, perpetually aloof to the random, irrational, emotional impulses of those around him, myself included, always coolly dismissive of the superstitions which he and I regarded as humanity’s basest instincts—seemed obvious to me, and I could not understand why it was not equally obvious to all those around us. He was simply unparalleled, and even in his most gruesome experiments I was his most enthusiastic supporter and assistant.
It was only in the past year or so, and especially now after his departure, that the wonder I had once felt has gradually slipped into horror and disgust. And now when I look over every minute interaction between us or every cold look he gave to passersby and every casual disregard for even the slimmest ethical obligation, I can pass over it in my mind with a fine-toothed comb and pick out like nits every sign of his deterioration to which I was utterly blind at the time.
The scientific curiosities of Herbert West evidently emerged at a very young age, and were already plainly apparent to all even before we attended high school together. His chief hobbies at the time included reading, cover to cover, the densest medical and scientific textbooks which even graduate students would’ve found exceptionally dry and should’ve been completely beyond the abilities of any twelve year old. Otherwise, he spent much of his time being regarded as a menace in the school laboratories, where he would stay long hours in the evenings toiling away over bubbling beakers and flasks of his chemical experiments; experiments of which no one knew his ultimate aim, if indeed there was one. Not even I, his ever faithful assistant, knew, as I merely stood to the side armed with concoctions of every chemical he would need, painstakingly measured on his orders.
On myself, as I know there will certainly be pointed questions over my association with the late Herbert West, I will add a few words. By this point in time I’m not entirely sure how exactly I came to be so closely acquainted with West. Though I had similar scientific inclinations as him, and our philosophical views both matched to quite a degree—though now I must wonder how much of that was my own natural development and how much could be blamed on his influence—I nevertheless did not hold myself to nearly the same standards of achievement. My school performance was always average at best, though enough for me to attend the same university as him, and my social life was always leagues more active than his; though I recognize that is hardly saying much given his utter lack of companionship other than myself.
And as for why I repeatedly failed to rein in his experimentation or at least report it to the proper authorities even as his behavior veered from the merely unethical to the plainly illegal? Well, I recognize no defense will ever be adequate in the eyes of any sane jury, but my failures I can only attribute to being utterly and wholly entranced by his entire being. Not only his mental faculties, though they were impressive to someone of far less ability such as myself, but, I cannot deny, also his physical aspects.
In that regard, and for wont of the full truth I will say this of all things stirred some amount of jealousy, he was nearly as flawless as he was in his intellect. He was a slight, delicate youth at every age with a head of white-blonde waves that had a habit of tangling violently into the curls of a mad scientist. His eyes were large and bright and greenish-blue from behind golden-rimmed spectacles that hung off his small pointed nose. His overall person had a feminine elegance, from his soft voice to his soft face to the not-insubstantial curves of his slim body. His skin was perpetually porcelain pale, the result of a chronic lack of sunlight and his time spent cooped up indoors, though this too provided a certain aesthetic charm. Though he was certainly no man’s-man, I believe he could’ve seen considerable social success had he ever been so inclined. And still, he maintained his youthful grace even as he neared thirty years. In fact it was almost uncanny, looking back, how little he changed in appearance over the years.
In any case, I would attribute most of my attraction towards him to his mental attitudes, attitudes which greatly agreed with mine but nonetheless differed enough to provide always stimulating conversation and debate. We shared many days and many evenings discussing our various views, especially the philosophic. I can say on this matter he considered himself an atheist, though I will add that he was a virulent one with an incredible disgust for religion of all sorts, a materialist, which certainly informed the basis of his experiments, and a hedonist of a somewhat Epicurean vein.
In any case, these views were likely still underdeveloped when his fascination with biology first began to burgeon in the latter years of high school. He informed me several years ago that he considers the most formative time of his life the roughly year-long stint he spent as a simple technical intern at a biological research laboratory at the university we would in the future attend. Though we had both studied biology extensively in our youth, this research amounted to little more than reading textbooks and journals and performing tediously elementary experiments in our classes; dissecting frogs and the like. But it was in the well furnished laboratories, with benches stocked with every chemical compound under the sun, with a practically infinite supply of glassware and equipment, and holding pens and cages filled with worms, mice, rabbits, and monkeys, that his devotion to biology took a far greater, and very sinister, direction.
According to his testimonies, he did not greatly endear himself to those above him while he worked in the lab. I can imagine why. But it seems other than whatever menial duties they assign to such interns, washing glassware and counting spores under the microscope, he was in many cases given almost free reign to utilize the facilities at his pleasure. It was only after he was spotted attempting to “procure” animal cadavers from the freezers that his access was strictly curtailed and, later, he was ejected from the lab. I can only imagine their private reactions when he reappeared less than a year later, with me in tow, as a fresh-faced undergraduate at that very university!
It was in university, and later in medical school, in which his experiments truly took their own form. He developed, around this point in time, his own theories revolving around the nature of life and the soul, namely that the soul did not exist. It was his belief, and mine to some lesser extent, that life and consciousness were purely the result of natural, mechanistic actions; chemical reactions and the firing of neurons in the brain. The natural extension of this belief was his hypothesis that death was merely a breakdown of these processes and could theoretically be reversed. He devised various methods to artificially restart, via chemical means, the functions of life until the body’s own natural systems could be restored.
Most of his time was spent preparing these elaborate “reanimating” solutions. I beg that you do not ask me to detail exactly what these solutions were composed of or how they were made. I remember very little of the extremely complex processes, not to mention the endless variations and modifications he would make; perhaps every experiment used a bespoke, unique concoction.
By the third year of our time at university, he had begun his experimentation proper. Of course these matters could remain in the realm of theory for only so long, and he moved onto live (or rather, recently dead) specimens. And it was here that he began to run afoul of the university.
They tolerated his early experiments on various small animals. He would collect mice, rabbits, guinea pigs, etc alive, and then quickly dispatch them via means of a nitrogen gas chamber. It was imperative that the animals remain as pristine as possible in death, and that experiments take place as rapidly as possible.
Once death was confirmed, he would inject his reanimating solution into the creature and apply a very small amount of electricity, only a few microvolts. His success rate in these early days was poor, but not zero. On several occasions he would joyously report signs of life. Mostly only for a few seconds before failing once again, but these signs were often quite vigorous and violent. However, after burning through a legion of small animals, West soon realized that he would need to progress to human experimentation if he ever wanted to further progress and refine his process.
But it was at a demonstration of his experiment, still on various animal specimens, in front of a collection of faculty including the dean of biology and chemistry, that he pushed the patience of the university too far.
The experiment proceeded along its usual motions. West injected his latest solution into a deceased rat and applied a current of electricity. After several minutes of tortured silence, the rat lurched to life. It was at this moment that something, though I don’t think we ever figured out what, went wrong. The rat, previously lying on its back, opened its bulbous red eyes and let out a gruesome screech that should’ve been impossible from such a small animal. It hauled itself unsteadily on its feet and then, with its tiny claws, began scouring and tearing at itself until blood welled up in beads on its white fur. It scrabbled around the cage for several minutes until it finally collapsed and signs of life, once again, left it.
To West, this was the greatest success he had yet seen. But the faculty were, in equal parts, horrified and deeply skeptical. Realizing that this was what West had been working on for the past year, they immediately and indefinitely barred him from any further animal experimentation, along with myself, and very nearly revoked his access to the labs wholesale had it not been for my own protests. And all this, they threatened, would be backed up with immediate expulsion without compensation if their orders were disobeyed.
The bitterly dejected West was in no mood, from that point forward, to be at all acquiescent to their demands. But his work nonetheless proceeded mostly on paper and, whenever the opportunity arose, in utmost secrecy. He was, however, correct in that his experiments with animal subjects were running into a dead end, and he would have to graduate to human experimentation.
The next four years were a furor of experimental activity. We purchased a small ground level apartment and the basement below it to convert into a private laboratory. Though we told no one its purpose, we devised a cover story of a simple chemical lab for our medical school careers.
By day we balanced our classes in our chosen fields of medicine, and by night we retreated into the dark basement where we prepared our alchemical solutions and devised nightmarish experiments on animals and humans alike. Sourcing appropriate cadavers was the most difficult part of our time there. The ones stocked by the university, all donated, tended to be entirely unsuitable. They were generally preserved in formaldehyde and other chemicals to prolong their shelf life, and were often kept in storage for weeks to months. West continuously stressed the need for entirely fresh, unpreserved bodies as they were the only ones possibly suitable for reanimation. The cell structures had to be as intact as possible.
Instead, we were forced to source our subjects through considerably less savory means. We kept a constant eye out for news of deaths in the local area, focusing specifically on accidents and sudden deaths. Our standards were exacting, no debilitating injuries or diseases, no embalming, no old age, only peak physical condition. Once we had spotted something potentially suitable, we would hire a few hands from the city’s desperate—those who would do nearly anything for the right amount of money—and we went to the specific graveyard with shovels and lamps.
Through this method we could source perhaps two or three bodies a year, much slower than we would’ve liked but it was all we could manage. I will not detail our various experiments, they are simply too gruesome and, now with West’s absence, too painful to recount again. But the pace of our experiments increased following our graduation from medical school. We began our own practice on the outskirts of the city in an expansive corner of a building, again with a basement. Now our days were occupied with the practice, and we returned to regular experimentation by night.
It was around then, now that I can think back clearly and without the rosy tint of my then adoration for West, that I notice the changes. Our mounting failures and partial successes had begun to take a toll on him. He had never quite managed to correct formulation, but had come close. Unfortunately, that “closeness” meant only horror, as our botched experiments, in a fit somewhere between life and death, lurched violently. We were, on several occasions, attacked. And on others, the living corpses fled somehow, out of the building and into the city. Most were never heard from again, others were shortly thereafter discovered and killed, with the locals and police thinking them escaped madmen.
West grew anxious and paranoid, always jumpy and glancing back over his shoulder and complaining of a feeling of being watched. He started carrying a revolver with him in his pocket, and from then on night after night was punctuated by the lone crack of a shot.
And it was also that point that I too began to truly worry for him and myself. Of course what we were doing had always been highly illegal and grotesquely unethical but though I had a few apprehensions of being caught, I was never particularly concerned over the philosophy of the matter at hand. But some mental changes happened in West. Of course suitable cadavers were still hard to acquire but I was shocked when West, in that soft boyish voice of his with his bright eyes on me, suggested certain even more unthinkable means of procuring bodies.
And I noticed how he began to look at people, healthy people, those particularly strong and fit who would doubtless make good experimental subjects. I could see it in his eyes, a coldness I’d never before noticed. They, at least for a while, ceased to be people and were only cadavers-in-waiting. And I noticed whenever he looked at me in much the same way.
When one evening I arrived in the laboratory to find a lawyer from the city laid out on the operating slab, still dressed in his wool suit and with the color still in his cheeks, I of course assumed the worst. Sensing my distress, West was quick to assure me he did no such thing, and that rather this poor gentleman had stumbled into the clinic a few hours earlier. He, a lawyer heading out of the city for business, complained of chest pains and dizziness and all the usual symptoms, but as West was helping him in, he suddenly collapsed and expired soon after. Of course this was a splendid opportunity and, as West reasoned, even an excuse to do something of a good deed. Of course these excuses were all entirely for my own benefit, but nonetheless…
Perhaps that particular one we should’ve been left alone, for it was difficult indeed to explain exactly how a heart attack victim ended up with three bullets in his head and chest.
I can still remember the ultimate fate of Herbert West, and though it transpired nearly a year ago now I can still recall it as clearly as if it occurred yesterday. I wonder if I might ever be able to close my eyes again without seeing his face in his last agonized moments before I lost consciousness, and before I never saw him again.
At that time, it was mid winter and business was slow and West had spent several weeks devising his latest formulation and procedure, busy to the point of not even showing his face in the clinic and leaving the entire business to me. I think we were both severely disturbed by that point, not only by the thought of police inquiry but by the results of our failures and our even more horrifying partial-successes. But all of this had seemingly done little but drive West even more fervently into his work, as if he was determined to succeed even if it took every ounce of his strength.
I was awoken very late one night by the telephone, and upon answering it I heard West on the other end almost delirious with joy. He beckoned me over to the lab at once, for he had found a perfect cadaver and was sure that his latest formulation would be a true success. Furthermore, he warned that if I didn’t show up soon enough, he would have to simply perform the experiment alone. This finally roused me. I knew very well the results of our partial-successes, which was mostly what we’ve been having lately, and I did not want to leave West alone just in case yet another experiment turned dangerously violent as many had in the past. I answered that I would be there shortly, and after having hung up I rushed out the door as quickly as I dressed myself.
When I found in the laboratory West practically vibrating with intense excitement and a fit, junoesque woman on the table still dressed with a permanent look of shock on her paralyzed face, I was by that point hardly even surprised. West bade me to prepare and I, dutiful and loyal to my friend as ever, did so. I never even knew who this poor soul was until well after the events of that night, but I recognized the reason for West’s interest: she was plainly very healthy, strong, and apparently someone unlikely to be immediately missed.
West wasted no time in hooking the body up to his electrical machines and injecting several vials of his solution into her bloodstream, and then applying a voltage. The body began to twitch at once, and after several seconds did so violently, but we disregarded these initial signs. On a fresh corpse, electrical impulses and certain chemical reactions are liable to trigger the still active muscle cells, resulting in twitches and motions which should not be confused with genuine life. West stood by with a stethoscope to her heart, listening intently.
Several agonized minutes passed without a sign, and even the electrical twitches faded, and West’s face grew darker and darker, his temper—an anger once completely unknown in him but now emerging more and more often—began to boil over. And then, like the flip of a switch, for the first time since her unfortunate demise, she began to breathe again.
Her eyes shot open, bloodshot and confused. West leaped back with a shout of joy, but one hand was still buried in his pocket, no doubt clenched around the gun which now never left his side. Then, she sat up, with an air of rushed panic, and for the first time, the subject spoke coherently.
“What the hell did you do to me!”
Her voice, comprehensible though it was, sounded inhuman, nothing more than an animalistic growl given human words. She yelled blindly into the room, her seeming anger directed at no one in particular, until she started glancing feverishly around, her entire body shaking and flushing red.
West was visibly shocked and delighted at his test subjects now being able to speak, and it was surely a promising sign of success, or at least yet one more step on the path to success. Or at least, it would’ve been, had West not finally blundered.
In his surprise he took a foolish step forward and withdrew his hand from his gun, as if wishing to embrace his creation. That would be, it turns out, his fatal mistake. For as he approached, making nonsensical shushing noises with his mouth, she wheeled about and turned to face him, a look of unimaginable rage and terror and disgust on her uncannily reanimated face.
I thought West might’ve realized his error as soon as he made it, but it was too late. His hand retracted and he drew his gun, finger on the trigger, squeezing—too slow! He cried out as she grabbed his wrist and wrenched his arm to the side. The gun fired once, twice, the bullets embedding into the walls, before falling from his hand and clattering to the ground.
The next moments are difficult to recall, I imagine from the sheer blind terror I experienced, and the horrors of the scene to come. But the undead woman rose from the table to her full height, several heads taller than West and even much taller than I. Though she might’ve been handsomely beautiful in life, her reanimation had transformed something in her, turning her somehow uncanny and difficult to look at. Perhaps it was her eyes; cold and glassy and doll-like and yet filled with inconceivable malice.
West recoiled, as did I, and he wrenched his arm free and retreated hastily, never turning his back. She pursued him across the room and shoved aside the obstacles he tried to throw at her, including a steel cart which, when she tossed it violently aside, it slammed into my stupified self.
From that point on I was as good as incapacitated, the wind knocked out of me and frozen from terror. The memory still fills me with shame, and I wonder if I would’ve been able to save my dearest friend had I been able to regain my wits. But I was stuck there on the ground, helpless to do anything but watch.
West attempted to make it to the door, but even as his hand reached the knob, she leapt and bowled him over, forcing him painfully to the ground. Then, with him pinned to the ground and scrabbling for purchase on the bare concrete floor, she—
Though this pains me to recount, as I can still hear his desperate pleading cries to me even now, cries to which I was utterly unable to respond…
She reached for the trousers which she was still wearing and, with an inhuman strength, tore them from her own body in a single motion. The fabric popped, revealing her nude lower body; her shapely, muscular legs drained of color, her heavy hips, and—to this day I sometimes think I must have hallucinated this episode, it seems so impossible—a well formed set of male genitals, already fully erect and flush with what must’ve been all the blood absent from the rest of her body.
She had seemingly found her voice again, for she started bellowing violent profanities and threats at the prostrate and weeping West beneath her. Decency prevents me from writing everything she said, but she was certainly discomforted at her newfound condition and was quite ready to take her revenge on the one who had done this to her.
And next to go were West’s pants and undergarments, yanked down to his knees and exposing his callipygian rear, once the object of affection for so many and now his undoing. His plushness calmed her for a moment as she prodded and squeezed him, her hands fondling his soft, hairless flesh and feminine hips.
But, without an ounce of human affection in that soulless vessel, she grabbed her inflamed member and, with no preparation whatsoever, entered him. For once, West’s own cries were louder than her growls. His slender back, with shirt pulled up above his chest, arched sharply as he tried to pull away. He said no words, but I could see the pain in his eyes and from the desperate pleas pouring from his mouth and falling on two pairs of deaf ears.
He begged me to retrieve the gun, if only to finish him off if nothing else, but I couldn’t. I don’t know why she did not attack me or even deign to acknowledge my presence, but I feared that if I should do anything to draw her attention, then I would suffer an even worse fate than my friend. I did nothing but lie there, listening, watching, shaking.
For a while, the only sounds in the laboratory were the sounds of flesh against flesh, of animalistic panting and growling, and West’s pained whimpers. But gradually, over the course of several minutes, even those whimpers of agony transformed into something entirely different: moans of delirious pleasure.
Was West enjoying his violent abuse? Of course not, but though his mind may have been disintegrating under his torment his body was significantly more pliable and he, at last, became another victim to those biological impulses which he reviled in all others and thought himself so far above.
He looked a wreck, his body shined with sweat, it plastered his locks of blonde curls against his doped-up face. His entire body shivered with her every powerful thrust, his flesh quivering under her dominance.
Above him, his tormentor was all but lying on top of him, pinning him with her bodyweight. Her face, foamy drool leaking from her mouth like a rabid dog, was pressed against his pale neck.
When she finally finished, she did so inside him, with a last thrust as she drove herself deeply into him as she could.
Her peaceful post-sex reverie, the brief respite from his torturous end, did not last. I watched her haul herself up again, her softening penis falling out of him and her spill slowly oozing back out again. West did not move, did not struggle, did not even make a sound as she grabbed him up after her and pulled him into her arms.
His eyes were still open, though who can say what was behind them. Still the bright green I recognized but, for the first time in so long, a flicker of genuine emotion burned within.
As calmly as a patient leaving their examination, she stood up, West still in her arms, and she simply walked out the door, the only other occupant of the room powerless to stop them as I watched my best friend of 17 years disappear into the gloomy dark.
The police and passersby found me there the next day, unconscious, still in that basement laboratory. The front door of the building had been nearly torn off its hinges.
That was the last time anyone had ever seen Herbert West.