Make Me a Monster
Make Me a Monster by Kalynn Bayron
Meka has had the same dream for years. It’s of a car crash that kills her mom, Kassie. Except this time, as she’s lying on her back on the ground in pain watching her mother die, there is something different about it. Different and horrifying. A new chapter. She feels like there is a hole punched in her chest and it’s filled with despair.
Meka is excited for the dead body waiting for her at home, Redwood Funeral Home that her family owns and operates. She’s been surrounded by dead people her whole life and she loves it. Not in a creepy way but in a way that she knows helps the departed and their families. Now, at seventeen, she’s officially Ithaca, New York’s youngest certified mortician’s assistant. Her mom Kassie and dad, Jonathan, her best friends Cipriana and Caleb, the latter of which is terrified of the funeral home, and Noah, her boyfriend, are celebrating her achievement with cupcakes and ambient lighting. As Meka blows out the candle on her cake, positioned on Noah’s chest who is lying on the table made up like a dead body, she makes the same wish she always does, that her recurring dream never comes true.
The latest funeral home guest, i.e. dead person, is Mrs. Lang. Meka does a fantastic job on her makeup, making Mrs. Lang look like an old Hollywood star she admired in life. After supergluing her eyelids shut since they keep popping open and snipping an extra piece of wire from her mouth being sewn shut, all is perfect. The only slight bit of weirdness is during the viewing. As Meka is watching the children in the playroom, one of Mrs. Lang’s grandchildren draws a picture of her holding her dead grandma’s hand through the ground and then another picture of her holding Meka’s hand, except Meka is dead and lying in her coffin. Later, Kassie tells her to throw the picture in the trash.
Meka and her dad eat dinner while Kassie, who only eats boiled rice as she collects food allergies like they are Pokémon cards, looks on. They talk about Mrs. Lang’s funeral going well and about the little family of ravens her dad's been caring for forever, and then the doorbell rings. As Jonathan goes to answer, Meka explains to her mom that her recurring dream is making her tired, but they are suddenly distracted by a tense conversation at the door. Peeking over, Meka sees a red-headed woman and a blond man. The red-head shows a flicker of recognition at her, though Meka doesn't know her.
To distract themselves, they move to the living room to watch Young Frankenstein. Half an hour in, the power cuts out. When the lights flicker back on, the TV blasts a news report: Vincent Hollowell, a Cornell English professor, has been spotted for the first time since a near-fatal hiking accident. Kassie could swear he was dead. The TV then flashes a picture of a missing woman before blinking off with NO SIGNAL, ending movie night. Later in her room, Meka calls Noah to discuss her changing dream. Noah mentions his grandma's belief that dreams carry messages, then asks if Meka has seen anything strange at the funeral home. She hasn't, but she remembers when she was five, in their old house, a figure with a messed-up face peered through her bedroom window. They vanished the moment her mom turned on the lights.
A few moments after Meka and Noah’s call ends, her dad asks Meka if she will accompany him to a body pick up from a nursing home because her mom isn’t feeling very well. Together they take their Ghostbusters-style hearse and collect the body. The casket doesn’t have a lid, so things could get dicey for the bagged body if the road gets bumpy. Meka drops her dad’s phone between the seats on accident, and when she looks for it, she sees a strange green glow in the gap. Feeling for the phone, she feels a snap, but her skin feels like it’s been burned. Jonathan is acting weird about the phone and distracted by something he sees in the rearview mirror. The body bag rustles and moves and the person inside sits straight up. Meka screams and dashes out of the car. It’s fine, an anomaly, but it’s still scary. Corpses move sometimes. However, a Google search later tells Meka they shouldn’t sit up.
The next day at school, Meka is exhausted from a 4 am wakeup following another dream. She’s hanging with Caleb, Cipriana and Noah in the cafeteria, planning a trip to the movies. Ironically, squeamish Caleb loves horror movies but can’t handle the idea of dead bodies in the basement of Meka’s house. In the meantime, they have film studies class. This week, they’re watching The Wizard of Oz. Soon enough it’s the end of the school day and they all pile into Caleb’s car and head to the old movie theater. As the zombies are shambling on screen, Meka can smell rot and it’s not the popcorn or theater carpeting. Noah, who she’s snuggled into, can’t smell anything. She also notices a lone guy and he’s giving bad vibes. On the way home after, some blond douchebag nearly hits Caleb’s car.
Caleb drops Meka and Noah off at the falls for them to spend some time alone together where they etch their initials in a rock. As they’re leaving, Meka notices someone lurking near the rock they etched, but they leave without incident and soon they’re back at Meka’s house. In her room, as they’re talking, Meka tells Noah about the old man sitting up in the hearse. He’s not squeamish like Caleb, but he’s not comfortable with dead people, and that story is creepy. The conversation turns into saying the L word, they do L-word each other, but don’t say it out loud, instead, Noah gives Meka a gift, a bracelet with a bead in the middle and M&N engraved on it. The moment is broken when Kassie calls her down to help with a guest, an elderly man in his 90s who died in his sleep. Kassie needs help because they have another body, a gruesome one that was killed in a car crash, and because of her dreams, Meka doesn’t work on those guests.
Moments after Noah has gone home, Jonathan tells her they will prep the new guests tomorrow because Kassie is too tired. Meka goes to the supply shed for more mortuary spray paint, surprised because the supplies are already low even though she swears they just made an order recently. As she crosses the driveway back to the house, she hears something weird and then a familiar smell: mortuary spray paint. Meka assumes her mom decided to start prepping after all. That night, Meka doesn't dream.
The next day is Saturday so that means prepping for services and checking obituaries, general admin stuff, and ordering stock, including more mortuary paint. Weirdly the stock list shows they got two cases only a couple of weeks ago. Double-weirdly, Meka sees an obituary for her mom's doctor, the one she’s currently seeing for her stomach. Meka’s work is interrupted by a cry of grief-filled pain. Jonathan comes in and collects her because Noah’s mom is here and she doesn’t look good. Noah slipped on ice, hit his head and died.
Meka is inconsolable. She rushes outside into the gray cold morning and screams. She retreats into herself until the day her parents bring Noah’s body in his coffin to the funeral home. Meka wants to see him, but her mom won’t let her until they’ve prepped him. His small service is set for the next evening, so her parents work through the night. The next day, Meka goes into the basement to see him. Kassie has done an amazing job, but he doesn’t feel like her Noah, he’s cold and still. Meka puts the bracelet he gifted her on him before kissing him, knowing it will be the last time, and she swears Noah sighs. Kassie comes to collect her then, she doesn’t believe Meka that Noah breathed. Meka looks at her mom and she doesn’t look right, she looks like one of their guests. Possibly her grief?
The time for Noah’s service comes and obviously it’s difficult, but Noah's mom is laughing and smiling and Meka doesn’t understand how she could do that. Noah was her only child. During the service, Meka notices the casket is closed, but she wants to see him one more time. She tries to open it but it’s sealed, which is weird since her parents prepped him for viewing. She begs and demands for Noah to come back before fleeing the service to her room, embarrassed. Later, Meka rides in the hearse with Noah and her parents to the cemetery and his family crypt. When they arrive, Meka sits next to the crypt, but she’s not alone, there is someone up the hill. She wants to yell at them to leave, but who is she to do that? After a while, Meka heads home.
Six weeks go by. Meka avoids people and keeps to herself. Her nightmare has become more vivid and worse, but now, something is different. As Jonathan is crouched over Kassie screaming, there is a bright silver flash. It’s new, but not better. Wide awake now at 3 am after the dream, Meka heads downstairs, noticing on her way that her parents' room is empty. She then hears them and the sounds of a can of spray paint coming from the basement. It’s not unheard of, but it is unusual for them to be prepping a body in the middle of the night. Meka listens as they talk about her dad getting a cheaper brand of mortuary spray paint that her mom isn't pleased with because they can’t skimp on the paint. Dismissing the odd conversation, Meka then sees a figure outside by the garage. Assuming it’s someone trying to rob them, Meka shoves on her shoes and starts to head outside but her parents stop her on the way. Jonathan does the sensible thing of calling public safety rather than allowing his seventeen year old go feral on whoever is outside. As Kassie is talking her down from violence, she notices her nails are broken and chipped and the smell of mortuary paint is strong on her robe. She should definitely throw it away.
Meka goes back to bed and has the same dream, but this time, after the flash of silver, she sees a preparation table and her father holding a book. She's sure her grief is infecting her dream. The next day she goes to the falls where Noah wrote their initials. The initials aren’t there, but there is a raven. It lands and sounds like it is talking with a croaky voice, saying get out, get out. Again she sees a lone figure, but this time the person tries to reach out to her. Meka walks away, but the figure follows. Meka runs and ends up at the cemetery where she can see footprints going up to Noah's tomb.
When she gets home, the figure is at the end of her street but they disappear as she looks for a weapon. Kassie thinks her lack of sleep is making her hallucinate. Her situation isn’t helped when Meka asks if ravens can talk, thankfully her dad confirms that they can but it’s mimicry. The really weird thing is Jonathan has a suitcase full of clothes for a business trip, but they stink of wood smoke. He claims his late father's old clothes must have mixed into his own. Jonathan never talks about Grandpa Redwood because their relationship wasn’t great, but since he’s mentioned him, he offers to tell Meka about him. This is really odd, and something feels off.
Deciding to get out of the house instead, Meka and Kassie go clothes shopping. The trip goes awry when an unhoused man comes into the store with a knife and begins threatening the store owner. Kassie pulls Meka into the changing room she was using and calls the police. All Meka can see, however, are the scars covering her mom's body. Before the police arrive, someone knocks the unhoused man out. Meka finds him semi conscious muttering about the end of days and little tiny pieces. At home, Kassie tells Meka to lock the house up tight before they have pizza and watch Death Becomes Her. Meka asks about the scars, she’s had them a long, long time and confesses that sometimes she uses the mortuary supplies to cover them. Meka dreams again that night, the only difference this time are words, undistinguishable words.
When Jonathan returns from his work trip later, they tell him about the unhoused man, and he’s shocked and worried for his family and acts a little weird when Meka mentions the muttering. A few moments pass and then Meka hears her parents arguing and it’s a bit cryptic. She doesn’t hear any more because she steps on a creaky floorboard alerting her parents that she's eavesdropping and then the doorbell rings with a delivery. A short time later, there is a new caller at the door, it’s the same people who came before Noah’s death. They say something to her dad about a choice to be made and an incident in front of St. Paul's. Her dad looks scared and leaves with the people.
While Kassie makes dinner, Meka helps tidy up, taking boxes to the supply shed. Which is locked. Meka left it unlocked… Adding to the strangeness, on the ground she finds an envelope with her name on it. Inside is the bracelet Noah gave her that she left with Noah’s body the night before his burial. While Meka freaks out, her mom keeps peeling potatoes. Kassie only reacts when she cuts her hand with the peeler. Refusing to let Meka see the cut, she dashes upstairs and tells Meka to text her dad. In the sink, Meka sees a huge chunk of skin, but there’s no blood. Picking it up, she realizes it feels like mortuary wax. Her phone rings then but it isn’t her dad calling after her text, instead, the name and picture are Noah’s. The voice is Noah’s, too, and it’s telling her to get out of the house, now. Then there’s a thud from upstairs.
Meka goes up to her mom, expecting to find her on the floor, but she’s with a blond-haired man she's seen around town for months. He’s holding a hunting knife, telling Kassie it’s all done, it’s all over. Meka launches herself at him and they grapple. Suddenly a new mysterious figure comes into the room and slams into the guy. The blond man is able to slice down on Kassie in the chaos, nearly severing her arm at the shoulder before fleeing. Meka hits her head on the floor making her sick and dizzy, but she would recognize the voice of the second mysterious person anywhere. It’s Noah. Meka passes out.
Meka has her dream again, but this time she sees her father dressed in all black writing in a book. He rushes toward Meka who screams in his arms. She can see the prep table and her mother lying on it. The smell of wood smoke fills her nose. Meka wakes, her head hurts and everything is spinning. Her mom is sitting on the prep table draped in a white sheet and Noah is holding a jar of mortuary wax. The only door leading out is barricaded. Meka does not react to this situation calmly. Kassie needs to tell her daughter everything from the beginning.
When Meka was seven, they were driving late at night and were in a car accident. Kassie died but Jonathan brought her back, and ever since, Jonathan has helped maintain her. He recently did the same with Noah. They’re in a state of not dead but not alive and Kassie has no idea how it works, only that it's something those in Jonathan’s family are able to do (Meka too?). The strange people that Meka has been seeing around want Jonathan, and now they can’t get in touch with him. Meka decides, with Noah’s help, she can patch her mom's arm and then they can find her father.
After a lot of stitches, sealant, wax, spray paint, and popping joints back in, Kassie and Noah’s wounds are patched up, not healed because they can never heal on account of being dead. Luckily they don’t feel any pain. Once they leave the basement, they check the house for any more goons because now that they know about Noah being undead, he isn’t safe either nor is his mom who knows about Jonathan's ability and asked for Noah to be brought back. They can’t reach her on the phone, so they pile into a car, first to check on Noah’s mom, then to find Jonathan.
They head to Noah’s mom’s house. She’s moved, but has set Noah’s bedroom up like he’s still a living, breathing, eating, bleeding, aging, really alive boy… all of those things he is not. She tries to feed him, wants to enroll him back in school and knows he’s dead, but doesn’t acknowledge that things are different and there are rules. While Kassie and Noah’s mom are talking, Meka and Noah head to his new room where they kiss. Though Noah’s mom is still refusing to acknowledge the difference in her son's state of being not legally alive, they are at least able to get her to stay a few days with a friend while they deal with the mysterious people out to get them. In the car, Jonathan finally calls. Only it’s not him, it’s a Bad Guy. He demands The Book™ which Kassie has never seen and Meka has just found out about, though she may remember seeing it in her dream/memory. On the phone, Jonathan screams and shouts in the background about them never getting the book, he swears on his father's grave!!! This is a clue!
They arrive at the cemetery and make their way to the mausoleum Grandpa Redwood is buried in. Noah is completely uncomfortable, Kassie is all business, and Meka can feel The Book™. As they look, they talk about the strangers holding Jonathan and what they might want. Meka mentioned they look odd, one in particular had weird and long arms. Kassie mentions that she always wondered what she would do if something irrevocable happened to a limb that she couldn’t fix, could she (or would she) take a part from another body? Is that what they have done?
They find the vault, CLARENCE D. REDWOOD 1947-2000 DEATH IS NOT AN END, BUT A BEGINNING, and break the fresh looking seal around the stone and haul the coffin part way out. Clarence Redwood is very, very dead and Meka wonders if he was even embalmed because he's so rotten. Kassie and Noah only see the decaying body, but Meka can see something under his crossed arms. As she reaches for it, Meka can feel the tingle of power, see the soft green glow lighting up the gore inside, and The Book™ materializing under her dead grandpa’s hands.
Unless Meka is holding The Book™, Kassie and Noah can’t really see it. On the title page there’s a name amongst the symbols: Johann Konrad Dippel. The Book™ is filled with horrific images of bodies cut open, then lists of names, lots and lots of names, the last ones are Kassie Redwood and Noah Cliff. The mausoleum residents then start rattling in their coffins. Kassie and Noah shout for Meka to close The Book™ and when she does, the rattling stops. Meka sees Noah being held by a strange man who entered during the noise, then she is hit over the head causing her to drop The Book™. She hears shouts of “get it” but they can’t see it just like Kassie and Noah couldn’t. More men come into the mausoleum and they’re armed. They’re outnumbered by the strange men who take The Book™, one has Noah hostage, and as he leaves, he cuts Noah’s hand off.
They go back to the funeral home to reattach Noah’s hand. He’s going to have to learn to take it off every couple of weeks, clean the wound and reattach it, forever. Meka says she’ll always be there to help Noah and her mom maintain their bodies but Kassie isn’t pleased by this. With Noah’s hand attached and Addams Family highjinks at an end, they need to figure out where Jonathan is. They decide to look through the house for a clue.
In her parents' bedroom, Kassie looks through her husband's papers while Meka starts in the closet, Noah lifting things down. He’s reached the very top shelf when his foot goes through a floorboard with a hidden stash of papers. There are old photos of Jonathan graduating, of Meka and her mom when she was still alive, Grandpa Redwood in his coffin, as well as newspaper clippings like of Camille Phelps who pioneered an embalming technique for medical research and who died but was definitely having a heated conversation with Jonathan the day before Noah’s death. In the back of the closet in a duffle bag, they pull out a hooded cloak that smells of wood smoke. That’s when the tapping starts. Tap tap tap. They trace it back to the ravens Jonathan likes to feed on a specially installed door and shelf outside the kitchen. On it is a huge raven with milky white eyes of the dead.
The eyes aren’t the only sign the raven is dead, the maggot dripping hole in its chest and visible vertebrae are signs too. On its leg is a tube with a note inside. After Noah retrieves the note the bird says “Roscoe” is its creepy bird voice. The note has a quote from Frankenstein. After some googling, they figure out there is a castle in Roscoe, New York, Dundas Castle, that is only two hours away that was used for exterior shots in the 1931 Frankenstein. Meka clicks further and finds out that Frankenstein may have been based on a real person in Germany, Johann Konrad Dippel, the same name from The Book™.
Soon they’re on the way to Roscoe and Meka falls asleep in the car. She has the same dream as always, except this time she sees her father write something in The Book™ with her mom's blood and hears him chant “Alive. Alive. Alive.” Meka also sees that her dad was holding her mom when she was reanimated. She wakes to her dream-mom saying “Let me go.” Her mom-mom pulls the car over, they aren’t at Dundas Castle yet, but they’ll need to walk the rest of the way or risk being found straight away by the bad guys and their goons.
It’s ice cold and the ground is covered in snow. It doesn't bother Kassie or Noah, affecting their mortuary wax parts maybe, but they don’t feel the cold. Meka however is very alive and very cold. They’re able to avoid goons on the way and make it on to the castle grounds where they see Camille Phelps ordering some goons around. Avoiding the people, they manage to sneak into the castle and follow some of the people going about their henchmen business, hoping that Jonathan is where they are going.
They end up going downstairs and it’s as hot as hell in the sub levels and smells of the same wood smoke Jonathan’s cloak does. Instead of finding Jonathan though, they find an altar. They’re only alone in the altar room for a few moments when bad guys come in. They don’t have The Book™ yet, it’s on its way, but they do have the dead body of a young woman and place it on the altar.
Camille is going to use the woman for parts. Gross. Jonathan is dragged in by robed figures and followed by a giant in the same robes. Something feels distinctly off about him. Jonathan refuses to reanimate the girl on the altar despite Camille’s (frankly whiny) threats and demands. Soon The Book™ arrives and Camille makes more threats and demands, but Jonathan refuses to be the lackey his father apparently was for them. It isn’t until Meka is discovered and Camille holds a knife to her throat that Jonathan relents. He starts the ritual, the room fills with smoke from a burner, The Book™ glows an eerie green, and there is electricity in the air.
Distracted by the ritual, Meka is able to break free from Camille. She stumbles though and as Jonathan is about to write the girl’s name with her blood in the book, Meka touches her causing the body to sit up. Then chaos ensues, the body goes back down on the altar, Kassie and Noah come out of their hiding spots and bad guys are having their patched up heads caved in. Eventually the fight stops when the big robed figure reveals himself to be the original creation of Johann Konrad Dippel.
The monster monologues about being the one to control the Reanimators, like Jonathan and Meka, and how it’s his right and god-like duty to decide who is brought back as a Reanimate, the name given to the people like Camille and the patched up goons and Kassie and Noah, and who is not. He recognizes the same spark in Meka that Dippel, his creator, had. He also realizes that she doesn’t need The Book™ to reanimate people, and neither did Dippel. She is special and he has watched her for years. He was the figure at her bedroom window and the man in the middle of the road that caused the car accident that killed her mother. He has watched all of Meka’s family for generations. Creepy.
Meka is able to reanimate the woman on the altar and she begs Meka kill me so Meka does so by removing her hand and the spark of reanimating she was providing. The monster orders Kassie and Noah destroyed after this. The monster tries to grab Meka but her mom steps in the way. He pulls her right arm off and twists her torso around, discarding her. Meka grabs a candlestick and plunges it into the monster's spine, but then everything goes black. Meka wakes to Camille cutting off the dead woman’s leg and then her own to be replaced, and another bad guy, armless and twisted, yelling Traitor! at Camille. Her dad, Noah and the monster are gone. By the altar, Meka finds her mom's body crumpled on the floor, she tells Meka this can’t continue and tells her to go after the monster.
Upstairs, Meka finds the monster holding her dad out an open window and Noah pounding at him. There’s more insane reasoning behind the monster’s assumption he should have the right to decide who lives and dies. As Jonathan fights the grip of the monster, the robe is pulled and ripped away showing the mashup of bodies in different stages of decay that makes up his body. Two hundred years of putrid flesh. The monster drops Jonathan then charges at Meka, breaking her ankle. Jonathan hasn’t fallen to his death though, he’s clinging to the discarded robe and Noah helps him back up. This gives Meka the opportunity to grab a knife and sink it in the base of the monster's skull and with the momentum, they fall through the open window.
Meka's ankle is shattered and she has pain in her ribs, but she’s alive and has landed on top of the monster. Noah has also tumbled out the window, but didn’t have a giant human shaped pile of decay to soften his landing, so his left leg is broken at the thigh and his hand is dangling off. Jonathan is still up at the window. The monster tries to stand, but the knife and the force of the fall have decapitated him. He picks his head up and just plops it back on, using his spine as a pike.
The monster starts to come after Meka when Jonathan arrives using a wooden plank as a baseball bat to thwack the monster's head away. Meka starts cutting away the monster's limbs. He’s gross, stinks and full of maggots. They take all the pieces back into the castle and pile them up. They’re going to burn everything. Kassie tells Jonathan to also burn The Book™. Jonathan tells them that if they burn The Book™ all the people whose names are written in it will be unmade too. Kassie is tired and wants to rest, and Noah feels the same. Jonathan burns The Book™ and all the Reanimates lie still. Meka and Jonathan take Kassie and Noah home but burn everyone and everything else.
They don’t hold a funeral for Kassie, but they tell everyone there was a short illness and that she was cremated. Noah’s second funeral is in the crypt with just Meka, Jonathan and Noah’s mom. They have to go back a few days later to reinter Noah’s lost hand they forgot at the castle. Oops. The car crash dreams have stopped, but now Meka dreams of Noah at the end of a corridor telling her she could bring him back.
Three months later, life is slowly turning into a new normal. Meka asks her dad about what the monster meant about her being special, but he doesn’t think it means anything, though Meka knows he’s holding something back. The monster said that Dippel wrote The Book™ after he was reanimated and used his own spark to bring him to life. Meka asks her dad if he's ever tried to reanimate without The Book™ and yes, Grandpa Redwood made him try but he was only ever able to make someone sit up or shift around. Jonathan insists reanimation can’t be done without The Book™.
Meka makes her way downstairs to prep their latest guest. She’s sure her dad is wrong and that she doesn’t need The Book™ because she has the spark. Meka holds the guest and can feel the spark and knows she could reanimate them. This guest didn’t ask to be reanimated so she doesn't do it, but Meka is sure the one person haunting her dreams wants to be. Later, Meka visits Noah’s tomb. She touches his name plaque and the ravens flying around caw Alive! Alive! Alive!
