
Transplant is directly inspired by an X-Files graphic novel
I read years ago in which the ghost of a man who had wrongly been used
for organ transplants wants his body parts back. I grounded this story
in slightly more realistic terms. The perpetrator was a flesh and blood
Human being with a religious mania not a ghost.
Or was it? In the first draft the Torchwood team simply
drove away from the retreat feeling depressed because they couldn’t
prevent the deaths of the two Anderson brothers.
“I actually thought it
was some kind of alien force using the re-animated body of Michael Anderson
to take back his own organs or...”
Coming from anyone other than
a man who couldn’t die because aliens tinkered with his DNA, that
would have sounded far-fetched.
Owen sighed.
“I wish it bloody well
had been. I know how to handle aliens. And those two sad buggers would
still be alive. I wanted justice for the people who had died, and for
Francine’s ordeal... I wanted to save Anthony Devlin’s balls.
I didn’t want anyone else to die. And certainly not like that.
I feel pretty damn shitty about this day’s work.”
I later rewrote it with Munroe casting doubt on the straightforward
Human nature of the murders...
This was just humans fucking
it up as usual.”
“I don’t know,
boss,” Munroe said. “Maybe there WAS something more to it.
The lad did the murders, right enough. But think about it. How could
he have extracted the marrow from every bone in the first victim’s
body by himself? Or punch through a woman’s chest to reach her
heart and lungs? And I’ll swear that when I took those bandages
off it was the first time that body had been unwrapped since the body
was embalmed. The lad might have had some kind of supernatural help.”
Owen considered that and sighed
again.
“Oh, bugger it,”
he said. “I hope you’re wrong. I don’t want to have
to tell Anthony Devlin there’s a GHOST after his balls.”
“It was Frazer’s
obsession, fuelled by his brother’s religious mania that set it
all in motion,” Munroe again pointed out. “Both of them
are dead. If they had inadvertently raised something beyond nature,
there’s a good chance it might lie quiet with them, now.”
“Meanwhile, this goes
in the ‘fucked if we know’ file,”
I think this is a stronger ending than the original,
with an element of doubt about whether the case is closed.


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