Dr. Perry was alive.
Despite the abuse put to him by the fiend, he still lived. The spark that burned in his body for seventy odd years refused to be snuffed. Bones were broken, limbs twisted and crippled, blood spilling from a dozen wounds, yet he lived and in living, was awake. He looked down on the fiend below him with a consuming hatred that would smolder, he was certain, long after death had claimed him and the fiend was so many ashes in God's palm.