When I woke up that morning after a nightmarish memory from a century ago, it was a brisk November morning. I rose up without a sound, contemplative.

Over the decades, I’d gotten used to nightmares. They didn’t show up as often as when I’d been a younger monster, but they still happened. I tended to get a bit moody after such a nightmare but I tried to let it go this morning.

Rising out of bed, I looked over at my alarm clock and let out a groan when I saw it was 3 in the morning. Damnit, I hated the nightmares that woke me up early. Over two hundred years and I’m still cranky in the morning.

I got out of bed and headed to the bathroom, lowering my head to avoid the top of the door, then taking a look at myself in the mirror.

I hadn’t changed much. Still eight feel tall, with my pale skin and black hair. I used to have sickly yellow skin, so I tried tanning, but apparently it had only made me look pale, something to do with my biology I assumed. My eyes shone an inhuman green, where before they had been white. I pressed a finger to my neck, where the faded scar lay around my throat, showing where my head had been attatched to the rest of me.

I’d gotted used my strange appearance so I quickly got to the business of showering, brushing my teeth, and all the other boring things one does while in the bathroom before changing into a shirt and some jeans and leaving my bedroom to the rest of my apartment.

I lived in New York City now. It wasn’t entirely by choice, as I’d had to stowaway on a boat to get to the city while escaping a group of pursuers, but I’d made a real home here. My apartment was small and cozy, my computer let me make a living without leaving the house, I had enough room to exercise, and food came by delivery. In many ways, I felt content as I walked over to my computer to sit down and start working.

First, I had a commission to make a website for a small business in Arizona, just something their clients could find. It wasn’t a big job, only something I’d been working on for a few days, so I made some of the final adjustments to get it ready and complete. Just some quick coding and making sure it all looked right, which took a few hours while I listened to some music on Youtube.

After sending it to be approved, I could focus on the things I was passionate about. I pulled out my drawing tablet and sketched aimlessly as I thought things over.

It was coming up on my birthday soon. Combined with the nightmare I’d had, I was feeling more morose than usual.

But then, the day I was born was quite eventful.

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My first memory was a muffled one. I was born with eyes that barely see, ears that could barely hear, my limbs twitching sporadically. Pain filled me like it was the very blood in my veins. When I’d awaken, it was with the feeling I would soon come to know was electricity shocking me, forcing my muscles to twitch, cooking me inside out. I screamed that day. My first noise was of pain and fear.

I fell onto an ice cold stone floor as loud and muffled noises surrounded me. I saw, felt, heard, and smelt at the same time. I did not know it then, but the man resposible for my creation had ran away then, leaving me in that lab to die.

I escaped from the University of Ingolstadt that night, and found my way to the woods. I found shade from the oppressive light of the sun in a forest, and eventually lay by the side of a brook, drinking from it when I was thirsty and eating some berries when I became hungry.

I cried for the first time the next night. Just weeping, lost in the world, not understanding what anything was. I had no knowledge beyond what a baby comes into the world with, and all of my senses were dead.

That was the first few days. Near blind and deaf, dressed in scraps of cloth I’d managed to steal from the lab of my birth in some instinctive need for clothing, eating berries and drinking water. Soon though, I began to grow stronger. My senses sharpened until I could hear the birds and see the sun, feel the breeze. I tried to copy the singing of the birds, only to scare myself with my unnatural voice. It’s gotten better, but I still have to work to sound human.

I found a fire made by beggars and learned about the nature of flame the way any child does. By burning. It was not a fun way to learn.

Soon though, I got hungry for more than berries and acorns. In search of real shelter and food, I found a hut, where I met my first human, an old man preparing breakfast.

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He looked at me, screamed, and ran for it.

Learned to get used to that sort of reaction real quickly.

I met more people afterward, and got more of the same reaction. Fear, anger, and hatred. I was other, so I must be a monster. Men and women gathered and threw stones at me, attacking me en masse as I cried out for help in my soundless roars of pain, before I escaped.

Eventually making my way to an abandoned structure next to a cottage where a poor family lived. That was my first home. A cold and desolate place in the country, living on scraps and stealing firewood to survive.

It was also my first time seeing what a family was. From a chink in my home, I could watch the comings and going of the family, see them work, play, and interact with each other. To them, they were poor. To me, they had everything in the world.

Still, I was amazed to find that they were so kind, yet so sad. I tried to help. To cut them logs for firewood so they could stay warm, which led to them being happy, something that made me happy in turn. Of course, they had no idea who had done it, but it still felt good to help.

I learned how to talk by watching them, learned how to read when the young son read to his blind father and pretty sister.

I also found out what I looked like after looking in a pool. Not great. Nowadays, I know it was in the moments of my muscles. I was still learning how to shift my face, so I usually ended up looking posivtively hideous when combined with my strange eyes. I can mitigate it now, but I still tend to freak people out if I’m not careful and don’t hide my eyes.

I’m a monster. I’m more comforable with the idea now. But then, it was a terrible blow. To realize that I had nothing, no one, that for all my great strength and speed, I was worth less than nothing in the world. That I would always have no one. No mother, no father, no siblings. Forever alone, a freak hated by everyone.

And, in that loneliness, I mad a mistake. I became to invested in that small family. I learned everything about them, their histories, their personalities. I made their well being my own. I became a stalker in every way. I was young and stupid, and I tied my own being to people who had never met me.

And I found Paradise Lost. I know better now to take the book with a grain of salt, but at the time, I considered it real history, and it effected me. The story of God, Adam, and Satan. I felt for Satan, for his envy, something I knew well.

And then of course, there was the day I discovered that, in the clothes I’d stolen, were the notes detailing how I was created. Those were the first time I realized I hadn’t been created by a perfect God, but by a lowly man. Someone who was overambitious, if smart, who had tossed me aside.

One day, desperate for a friend, I went up to the blind man and spoke to him. For just a moment, I had the companionship I had wished for my entire life. I was convinced that as long as I was kind and courteous, I could make friends. I could truly have a family.

And at first, it was a dream come true. The old blind man comforted me, spoke to me, and let me feel just a bit of that kindness I’d always wished. Of course, then I had to ruin it by admitting I’d been stalking him, something that, in my ignorance, I hadn’t thought was strange. Then his family came back, his son threw me out, and I was left alone once again. When I tried to return, hoping to state my case again, the family had left in horror.

I know now why it had happened. Finding out some massive inhuman creature has been following you around is not a comforting prospect in the wonderful past I had been born in. But I wasn’t magnanamous in those days. I ended up destroying their cottage, burning it to the ground.

From there, my final dip into being a monster began. I killed my creators brother, and tried to force him to make a companion for me under threat of killing everyone else. He almost did it too. But just when it seemed like I would finally have someone Victor destroyed her before she could be brought to life, apparently horrified at the idea that we would create more like us.

I dream about her. About the woman who could have understood me. Loved me. Maybe she would have hated me as well. I’ll never know. But I dream of it.

I worked, from then on, to turn my creator into the same lonely creature I had become. I killed his wife on his wedding day, his best friend, and more. I hounded him as he hounded me.

Soon, we both reached the North Pole in our chase of each other. I was ready, prepared to kill my creator. Everything I’d been working for, all of my hate and rage, focused on this man, this man who had abandoned me, who had whined and complained about my creation rather than showing me even the slightest hint of kindness. Finally, I could wrap my hands around his throat and kill him.

And then he just died.

It was kind of funny.

And I was alone again.

If I’m skipping over this stuff, forgive me. Those early years of my youth, the wasted time on the hate I felt towards those I now can dismiss or ignore. I am now a better man I hope.

In the end, I choose to disappear. To enter the cold wastes of the North Pole to die. I floated across the landscape on a raft of ice with the body of my creator by my side as I slowly made my way. I had no wish to do anything but die.

I did not, obviously. I don’t know why I didn’t kill myself. Why I hunted for food and drank water, still pushing my way through the unforgiving land. Eventually, I reached land in Asia, somewhere in Northern Russia. I buried Victor Frankenstein in the cold dirt of that land, and kept on moving. I kept walking, ignoring civilization, ignoring the cold, hunting, scavenging, and walking.

Soon though, I found a reason to live. But those early years still haunt me in so many ways.