Frankensteins have a status that their wealth provides where their homes and castles were among even the envy of royalty, whose voices shudder when they rumor the Frankenstein name in whispers to both the wives and their title holding husbands. Amid November’s autumn the year 1805 where in high society the children are safe to roam the corridors within their warm manors and city homes. To grow plump with meals their mothers never cook them and shop of new attire regularly to wear the finest clothes that they can afford a tailor to seam for them. Surely there are those who cry in secret at the resentment of a passive family groomed by its society. Those cries are subdued by the remedy of lavish balls, exquisite and expensive theater and the hourly doses of wines and spirits. It cannot be denied that these people are living comfortably while enjoying the splendors of the world. With loyal subjects to handle mundane everyday tasks it frees up their time to find leisure, to enjoy the arts, to taste the abundance of food served freely and actively attend parties and weddings. Yet in theses crowds of crystal cups and silk dresses there is no Frankenstein. Nor are they found in quiet corners or private dinners. Not within the lecture halls or university class rooms. England has not seen a Frankenstein amidst its streets in eighteen years.
Far from society in the southwest of Germany, bordering France, the Frankenstein castle resides. A Schloss castle with seven stories looms mountainous on a rock in the middle of a massive lake. Complete with flying buttresses, countless towers, domes and wings. A truly visionary love-letter to Gothic architecture. A mighty landmark for the Frankenstein’s symbol of status.
Thick forest and wild mountain range lay on the opposite side of the lake from the castle resembling an oil painting of yellows and hazel hues where the green of spring is dying.
As the evening makes its comfortable arrival the castle lives silently with emptiness. Without a soul to see the setting sun pass through its hundreds of windows. No maids, no cooks, no loyal servants have roamed these halls in some weeks and the quiet that rests on the walls is one shrouded in mourning. An abandoned grave yard of bouquets can be found in the ballroom. Their dried up and withered corpses gone unloved. Piles of melted candles can be seen crowding the corners of a few rooms. The stillness of time throughout the castle, black fabric draped across portraits, mirrors, and scattered furniture has left nothing more than the solemn silence of a once illustrious home.
As the dawn is snuffed out by a starless night sky; a woman of forty-four with black hair is asleep against a window pane in a stone-quiet hall. She inhales the frost that passes like a phantom through the window. It brushes her cheek and nose. In time the stone walls absorb the cold. Without urgency Victoria Frankenstein awakes raising the lids of her deep set eyes and through the window she views her castle grounds in the throws of night. Her body resting on an icy cushioned window nook. The comforts of wealth have clearly taken care of her as she appears younger than her age with fair skin. For a moment she is still and all is calm. Reflecting in her eyes is a crackle of lightning that scrapes across smoky black clouds. An electrical storm is rising. She then brings her legs off the nook and marches with a haste through the halls. The walls are adorned with hanging oil lamps that are not lit with ornate patterns of callous shadows from floor to ceiling. She passes them one after another journeying to the other side of the castle. Her clothes are a custom stitching opposed to the common fashion of wearing a fall front gown or tubular skirt she instead wears a pair of dark trousers, a tweed vest and a simple, long cotton coat that have been tailored to her body and designed by her own personal seamstress. Her hair loosely wafting behind her before reaching the master bedroom.
What is meant to be a bedroom doubles as a library where each wall is covered up by dark wood bookshelves; each one filled with red leather bound journals in row after row. Each journal is guaranteed to be filled with her documentation and notes. There is a window that reaches from floor to ceiling, climbing a precise twenty-five feet. Aggressively she draws the curtains back on it. Living beside the window is a writing desk. The loyal tools of her workshop are loose parchment paper, a quill and ink and a loop handle candle stick holder all neatly prepared on top of her desk. Before she can light the candle a silent tide of light splashes the drafty room in a blink. A light explodes to life on the match stick she uses to ignite the desk’s candle.
Adjusting the quill between her fingers she eagerly sits down to a blank sheet of paper. In a moment she ponders how there is a razor judgment for a woman who has such wealth and still makes no allegiances with the men who wish to grow their fortunes larger. To add to her position she is alone in her ancestral home which leaves many to speculate suspicions especially in high society. “Hmm… Then what a rare and fortunate position I must be in.” she thinks, “A rare case of one such woman. To be alone with her thoughts and allowed to think unhindered. With the wealth to make actions of her ideas. Monstrous ideas. Committed as any man, I am, only because I live as... the other”
She starts writing with her ink dipped quill in the weak glow of dying candle light. She sits at her desk assertively, writing every word with self appointed discipline. She can smell stale musk when wetting the hemp parchment paper with every line of ink. Her black wavy hair falls to one side resting on a shoulder. The music of rain hitting the glass of her windows can he heard coinciding with the quiet scratching sound her quill makes when writing. She writes:
“I, Victoria Frankenstein, on this the year 1800 and the 5th. November the 5th, believe it is of the upmost importance to journal additional details before I conduct my experiment in any case of misfortune throughout. I have, for twenty-two years, researched rare cases of a disease. From these cases I have taken blood from men and woman for further studies. The samples origins – Egypt, The year 1700 and 83.
A man with this disease was mummified. The disease allowed him to survive thousands of years in dormant as long as his organs remained removed from his body. He was the most powerful of all cases I have ever encountered. His blood, immortal. I expand on this case in further detail in my journal labeled ‘King of the dead’.
Point Pleasant, The Americas, The year 1700 and 84.
This case is still shrouded in grand mystery. Blood was obtained from a massive creature that was black and winged with red eyes. I have documented this encounter in further detail in my journal labeled ‘Point Pleasant’.
Gevaudan, France, The year 1700 and 85.
A woman who was relieved of ailments or any harm by her disease also would suffer to a frontal lobe takeover while her body underwent a flooding of hormones of both estrogen and testosterone and adrenaline in the night of full moons. I expand on this case in my journal labeled ‘Beast of Gevaudan’.
Lastly, I have obtained blood from my love of 19 years, Voivode. He is a man truly cursed with every purposeful enrichment of the phrase. There is a tremendous amount of similarities his version of this disease shares with a variety of illnesses. His pale complexion could define him as having the white plague but he shares no other symptom, and defies the end result of the disease which is death. Rabies has a common connection to a painful sensitivity to sunlight. Thus, his case has more than just a sensitivity to sunlight. It whittles his body, destroys his flesh and rumples him into a chard living-carcass. Porphyria causes a hyper sensitivity to light as well but never to a damaging extreme such as he experiences. There must be an ingestion of blood if he is ever to be damaged by the sun in order to recover therefore an absence of the need for blood is his general everyday living. In spite of these factors Voivode is immortal. I expand further on his case in my journals “The son of the dragon”.
All four cases are like any disease with damning drawbacks but in all four cases there is a profoundly rare healing factor that I hope and dream I can enable in dead human tissue. I am far from understanding how this blood and disease truly functions and if there is any such way to manipulate it but if I could it would mean an advancement in medicine that would give the recently deceased a second chance at life. A cure to child illnesses possibly those as such as measles. The potential is there for bettering the well being of all human life. There is no fathom to limitless progress humanity can propel to. The death of the young who potentially hold answers and keys to creating a Utopian future can be given a second chance to gift us with their imagination. Less creativity and love will be lost so we all can rise higher as the human collective. No mother will have to lose their child again. Evidently no child will have to lose their mother to have life.
My motivation overflows with a terrible exuberance in my every waking day. To see success in a one in a trillion probability would mean more than changing the world, more than the advancements of medicine and more than a bright and bold future. In truth what is most important to me is that it would mean I would get back the heart I lost in this world. The love in me this world extinguished.
It is with tremendous shame and dismay that I must disclose a wretched confession. In the past day I have grave robbed the body of a Mathys Holl, who has passed in the last week. He met his demise in an accident as he came to collapse under a wind mills water wheel. He suffered cranial damage in the back and top of his skull destroying his brain. I transplanted into him a brain and eyes. I have surgically implanted 4 electricity conduits into the body. Two on either side of the torso. I have also combined the blood of all four previously mentioned cases. The result was a biological lumination that I believe is two chemicals that I have known to be common in sea life was present in two separate collections of blood. With only enough to fill two vials after mixing. I will be injecting one full vial into the body while it lay in a vat of water. Soon after I will engage an electrical current from a battery that will be connected to the four electricity conduits in the torso. Allowing for electricity to course through the body.
To further explain, in the year 1700 and 96 I began funding the experiments of Alessandro Volta. He is an Italian Physicist that was working to invent a machine that will produce electricity over a long period of time, steadily. I take no credit for his work having only been present for his experiments eight or so visits in under ten years. When he finally invented the voltaic pile in the year 1700 and 99 we worked together in secret to create a version of the voltaic pile that produced 100-200 watts instead of 1-2 watts which is what his invention initially supplied. We eventually became successful and I posses such one machine that I have named ‘the box”. I will use it to produce a steady current of electricity into the body through the electricity conduits in the torso for over the course of six hours. The hope is that the end result will be the aforementioned disease in the combined vials of blood will take hold of the cells while they are surging with a steady current of electricity. Allowing for the cells to adopt the diseases regenerative affects and heal the dead cells back to life. If there is no problematic occurrences and I am without harm I shall return to record my findings. This concludes my record.”
Placing the quill beside the ink jar, Victoria turns to get up from the desk but half way up she stops herself and a hurt curried on the love of her heart now runs through her, drenching her eyes in longing. Gently, she sits back down. Her hand resting on the desk calmly drifts over to pick up the quill once again. Her eyes gloss with sentiment as the point of the quill starts a new page. She writes, “I said goodbye to my love today. I watched from my windows as his charcoal black horses took his carriage through the castle gates. I stared with painful concentration hoping I could somehow see through the charter’s black painted windows and maybe catch a glimpse of him once more. I watched him leave; though I am not unfamiliar with the sight it does not make it any less difficult. I stayed long after he was gone when the sun peeked over the horizon. I looked on till I fell asleep against the pane.”
Lightning flashes but thunder cannot be heard. The blinding pulse of the lightning does not distract Victoria. Her hand pens with indomitable determination, “His travels will take him far from me. Though it is nothing I wouldn’t expect for the legacy he is building is far greater than any fictional giant. I also think about my legacy. I wonder what the world will write of me 200 years from now. I know they will tell of how I advanced mankind with such unmatched haste. Children will idolize me as the hero they strive to someday be. I will lay here in my bed tonight and I will not cry for what I have lost! I will not cry for the absence of my love. My father, the glorious man that he was, always said ‘Death follows Frankensteins, so I say let him follow for I will never slow, I will never halt. Every inch of my being, until my last breath, will constantly strive to fulfill my dreams. I will get back to my heaven. I will get back my life. As I doze off I will be imagining what history will write of me as someday they will erect a monument in my likeness as a memorial of my achievements. Doctor Victoria Frankenstein. The angel of life. I dream… so often it becomes a wool over my eyes. A facade of mountains built with delusions of grandeur that when it fades a dull colorless perspective remains. The tightening of a noose can be felt then, around my neck and I shed stinging forced tears. I dream. And I dream, because I carry with me a moratorium. Inside it holds the tomb of my mother, whom I have never known for she passed shortly after I was born. The child I lost while still in my womb. The tomb of my father who perished in Egypt the winter of the year 1700 and 83. A lifetime of lovers who came years before my current companion, Voivode, are all but corpses now. I dream because they cannot. I dream because if they could still be here they would want me to dream. For them I keep my dreams protected in a chamber I keep near my heart. Impenetrable and invulnerable to corruption and never in need of the sustenance of glory or ego. It was my grief of being followed by loss that I desired to spite death themselves. The beauty of my memories has tarnished therefore thy moral boundaries I have crossed to see the happiest part of my life returned to me mustn't be to no avail. This will be a home again.”
Victoria gets up from her desk to then dress down. She collects the recently written pages and closes them inside a red leather bound journal putting a flattened white lotus flower in the pack of the pages before closing it.
Only wearing her under garments she walks with haste across the castle to the bergfried. Defined as the tallest tower in the castle and usually reserved to be constructed in the middle of an architecture, is found instead at the back of the Frankenstein castle. She steps into a room built to be sealed for sanitation. She walks over to a wall where there are four tubs filled with water and she begins a process of washing and rinsing vigorously from the tips of her fingers on up to her elbows. She does the process twice before putting on a second pair of under garments that look tailored for a man which then she proceeds to put on a pair of rubber overalls followed by a long white lab coat that is similar to that of a male doctors coat but with alterations to fit her body type. She fits a hair cover and surgical mask on and then slips on black rubber gloves that reach up past her elbows and exits this sanitary room through a second door, with her journal tucked under her arm.
The large body of a corpse lies under a white sheet on a metal table that is hanging off the ground by five feet. In the darkness light flashes from the heedless dancing of lightning proceeded with thunder sending a tremble through the Frankenstein castle. The strobes of light fill the room till Victoria enters and she begins to flip switches on a board that is in direct control of an electrical source that brings to life bulbs beaming with illumination in every corner of the room’s darkness. The technology in this room alone isn’t just made up of prototypes but the newest inventions from all over the world that only one with the means to find them and the wealth to obtain them could have. This is a laboratory that is also built like a sanitary room but on a larger scale. There is a frightening coldness to the white cleanliness of the floors and walls. Victoria takes every step with purpose as well as every movement of her hand is lead with a predetermined plan. Operating with a choreography practiced in the playground of her thoughts a thousand times over. She prepares four syringes by extracting a few ounces from a vial that glows a milky blue. She turns on a machine that begins to produce sounds of crackling electricity. The large voltaic pile she named “The box”.
Beneath the metal table that the massive corpse of a man resides on is a tub large enough to lower the table into. She stands against the wall twisting the knob of a faucet. The faucet is connected to pipes that lead to the tub under the corpse. The tub begins to fill with water and after she shuts the water off; Victoria lowers the metal table into the tub. She approaches the tub and pulls back the sheet to see the face of the corpse and she adjusts the table making sure the nose and mouth are not submerged. She grabs the sheet to cover the face of the corpse once more and pauses to stare at it. Just then lightning and thunder chase after the other and it demands Victoria’s attention. She looks to the window in the ceiling and slowly covers the corpse’s face with the sheet.
She speaks to herself aloud while staring out the window, “Like the mysteries of what electricity is, so is the uncertainty or truth to the extent of which we can control life and death. We can see it, make use of it, feel storms of the heart and try to capture it in words. But there is no maker of magic or nature. We do, in action, to undue it’s mysteries, and make less fear of the unknown.”
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
Through the castle gates, across the lime stone bridge and down a twisty road, there resides the gates of an old medival Bavarian town down the hill. Little rain from the storm has happened upon its ensemble of colorful half timbered houses. The Autumn breeze carries bright foliage through the winding narrow alleys. The towns’ people are made up of women wearing high waist gowns with long muslin skirts and men in dim or dark colored breeches with some in long, loose and coarse overcoats and others in tweed vests and jackets. They come out of their homes and crowd the twisty cobblestone streets for the voltage of lightning strikes can be heard coming from the thunder storm over the Frankenstein castle. Between every explosion of thunder a wave of fear courses through the towns people resulting in shutters slamming shut on the flowers that pour over window boxes, while the crowd that is growing outside collectively gasp and clutch their chests. The town is wrought with hanging street signs that start to violently sway with unwanted screeches of iron.
The towns folk are gripping with fear at each BOOM that echoes through the sky. Villagers have crowded into the town square. A man, with an intense scowl, in leather shoes and dark colored lederhosen covered in dirt and drenched from the rain emerges into the crowd. He is carrying a torch that he uses a near by lantern to ignite and walks through the crowd raising his torch as he screams, “The devil is in our community! Victoria Frankenstein commits acts of heresy as we all stand by, we allow that heretical perversity to grow in the land of our lord. Exodus 22:18: thou shalt not suffer a witch to live! She is the last of her lineage. She is alone inside the Frankenstein castle! For years she has been behind those walls, dwelling, hiding a secrecy of her life. Under the guidance and protection of God I have suspected her of WITCHCRAFT! She must be persecuted!” his final words horse with venom. A wave of gasps passes over the towns people.
“Turn away not now for the works of evil are at hand! Turn away not and see before you now the proof! See before you with your eyes the truth. If Victoria is left unimpeded, who knows how strong her companionship with the devil will get. It is up to us to destroy her evil and the evil of her allegiance with the devil!”
An older man with a gray fretted beard screams from the back of the crowd, “What acts of heresy do you submit Victoria has done?”
The town crier swings his lanky body around with his torch and screams back without hesitation, “We have all bared witness to the carriage, the one that blends in the darkness of night. The Devil himself comes to the Witch Frankenstein to bestow his bidding onto her. He has finally instructed her to do the most unspeakable! She grave robbed the body of Mathys Holl! His funeral was not but six days ago! I had come in from fishing last midnight to see her hauling his body. Tonight I dug up his grave and my suspicions were confirmed. There lie no man, but an empty coffin! These eyes are the son of a witch hunter, a child of god. My bloodline can be followed back to that of a crusader! There is no lie I wish to speak!“
He points to a gaunt young woman with similar features to his own, “That is my sister.” then he points to a rigid looking man with wrinkles that betray his age, “and my brother!” He continues to gesture to various people in the crowd, “My family founded this town generations ago leading us all into God’s gentle light.”. His brows furrow as he looks onward, “That storm lay over top her castle because it is with her that god is angered and we will all perish to a witches will lest we rise now!”.
In the laboratory Victoria drives the needle of a syringe between the corpse’s ribs and empties it into the body. She then places the syringe in a copper pan with three other used syringes. There is one snake like cable connected to “the box”. She drags it over to then clamp four loose wires at the end of the cable to each of the four conduits in the corpses torso. Four chains are connected to the corners and hold up the metal table.
The chains are part of a pulley mechanism that hoist the metal table higher or lower. The hoist is securely fastened to the ceiling… near the only window in the lab. When Victoria clamps the box’s cable to the conduits, small fragments of iron begin to stand on end on the chain near the ceiling where the chain and the hoist meet.
In the town below a commotion brews where it took little effort for most of the towns people to be persuaded to persecute Victoria. With the children tucked away in their homes, they gathered with torches and pitchforks. Together they ascend from the town, up the twisty roads and across the limestone bridge to the Frankenstein castle as a down pour begins.
The mob reaches the castle and attempts to set it ablaze. They find it difficult in torrent of rain, but continue to try as a group of eight men breaks off to use near by lumber as a battering ram on the castle doors.
Victoria cannot hear the pounding at her castle doors over the deafening humming sound “the box” makes entwined with the thunder over the laboratory roof.
Eventually the mob realizes they are no match for the doors and fire starting is impossible in the rain. They decide to make a ramp to the second story window where one man climbs up to break the window and climbs inside to open the castle doors for the mob. Once inside they begin scattering throughout the castle, setting fires and gathering curtains and furniture to set ablaze against the walls.
A small group gather to attempt to set a painting of Victoria on fire that is near the entrance. It is a challenge as it is on a stone wall between stone pillars and 20 feet out of reach. They give up on problem solving and move on, leaving the portrait alone.
Inside of the laboratory Victoria stands beside “the box” and watches a rod that protrudes from the top of the boxe’s housing. The rod is 3 feet long with a sphere at the end. Here in this moment as she waits patiently beside the box while holding her journal on one side of her; she slowly peers over her laboratory from one side to the other stopping on the giant corpse of a man that is hoisted in a tub. Here in this moment does she recognize doubt in her ethics. After a moment of self reflection she speaks passionately aloud, “Be my choice wrong or with greater or harsher judgment than that of 350 years of illogical and unethical torture and murder of all who perished under persecution of witchcraft? The world is covered in homes where the dead spirits stage life scorched by fires used to burn those at the stake. Weary of innocent souls drained from the beauty of time. If I am to be found immoral than my immorality sits at the distance of the moon from that of the practices of slavery for there is no closeness in comparison. It is of the greatest immorality to say ‘give me your life agreed or I shall take it by force, and with your life in my hands I care not how it is fumbled or crushed; only that you provide your indentured servitude- with suffering or not- till you can not be used to provide anymore.’ My tampering of dead flesh and reanimation brings no pain, creates no harm, and cowers in comparison to the monstrously rudimentary practices of medicine, healthcare and doctors and physicians and hospitals alike.
She screams, “Listen to me now! If the forces at work truly disagree with my experiments may Zeus himself ride down on bolts of lightning to punish me!”
It’s then that she sees static electricity form around the sphere in which she instantly grabs a lever on the box and flips it like a switch. She watches as electricity is sent through the cable to the conduits.
Her eyes follow the electricity in the few seconds it takes to travel. She see electricity form out of the water and begin to climb the chains. But then her eyes follow the chains to the ceiling where the hoist is fastened. An alarming sense runs through her that a mistake has escaped her and there is a dangerous precedence in her oversight.
The window in the ceiling glows brighter than the bulbs and whiteness of the room.
With the electricity in the air the hair all over her body stands on end. The metal tray and the syringes that were in it levitate sparking of static.
Millions of miles away… in the darkness. Empty space of unimaginable size is home to a void outside of our galaxy. In the maddening orchestra of stars, a violent collision of a dwarf planet and a moon begins. It is catastrophic devastation in the wake of these two celestial juggernauts colliding. The decomposition of organic matter releases blasts. The absolute annihilation sparks the conception of an energy. This energy makes a cosmic ray that is shot out into space as it is projected by a devastating shock wave the collision creates. This high energy particle travels at super speed through space. It enters our galaxy. Eventually it enters our solar system. Unbeknownst to Victoria she is about to experience a phenomena event and be the only person to see up-close a lightning strike when combined with an impossible particle. A cosmic ray is traveling from extragalactic reaches of space and it carries with it levels greater than exa-electron volts which is measured to be millions of times more energy than anything that humans can produce on earth. It enters the atmosphere and intertwines with a lightning bolt.
In milliseconds that lightning bolt breaks through the window in the ceiling and rides down the chain hoist. It travels through the metal table, the corpse, the water and into the cable. The large voltaic pile absorbs the electrical current and overcharges. With a flash and a bang “the box” explodes with electricity and fire sending Victoria to the floor and knocking her unconscious momentarily. She is alarmingly awakened far from a comfortable heat. Having breathed in smoke she coughs desperately in search for air. In between each attempt to inhale oxygen she combs the laboratory with her eyes looking for her experiment but sees only fire and destruction as well as a wall of smoke. Through the haze her fingertips lightly skim through the debris of the explosion. Broken glass and ash can be felt as she coughs and moves about until she feels an all too familiar binding by her foot; she sees her journal that she picks up before the flames become unbearable, and the air unbreathable. She wants to find a way to save her experiment. She wants to cross the raging fire to the other side of the laboratory but she knows the high cost would mean her life. She needs more time and then surely there would be nothing that could stop her but there is no time as the fire tyrannically burns to temperatures she can not grapple with. She is left with no choice but to escape with her life now. A clear path to the exit can be seen when she turns around and she cautiously makes her way to the door to leave the lab but stops just before exiting. She turns back, dropping her shoulders as she begins to cry.
“Forgive me!” She yells into the fire and smoke, “Forgive me!” she yells through the tears, “Forgive me!” She yells with heartbreak riding on the trembling decibels of her words.
She runs through the halls of her castle without questioning how the fires reached the other wings. An ever unraveling disappointment of failure takes hold of her as she navigates to escape the burning castle.
She ponders, “Is this where God has disowned me? Has he been here all along and I ignored the presence he took so I may foolishly keep the dead I could not let go? Here I voyage from my deeds without God. My Punishments could be as severe as hearing only noise in the grace of music and I would wallow knowing I deserved it.”
Her sorrowing makes her fall ill as she continues onward down flights of stairs. She continues in thought, “An arrow pulled back, and with my guiding hand it was shot. Shot with good intention and confidence in it’s success but still only just the one arrow. Only one opportunity to hit the target. The brain, it was a person, there was a life there. Memories no one can have. Now, they never will. The days where there were rain instead of sun and the lungs were filled with petrichor. The warm meals with family, never a night alone or without a full stomach. The warming touch of sunlight on the eyes in spring.”
She pauses to weep, grabbing on to a door frame to hold her from falling while gripping her journal to her chest. She weeps uncontrollably as though she has never wept. As though she was attending a funeral.
She presses forward as the flames have followed her and push her out into the gardens. She keeps going stumbling minimally as she continues in her provoked thoughts, “Burden me! I wanted it! I wished for it and sought it out. Burden me with something to love. A child to give love and a purpose to never tire of. Burden me I asked, I demanded, I am strong enough I said. Remove my hand, burn me with frost, drown me in fire and I will show you the meaning of loving and to love. Burden me. I will never tire. Death follows Frankenstein’s.”
Now standing at the back of the castle gardens she watches as all the castle windows spill over with flames.
“Is this God?” She ponders, “Is he ashamed I ask, then he provided, and I could not live up to my self anointed merit? Or was my oversight so horrendously epochal that no act of divine punishment was needed? Or was the hand that sows a puppeteer to my decisions?”
The Fire has grown to be so big that the heat from the flames are too much for Victoria that even standing at the back of the gardens is unbearable.
Victoria takes to a stairwell that leads to a pier. She dashes to a rowboat at the end of the pier and climbs aboard frantically, setting her journal down in the boat and rowing out onto the lake. She cries as she rows watching her ancestral castle burn down. A castle 300 years old castle that took 200 years to build and only one Victoria Frankenstein to burn it down.
As she reaches the middle of the lake she sees something escape the flames and emerge onto a balcony under a row of flying buttresses on the seventh story of the wing next to the laboratory. She stops rowing and stands in the boat. There is a massive figure silhouetted by the fires. She pauses in awe before celebrating accomplishment with a gasp and a jump.
“Alive? He’s... ALIVE!”
But her celebration is short lived when a few men arrive on the balcony. Victoria watches in confusion from the middle of the lake as the men proceed to attack her experiment mercilessly. Victoria is filled with horror already as she can only stand and watch when the tides turn. A silence smothers the world, as the rain recedes and the clatter of thunder takes a pause when Victoria’s creation explodes with power in retaliation, tearing five men apart.
Her palm impulsively reaches out before her in shock. Her fingers are stretched apart and she can see her hand and arm silhouetted by the fire that engulfs her castle. Slivers of light can be seen emitting from the body of her massive creation… like a monster. The same mysterious light can barely be seen glowing from its eyes. A flood of questions and curiosities whirl like the winds on a tornado in Victoria’s mind.
She asks herself, “Have I birthed a titan so unstoppable?” In the moments as she watches. Victoria tries to decipher what she can of her creation from its movement in the dark. She hones in on some of those thoughts in the hurricane of her mind, “I imagine there is no world that finds itself safe from a creation such as this. 100 feet tall, immeasurable strength and no limits to what more they are capable of. With the blood of all four subjects that I manipulated in an attempt to remove or reduce the drawbacks of the disease and combine them in a single body, there are 4 truths I foresee of my creation’s biology. One, there is no wound it can not heal from as their cells regenerate as fast as a breath. Two, unbridled strength with muscle fibers that imitate the density of steal. Three, mutation. There is not enough I could record in my years of research to understand why different individuals reacted in a unique way to the disease. But there was a pattern, and in three cases they had a mutation that made them deadlier. Four, it will be immune to illness, disease, starvation and mortal wounds. It is immortal. I grow sicker within my bowels and breathing to the sheer imagining my own creation arriving before me. What misery I imbued on it. Is there pain it feels? Is pain a sense for it? How much pain have I caused it? For whatever the motivation may be, I can not conceive that our meeting will be without a shared resemblance to the effortless removal of a mans entrails and dismantling of the human form in one smooth swinging motion. How dare I ask only now, Was I wrong? How beautiful a creature, to curse the world like a form of arts opposite, plant a gaze on horror which unsettles the soul but inflicts a towering fear to turn away. Like soldiers at war, two children in a uniform and placed on the battlefield to look each other in the eyes. Deter their eyes from the other could mean an opponents opportunity to strike the killing blow of a blade entering the heart. They fear to turn away lest doom come for them. So is the fear my creation inflicts. I can feel... the summer of my life begins to drain from my hair, a woman of forty-four sees more in the lessening of ability than that of growing ambition. There now lies among the lost, ones fearlessness to endure.”
Panic rises in her as more towns people arrive to meet the horrors of her creation’s rampage. She can feel that chamber near her heart that holds her dreams, be crushed. The walls that hold up her dreamers soul were before now unbowed and impossible to abandon. Now they beckon to forfeit as those walls begin to crumble and collapse. Single handed gore and blood shed like shes never seen is spread across the balcony. She sinks into an ocean of emotions disappearing further into a darkness that light and air fear from as she drowns in despair. There is no breath she could take that could breathe life back into her broken dreams.
Lightning strikes, bursting in the sky like an orchestra for nature reaching crescendos whenever the towns people are split up the middle and cut down by Victoria’s creation. From the middle of the lake she stands in her row boat under the dark of night while being pelted by the rain looking on with terror into the flames. She feels the death of a part of her within but also the birth of an unexplored era.
The birth of dread.
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