by Nicole Mello
“I spent a while in the woods, just wandering aimlessly. At last, Victor, I remembered you. How was I to find you, I wondered? I remembered the details of the city that I had run to after my birth, and so I covered myself — head, face, hands, all of it — and went to a public library, so I could search the details. The closest I came was Boston, but that was enough. My new goal was to go to Boston; from there, I realized you were likely in Cambridge, so I changed course. I researched the area, trying to find you. I asked people about a man matching your description, since I did not know your name. But it was then that I learned who you were — Victor Frankenstein, my creator, my malevolent God, my father.
“I also got a home address for you from your records, but the address was listed as being in New York, not Cambridge. I quickly figured out that this address was separated from your actual living address when you were at school. If I had stayed, perhaps I would have met with you that day. But, as it was, I left again, journeying day and night, heading for New York. I am a determined individual, you will find, and I wanted nothing more than to find you. I wanted companionship, Father. You were all I had left.
“I reached your home. I climbed up the side of the building, as I had seen a young man do on the building adjacent. It seemed safe enough, and, since I was not allowed through the front door, it seemed to be my only option. I examined room after room, until I startled a young boy. He did not look like you. I did not know yet that he was your brother. He began to shout, no doubt startled by my sudden horrid appearance outside of his window. The window was open. I wanted him to stop. He did, after I laid my hands on him. I didn’t mean to strangle him, I swear I didn’t; I didn’t want him to die. I never would have wanted that. But that was what happened.
“My hands got tangled in the chain around his neck, and I accidentally tore it off in my haste to get away from the dead body of the boy. I fled through the window, which was when I noticed the chain, stuck around my fingers. I ripped it free and tossed it through an open window near me on the fire escape. I ran, but, over the next day, my curiosity got the better of me, like yours did to you, and I returned to the scene of my sin. I heard voices, and I hid. Who should appear in the room but you, Father? I was stunned, but, still, I was thrilled. I had not seen your face since my birth, but I had imagined us meeting again for so long. I was delighted by you. I emerged from the closet, and your face turned into one of repulsion at once. All this work to find you, Father, and your first response was disgust. I was afraid; I was disappointed. I ran again, going back out through that open window and climbing down the fire escape.
“Nothing could keep me away from you, though. I kept an eye on you. I followed you wherever you went, staying at a distance, keeping to the shadows. I followed you to the trial of that woman who was accused of the crime I committed, and I wondered why you did not speak up. I still did not realize what man you must have been; I had… What would you call it? Rose-colored glasses. I had those, when it came to you, Father. I wanted so badly for you to be that God which I was seeking, the parent I so deeply wanted. When you fled, after receiving news — though what the news was, I’m not sure, but you seemed distraught — I followed you, all the way here. I waited, until you were presentable again; it took some time. I wasn’t sure what was wrong, but you seemed to improve after a while.
“And yet, as you grew healthier, I grew angrier. You, who had abandoned me three times, who looked upon me as though you reviled me, had been given yet another opportunity to start over. You were getting happier, and I was only more miserable, living in the woods again like I had been in the early days of my life, like an animal. I was no longer newborn; I was not impressed by you, or in awe of you. I was angry with you, Father. With each passing day, I felt more rage towards you. How dare you abandon me and try to carry on like nothing happened? How dare you try to pretend I never existed? How dare you?
“I gathered my courage, again, just this week. After what happened at DeLacey, I was terrified, and justified in that terror, I think. I obtained a gun for myself, just in the case that you became hostile, and it became necessary. I approached you, with the intent of explaining everything to you. I’m surprised to have found in you a captive and willing audience; you’ve listened to the story of my life without interrupting, and I thank you for that, if nothing else. I only have one more thing to ask of you.
“Father, I request a companion. You created life when you created me; surely, I think, you can do it again. I need a companion. And I would like her to be… a her, yes. That’s all I ask of you; surely you can deliver it to me, after all the wrongs you have committed against me, your only son, your greatest creation? I want to love someone as much as I loved Luna. I want an Eve to my Adam; I want another of my kind, to love me as you are loved, to care for me as you are cared for. I am envious of the love and the family you have, even if it has been weakened by my carelessness with your brother. I want that for myself, Father. Please. Then you can go back to pretending I never happened.”
After this last plea, the demon who sat at my kitchen table fell silent, for the first time in hours. Henry had made several more mugs of tea for each of us, if only to keep himself busy while the story of the creature who called himself my son unfolded before us. My mind was reeling; I had so much to absorb, and the request at the end of the story was maddening to me. My life had been destroyed by this beast, and he wished for me to create another? I couldn’t; I wouldn’t. I told him as much.
“I had hoped you wouldn’t say no,” Adam said to me, “because I am rather insistent that this happen, and I have a backup plan, which I wish I didn’t have to defer to. Please, reconsider, or you have to hear it.”
I did reconsider; I thought on it, in utter silence. Henry had stopped moving, standing at the counter, completely still. Adam, surely, could read the hesitation and the rejection in my eyes, and he gave a little sigh, like I was a pet who was not behaving in quite the way he wanted me to. The sound crawled under my skin.
“Father,” he said, and the way he said the title he had chosen for me hung uneasily in the air. “I must have a companion. If I do not, I plan on evening our playing ground, as it were, if I am actually using that phrase correctly.”
My blood went cold, and, try as I might not to jump to any conclusions, I already was. I asked him to clarify what he meant.
“I mean,” Adam told me, “that I will take all of your companions — your family members, your friends, your neighbors, your loved ones — until you are as alone as I am. If you will not make me a companion, you will be alone as I am. Then, we will be each other’s companions. How does that sound, Father?” Adam was silent for a moment. I did not answer him. “Will you reconsider my original proposal, then?”
I was terrified. He was threatening me, in that he was threatening everything I held dear; I didn’t have much desire for money, or possessions, but the people in my life were the only things I had left to live for. I could not allow him to take those things from me, and I almost agreed to his request right then and there, but I caught Henry’s eye, and Henry shook his head minutely, while Adam was not looking at him. I turned my attention to Adam.
“If you give me the night to think on it, you’ll have your answer in the morning,” I answered him. He seemed hopeful; though not quite a yes, this was more than a no, and he was willing to accept it until the next day. He thanked Henry for the tea, unnervingly polite, and extended his hand to me for me to shake. It took me a moment to realize what he wanted, and, when I did, it took me another second to will myself to shake that large, horrible hand of his. He left, but not before making sure I knew that he would be waiting close by, all night, and that he expected an answer first thing in the morning. He ducked under the ceilings and out the front door, which Henry hurriedly shut behind him.
I turned to Henry, reached out to speak to him, but he turned away. I saw Adam retreat to the trees through the window.
I wished I would wake up.
Chapter
Fourteen
Henry was silent for a long while. He took an unnecessarily long amount of time cleaning up the kitchen, paying extra attention to the dishes as he washed them. He put them in the rack, and I dried them, quietly, with a dish towel. I wanted him to speak. I wanted him to say something, anything; I would have preferred they were words of warmth, and of kindness, which I was so accustomed to from him, but I would accepted rage, shouting, anger, pain. It would not have been unreasonable; he had every reason to be upset with me. Anything was better than the silence I was treated to as he collected himself and thought. I waited on the outside for any sign that he hadn’t decided to leave me.
We finished the dishes, and Henry only very briefly made eye contact with me before he headed to the bathroom to shower before bed, since the sun had set while Adam had spoken with us. He shut the door before I could reach him, and I sat right there on the floor, leaning against the wall. I waited for so long; Henry needed his time, and I was unwilling to end my vigil. I fell asleep, and I awoke to Henry, his long hair wet and braided back, shaking me lightly by the shoulder.
“Go to bed, Victor,” Henry said, the first words I had heard from him in hours, and I wanted to bask in his voice. I followed him to our bedroom, where we both changed for bed. I sat on the edge of the bed, waiting for Henry to finish dressing. He tugged his pants up and knotted the drawstrings, then hesitated, his eyes on his hands. His head fell down, and his shoulders shook. It took me a moment to realize what was happening, and I jumped up to comfort him, as he would have done for me, wrapping one arm around his shoulders and leading him to sit on the bed. He tensed under my touch, but tentatively allowed it, so I didn’t push him. I simply left my arm there, letting him know I was there while he cried. I did not know if he was sad, or angry, or frustrated. I still don’t know. I just let him do it.
Finally, he calmed down, the tears ceasing to flow, and his breathing evened out. He seemed calm again, and he lifted his head to look at me.
“Don’t do it,” was the first thing he said. I was bewildered; he had to know what me not doing this for Adam meant. He could not possibly have misunderstood the monster’s meaning when he said he would take everyone from me. It was certain that Henry would be one of the first taken from me; the special attention Adam paid to Henry had not escaped my notice, so surely Henry hadn’t missed it, either, being much more perceptive than I had ever been.
“Henry, you don’t-”
“I understand, Victor,” Henry interrupted. He sounded tired. “I understand perfectly. And I don’t- Victor, this is so much to deal with.”
“I know, and I wouldn’t expect you to-”
“Stop,” Henry interrupted again. “Victor, stop. Just stop.”
I stopped. I fell silent, and I waited while Henry gathered himself. He took a deep breath.
“We’ll hide,” he suggested. “We’ll hide. We’ll bring Eliza with us, and your dad. We can call Glo and ask her to bring Robin and Lewis. They’ll be okay. We’re not going to give in to him, okay?”
It was not okay, not at all. Henry didn’t understand. We had our biggest, and one of our only, fights ever that night. Neither of us was willing to back down; it turned into a nearly-incoherent screaming match, the two of us shouting back and forth at one another, each of us trying to get the other one to understand, to listen, and neither of us was willing to give up our side. I don’t think I could ever repeat that argument for you in its entirety, but I will tell you how it ended.
We had been throwing words back and forth, trying our best to get the other to understand. And, finally, I told him the complete truth. I told him how terrified I was. I’ll admit, I broke down, right then and there, which must have been shocking for Henry. I had never been very emotional before, at least not outright, and lately I had been downright straight-faced. He let me speak, all the way through. I told him how much I feared losing him, especially to the monster which I had created. I couldn’t live without him. Don’t think I’m exaggerating, because I’m not, not in the least. I, very simply, was unable to live without Henry. I pleaded with him to understand that, if it was between him and me, it was always, always going to be him. There is no me without him. He had to understand that; I hope that he did, before the end.
He didn’t relent, or agree with me after that, but we did stop arguing. He seemed resigned to this. He knew I was going to do it; I knew I was going to do it. My mind couldn’t be changed. I had to protect Henry; I had to protect my father, my sister, my sister’s family, and Eliza, especially after I had failed Will. I had to protect them all, and this was the only way I could do it. I want to think that Henry understood that.
He made me lie down in the bed, then he lay beside me. That was how we stayed all night. I think we were both afraid the other one would disappear if we so much as blinked; that was what I was afraid of, anyways. I didn’t want Adam to take Henry from me prematurely. I didn’t want him to leave. I was afraid to take my eyes off of him. I looked at him for so long, I think I could still tell you of the exact placement of each of his freckles, of the way the moonlight moved across his face as the night grew longer, of the rhythm of his breathing, how it would hitch and sometimes stop.
When dawn came, with the room turning into muted greys, Henry nudged me out of bed. I got ready for the day stiffly; I don’t think there was any way I could really prepare for that day, for what I was about to do. Was I betraying my own species? Was I betraying myself? I forced myself not to think it, but the question was still there: what would my mother have thought? Surely there would have been no pride there. I couldn’t even forgive myself; why would she have forgiven me? Why should my father, or my sisters, for that matter? Why should Henry? Why should he stay? Why shouldn’t he leave on his own, without me? Certainly he’d be even safer then, if he went into hiding, even if he took my whole family into hiding with him. Without me, they’d be so much better off. Without me…
Adam came back as promised, as the sun started rising over our little house in the village. He waited at the front door until Henry noticed him and I opened the door for him. Adam followed me through to the kitchen where he had told us his story the day previous. The room was chilled; neither Henry nor myself had thought to start a fire in the fireplace, or in the wood stove, and the morning was crisp. Adam did not seem to feel it. Henry did; he had a sweater on, I remember. It was forest green, and had once belonged to me, I believe. I don’t know what I wore.
I told Adam that I would do this horrible thing that he asked of me. I told him I would create a companion for him, an Eve, and he requested that I make her beautiful, more beautiful than him. He insisted that he would love her regardless of her appearance, but he wanted to have his opinions and thoughts considered. He promised he would leave after he had her, and that he and his Eve would go to South America, where the two of them would live out the rest of their days in solitude. I accepted this proposal.
It was clear to me that we could not stay where we were. Not only had Henry — and, true, even I — grown to like our neighbors and our town, and wanted them to stay safe, but I also did not have the equipment which I needed to perform my experiment a second time. Henry and I packed up our things, and I led him and Adam down to Maine, to a small town which had a college nearby, a university which had a rather well-endowed science program. Their laboratories were rich in the equipment I needed, and the central hospital in the closest city was willing to hire me.
Henry did what he did last time, and each time before: though he did it more slowly at first, he, again, started to create a new life for us. He tried so hard for us to be normal. It took him time to warm to me again; I apologized profusely to him, asking his forgiveness daily. I don’t like to think that I wore him down, but that’s likely what I did. Henry was a good man, a better man than me, a better man than any other I’ve ever known. It was really only a matter of time before he forgave me, which we both knew, but our relationship was never quite the same. How could it be, after som
ething like that? Our relationship evolved; it suited us at the time, in that new world which I regretted creating for us. Things weren’t so bad between Henry and I after that, but I still wish that I could have spared him.
I told Adam, in no uncertain terms, that he was not to live with us. I cited not having the space, since Henry and I were cramped in our new, small house as it was, but I really just didn’t want him anywhere near myself or Henry, and we both knew that. He acquiesced; I don’t know where he stayed. I never went to him; the desire to do so never crossed my mind. When he had a question, or an idea, or an impulse to see his promised companion, he came by our house, never the other way around. I hoped, viciously, that he lived in the woods, in a hole in the ground, in a ditch. I wanted him to suffer outwardly as I suffered inwardly.
I kept my project confined to the basement. When we were looking for a house, I had been searching for a stone basement, something unfinished and suitable for the job to which I had been assigned. Time constraints, however, as well as monetary ones, restricted us, and the basement that I worked in was a finished one, better suited to children’s sleepovers and parents watching football games, not for the horrible thing which I was building in it.
I built her, piece by piece, in that basement. I borrowed equipment from the local university; they had received word from Harvard of my reputation and my character, and were welcoming to me. They asked me to guest-lecture occasionally; I accepted, if only to keep up the charade and avoid suspicion. I worked at the hospital, too, and did what I did before, taking pieces from the hospital morgue off of the bodies of the unclaimed. I felt sick constantly; I was weak, and revolted by myself. There was nothing of the fire and determination I had felt the first two times I had done this, that this was a higher purpose for me. There was only rage, and fear, and disgust. There was nothing for it, though.
