Bride

by Kyle Alexander Romines

  “You wanted to see me?”

  Walton pulled a chair back for me and gestured for me to sit. “I was hoping you might share some tea with me. I’m afraid I haven’t been a very good host since your arrival.” With that, he began to pour a stream of hot tea into my cup.

  “How goes the work?” I asked, watching him from across the table.

  “I expect we will be free of the ice within the next day or two, with any luck. Not that we’ve had much luck on this accursed voyage.” He paused. “Your skin is so pale—you must be freezing. Would you like to move closer to the fire?”

  I stared into the flames and shook my head. “I’m fine.”

  Walton lowered his voice, as if confessing a dark secret. “The others…they’re afraid of you. They say you don’t eat or sleep, and that you’re a bad omen.”

  I didn’t flinch. “You seem remarkably untroubled by that possibility.”

  “I believe in science, not superstition.”

  “That is what brought you here?” I asked, ignoring my tea.

  He nodded. “I want to be the first to lead a voyage to the pole—to stand where no other man has stood before.” Walton sighed. “The others, they can’t see my vision. They want to turn back. They don’t understand the significance of what I am attempting to accomplish.”

  “How lonely that must be for you.”

  “It’s been a difficult voyage,” he admitted. “I came from nothing, Miss Moritz. I learned everything on my own, without the benefit of fortune or proper education. This is my chance to leave my mark on the world. I can’t turn back now. I’ve come too far. I won’t turn back, no matter the cost.”

  The flames died low, and the candles flickered as a chill spread through the cabin. The ship’s wooden frame groaned under the shifting winds. Walton shivered and leaned closer to the fire for warmth.

  “I once knew a man like you,” I said after a time. “His body lies below.”

  Walton’s brow furrowed as he watched me in the dark. “You’ve never mentioned how you ended up on the ice, or where you come from.”

  “Would you like to hear the tale?” I asked. “It’s a story about someone else who pursued greatness, and all it cost him and those he loved.”

  “Go on,” Walton said.

  I began my account, starting with the moment I had awakened in Victor’s laboratory. The story went long into the night. The hours passed one after another, and by the time I finished it was nearly dawn.

  “Good God,” Walton stammered when I fell silent. He was standing beside the ashen remains of the fire, which had long ago turned cold. “I can hardly believe such a tale.”

  I crossed the room until we stood face to face, took one of Walton’s hands, and held it over my heart.

  He gasped and took a step back. “You have no heartbeat. How is this possible?”

  “Now do you believe?”

  The door fell open before he could answer. Morning light stole into the room from the spot where five sailors stood in the doorway.

  “What is it?” Walton demanded, unable to tear his eyes away from my undead features, revealed in the light of day.

  The sailors exchanged nervous glances until one of them spoke up. “We must turn back,” the man volunteered. “We’ll never make it to the pole. The weather is too much. The ship can’t take it. Our rations are running thin. We won’t last much longer unless we turn back now.”

  The captain started to speak but stopped and bit his lip, as if torn, until at last he spoke in a defeated voice. “Very well. Tell the others to prepare for our departure. Chart a course for England.” The sailors hurried away to spread the news, and Walton turned back to me, a sad look on his face. “Thank you for reminding me that some things are more important than my own ambition.”

  “Though it might be a small comfort now, you chose wisely.”

  He nodded, and for the first time looked as if a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders. “Where will you go now?” he asked me.

  “Home,” I answered.

  Geneva slept under winter’s grasp. The world was white from the distant mountain peaks to the lake’s cold waters. The sins of the past seemed lost in the purifying snows, as if all that had transpired amounted to a bad dream soon to be forgotten. The city streets were quiet. A few stragglers made their way over icy sidewalks as the snow fell, wearing thick cloaks and woolen gloves. None seemed to notice me.

  The shack where I grew up was abandoned. I doubted my mother lasted long after the pox took her. I prayed that wherever she was now, her soul had found rest. I lingered in the town square for a long time in the place where the gallows once stood. I knelt in the street and placed my hand over the fresh snow. I left and did not look back. It was time to leave the past behind.

  My gaze fell on the lonely castle waiting for me in the hills. Given the snows, the journey would have been impossible by carriage or wagon. I managed it easily enough on foot, though the incline was steep. When I emerged from the forest, another trail of footprints had been left behind in the snow. The falling snow had already begun filling them in, but the tracks were fresh. I followed the path, walking alongside the prints under the shadow of the looming structure ahead.

  The castle was abandoned. It was a ruin of its former self, its splendor tarnished by burned stone and shattered windows. Not a soul remained inside. Debris and broken furniture were scattered across the entry hall. The rest of the castle was an empty skeleton, looted clean long ago.

  I found Ernest in the family plot behind the castle, where Alphonse and Elizabeth had been buried beside Caroline and William. A simple brown suit had replaced his uniform and red coat. He alone had survived the monster’s wrath.

  “I try to visit whenever I can,” he said when he saw me. There were fresh flowers at the grave.

  “I thought perhaps you would return to the place where you grew up. The castle is yours now.”

  “I live with my wife and daughter in the village,” he replied, mustering a half-smile. “It was never the castle that made this my home, but the people who lived there.” Ernest stepped away.

  “You’ve married?” I asked, pleasantly surprised that a member of the Frankenstein family had managed to secure a measure of happiness.

  He nodded. “My family lives on a farm on the other side of the lake. I’m more suited to it than the life of a soldier. I’m glad to see you, Justine.”

  “And I you,” I replied.

  “Is Victor…” He stopped, unable to finish.

  I shook my head, and he nodded as if he had known the answer all along. “I thought as much. He was never the same after Mother died, not really.” He sighed. “The cost of vengeance was too high a price. It consumed his soul.”

  “He found redemption in the end, though by then it was too late. He died protecting me from the creature.”

  “I forgave him long ago,” Ernest said. “He was still my brother, whatever his flaws.”

  “You were always the best of us.”

  Ernest gazed forlornly at the graves and shook his head. “No. That was Elizabeth. And you.”

  “Ernest,” I whispered. “I’m so sorry for everything that happened—and for everything I did.”

  “You saved my life,” he said. “No matter what happened to you, you still have the same heart. Gerhardt knew it, and I do too.”

  “Thank you,” I said, a lump in my throat.

  “Now if you’ll excuse me, it’ll be getting dark in a few hours, and supper will be waiting for me at home.” He turned away from the graves and hugged me tightly, taking me by surprise. I wrapped my arms around him as snowflakes dropped around us until finally he pulled away. “Farewell, Justine.”

  “Farewell, Ernest,” I said, watching him walk away in the snow as I stood in the castle graveyard, among the dead.

  My story does not end there.

  After parting ways with the last surviving member of the Frankenstein family, I returned to Victor’s laboratory. Unlike the
castle, the laboratory remained relatively untouched, save for a thick layer of dust that had gathered in my creator’s absence. Most of the various machines and equipment remained functional. It was a small task to repair or replace everything else with parts from the city.

  Before he died, Victor claimed to have perfected his method of restoring life. We would have used it on Gerhardt, had the creature not taken him from me. Although Victor was no longer able to assist me, he had shown me the process himself. I was intimately familiar with his experiments, having read his journals many times over. My teacher had instructed me well, and his lessons on science and mathematics had not gone to waste.

  I was dead for months before Victor brought me back.

  All the candles have gone out but one. I sit here now in the dark, waiting. The storm rages outside. A puddle has formed from the sweeping rains entering through the open trapdoor, under the table where my creator’s body rests.

  As I record these words, I hear a terrible clap of thunder—so great it rattles the chamber—accompanied by a flash of lightning. Electricity flows through the wires, sending sparks flying across the lab. Machines whirl to life above the sound of the icy wind.

  Just as suddenly, everything stops. I lower the platform through the trapdoor and wait. A form tears free of his restraints and rises from the table, bathed in shadow. He staggers toward me, his eyes darting around the lab. Victor cocks his head to one side and stares at me, as if trying to remember something that was on the tip of his tongue.

  “You’re alive,” I declare, facing him. We stand inches apart. I hear his heart beating. Steam rises from his pink skin, a sign of the warm blood flowing through his veins. “I am Justine Moritz, and your name is Victor Frankenstein.”

  A dreadful silence falls over the lab, and then my creation says a single word in two distinct syllables.

  “Vic-tor.”

  We embrace, and the last candle flickers and goes out.

  Acknowledgments

  I was never afraid of monsters as a kid. Most of them, anyway.

  After all, if I ever encountered the ultimate evil, then it would also be proof that the ultimate Good must exist as well. So as much as I loved horror stories, I was never really afraid of them.

  Frankenstein’s monster, on the other hand, terrified me. The creature depicted in the movies was a stitched-up corpse, with no mind of its own save for evil, murderous intent—a soulless abomination birthed by a scientific experiment gone horribly awry. Once, when I was much younger, I outright refused to watch the original black and white Frankenstein film with my family.

  It was only later, in high school that I discovered that Mary Shelley’s book told a very different tale—not just a horror story, but a tragedy. In Victor Frankenstein, I found a man whose noble intent was tainted by his unbridled thirst for knowledge, who aspired to create life only to bring death to everyone around him. The creature depicted in Frankenstein was not the mindless brute from popular culture; instead, he was an intelligent and articulate tortured soul, who drew on the pain from his rejection by mankind to commit terrible deeds. In this telling, it isn’t quite as clear who is the true monster: Victor, who sets out to achieve control of life over death and then rejects his creation, or the misunderstood monster, condemned to loneliness by a world that hates him for his appearance, who seeks terrible vengeance in recompense. When I think of Frankenstein, I’m always left with the same question: what is it that makes someone a monster?

  Which brings me to this book, a story that is all about exploring the idea of what it means to be a monster. No one is all good or all evil. People are shades of gray, and that’s where the conflict lies. We all struggle against our darker impulses. Being a monster isn’t about what we look like on the outside—it’s about the choices we make. Frankenstein’s monster might have been rejected by his creator and shunned by the world, but he chose to murder innocents. Justine on the other hand, despite all the pain and suffering she had endured, made a very different choice. And although we might not face life and death decisions, this is the same choice we face every day—the choice between good and evil.

  Since this is my first work to feature characters in the public domain, I want to take a moment to acknowledge all the stories that helped influence and shape the direction I went with this book. The idea of a bride for Frankenstein’s monster isn’t new. In fact, it originates with Shelley’s novel, where the monster demands that Victor build him a companion. In the book, Victor begins assembling a female creature in the Orkney Islands, but unlike in my story, he destroys his work before it is finished, fearing the potential consequences to the world.

  Perhaps the most famous version of a mate for the creature can be found in the 1935 Universal Pictures’ film The Bride of Frankenstein, where surprisingly the bride is actually only featured near the end of the movie. Though created for the monster, she rejected him in horror, just like the rest of the world, leading the monster to destroy them both, along with Victor’s laboratory.

  Another version of the bride appears briefly in the film Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, in which Victor resurrected his murdered wife Elizabeth, who then set herself on fire after realizing what she was. The scene in this movie where Justine was hanged by the mob for William’s murder, based on nearly identical events in the novel, stuck in my mind long after I watched it. The unfairness with which this innocent girl was executed for a crime she didn’t commit came back to me as I was trying to decide the identity of the bride in my story.

  Yet another depiction of the bride was featured in the television series Penny Dreadful, a show that brought together all the monsters from Victorian era literature. In this telling, the bride was a former prostitute dying from tuberculosis, involved in a tragic romance with a fugitive from America. Killed by Victor Frankenstein and resurrected to be a companion for his creature, she rejected them both and embarked on a killing spree of her own. It was a beautiful show, poetic and exceptionally well written, but it ended without ever reuniting the two long-lost lovers. Victor and his monster didn’t even share a single scene together in the final season, which left almost all its plot threads dangling in a complete lack of closure.

  This was how I felt about almost all the depictions of Frankenstein listed above—as if there was something missing, some part of the story that had been left untold. It dawned on me this was because I had a story to tell. With the characters from Shelley’s novel all in the public domain and available for use, I set out to attempt a fresh take on the story of Frankenstein. I hope I succeeded.

  As always, I want to thank everyone who helped to make this book a reality, including my mother—Pam Romines—and my sister—Megan White—who were the first to review the manuscript. I also want to thank my longtime editor Amanda Melheim, as well as Margaret Dean, who proofread the final draft. The folks at Damonza also deserve a lot of praise for designing and formatting the book’s cover and interior. And of course, thanks to you, the reader, for your support!

  Until next time,

  Kyle

  Credit: Ivy Hedgespeth of Hedgespeth Photography

  About the Author

  Kyle Alexander Romines is a teller of tales from the hills of Kentucky. He enjoys good reads, thunderstorms, and anything edible. His writing interests include fantasy, science fiction, horror, and western.

  Kyle’s lifelong love of books began with childhood bedtime stories and was fostered by his parents and teachers. He grew up reading Calvin and Hobbes, RL Stine’s Goosebumps series, and Harry Potter. His current list of favorites includes Justin Cronin’s The Passage, Red Rising by Pierce Brown, and Bone by Jeff Smith. The library is his friend.

  Kyle is a graduate of the University of Louisville School of Medicine, from which he received his M.D. Like Victor Frankenstein, he is a doctor (but not a mad one).

  He plans to continue writing as long as he has stories to tell.

  You can contact Kyle at thekylealexander@hotmail.com. To sign up to receive autho
r updates—and receive a FREE electronic copy of his science-fiction novella, The Chrononaut—go to http://eepurl.com/bsvhYP.