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Victor leapt carefully off the table, retrieved his pistol, and pointed it at Mary. It shook with rage in his hand, but I did not doubt he would strike true. I turned, panic choking me, to find she had fainted from loss of blood, or from the shock of seeing the monster. Satisfied, Victor tucked the pistol back into his belt.
“You can put yours away, too, Elizabeth,” he snapped. “Either it does not work or you are incapable of shooting me.”
I dropped it to the floor, all feeling gone from my extremities. I could not tear my eyes away from the monster. Now that he was still, my gaze traced his form, unable to linger on any one terrible feature. Everywhere the mind rebelled against the shape of him, rejecting something so close and yet so far from humanity.
Finally, I settled on his eyes.
Though he appeared incapable of movement, his eyes were alive with emotion. Yellow sclera surrounded irises that were shockingly, perfectly blue. And as I looked at them, I realized I had seen them before.
“Henry?” I gasped.
Victor kicked one of the monster’s feet out of the way, stepping over the other. “Well. Some of him, anyway. I told you he was alive.”
A sob escaped my lips, and I dropped to my knees as this, the last part of my heart, was cut from me. I had saved no one I loved.
I had damned them all.
“It is funny,” Victor said, wrapping his hands in a towel and tugging the ruined remains of his father off the table with some strain. The skin had burned, sticking to the metal. “Even in that form, stronger and faster than any human, more capable of resisting the elements, still he is too kindhearted to kill me. But then again, it is not Henry’s heart. I cannot recall whose heart it is….Maybe it is her uncle’s? Whosever heart it is, it is not up to the task of killing me. Miserable wretch! He fills me with the deepest disgust. To think that I, who reached so high, could create such an abomination even the devil’s angels would turn away in fright.” He finished yanking his father free and forcefully tossed the remains against the far wall. The floor was littered with glass from the window. It caught the lights of the chandeliers and lamps, gleaming in the puddles of rain still gathering. Judge Frankenstein’s tortured and twisted earthly shell lay amidst the glass and the water.
“Do you love nothing?” I asked, able for now only to look at Victor. But even in the presence of the monster, Victor was far more monstrous.
“Only you.” He stated it as fact. But his expression was angry, his tone sharp. “Another body, wasted! And more mess to clean up.”
“I tried to protect you,” the monster groaned. I looked at it, shocked. Why would it would ever try to protect Victor? But its eyes were fixed on me.
Henry.
The monster.
“I saw you. In the city of my birth. Where all else was shadows and fear, I knew your face. I had awoken in darkness and terror, rejected by my creator. I ran, hiding, not knowing why I elicited such terror but unwilling to expose myself to more hatred. I was as a newborn infant, and instead of love and comfort found only bitterest rejection. I had no sense of myself, though. How I had come to be. What I had been…before. I knew only what I had seen since my eyes opened in his laboratory.
“And then I saw you, and I remembered. Not everything. But I knew your face when my own was alien to me. I followed you. I wanted to warn you, but the idea of you seeing me and crying out in fear bound me like a coward. I hid as a creature of the night, observing. I revealed myself to Victor to threaten him. To let him know I was watching, would always be watching. I would not allow him his evil pursuits, and I would not allow him to hurt you.”
It was not Henry’s voice, or his face, but they were almost his words. I was ashamed at my revulsion. I would have given anything not to be repulsed by him. But he was an outward reflection of all the evil Victor had practiced on the world.
“And I tried my best to kill you,” Victor said, checking some dials and refilling his vicious needle. “If I had not made you so damned strong, it would have been much easier. But I learned a great deal. I have had to comfort myself with that.”
I did not know what to say—feared I would never again know what to say. Tears threatened to overwhelm me, and I envied Mary her insensibility. I longed to leave this room, this consciousness, to leave behind forever my awareness of these horrors, my full knowledge of all I had lost and would yet lose.
Victor had won.
He looked up at the sky, where a rumble of thunder too close for comfort signaled that his work for the night was not yet finished.
“One more jolt should do it,” he said. “To snuff out that spark of life I should never have deigned to light in you.” He frowned, staring down at his first creation. “It will be very difficult to leverage you up onto the table.”
I looked at Mary, helpless. She was a perfect victim. Doubtless she was next for the table. I looked at the door. I could run. I could escape.
Victor sighed. “You really should be helping. I have always had to do most of the work. Run if you must. You do not want to see this part. You never did. But be assured of this: I will find you wherever you go. And when I do, I will be ready. You are mine. Nothing you can say or do will stop me from achieving my goal. Surely you, knowing me best in all the world, know that this is the truth.”
Shuddering, I turned back to Victor. My savior. My husband. I did know that. And I knew that, out there, the world held no help or pity for me. I nodded.
Some of his anger dissolved. “I know the process seems horrible. But you will not see or feel those parts. It will be as waking from a deep sleep. And when you awake, you will be as this abomination is—stronger, faster, invulnerable to the elements. Free from pain and fear. But you will not be a corruption like him. You will be like a seraph from on high. You will be perfected. All your life you have lived in fear and worry. I will keep you safe from ever fearing anything again.” He paused, and I watched as he deliberately softened his expression, put on the smile I had taught him to use. “I will let you look away. I will let you leave now and not observe any of my final trials. I take this burden on myself alone, to gift you with the result after I have waded through hell to deliver you heaven. Can you accept that?”
Defeated, exhausted beyond imagining, faced with the loss of my final friend and the impending destruction of my newest one, I raised my eyes to meet his. I would be strong. So much stronger.
“Will you let Mary go?” I asked.
He frowned. “She will be useful.”
