Monster

by Dave Zeltserman

  Frankenstein was in a sour mood when we later took a coach back to his flat. He was a bit drunk, and I was much more so. For several minutes he brooded silently, and then he spat out his distaste for the club. “Disgusting,” he pronounced. “That those girls are there of their own free will and are paid handsomely for every welt they take on their backside and every cock that enters them! It makes the proceedings there nothing but a mockery, defeating the very purpose of what we are trying to accomplish!” His voice lowered as he stewed in his anger. “A disgrace, Friedrich, an absolute disgrace. That club was filled with nothing but imposters. Children playing their games.”

  “You prefer it then when innocents are taken against their will and cruelly tortured and defiled. Is that when you are happy?”

  He turned angrily toward me as if he were going to strike me, but his emotions fizzled. “You don’t understand yet, Friedrich. What we will be doing with our performance is striking a blow against the hypocrisy of this so-called enlightened world of ours that murders with impunity in the name of God and state, but refuses to acknowledge that we are the same as any other beast in nature.” His voice trailed off into a whisper as he shook his head and added, “When you see our performance you will understand this, also.” He brooded silently after that before turning to me with an inquisitive smile.

  “The gentleman that you chased out of the club. Why?”

  “He was a vampyre there to feed on one of the young girls. I did not care to have him do that, so I ordered him to leave.”

  He stared at me blandly, then shook his head. “You seemed to have found a hole in the spell, Friedrich. It appears that it is allowing you to lie to me. It is not supposed to. Fine. Keep your secret then.”

  With that he went back to his brooding over all of the moral deficiencies he found with the club. How they weren’t sufficiently evil for his tastes.

  When we arrived at the flat, and the coach driver had let us out and had driven away, Frankenstein informed me that we would be leaving early the next morning for Scotland. That he had gathered all the knowledge that he needed for the operation that he would be performing.

  CHAPTER 26

  When we left London, we did so by hackney coach, with Frankenstein having little care whether the driver was alarmed by my size. I was hidden within my cape, and while the driver of the coach glanced back nervously at me numerous times, he did not have the courage to say anything. When he left us at a pier where Frankenstein had chartered a boat, the driver only seemed relieved to be free of us and more than happy to drive away hastily and without making any sort of fuss.

  The boat took us up the eastern coast to Edinburgh. During this trip both of us were too preoccupied to pay the other any attention; Frankenstein presumably deep in thought about the operation that he would be performing while I couldn’t stop thinking of Johanna soon being brought back to me and how she would react to my new appearance. A nervousness twisted my insides as I thought of this, and my stomach seized up every time I imagined how she might scream or simply show a look of horror upon her face on seeing the hideous form that I had been made into. As much as I longed to see Johanna again, I equally dreaded the thought of her seeing me as I now was.

  The boat arrived in Edinburgh late in the evening, and we spent the night at a house that Frankenstein had waiting for us. Again, we were too absorbed in our own thoughts to bother acknowledging each other, let alone speaking any words to each other.

  The next morning Frankenstein had a coach take us further north to the coast. This driver also paid me quite a bit of attention, but unlike the other drivers that we had so far encountered, this one was not shy in speaking to me.

  “Warm isn’t in, gov’nor, to be wearing such a heavy cape as that?” he asked.

  I did not bother answering him, but that didn’t deter him.

  “You’re a big’un, aren’t you? How tall are you? Seven feet? Never saw no one your size before.”

  Frankenstein had been absorbed in his thoughts, but this brought him to life and he snapped at this man to watch the road and not to pester me with any further questions, at least if he wanted to be paid for his services. The driver apologized, but still kept glancing back at me suspiciously. When we reached a desolate area along the shoreline, Frankenstein had the driver stop the coach. He first took a gold watch from his pocket to see the time, then got out of the coach, and after pulling a small folding telescope from out of his inside jacket pocket, used it to spy in all directions. Satisfied with what he saw, he ordered the driver to take his trunk down from the coach where it had been stored. The driver struggled doing this and several times glanced in my direction hoping that I would offer to help, which I ignored. He did not need to see that I could have lifted the trunk with one hand. After several minutes of his huffing and puffing he had it on the ground. He was then paid and told that he was no longer needed.

  His expression queered as he looked about this desolate area. “You want me to leave you here in the middle of nothin’?” he asked.

  “That is what I am asking.”

  He shrugged and climbed back on top of his coach. After he drove away, Frankenstein pointed out an island to me.

  “That is where we will be going,” he said. “A rowboat should be waiting for you no more than a mile down this coast. I would have you come with me, but I am afraid with your additional weight we would capsize the rowboat I have arranged for myself.”

  Frankenstein glanced once more at his pocketwatch as a way to dismiss me, and I turned and headed off in the direction that he was sending me. The rowboat was where he had said it would be, and I used it to row myself to the island, which was only a little more than a mile from the coast. With my great strength, the trip was quick, and at times the boat appeared to barely skim the water’s surface. When I reached the island, I saw another dinghy with two men aboard also coming to the island, and I knew that Frankenstein was one of those men. From the distance they still had to travel and given the speed at which they were propelling the boat, it would take them another half hour to reach the island’s shore. I left the water’s edge then to quickly explore the island before returning and waiting for my enemy.

  I was able to cover the grounds in less than a half hour. The island was a barren place, mostly rocks, and held little more than four small cottages. From a distance I spied a man and a woman entering one of these cottages. From the manner of their dress they must have been servants. Both appeared to be large-framed with an extraordinary dullness about them. I guess as well as being servants they were most likely also husband and wife. I did not call attention to myself so it was doubtful that they saw me.

  There was a grayness about the island that not even the late afternoon sun could dispel. A shiver ran through me as I sat and waited for the other rowboat to arrive. Without looking inside any of the cottages, I knew that in one of them a girl was being held captive, the one who would be transformed into Johanna. I tried not to think of her and the terror that she must be suffering. I tried telling myself there was nothing that I could do about it; that Frankenstein’s black magic held too much power over me, but I still felt myself a coward and a fraud.

  It took Frankenstein and his companion much longer than a half hour to bring the rowboat to the island, as they had trouble with the waves and the undertow. The sun was already setting by the time their boat pushed onto the rocky shore. They both looked winded as they climbed out of the boat with perspiration glistening upon their faces. But Frankenstein smiled excitedly as he stepped first from the boat.

  “Friedrich, I see that you beat us here,” he said. “Not that that should have been any surprise. I would like you to meet a childhood friend of mine, Henry Clervil. He will be observing our experiment, and will later journey back with us to my castle.”

  The other man was Frankenstein’s age. Tall, finely dressed, with sharp features and a sallow complexion made to appear even more so by his black hair. Like Frankenstein, he was incapable of disguisi
ng the cruelty that he held in his eyes and mouth. As I looked at him, I felt as if I had seen him before.

  “Do I know you?” I asked.

  His eyes showed only slightly more life than those of the vampyre’s I had encountered in that depraved club in London, and the light faded quickly from them as the look he favored me with turned dismissive. “I don’t believe so,” he said as he left the boat to join my enemy.

  Frankenstein had me carry his trunk for him, and as he walked to one of the cottages, he explained that the operation would be done the following morning. “This will be a more difficult operation than my construction of you, Friedrich. The task of replacing one brain with another while leaving the rest of the body intact is a delicate one and requires far more precision. But after a restful night’s sleep, and assuming that I have a strong morning sun, I should be able to proceed.”

  He had me leave his trunk at the cottage where he would be residing, and then he led us to a cottage that was farthest away from the others. Inside of this one were all the instruments and devices he would need for the operation, as well as the young girl that I had chosen to be Johanna. This girl lay on a small cot, her eyes swollen and rimmed with red as if she had been crying miserably for days. She avoided looking at us. I saw that a manacle was attached to her right ankle, chaining her to the cot so that she would be unable to move more than a few feet from it, with the cot itself bolted to the floor. Frankenstein ignored her and instead opened a wooden crate. From this he removed a glass bowl, inside of which floated a lump of grayish matter in a similar milky liquid that had sustained Charlotte.

  “Here is what remains of your Johanna Klemmen,” Frankenstein said, his eyes intent on the contents of the bowl. “Her brain.”

  Clervil stood transfixed as he also stared at this bowl. I looked away. The thought of Johanna’s skull having been cut open so that her brain could be removed from it disturbed me greatly. I knew she was dead at the time and would not have felt anything, but still this violation to her body struck me as utterly inhuman. And yet, the same was going to happen to this girl who lay only a few feet from me, and I was going to be complicit in the act.

  Frankenstein had enough of studying Johanna’s brain, and he packed the bowl away. He commented that the brain showed no signs of atrophy or decay. “It should be fine,” he said. “Tomorrow, Friedrich, you will be reunited with your betrothed and we will see if her memories have remained intact. For tonight, you will stay here and keep your future bride company.”

  A panic seized my throat at the thought of doing this. “I would like to stay in one of the other cottages tonight,” I croaked out, my voice not much more than a guttural rasp.

  “I am sorry, Friedrich, but that won’t be possible. I will be occupying one of the cottages, Henry another, and the final cottage is housing my servants.”

  “Then I will sleep outside.”

  “No, I prefer that you spend the night with your future bride.” A pitiless glimmer sparked in Frankenstein’s eyes, and Clervil’s lips also twisted into a thin smile. “I know it goes against accepted moral conventions to spend the night before your wedding with the bride, but in this case we’ll make an exception. Besides, it will allow you to more appropriately reflect on the decision you have made, and your role in the events that will be transpiring. Good night, Friedrich. And I do not want you leaving this cottage. Henry and I have much to discuss, and I do not wish to be disturbed.”

  With that Frankenstein left. His friend, Clervil, turned once to look upon me the way a snake might a mouse, and then he also left. There was another cot along the opposite wall from where the girl lay and I sank into it, lowering my head heavily into my hands. As I sat there in my cowardice I tried not to think of the girl chained helplessly only a few yards or so from me. After some time, however, I could feel as if her eyes were boring into my skull, and that feeling soon became unbearable. I dared to glance toward her, and she was indeed staring at me. As swollen and red as her eyes were, the rest of her face was pale and bloodless.

  “Am I to be your bride?” she asked in a tortured voice that pierced my heart. “Is that why you chose me and I was sent to this place? Am I to be married to a monster?”

  I shook my head and lowered my eyes from hers. “No, that is not what it will be.”

  “Then what will it be? I have the right to know!”

  “You will be made … different.”

  I could not keep myself from glancing up and seeing the confusion which wrecked her face. “How will I be made different?” she asked. Then it was as if a trace of the knowledge flickered in her eyes. “It has to do with that brain, doesn’t it?”

  I nodded. “My betrothed was murdered, and that is what remains of her,” I said.

  “I do not understand,” she said. “What does that have to do with me?”

  I tried to smile at her, but from the way she reacted my attempt must have made me look even more hideous. The twisting within my stomach became something awful.

  “You will be made into my Johanna,” I said at last.

  “What are you saying?”

  But she saw it. She made the connection then to her being brought to this island, all of the medical equipment and devices within the room, and my Johanna’s brain being kept in a glass jar in the very same room. Her mouth gaped open, but she was too stunned to cry or weep. “All of you are monsters,” she whispered in a voice that sounded like death. “You are going to take my brain and replace it with another? Is that why you chose me? To be made into something unnatural and monstrous like yourself?”

  “If I did not choose you they would later commit utterly vile acts on your body and then kill you in a terrible way.”

  “And this is not utterly vile? To turn me into a freakish thing?”

  “At least now you will live,” I said.

  But she knew this wasn’t true, just as I did. At least she would not be living in any way that could be thought of as natural. Her mouth closed, and she aged terribly in front of my eyes. The pain within her became an awful thing to witness.

  “I would rather die,” she said. “My younger sister was stolen also. If they are going to murder her then I wish to be murdered also so that we may join our ancestors together. I do not wish this thing that will be done to me. It was evil of you to choose me.”

  She started weeping then. The sound that she made was that of a wounded animal that needed to be taken out of its misery. I sat, helpless, and listened.

  “I am sorry,” I said. “I wish there was something I could do to help you.”

  “Unlock my chains!” she pleaded as she wept. “The keys are right there on the table! Or will you have me turned into a monster for your own selfish needs?”

  “That is not my reason,” I implored. “Frankenstein holds a power over me that keeps me a slave to him. But I wish I could help you.”

  When my words made sense to her, she started wailing and beating on her head with her fists. I got off the cot so that I could keep her from hurting herself. When I came within a few feet of her, she lurched forward and grabbed me by my cape and pleaded with me to kill her. “If you cannot help me, then end my life, I beg of you!”

  Once more I was being asked to kill an innocent to save them. I could not bear to turn her down. I tried to lift my hands to her throat, but Frankenstein’s spell prevented me. She saw in my eyes that I was powerless to do as she begged, and she fell on the cot weeping violently.

  I stepped away from her. When she had grabbed my cape I heard a crinkling noise, the type paper might make. I remembered then the odd little man I had met outside of Leipzig and the envelope he handed me. I searched the inside pocket of my cape and pulled out this envelope. It had yellowed and aged with time, and when I looked inside of it I saw dried plant leaves, and remembered this odd little man telling me that they were leaves from a jimson weed plant. I remembered what he told me about how I could use these leaves to cure myself. I looked around the room and saw that everything I
needed in order to follow the instructions I was given was present. I felt an excitement as I acted once more as a chemist and generated a tincture from the leaves, and then diluted this in the method that was explained to me.

  The girl had stopped her weeping to ask me what I was doing. I told her I wasn’t sure. Once I had the solution prepared, I placed several drops of it under my tongue. Nothing happened, at least at first. But as hours passed and night approached I felt a sense of peace that I could not remember since long before waking up within Frankenstein’s laboratory. I also realized that a noise that had been buzzing incessantly within my skull was gone. I hadn’t even been aware of this noise, but the new quiet that I sensed was something welcome and unfamiliar to me.

  As I sat in the dark marveling over these changes that had occurred, I remembered where I had seen Henry Clervil before.

  CHAPTER 27

  Early the next morning Frankenstein’s servants departed the island by rowboat. I heard them as they left, and assumed that Frankenstein sent them away so that they would not be witness to what was going to be happening. It was a short time later that Frankenstein and Clervil entered the cottage. Frankenstein nodded brusquely at me and commented that he hoped I had had a good night’s sleep. He was too absorbed in his planned operation to have paid any attention to what I might have said. His friend, Clervil, was the same way: both of their faces hardened with eagerness and anticipation. Neither of them paid attention to their surroundings within the cottage as they headed straight to the wooden crate where they had stored Johanna’s brain the evening before. I had learned during the night that the girl’s name was Mariel. If they had been paying attention, they would have noticed that Mariel’s manacle had been removed, even though she remained sitting on her cot.