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I double checked the apartment number from his first letter home. This was definitely Victor’s apartment.
The last letter we received from him came over a year ago. I’d written to him hundreds of times, begging him to write me back. Begging him to send any sort of answer that he was still there. He never replied. Finally the decision was made that somebody had to go find him. Clerval offered. He was waiting for an acceptance letter from the University of Ingolstadt, so he would be going anyway. But I insisted it be me. It had to be me. I couldn’t stand it any longer. I had to see Victor’s strong face, and hold him in my arms. I would only feel satisfied when I looked into his eyes and saw that he was grounded with me.
Folding the letter back up, I put in my purse and approached the door.
“Victor?” I called, knocking softly. “Victor, it’s me, Elizabeth.”
Nothing. I knocked more.
“Victor, your father sent me. You haven’t written us in months. We’ve been worried about you.”
Old wooden floorboards within the apartment creaked with the shifting of a heavy weight. Something bumped.
I felt my heart sink. Was he ignoring me?
“Victor, please! I know you’re in there.”
More creaking of floorboards, but otherwise silence.
Not once in our entire lives had Victor ever ignored me. Yes, he had lost himself in his own world at times. Often I caught him in the middle of reading or journaling. But never once had he dismissed me or ignored my call. I tried the door handle. It was unlocked.
The suffocating stench of decay immediately overwhelmed me upon opening the door. I gasped and covered my mouth and nose with the crook of my elbow. The front room was dank and cold. Gooseflesh rose on my exposed arms. It was dark, apart from the light coming in the open doorway. That was enough to expose the disastrous state of the apartment. Scientific equipment was scattered all across the floor; Some of the glass instruments had shattered. Dust floated through the beam of light from the door like snowfall in early December. I felt around the table by the door for a candle or oil lantern I could light. I found a chamber stick and a tinderbox and ignited the candles.
Once the rest of the room was illuminated I almost dropped the chamber stick and ran. Browning crimson blood splattered the walls and floor of the parlor. In the center of the room was a large bed-like table, almost nine feet in length, with leather straps and metal rods sticking out of it. Half-empty jars of mysterious liquids were strewn about on side tables and tipped over on the floor.
My heart beat rapidly in my chest. It was the most gruesome display I had ever seen. The smell of decay mixed with the old smell of burning, far too powerful to be coming from my candle.
Victor couldn’t have done this. This is the wrong apartment, I told myself. But there on the bookshelf was a small framed portrait of his mother. This was Victor’s apartment.
But where was Victor?
My mind began to race with the darkest thoughts. He could’ve been murdered. A vile attacker burst into his apartment and made a show of his demise, leaving his body to rot. Or he had an accident during an experiment. Nobody would know, and if he’d been mortally wounded he couldn’t have gotten help. These thoughts combined with the stenches of the room made me feel sick. I raced back out the front door, leaving the chamber stick on the table. I leaned against the outside wall. The fresh air immediately bathed me in its cleanliness, but I seemed to breathe none of it. My corset was suffocating me. Forgetting manners in a thoughtless panic, I pulled at the laces and heaved. My nausea slowly ebbed, but a dizzying light-headedness made the world sway.
I slid down the wall until I was sitting on the ground, careless of getting dirt on my dress. I breathed more of the fresh air until my head was clear. The college was only a half mile away, full of young men who would trip over themselves to help a lady in distress. The constable’s office wasn’t far either. I passed on my ride through the town. But if the state of the apartment was truly the work on my dear Victor, what would become of him?
Something bumped in the apartment. I could hear books fall off a shelf and thud against the wooden floors.
Somebody was inside the apartment. And something inside me told me it was not Victor.
‘Please...let me be mistaken.’ I prayed, rising to my feet.
Two of the candles on the chamberstick had gone out when I dropped it on the table. I carefully relit them, burning myself on the melted wax once. Lifting my skirt with one hand and holding the candles in the other, I quietly began to walk through the apartment.
The room became uncomfortably colder the farther I moved from the door. Awash with candle light, it seemed more like a horrific nightmare than the apartment of a respectable college student. I approached the large table in the middle of the room. The metal was scuffed and dull, stained in several places with mysterious liquids. Snippets of thick silk thread and broken needles were strewn about the floor and table edges.
Floorboards creaked behind me. It was coming from the bedroom. I spun around, gripping the chamberstick so tight it hurt.
“Who’s there?” I said. I could feel myself shaking. “Come out here.”
Silence.
“I said come out here!”
Slowly, a face peeked out from the doorway, then a whole body. I gasped and dropped the chamberstick.
A man, who had to have been at least eight feet in height, towered in the doorway. His skin was yellow but ashen, like that of a body who’d been dead for a day. His hair was thick, but long and unkept, falling in his face and down his shoulders in greasy strands. Stitches as thick as medical sutures traced his body like a poorly made rag doll. And those eyes. Those haunting eyes. Pale like a yellow rose, but piercing as an icy grave.
I stepped backwards, making my way to the door without taking my eyes off the monstrous man looming before me. My heel caught the back of my dress and I tumbled back, hitting the floor with a resounding thud.
The creature bent beneath the doorway, coming towards me. Each of his steps made the floorboards creak.
“Stay back!” I shouted, trying to crawl to the front door. My large skirt hindered me.
His foot hit the chamberstick and he stopped. Like a little child reaching for their favorite toy, he bent down and grasped at the floor until he had his hand around it. He stared entranced at the few candles still lit, gently touching the hard wax with his large hands. He ran his fingers across it slow and gentle, flinching when a drop of cooling melted wax dropped on his finger.
I watched as he held his hand near the flame, moving it forward and back, noticing the warmth as he got closer. Without warning, he grabbed at the flame and closed his hand on it. Its swift burn made him cry out and drop the chamberstick.
“Why did you do that?” I asked.
He looked up, seeming to notice me for the first time. Those piercing eyes bore into my soul. He crawled toward me, never breaking eye contact.
“No, don’t come any closer!” I cried.
He reached a hand out towards me. I flinched as his fingers gently touched my cheek. They were starkly warm against the cold of the room. He began prodding my cheek with the same gentle curiosity he had given the candles. I whimpered nervously.
The creature pulled back at my sound of distress. I crawled back until there was several feet between us again.
“Who are you?”
……
“What are you doing here?”
My words seemed to go in one ear and out the other. That, or he would not award me the courtesy of a response.
“Can you even understand me?”
I decided the answer to my question was no when I got nothing but a curious stare and silence in return. After a tense moment of anguish and inner deliberation, I gingerly reached out and touched his hand.
He gasped softly at my touch, and grabbed my hand with his other, holding it tight. This man had the same wonder in his face and inquisitiveness in his touch that a toddler has when he is exploring the world beyond his mother’s arms for the first time. It reminded me of the first time I took William with me to paint when he was only five. We went out to a place where the mountains could be seen in perfect view, green and pristine with the spring. He wanted to hold his own brush, and open the small tubes of oil paint all by himself. He was covered in it by the time we were done. I had to buy more on my way back into town, and his outfit would never be clean again, but the wonder on his face as he watched me work and the spark in his eyes when he tried mixing his own colors made every moment and soiled garment worth it.
A songbird warbled outside the window in the bedroom. The creature’s grip on my hand loosen as he turned towards the noise. Another songbird warbled in reply to the first. He stood up, still holding my hand, and led me to the window. The thick curtains were drawn, leaving the room quite dim. I reached out and parted them. He flinched and grunted at bright morning light, bringing up his arm up to cover his face. Slowly he adjusted to the light, and he stared out the window, searching for the source of the sounds.
It would be lying to say I wasn’t afraid of him. Yet I did not feel like I was in danger. This...man...seemed innocent. Incapable of harm. While he was distracted by the songbirds I slipped out of his grasp.
Victor’s bedroom seemed almost abandoned compared to the parlor. The shelves and dressers were coated in a thick layer of dust. The only signs that Victor had been here at all were the unmade bed and the jacket hanging on the footboard.
He left without even taking his jacket.
That could only mean something bad. Victor had never been the social type, but he did keep up a well maintained appearance. I lifted the jacket and held it to my chest, feeling panicked. The right pocket felt heavy. Reaching inside, I found a little leather bound book tied with a leather lace. It was well worn, with papers sticking out the edges. This was the journal I had given Victor before he left for Ingolstadt.
“I know how full your mind is. You, and the world, would fare much better if you wrote those brilliant thoughts down,” I’d said to him as he opened the brown paper wrapping. He’d smiled and thanked me, putting it in his jacket pocket, and that is where it seemed to live.
At least I know he’s used it.
I flipped it open to the most recent entry, hoping answers would be written for me.
‘It is nearly finished. I have fashioned him great in size to make easier the handiwork. He will be approximately eight feet in height and comprised of only the most finely-formed limbs and organs... exceedingly perfect. Like God, I have taken great care in fashioning my Adam. And if I succeed in breathing life into this new creation, might I not also, one day, be able to restore life to those claimed by death?
The time... 12:40 am, November 16th. The storm is nearing its zenith. The moment is at hand.’
I must’ve read that entry three or four times. My brain could not comprehend the meaning of the words, or it didn’t want to. I looked at the looming creature whose shadow was blocking the sun from my face.
Impossible.
I flipped through the pages, skimming the entries from the previous weeks and months. They were crammed with notes and sketches of the human form. Diagrams showed the necessary organs and how to orient them inside a body. He had written accounts of robbing graves and paying wretched men to get bodies for his science.
“You...made a man,” I whispered.
The creature cried out and crashed into the wall. I dropped the notebook. He was pressed against the corner holding his foot, which had a bloody piece of glass lodged in the sole. He tenderly tried to put his foot down again, and howled when it still hurt.
“Oh dear!” I crossed over to him. “Please, let me help you.”
When I touched his ankle he grunted and yanked away, which knocked him off balance. He fell and caught himself on his hands, just barely missing hitting his foot again. He plopped back against the wall.
“Stop moving or you’re going to hurt yourself!”
He gently ran his finger around where the glass was, wincing. I took his hand and placed it in his lap. He reached to touch it again. I moved his hand again. I grabbed the glass between my fingers, still holding his hand.
“Will you let me help now?”
He didn’t stop me, but I could tell he was biting his inner lip. With one swift yank the glass was out. Blood dripped from the wound. The creature sighed when he saw it was gone. He reached to poke the spot.
“Don’t!” I said. He stopped, looking at me. “I still need to find something to wrap it with so it doesn’t get infected.”
I remembered seeing some linen bandages sitting piled on a bookshelf in the parlor. I went and found the linens, then came back and began wrapping the wound. He sat and watched me, lip quivering.
‘You poor thing...Not quite a man, but certainly not a monster. The first being on Earth that's not a creation of God…’
My heart began to overflow with sympathy. It was no wonder he behaved the way he did, he was new to the world. Not a baby, exactly, but something like it. Victor brought him into the world, completely defying every law of nature, but now he was here. And I felt the need to help him understand.
When the cut was tightly wrapped, I tied off the linen and tore off the end.
“There you go! All fixed up.”
He gently poked the linen bandages. When he discovered that it did not hurt, he smiled at me. I smiled at him, then furrowed my brow.
“I now have a deeper understanding of your nature, and yet it’s left me with so many questions…”
The Creature felt the lace of my skirt brush up against his knuckles. He took it and rubbed it between his fingers. I put my hand on his.
“My name is Elizabeth Lavenza. Could you try that? Elizabeth?”
He said nothing.
“Elizabeth. C’mon. Eelliizzaabbeeth,” I said slowly.
The creature rolled his tongue in his mouth. “Eh..Elis…”
His voice was deep and croaky like a bullfrog. It made me jump a little to hear. He seemed frustrated by the sounds he made, and even more by the ones he could not make.
“You’re doing good,” I said, “try again!”
He did not. Merely glowered and held his mouth open. He appeared to want to try, but not to mess it up.
“That’s ok,” I said, “we’ll try again later, when Victor gets back.”
Victor...I was still worried about him. I still didn’t know where he was. Perhaps he went to class? Or maybe he went to find another scientist to share his creation with. I don’t understand science, so I don’t know how this goes. What I did know is that he would have to come back eventually. When he did we could talk about his lack of writing back to us, and the dreadful state of his apartment. Plus this man that he’d made.
“You need a name!” I realized. “I don’t suppose Victor’s given you a name. If he has, he didn’t write it down in his notebook. I’ll just come up with something to call you for now.”
I pondered this for a moment. I was never good at naming things. Most of my paintings were nameless, until William insisted they be named. I let Justine and him name them for me after that.
“How about Adam?” I asked, “That's what Victor referred to you as in his notes. ‘His Adam.’ I know he meant it in the biblical sense, but it can be your name too.”
I put his hand on my lap. “Elizabeth.”
I put his hand on his chest. “Adam.”
Adam smiled. I wasn’t sure if he understood me, but he liked it regardless. I smiled back at him.
“This apartment is an absolute disaster!” I said, “Surely I can’t let Victor keep living in a house full of broken glass and mysterious stains.”
Rising to my feet and straightening my skirt, I walked back out into the parlor and began to pick up jars and pieces of broken glass. I piled them all on the metal table for now. Adam stood in the doorway and watched me. He disappeared back into the bedroom. His steps were still slow and unevenly weighted, but he was trying. I found a cloth and began to wipe down the counters and tables.
I almost didn’t notice Adam come up behind me. I wouldn’t have noticed him at all if it weren’t for the squeaky floorboards.
“You startled me!” I laughed.
Adam took my hand and put something in it. It was the broken glass I had removed from his foot.
“Oh, thank you!” I said. I put it on the table. Adam smiled and disappeared into the bedroom. His smile wasn’t the most comforting thing in the world...but I didn’t mind. He came back out with Victor’s notebook and set it on the table. Then he found the chamberstick and set it on the table. Anything he could find on the floor he picked up and set on the table.
I felt my heart melt. He was helping me clean up. Or trying to, at least. We continued like that for at least a quarter of an hour. Adam stacked up more loose scientific material on the table, but also Victor’s coat and a pair of his shoes. I didn’t stop him from adding those things. The sentiment was what was important. Just as I was about to start cleaning the floors, I heard voices approaching from the open front door.
“Professor Waldman, I know how it sounds, but I swear it’s true.”
Victor! I knew it was him the moment I heard it.
“Frankenstein, I was supportive of helping an intelligent young man like yourself with advanced studies, but then you disappeared. For an entire year. And now this...this creation myth you’ve told me? It’s—“
“Madness? Folly?”
“I was going to say it’s impossible. I don’t know what you've been doing in that apartment, but it’s exhausted your mind. Please, why don’t we go back to my office and—“
“Professor, you have to see!” Victor shouted.
Finally I could not contain myself any longer. I gathered my skirts and raced out to meet him.
“Victor!” I cried as I came out the door.
“Elizabeth?” He asked, shocked.
“Victor! I—“ My voice caught in my throat. This was not the same man that left me in Geneva. He was emaciated and pale, his eyes sunken and ringed with gray, like a man on his deathbed. “...I’ve been so worried about you.”
He came up and held my face, rubbing his thumb across my cheek. He then wrapped his arms around me, holding me close. “You’re really here. And you’re ok.”
For a moment, I was tense. I still wasn't sure that this man was my Victor. It had only been a year, and yet he was so different. But when I felt the warmth of his body, I knew it was him, and I sunk into his embrace.
“Yes. I am.”
He let go of me and held my shoulders. “What were you doing in my apartment? How long have you been here?”
“I...I arrived this morning. Your father sent me. We’ve been so worried since you didn’t—“
“This morning? No no no!!! That means it’s gone!” He cried in anguish, rubbing his tired eyes with the heels of his palms.
The old man with Victor cleared his throat. I moved to straighten my dress for introductions, and realized my corset was still loose-laced. The suffocating flood of embarrassment almost killed me right there. Correcting it would only draw more attention to it, though, so I chose not to acknowledge it at all.
Victor made no move to introduce the two of us. The man and I stared at each other.
He finally broke the air. “You must be a friend of Victor? I’m Professor Waldman,” he said, bowing respectfully.
I curtsied. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Professor Waldman. I’m Elizabeth Lavenza, ward to the Frankensteins.”
Victor was staring off into the middle distance. He looked so much older than he did before he left. So full of anguish, and hurt. I yearned to comfort him, and yet, at least now, he seemed beyond my comfort.
“What brings you here this morning, Professor?” I asked.
We both looked at Victor, expecting him to answer. He didn’t.
“Victor wanted to show me his most recent project, I believe…”
Adam. He was still in there. I’d almost forgotten about him. There was still blood on the floor and the walls of the apartment. Victor would be arrested if the professor saw what he was doing in there
“I...do not know if the apartment is in a state for visitors,” I said.
“Every scientist gets a little messy while pursuing knowledge,” professor Waldman said, “I’m certain I’ve seen a worse state of things.”
Would it embarrass Victor to insist he hasn’t?
A cry came from within the apartment. I immediately knew it as Victor. Waldman and I shared a look of concern before running into the apartment.
“It’s gone! The nightmare is gone!” Victor cried. He was running from room to room, searching desperately. I couldn’t tell if he was excited or distraught.
Waldman stood in the doorway, eyes wide. “What...what happened here?”
Victor looked at the professor. “Professor I’m sorry. I will repent. I will never besmirch the name of science again.”
“Stop being cryptic, Frankenstein, this is serious! Do you know what this looks like?!”
Victor’s shoulders relaxed. It seemed like the first time he’d relaxed in months. He looked at me, “My darling…”
Suddenly his eyes rolled back in his head, and he collapsed to the ground.