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The worst of them, the dreams Victor truly dreaded, weren’t of the explosion. Or the pain. Or Elizabeth’s sharp disapproval, or worse her complete indifference towards him. Her silence. The worst of them wasn’t the abhorrence and disgust at his own creation.
It was that moment. That exact moment. When he heard the anguished scream of his name and decided to turn back.
That was what haunted him.
He knew that William thought he had some sort of mental affliction, from the trauma of losing his leg; of the tower collapse. He saw it in the careful way William talked to him, soothed him, after he’d startled himself awake gasping and sweating and with the infernal tracks of tears on his cheeks.
It was Victor’s secret shame that he didn’t correct him. Let him think what he would, rather than the truth – that what plagued him most was that single moment of weakness.
He’d wavered.
No one knew and no one saw. But he knew. Victor knew. That he went back.
Despite his distaste for the deplorable creature, something that defied all rationality had - had made him hesitate as he’d walked away; he’d been unable to walk away.
And the knowledge consumed him.
It was reprehensible - unfathomable - perverse! But against his very will he’d felt an instinctual – an almost paterna-
No. No, come. To be truthful. To completely unburden himself:
For a split second, against his very will, he’d felt an instinctual maternal panic for his creation.
Worse: he’d let himself be ruled by it.
It felt right that it had cost him.
That was what ate Victor up inside just as surely as the syphilis had eaten away at Harlander. The truth that he had felt true, gut churning horror, and gone back to rescue his Adam.
It plagued him in his darkest hours and he would never tell a soul.
Reality was insidious, no matter how fervently he denied it. He could pretend all he desired; in his waking hours he could convince himself otherwise. Rationalise that he hadn’t changed his min-
-hadn’t turned back because of anything so base as sympathy, or god forbid it, affection for the thing. No if he had to accept that he’d turned around at all it was simply because he’d reconsidered his position on destroying what could be learnt from, that was all. It could be useful. A failed experiment.
But when Victor slept.
When Victor slept, the wretched truth came to him, as it always had.
Asleep, he saw his creation chained down, down in that dank cellar. Burning, just like his dark angel.
Such deep, expressive eyes. Why had he given it those eyes? Asleep, his unchecked imagination ran rampant; showed him vivid blood red visions of those damn eyes glinting in flame and swimming with – in a man he might call it Hurt. Betrayal.
Accusation.
Oh it made him furious. To be made a fool of by his own fevered imaginings. He was angry at the trite nonsense his brain had conjured up without permission, and angrier still that he had awoken wet-eyed and afeared and with William’s hand resting on his hair. Angriest that he couldn’t quite convince himself that the fear he felt was for his own person, and not for the image of his creature, abandoned.
No, maybe angriest that there were echoes of Elizabeth in that sentiment.
No, perhaps angriest that his own mind continued to torment him, not with echoes of Elizabeth but with:
El-iz-a-beth.
Two moments.
There were two moments, two dreams, which chose to haunt him.
Not the hearing of it – oh he’d heard it – not even the pretending not to.
It was the damming evidence in pretending not to, wasn’t it?
It had had the gall to use her name and in choosing to ignore it was to simultaneously acknowledge it– not only the differing shape of the sounds but the petulance and challenge in its choice - in order to discard it.
What manner of scientist deliberately ignored the evidence because it didn’t fit with his own narrative, went against his hypothesis, against his final conclusion that the thing was simply a thing?
A poor one, irrefutably.
Except.
It was different. Not applicable to the situation. An outlier. A fluke. Surely.
The conundrum festered and was not so easily walked away from as it had been in the sewers.
Victor hated the creature. Hated it.
IT had done this to him. Reduced him.
IT had done that. Made him so unsure of his own actions – he! Who had never doubted his course! It truly was an accursed, detestable wretch-
Three moments.
Sometimes, when Victor lay awake at night, exhausted, he acknowledged the third dream. The one he dreaded most of all, because it was the very worst of it.
Sometimes, when he was unconscious and unable to put up a fight, he remembered that first morning.
When he had shown it the light and listened to its thudding heart and it had said Vic-tor, just like that.
(The ultimate betrayal to himself was that he had the cadence of it perfectly preserved).
Vic-tor.
Just like that.
It was the apogee of shameful evidence. If he truly believed it only an imperfect husk then he would not remember that Vic-tor as exactly as he did. The shape of his lips as he’d said it, sounding it out -
Just like that.
Three moments.
Three tiny moments that came back with horrible crashing clarity the instant the Thing sidled out of the shadows and spoke.
Victor didn’t acknowledge the feat because to acknowledge it would be to give it power.
He didn’t acknowledge it because he wasn’t surprised.
What did surprise him was a sensation he’d long thought forgotten, especially aimed at this particular subject. Pride. It was unwilling but he felt it all the same.
Of course he had not miscalculated. Here was proof of what he had theorised all along – that he could create something capable of learning, of speech. He had dominion over life and the mystery of consciousness, inscrutable no longer. It was possible. He’d made it possible.
It was just that the flicker of accomplishment was entirely overwritten by the thing acting like it was somehow a person with personable wants – personable needs!
(If Victor allowed himself, he might see in his mind’s eye that split second where he’d felt humanity for it, out on the gravel, or the way it had chosen El-iz-a-beth to wound him. He might see the conversation they were having as evidence upon evidence upon evidence and –)
Oh how it angered him. To be made to feel such doubt!
How dare it? This impossible thing. It would not leave him! It would come and speak halting and mild and ask for something so quaint as companionship and all it proved was –
Victor had truly created life, then abandoned it in the cruellest of ways
-had created a soulless monster, hellbent on spreading its tainted touch further. And the second he opened his mouth and rejected it with as much vigour as he could muster came the profound sense of solace that he had made his final decision on the matter.
God it was almost relief when it made him kill dear Elizabeth, when it slaughtered sweet William, and did the harm unto his own person he had long suspected it had the proclivity for, and was merely waiting to bestow. There were no more haunting dreams. All Victor’s unjust torment and confusion could be put to rest. Now, it was Rage meeting Rage heedless of the trace of imputation or entreaty in that one last Vic-tor!, howled as the tower burned. Rage complete in itself without guilt that he’d turned around too late.