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The first thing I ever knew was the dark.
The first thing I ever saw was the light—stark and blinding and painful. But after I found the cupboard, the first thing I ever knew was the dark. Watching my creator from inside the dark. Coming out when the light goes away and scurrying for leftover food and trinkets in the dark. Everything in that first year was dark.
I met my creator in the dark as well. When I gained just enough sense of myself, I realised I was alone. Not just alone—there was a sense of absence. Someone had been there and now wasn’t. My exploration afterwards was partially mere curiosity; though the scars and my joints still ached and my gait was still unsteady. I walked in the now dim light of what I now know was my creator's laboratory. I first learned my height emerging from the room, because I bumped my head on a doorframe emerging from the room, and gave a low sob.
I came by my creator again because his door was open and none others were. Maybe there were no other doors, bar the front that led to the outside. I don’t know. I was never curious enough to check. There was only the lab and my creator’s living quarters—I knew of nothing else.
My creator was in bed, asleep but fitful. Pale, his face coated in sweat that stuck the raven hair that had escaped his ponytail to it. He hadn’t even taken his glasses off—there was a fractured crack down the lens of one side, branching off into white jagged lines in all directions.
I hadn’t known enough to notice any of those things then. I just knew him. I knew the absence had been filled.
My lips pulled. I would later know this as smiling.
I tried to speak then. I wanted to speak. But I knew no words, so all that came from my mouth were low grumbles that almost frightened me, coming out of my mouth, but silence seemed worse, so I didn’t allow myself to stop. These noises seemed to wake him up, which only delighted me further; I couldn’t tell what exactly it was I wanted, much less needed, but I did wish for his attention. Maybe for communication, maybe for comfort. I reached a hand out, blindly, though I was unsure what to do with it.
My creator’s mouth had opened as if to scream, but there was only a wheezy silence. He had inched further up the bed, away from me.
I couldn’t perceive this as anything friendly or innocent, even then. To assume so would be delusion. Yet, I hadn’t immediately seen it as rejection either. My fingers had brushed one pale, greyish, yet reddening cheek, and that’s when he stood up altogether. Stood up and ran from the room; his door had closed behind him with a decided thud.
I decided to wait. Maybe he would just come back—I knew he’d have no real choice otherwise. I’d had some vague understanding this was his home as much as mine.
My home.
I went exploring again. Briefly. There wasn’t much to look at. Not much that I could properly recognise anyways. I found my birthplace again—a slanted, grey table, the cloth draped over it stained in dark brownish red. I ran my fingers over the stitched wounds and parts of my body, parts of them tacky with the same colour. They still ached vaguely, and I whimpered. I turned my attention to the desks covered in unused parts and lab equipment. I picked up a sort of glass bulb, tumbling it in my hands until, with a jolt, it fell to the floor and shatters. I stare at the pieces. Little shimmering shapes coming from one object. I feel a sense of guilt—maybe for my creator, maybe for the object itself. I wanted so badly to examine the parts further, to see if there was any way they might go back together again, but a low ache in my belly distracted me, and I left the room again, one want forgotten for another.
There was a small, pantry-like kitchen between my creator’s bedroom and this laboratory, that I hadn’t immediately seen. My curiosity, need and loneliness growing, I shuffled here next. I’d started learning to duck my head before entering any of the spaces. I was halfway proud of myself for having learned this, albeit from the pain of it.
There was a loaf of bread on the nearest table. Left out and stale from neglect, but instinct told me to take and chew. It helped with my abdominal discomfort immensely. I didn’t have much to compare the meal to anyways.
Leaving the room, I finally, yet again, came into contact with the big door. The one to the outside.
I opened it.
I almost went out. Almost did. However, there was no sign of my creator there and too much open air that I felt a sudden overwhelm overtake me. It seemed dark, and terribly lonely, which wasn’t inherently different to the spaces I had just come from, but at least this loneliness could be confined to those walls. This seemed almost neverending. I couldn’t bring myself to even open the door further than a fraction.
I shut the door.
I decided to wait.
My creator had a large closet tucked away to one corner, just about sizable enough for me to crawl into and stay there. Under the rows of hung up coats and cloaks, of which I stole two. One to wear, and one to sit on, for the additional comfort. I finished my hunk of bread in three bites and was immediately sore, hunched in on myself, back aflame, and bored. Not even sure how long it was until I heard voices again. I assume I must have slept at one point, coming to to an ache in my neck and a metallic taste on my tongue.
“Now, now, my dear Frankenstein— What in God’s name is the matter?”
“Oh, Henry! He is here somewhere, I know it— Oh, save me!”
Those were the only words I could make out before it all melted into terrible commotion. I curled into the corner of the closet, as though the noise was making its own residence in the space. I still didn’t feel much easier when it softened into low voices I couldn’t hear at all. I knew my creator had come back at last. I wasn’t sure that made me feel better at all.
I heard the door open. Confused and intrigued all at once, I inched forward. I had found a hole in the door of the closet that I could see the rest of the room from. I had meant to reveal myself to my creator then and there; maybe, after whatever it was he had been doing, he would not run. Would not leave. However, there was a stranger in the room, and something in my bones told me to just observe.
The man had hair similar in length to my creator, though his ponytail more styled and less deteriorating—its colour matched the sparser hair at the tip of his chin. His eyes were rounded with gentleness and concern. He wore an ensemble of reds and ambers that were the most attractive to me, in these rooms of beiges and monochromes.
“You need to rest,” the stranger said, to my creator. He said it in a firm voice, but I didn’t sense it to be unkind in any manner. “You need rest and— and to eat. You are so frail, Victor… You should have told someone you were unwell.”
My creator hung his head forward, hair falling limply over his face. The stranger pressed his lips to these strands in a gesture I (albeit, like many other things) had never seen before.
My creator opened his lips, as if to speak, though it took him a few tries. As if we had that in common. Still, eventually, he managed. In words I couldn’t understand, but still more structured and distinct from the garbled amalgamation of sounds my own voice had put together moments ago. “He may— still be here.”
“Victor…” the stranger sighed. I couldn’t understand how he could look so upset yet sound so kind. I quite liked this man already. I wondered if he would speak to me that way, happy or sad, whenever I finally decided to introduce myself. “Alright. Get into bed, and I… I will show you there is no man anywhere in your room or home.”
My creator moved his head up and down—very quickly, and so slight I almost couldn’t see it from my angle—and allowed this stranger to shuffle him towards the bed. To help him lay down and tuck him in underneath the covers with a tenderness that almost made me want to weep.
I couldn’t understand their spoken language, not yet; but, somehow, this I understood to my very blood.
I watched the stranger brush one finger along my creator’s face, as though he were illustrating him. Gently, with such concentration. “I shall have to treat you as Justine does William. Carry you everywhere and read you stories—coax you to eat your vegetables… Is that what you need, now?”
There was only more warmth, even humour, in his voice now. He cupped my creator’s cheek then. My creator made a near inaudible sigh, leaning into the contact.
Then the stranger stood. It took me a beat too long to realise he was making long strides towards the closet.
I inhaled somewhere deep into my chest, and pulled my knees up to my body, as if trying to make my suddenly too-large frame twice as small. I wanted to see my creator again, and I wanted to be part of this beautiful scene, but the idea of this gorgeous, kind stranger throwing the door open and throwing me into the light suddenly seemed naked and violating and—
“Oh, Victor.” The sweet voice was back again. Victor, again. A word I was beginning to note in my unconscious mind. “You are shivering…”
I held my breath for a moment, willing him to stay far and distracted, even just for a moment longer. I heard all sorts of shufflings and mutterings for a while. I first allowed myself to breathe again, properly. Then, to stretch outwards again. Finally, I crawled forwards once more to peep through the hole, into the light.
The stranger was now in bed with my creator. One more rosy hand over the milky white one, their faces touching. My creator seemed more at rest than he ever had. I was almost envious of this warmth and adoration between them, suddenly aching profoundly to join them in this bed. Though nothing was actually stopping me, my nerves still wouldn’t let me.
(For good reason, I would later learn.)
Occasionally he would whine out something, and the stranger would mumble back. I’m here, was something I picked up on a few times, but I still couldn’t recall the meaning. I would practice it later in the day, when my creator was fast asleep and the stranger was either out bringing him food or stories he would read in his slow, soothing rhythm; or often cleaning, I could only assume, with the tidiness I found in most of the other spaces in my later explorations of them, as opposed to the clutter and rot of them in my very first memories.
The first language I learned was that my creator's name was Victor, or Frankenstein. The stranger Henry, or Clerval.
Much, much later however, I would learn a new word, between them both. Companion.
I liked that word a lot.