Sunday Shorts—Excerpts from the Personal Journal of Dr. V. Frankenstein, MD, Department of Pathology, Our Lady of Mercy Hospital by Alex Acks

[image error]I do love a re-telling, and this one, by Alex Acks, takes Victor Frankenstein and nudges the tale forward to take place during the 1960’s through to the 1980’s. Conceptually, this changes a few key pieces: the involvement of funding, the NIH, and academic politics, but where this story from We Shall Be Monsters really kicks off is in the direction it goes with Dr. Frankstein’s journey of understanding what he has done.

Approached by a hooded figure (the identity of which he knows all too well), Frankenstein is tasked with creating life, but in a different way: he is to create a child. Over the course of the journal entries—each growing a bit more feverish and disturbing—the doctor does indeed succeed, but it’s what comes after, once he has handed the child creation over to the person who has funded his experiments that things take a different turn.

This is a Frankenstein just as disconnected from much of humanity as he is in the original, but here there is a singular love he has for his creation in at least an intellectual sense, and it’s this foundation the story places the turning point, and Acks takes it to a place I really enjoyed going, even if there was misery and abuse along the way.