The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein

by Kiersten White

LIGHTNING CLAWED ACROSS THE sky, tracing veins through the clouds and marking the pulse of the universe itself.

I had become this girl in order to survive, but the longer I lived in her body, the easier it was to simply be her.

“My husband,” I said, the word foul and poisonous on my tongue, “experimented on and then cobbled together dead body parts to create a monster. Once that was accomplished, he went on to murder his brother and frame my best friend for the murder so that she would be hanged. Then he tried to use her body to practice his dark science on, in preparation for eventually changing me from living to dead, and back again to a new form of being that would never corrupt or die or be parted from him. I told him I was not interested in being his wife under those particular circumstances.” The woman’s eyes were wide, and she scooted several inches away from me, pushing herself along the floor. “So.” I smiled, the expression that had been my instinct all these years feeling false and at the same time more true than ever as it cut meanly across my face. “We are here for basically the same reason.”

It was so hard, sorting through what was left of me when I cut off the parts that existed for others.

“It was not his mind I loved. It was his esteem for me. He valued me when no one else did. And I thought it made me special, that he loved only me. I should have realized that his inability to love anyone else just meant something was wrong with him.”