The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein

by Kiersten White

Words and stories were tools to elicit the desired reactions in others, and I was an expert craftswoman.

Though my heart was filled with joy among them, my journeys served a dual purpose: if I discovered where the animals I loved lived, I could deliberately avoid them when I was with Victor.

If I could have worn nothing but my slips, I would have. But clothes were part of the role I played. And I never stepped out of character where they could see me.

Henry’s smile was shy, but it hid nothing. His round face was open and utterly incapable of deception. Where Victor was cold and removed from the world, and I was as deceptive as a sour strawberry, Henry was exactly as he appeared to be: the most pleasant boy in existence.

If I could not go to school, Victor’s going was the next best thing.

I instinctively knew this house was a predator. But I was clever like a rabbit, fast and smart and tiny.

I might have been his, but he was mine. After that day we were truly inseparable.

Surely God, so stingy with his miracles, would not answer an unoffered prayer. I did not repent of my distance from God. If I wanted help, I would find it for myself.

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.

Henry had asked if I was happy. I was safe, and that was better than happy.

“It worked.” He closed his eyes, shoulders shaking. I could not say for certain, but I thought he was weeping. I had never seen him cry. Not even when his mother died. Not even when he thought I was going to die. Victor did not cry; he raged. Or, worse, he did not react at all. What could make him cry? “It worked. And it was terrible.”

He did not stop. I did not stop him. Red leaves. Red knife. Red hands. But white dresses, always.

I would lie silent and still, like a corpse, as he studied me. His careful, delicate hands explored all the bones and tendons, the muscles and tracings of veins that make up a person. “But where is Elizabeth?” he would ask, his ear against my heart. “Which part makes you?” I had no answer, and neither did he.

When people steal from my cemetery, they do not take jewelry off the bodies. They take the bodies themselves.”

“You are mine, Elizabeth Lavenza, and nothing will take you from me. Not even death.”

“Oh, I like you, Elizabeth Lavenza. I like you very much. I am a little bit afraid of you, but I think that makes me like you more.

I sought to puncture heaven and instead discovered hell.”

“Why is it, I wonder, that I can find beauty in this? What is it about your hair—a natural phenomenon, one that holds no inherent value or purpose—that triggers happiness in me?”

He was sleeping, and he would never wake again.

“Damn you!” I shouted at the skies. “Damn you for watching and never helping! I curse you! I curse you for ever creating man, only to let him destroy the most innocent among us, over and over and over again!”

But remember, I shall be with you on your wedding night.”

You are mine. You belong to me. And I will be damned if I let the sickening frailty of flesh take you from me.

They had stripped us of everything we were taught made us women, and then told us we were mad.

“Elizabeth Lavenza.” Her black eyes narrowed with intensity. “It is time to kill your husband.”

Perhaps that was why Victor was so desperate to imitate life with his own twisted version. He had never been able to feel things as deeply as he should; he had been raised in a home where everything was pretense and no one spoke the truth. Not even me. I had accused Victor of creating a monster, but I had done the same.

I was aghast at his priorities. “I have just escaped from the asylum where you trapped me, have come here with the express purpose of killing you, and you want me to change my clothes?”

“I would have aimed for your heart, but there is only an empty space there.”

“I am ready to kill you now, I think,” the monster said.

“I will survive. And so will Victor, unfortunately. You could not have stabbed him in the neck? Or in the eye? Or in the chest? Or in—”

“We should check the servants’ quarters. I would hate to murder someone by accident.” “We only plan to do that on purpose,” Mary added helpfully.

Two hundred years ago, a teenage girl sat down and created science fiction.