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.

I, however, was perfectly aware of my beauty. I considered it a skill, alongside speaking French, English, Italian, and German. It was a language of its own, in a way; one that translated well in different circumstances.

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.

“I have been stuck in the business of books for so long, I forgot how much fun being a part of a story can be.”

“Men are always doing things without thinking of how they will affect others. It is a woman’s heart that is big enough to hold another’s feelings.

“Death touches us all in different ways,”

It was easier to rage than to despair.

We were, all of us, bound in this deadly and horrible dance, until we died or triumphed.

You say you created an abomination? You are one, Victor. You made a monster because that is all you are capable of being yourself.

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

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.

Everything I had known of him, everything we had shared, rose like the dead before me, rotted through to show the horror of what festered beneath the skin.

“Not being blameless is not the same as being guilty.”