The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein

by Kiersten White

“The way the lightning would play off the mountains, throwing them into sharp relief, as though we were watching the creation of the world itself. Or over the lake, so it looked like it was in both the sky and the water.

“It was glorious.” I smiled, placing my hand flat against the cold glass, feeling the temperature beneath my lacy white gloves. “To me, it was the great and terrible power of nature. It was like seeing God.”

“Do not ruin this,” she hissed. “Better for you to have died at your birth along with your mother than to be left here with me. Selfish in life, selfish in death. That’s what you come from.”

She loved it because I told it just for her. It was not entirely the truth. But so little of what I told anyone ever was. I had ceased feeling guilty long ago. Words and stories were tools to elicit the desired reactions in others, and I was an expert craftswoman.

“Is it a dangerous city, after dark? I had not heard that.” The town revolved around the university. Surely a center of learning could not be that threatening. When had the pursuit of knowledge merited so many locks?

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. Even his blue eyes were as clear as the lake on a summer day.

This city, pleasant though it might have been, was a stranger. And strangers were not to be trusted.

The man from the gutter—definitely not dead, then, though he smelled as if he had spent many long hours dancing with death—was leaning precariously behind us.

The doctor and Judge Frankenstein carried her from my bed. Her head lolled to the side so her eyes could watch me the entire time as they bore her away. I pushed out of the bed and away from the ghost of Madame Frankenstein already taking residence there, though she yet lived.

“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.”

“Death is never allowed to touch you.” Victor traced his fingers along the spill of my hair across the pillow, and then walked from the room.

She had been so convinced of her wickedness by her cruel and depraved mother that she would let a man convince her to confess false guilt simply for the sake of some invisible soul’s well-being!

Did I, though? Would I prefer to know she was gone from the earth, or to go on under the false belief that she was well?

I thought I would rather believe her well than know the truth. But I had no such luxury.