The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein

by Kiersten White

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.

How could someone so effortlessly happy ever understand me? Would I have to pretend to be a new Elizabeth to keep him happy as a wife in some imaginary future? What Elizabeth would I be at his side? I had worked so hard to be Victor’s Elizabeth, and I had failed.

Sometimes we were strangers even to ourselves.

It was just the blackened and tortured remains of that tree long ago destroyed by lightning. Why they had never torn it out, I did not understand. Something about it now struck me as obscene. It was like leaving a corpse as a monument.

Was it wrong to envy a five-year-old child? As the third son of the family, he would have means but lack pressure. He truly could be whatever he wished. Perhaps he could even change into a fire-breathing hellbeast. Wealthy men did whatever they wanted, after all.

I wanted him here to comfort me, but I did not know how to be comforted. So I nodded and let him pass by.

I missed the security of mountains, the solid and jagged definition of the horizon. Here, the hills rolled on until darkness- or distance-obscured. I felt exposed and unprotected. Perhaps that explained the military aggression of this tiny island country: they could never feel the edges of their land, so they pushed forever outward.

He patted my shoulder with what I assumed was paternal kindness. I had never received such a thing, and it filled me with the oddest sense of sadness over what I had missed.

He held out the chick to me, as though I would want to hold that little piece of death.

This is your fate, Elizabeth Frankenstein. I will let no other claim you—not man, not death, not even God.”