Our Hideous Progeny

by C.E. McGill

‘When a carriage crushes someone in the street, is it the wheel we call dangerous, or the reckless driver? When one man stabs another, do we blame the assailant or the knife? The fault is not in the steel, but in what one makes with it – a bridge or a warship, a scalpel or a sword! And even then, cannot a sword, in the hands of one abused and made weak, be used to defend? Cannot a scalpel, in the hands of one ignorant or uncaring, maim and torture?’

It was from this that Mary Elizabeth Frankenstein was born. So if you like her, if she strikes a chord, this one goes out to you: the angry women, the threatening women, the solitary and the abhorred; women with cold hearts and sharp tongues, who play with fire and fall in love with monsters; women who love women, women who didn’t know they were women at first but know better now, those who thought they were women at first but know better now. We shall be monsters, you and I.