The Horrific Paradox of Creation and Consequence
The autumn wind howled through the narrow streets, carrying with it the bitter chill of the coming winter. Inside his dimly lit laboratory, Dr Victor Frankenstein sat hunched over a desk full of papers and books, his fingers trembling as he clutched the pen. The candlelight flickered, casting long, grotesque shadows across the stone walls.
For months, the townspeople had whispered about the reclusive nature of the brilliant doctor. They spoke of strange noises echoing from his estate at midnight, and of the towering, cloaked figure seen slipping through the alleyways in the dead of night. The local authorities suspected the doc was harbouring a criminal, a brute they had come to call Mr Adam.
Victor knew the truth, and it was far more terrifying.
The Confession
He dipped his pen in ink and began to write, his words pouring onto the frail paper.
“To whoever finds this log, I must unravel the dual nature of my misery. I sought to conquer death, to fashion a being of pure nobility and strength. Instead, I birthed a shadow; the first of a new, terrible dawn.”
A heavy thud echoed from the chamber above. Victor paused, his heart hammering against his ribs. He could hear the slow, deliberate footsteps. They were too heavy to belong to any normal man.
“At first,” Victor’s journal continued, “I believed we were separate entities. I thought he was merely a monster I had stitched together from the grave and cast aside. But the truth is a more claustrophobic horror. Mr Adam, as he happily introduces himself, is the manifestation of my own unchecked ambition, a physical parasite bound to my very soul.”
The footsteps grew closer, descending the spiral staircase. Victor did not look up. He forced his shaking hand to keep writing, desperate to finish the account before the transformation took hold again.
“We share a consciousness. When I sleep, he wakes. He wanders the foggy banks of the river, seeking the vengeance I am too cowardly to pursue. He possesses my memories, my intellect, but none of my conscience. He is the raw, unbridled fury of a creation abandoned by its maker, yet he wears the flesh I crafted.”
A Dialogue
The laboratory door creaked open. A draft rushed in, extinguishing half the candles.
Victor looked up at last. Standing in the doorway was a figure of colossal stature, wrapped in a heavy woollen coat to hide the dull yellow skin and the watery eyes that gleamed with a brilliant, torturous intelligence. It was Mr Adam.
‘You write of me as if I am a disease, Victor,’ Adam said, his voice a deep, resonant rumble that vibrated through the floorboards.
‘You are my ruin,’ Victor whispered, gripping the edges of the desk. ‘You are the consequence of my arrogance.’
Adam took a step forward, the floor crying out under his immense weight. He looked down at the doctor with a mixture of profound sorrow and malice. ‘I am merely a mirror. You sought to play God, yet you curse the reflection you created. You think we are different, but who is the true monster? The one who wanders the night in loneliness, or the one who brought him into the dark and refused to hold his hand?’
The Dissolution
Victor felt a familiar, sickening sensation rising in his chest. His limbs grew heavy, and his vision began to blur at the edges. The hours of the night were waning, and his own strength was fading. The boundary between the doctor and the creation was dissolving once more.
‘The townspeople are gathering at the door,’ Adam said softly, moving to stand right beside the desk. ‘They see the horror of what we are. They bring torches.’
‘Let them burn it all,’ Victor choked out, his fingers losing their grip on the pen.
Adam reached down, gently closing Victor’s journal. ‘They will never understand the strange case of our existence, Creator. We are bound in this skin together.’
As Victor’s eyes closed in exhaustion, the towering figure smiled a tragic, bitter smile. When the laboratory door was finally battered down by the fearful citizens, they found no doctor and no monster. There was only a single, colossal man, sitting alone in the dark, weeping over a manuscript signed in two different hands.
*Author’s Note:
In Mrs Shelley’s book, the creature is usually referred to as ‘the monster’ (33 times), ‘the fiend’ (41 times), ‘the dæmon’ (20 times), or ‘the Wretch’ (64 times). He even tells Dr Frankenstein at one point: ‘I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel.’
