Mechanized Masterpieces: A Steampunk Anthology (39 page)

There was stirring in the corridor, a sound like floorboards creaking. I rose from my little chair to listen at the door, which was locked from the outside as Victor had planned. There was silence again, and so I turned back to my vanity table.

I stopped reaching for the hairbrush when I realized that there was another presence in the room.

The creature stood quite tall, towering over me, uneven shoulders falling into unusually long arms. Its head was tilted, its eyes full of lightning and ferocity despite the calm expression of its face. It appeared, for all intents and purposes, male, just as it had that day on the hillside, but I could not conceive that it was still a true man, after death and unnatural rebirth in this way. It reminded me again of a huge animal in the jungle, perhaps, wild even in its stillness, and haunting in its silhouette.

It stared at me, across the room in which I was locked, and I stared back at it.

“Hello,” I said. I was surprised by how soft and calm my voice sounded in the dark room. “I suppose you have come to kill Victor.”

The Creature tilted its head the other way, and there was such a silence that for a moment, I wondered if it could speak at all. Then I recalled that Victor had said it promised him aloud to be with him on his wedding night. And it had kept its promise indeed.

“Will you not speak to me a few moments?” I asked as gently as I could, trying not to be angry with it for having killed William. I could not tell whether or not it had ended William’s short life in true consciousness of its actions, or if it had been merely an accidental feat of strength.

“He . . . lied to me.” The Creature’s voice wrought me with tension, yet gave me hope that perhaps reason could be found within its mind. “He promised me a companion, a female, and he lied . . . oh, he lied most grievously . . .”

“What do you mean, he lied?” I thought about moving to the vanity, but remained calm, standing still, lest the thing be frightened.

“I am . . . so
lonely
,” it moaned. “I only wanted another to share . . . to stay with me, always, and I swore I would leave him alone forever. But he could not give me what I asked—no! He
would
not give me what I asked.”

“I see.”

I did see. This was not what I had expected, not at all. I found myself strangely calm in the moment, and breathed slowly. “You did not ask to be brought to life, did you?”

The Creature did not respond, but it made a low sound of pain, of anguish, and stared at me most piteously.

“And since Victor will not give you a wife, you are utterly alone in the world, but for your creator. Is that why you killed William?”

“He lied,” said the Creature, suddenly, harshly.

“William never lied a day in his young life,” I replied as evenly as I could, fighting the urge to snap. The pain of losing William swelled within me as freshly as the day he’d died.

“Little boy said that he knew where Frankenstein was,” the Creature growled, taking a step towards me, “but he would never tell, never, never tell me where. And then when I grabbed him . . . he cried out that he was Frankenstein’s brother. And so I killed him, so that Frankenstein would know I was coming. That I meant to keep my promises.”

“What other promises have you made?” I demanded.

The Creature’s strange, mismatched eyes gleamed in the dim light of my wedding chamber. “He took the one thing I wanted to love, so I shall take
all
that he loves.”

It lunged for me, but I found myself darting forwards and sideways to evade its long arms. For as fast as this giant creature was, I was somehow faster. It stumbled and swung at me; I stepped back again and reached for its incoming fist, which I grasped in both hands and twisted hard back the other way. It cried out in an animal cry, and swung with its other hand, which connected with my gut. I barely felt the impact.

In this manner, we fought for several minutes, my heart pounding in my ears, and then, the Creature gained the upper hand. Its arm was tight around my neck, my hands grappling to peel it away and free myself. My knees were bent somewhat and I was pressing my back against my attacker, seeking some kind of leverage to twist out and away, but it was determined to keep me pinned.

“I must punish him,” the Creature growled in barking, disjointed tones. “He killed my wife, so I must kill his!”

“Then we are at an impasse,” I said, gritting my teeth, “for you killed my brother William. Must I not then kill you?”

We struggled against one another, and the monster began to drag me about the room, bashing me against wall and table, closet and bed, in hopes of knocking me unconscious, no doubt. I fought as best I could, but knew that it was mostly show, for I felt only the pressure of his grip, and no pain, thus far.

We made a pass by the vanity once again, and I grabbed for the letter opener I kept on the tabletop. I would have missed it if the monster had not stumbled over the hem of my nightgown. The blade landed in my hand and I shifted it neatly, reaching back and up and slashing at the thing’s face. I must have struck it, for it yowled and fell back, releasing me from the headlock. I spun and stabbed at it again, landing blows to its shoulder and chest several times while it clutched at its face, the noise it was making being most terrible and nightmarish.

It was then that I realized I did not wish to kill the Creature; it was really most pitiful. Yes, it had killed William, but it acted as it did seemingly only out of rejection and desire to be loved. Had Victor not been so entranced by his own sin, perhaps he would have understood that . . .

My thoughts on forgiveness were interrupted brutally as the Creature lunged at me again, and my little knife made a vain sweep through the air as it fell upon me, its hands at my throat and face. I heard the letter opener clatter to the floor in the dark, and stared up in blank amazement at the monster, who snapped my neck sharply to one side.

My breath caught in my throat and I crumpled immediately to the floor. I heard my heart stop, my lungs cease to fill, my internal mechanisms as loud as timpani drums at the opera in the sudden absence of my breath and pulse. The monster stood over me in silence as I lay on the ground, unmoving, listening to my insides wind down.

Ah,
I thought to myself,
so the gears are wound continually by the breath. This is most ingenious of my architect, to create a system wherein I am constantly winding myself, so as never to run down, save in an event such as this one.

I wondered then how long it would take the monster to realize I was not dead, but merely immobile. Instead, the Creature made a sad, angry sound low in its throat, and it lumbered away, disappearing out of the window into the night.

A little while later, Victor arrived with our father and found me lying on the floor, staring without blinking, utterly motionless in every way. There was a great deal of emotional outbursts, and then, when they had calmed down a little, the servants placed my body on the bed and covered me with a sheet.

I was at once both amused and quite put out to no longer be able to see the comings and goings of the room; but then, how was anyone to know that I was still apparent within my broken body? I could hear and see and sense as well as any living thing, though my casing was bent the wrong way and I could feel my cogs and springs slowing their internal motions more and more by the second.

I was rather amazed, and admittedly, quite pleased that I was not dead. I wondered if this meant that I was to live forever, or if it meant that once my springs stopped unwinding that I should be as good as dead rather permanently. It was a confusing sort of limbo to find oneself in. I drifted off into a sort of sleep, my ruminations on this new development fading into a kind of trance of my own subconscious formation.

And then something of a little miracle happened.

When the coroner, or whoever it was, came along to prepare me for burial, they realigned my neck with my spinal column, and when the bones clicked back into place, I felt the jolt of mechanisms within my body begin to click and whir and hum once more. They had closed my eyes at one point or another, so I kept them closed, but proceeded to allow my internal clockworks to start up again. Once I was alone in the room—which, as it turns out, was not the same room I had died in—I opened my eyes and sat up.

I was rather well dressed, indeed, and my hair had been brushed and plaited. Of course, it had been their intention to bury me this way, and I was certain that they would have rather a shock when I vanished, but it was of no question to me what I must next do.

My husband Victor was pursuing a monster, which in turn pursued him. One was bound to kill the other, but it was more likely that they would both die in the endeavor. I knew that there was no way I could return to Ernest and my father and the house. I would have to excuse myself from the burial process and take my leave of the town. Then, I would be free to search for Victor and his creation wherever they may have gone, and try my best to facilitate the justice which each deserved in their own way.

As a child, my mother told me that angels were God’s messengers, sent to Earth to bring glad tidings to mortals, protect them from harm, and share the love of Heaven. I had always been called my mother’s little angel, and as children, Victor had shared that sentiment towards me.

I saw that it was time to do what my destiny had always been, and that by the determination of my mother and some other unknown geniuses who had taken part in my creation, I had the means and the strength to take hold of my duty and my fate.

Victor had taken his fire from the gods and brought it down to the level of common men, and had sinned in doing so. I found myself ready to set things right, both for the poor damned Creature, and for my husband, the modern Prometheus.

For, like the statue built by Pygmalion to be the perfect woman, I had been given new life and purpose, and my will was my own. Although my heart ticked as steadily as any grandfather clock, I thought of myself not as a machine, but as a Galatea, created not by God, but by human hands, and free to fulfill the destiny my mother had wrought for me.

Styled after Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus by Mary W. Shelley