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To Mrs Saville, England.
September 12th, 17-
It is past; I am returning to England. I have lost my hopes of utility and glory; but chiefest among my sorrows is that I have lost also my dear friend, that wondrous creature we rescued from the ice, he who seemed sent by Heaven itself to alleviate my great unbearable loneliness. Fate has gifted me with the knowledge of what it is to have a true companion, one who perceives the depth of my soul and by his very presence lifts my dark and despondent spirits, only to then snatch him away with cruel and wicked hand. I will endeavour to detail these bitter circumstances to you, dear sister, though the recollection of them brings me the greatest of pains; but the tale which I have recorded would be incomplete without this final, awful catastrophe.
Though he had been held in the grip of his terrible illness for a week or more, life had returned to the wretched frame of Frankenstein by the time the ice released us from her grasp. He was much aggrieved by my capitulation in the matter of our return to port, and spoke passionately to both myself and the crew; but the men would not be moved. Hearing this, he determined to press onward with his pursuit of the wretched fiend; but I implored him to stay a week more, so that he might truly recover his health. This did not suit his temperament, but by way of several heated discussions I made him see sense; and he agreed to be detained for the duration of seven days only. I cannot lie to you, Margaret, and say that I did not intend to somehow to turn him from his dread passions, and convince him to return with me to England; but circumstances intervened, the like of which not one of us could have predicted.
I was engaged in the Captain’s cabin, discoursing with the master and some few other crew members on the course of our return to Archangel, when a great cry and crash came from the direction of the cabin occupied by Frankenstein, followed swiftly by the unmistakable sound of a pistol shot. We all of us made haste toward that frightful sound; and upon throwing open the door to my dear friend’s cabin, I laid eyes upon a creature of such distressing and horrifying ugliness that even now recalling the sight of that evil visage sends a shudder through my very bones.
The creature loomed in the centre of the room, monstrous in form and size, towering over the much smaller form of Frankenstein; but that man did not wilt or tremble, and he was as we entered in the process of reloading his pistol. The creature’s watery eyes turned to me, and his arm shot out, faster than his size belied; it was only the master’s quick tug on the back of my coat that saved me from being caught in the monster’s fell grasp.
“You seek again to deprive me of my most faithful companion, wretched dog?” Frankenstein cried, lifting again his pistol.
The monster glared at me with his hateful eye. “Fate is so turned against me, it seems, that even here, in this most dark, frigid, blasted wasteland, Victor Frankenstein might find love and faithful companionship, while I remain alone, forever spurned and reviled.”
The master behind me stood unmoving, struck dumb by the horror of the sight that had greeted us; I pulled his gun from his unresisting fingers and levelled it at the monster, though I made no move to shoot. The killing of this fiend was my utmost of desires, for, released from the urgency of hunting him, I had hope that Frankenstein might consent to return with us; but my shot is, as you know, rather poor, and I had no certainty that I would not miss the creature and risk hitting Frankenstein instead.
The monster seemed to intuit this; he did not move. “Thou hath been detained here too long, hated creator,” said he, “And our tale is not yet done. Consent, then, to come onward with me; and their lives shall not be forfeit.”
For a moment Frankenstein regarded him in cold silence; then he said, “So they will walk free with their lives, while others were given no such consideration?”
“You were given the path by which to save them; and by destroying my companion, you gave your answer,” the creature replied. “Now, choose; will this vessel make a safe return to port, or float on dark seas forever, a silent, frozen grave?”
At these words I cocked my pistol; but the monster turned his hideous gaze on me, and in a moment I subsided, my terror overtaking me, my hand shaking too hard to risk a shot.
Frankenstein did not seem to take notice of this interplay, consumed as he was in his own thoughts; but presently he looked up, and though he regarded the creature with a disgust that remained unchanged, in short words he agreed to the monster’s terms.
This quickly uttered sentence pierced me to the core; I begged him to remain, but he would not be swayed. “Be assured, Walton, that I hold you in the highest regard, and thank you most profusely for my care,” said he, “Thus, I cannot allow you and your person to be endangered by the very daemon for whose existence I am responsible. No; he and I will settle matters between us, from now on.”
Thus Frankenstein gathered up what few items belonged to him, and with the hateful monster following behind, departed our ship. The monster’s dogsled waited just below; I watched with a heavy, despairing heart as Frankenstein bundled himself in the proffered furs and took a seat within it, while the monster took his place on the back with whip in hand. He urged the dogs onward, and soon enough they were little more than a black silhouette disappearing into the maze of snow and ice; the small, fragile form of Frankenstein wrapped in furs, with the hateful, hulking form of the monster towering over him.
Somewhere on the Kara Sea, Northern Russia
17-
We raced across the ice together, the fiend and I; and for many hours we did not stop. The bleak white landscape went past in great hills and towers of ice, the snow sparkling under the harsh light of the sun like a dazzling spray of diamonds strewn across the earth. The furs insulated me from the chill of the air and the cold wind of our passage, but I did not feel warm. Giving in to the monster’s demands and allowing him to whisk me away across this foul landscape felt like a heinous betrayal of both my own being and the spirits which followed close at my heels; but allowing him to commit acts of violence against Walton and his crew would have been by far the greater evil. Now noble, gentle Walton and his fellows would live on, while Victor Frankenstein took his rightful place of wrack and ruin.
At length the monster brought the dogs to a halt, though he intimated by various movements that I should remain in the sled. The temperature was bitter, but the monster worked with incredible speed, employing a technique of cutting ice blocks and arranging them into the shape of a dwelling that he must have learnt from the native people of the land. I sat no more than an hour before our abode was ready, and the monster bid me rise from the sled and bring the furs inside.
The entrance to the snow-house descended into the ice, then rose again inside the small domed space. A ledge had been created that occupied one half of the space, which seemed to me the place to lay down the furs. Thus arranged, I took a seat upon the perch; and no sooner did the monster enter, bearing a bundle of firewood. He laid the fire and lit it in silence; I almost observed that he had now learnt this skill, when the secret of fire had so eluded him before, but I refrained. It would not be wise to provoke my captor, out here where he was my only means of survival; but it was tempting.
When the fire was sufficient, the monster rose, saying only, “I will hunt,” before disappearing through the entrance tunnel. What he would find to hunt out in that vast, desolate wasteland I had no idea, but I did not gainsay him. I had not realised the extent of my hunger until there was the mention of food; but I had not eaten a morsel since breakfast on the ship, which was now many hours distant. I sat a few moments in paroxysms of hunger; then, in an attempt to distract myself from the tortured groans of my stomach, I wrapped myself in the furs and tried to sleep.
The interior of the snow-house soon grew pleasantly warm, and I found myself staring into the flickering flames, hypnotised by their merry dance. At some point I fell asleep; for when I woke I was no longer alone. The creature sat across from me, his limpid, dull eyes fixed on my face; and though he clearly marked that I had awoken, he neither spoke nor removed his gaze. My own throat was suddenly too parched to speak; thus we remained there, gazes locked, for a period indeterminable before the creature eventually moved himself to speak. “Are you hungry?” he rasped.
The mere mention of food brought my earlier hunger rushing back; but I restrained myself to a simple nod. The creature’s hunt had clearly been a success; he had laid out great slabs of meat from some unknown animal in the lower part of the snow-house, and one of these he began to roast upon the fire. When it was cooked, he teared it in half and handed one piece to me. Such barbaric eating practises would have shocked and appalled the man I had once been, but now any sustenance was as the ambrosia of the gods; I gulped down the half-raw meat as if it were comparable in quality to the finest delicacies of high society. Though I tore through my own meal with abandon, I was in no way comparable to the creature, into whose gaping maw the meat descended as if it were swallowed by the very mouth of hell; and when he had finished his meal he simply sat and watched as I ate mine, not moving from his spot near the small fire, his hateful eyes riveted on me. I did not enquire as to his thoughts; but I did find, most oddly, that I was curious to know them.
At length, once the meat was consumed and we both sat in stony, freezing silence, the only sound the whistle of the harsh Arctic wind around the crown of the snow-house, the monster begin to speak. “Thou wonderest why I have taken thou under my care,” he said, his rough voice soft.
“To subject me to further torment, no doubt,” I said, not hiding the contempt in my voice.
“I had intended to lead our merry chase until we reached the northernmost extremity of this earth; and there would we have met at last, and both been consumed utterly in the very same funeral pyre.”
I could not hold back a contemptuous laugh. “Nature herself foils your plan, wretch. You can see for yourself that there is no suitable timber here for such things as funerary pyres; I do not doubt that the bundles you keep on your sleigh are the densest concentration of wood for many miles.”
“This is true,” allowed the creature, “But so too is the fact that a quick death in the flames is too little atonement for the grief thou hast visited upon my person; and upon reflection, I have conjured a better penance.”
At this he stood, and his hulking form filled the snow-house near to the roof, towering over my slight, fur-wrapped form. A thrill of fear ran through me; though it was curiously also like a thrill of excitement, like a flow of lightning under the skin.
“I hath saved thee from the chill bite of the Arctic winter; thus your life is mine own. Slave I called thee once; now slave thou art again.” The creature’s eyes shone with an unholy light, gazing down on me from on high like the very eyes of God in Heaven. “Will thou not consent, then, to call me master?”
In answer I spat at his feet. “I will not name you master while there is still breath in my body; I shall not return to the gruesome task you demanded of me. You may torture me as long as you see fit, but that answer will not change.”
“I seek no longer a companion,” the monster said. “But thou wilt bend to me, or the shelter of this house will be stripped away, and I shall leave thee to die in the freezing waste outside. Thine life belongs to me, and I shall decide the hour and method of your destruction.” The monster stepped forward, and one great hand rose to clutch the pale, fragile column of my neck. He did not grasp hard enough to constrict the passage of air through my throat, but I felt the power dormant in his gruesome fingers, and as I stared up into his eyes, I knew the horrific fear that had clutched sweet William, devoted Elizabeth, and loyal, blameless Clerval. The creature’s detestable eyes stared into my own, lit with a burning flame as he repeated his demand. “Bend to me,” he hissed, “and name me thy master.”
“God only is my master,” I spat back, “and thy only master the devil.”
The hand around my throat constricted, and the monster threw me back against the furs; in a moment he was on me, pinning my wrists with a grip tight enough to bruise, his other hand returning to my throat. “Shall I kill thee, loathed creator?” he asked, “Is this what thee wish?”
My heart in my chest thundered like the fall of an avalanche down Mont Blanc’s sheer sides, and the chill air sawed in and out of lungs with every panting gasp. I could not contain my shudder as he pressed me down harder; could not admit that it was not wholly one of fear.
Some understanding flickered in his eyes. “This, then, is what you wish?” I gasped, made to protest, but his dread hand tightened over my throat. “Do you enjoy it,” he whispered, his eyes flickering with an intensity I had not yet seen, “when men hold you down like this?”
There had only ever been one man- an older friend from Ingolstadt- I bit my lip and turned my head away, closing my eyes.
His fetid breath caressed my ear. “I will take that as my instruction, then.”
I could have protested; I could have struggled. I know not why I didn’t; only that some perverse impulse drove me on, made me gasp and squirm under the fiend’s hands as he divested me of my clothing and touched all over my chilled skin. With one hand he kept my wrists pinned above my head, and no amount of struggling could have freed me; though the shameful truth is that I did not want to be freed. I kept my eyes tightly shut, knowing that one glimpse of the creature’s awful visage would shatter the rising pleasure brought on by his hand on my skin and his lips and teeth at my neck. Thus I saw not what slick substance he used to work me open, and nor did I care; in that moment I threw away all righteous, rational thought and surrendered simply to the pleasures of animal nature.
I had made him of gigantic stature, and proportionately large in every area; a fact I did not recall until he was pushing inside me, a relentless advance that left no room for air in my lungs. It hurt, but he did not wait for me; with both hands he took my hips in a bruising grip and used me for his pleasure, setting a punishing rhythm of rough, graceless thrusts that pushed moans from my lips unbidden. I should have felt nothing but the greatest disgust; instead pleasure like fire built under my skin, his harsh, merciless treatment of my body only fanning the flames. I would be bruised and sore and battered come morning, but all that paled to insignificance when put against the inferno he stoked within me, rising higher and higher.
My eyes still were shut; but I could feel his lips touch my neck, his breath wash over my ear. “Bend to me,” he rasped, his voice low and guttural.
I cursed him; in return he made several thrusts with such violence that my foul words cut off in a choked moan. “Bend,” he commanded, his voice cold as the ice, implacable as the glacier. The snap of his hips became faster, harder, as he drove into me with the frenzy of a madman. I could not have answered him if I wanted to; the breath was driven from my lungs, my hands twisted in the soft furs with vice-like grip. His hand closed about my throat, tight enough that my eyes flew open and I beheld his hideous face; at that same moment he caught my hard, aching shaft in his other hand and began to stroke and pump me without mercy. I pulled at the hand at my throat, but it was as if I tried to move a mountain. There we stayed, him driving into me and working me over and staring down at me with the light of hell in his eyes, and though I stared at his directly at his ghastly, sickening face, I could not help but release with a long, breathy wail.
He did not pause in his rhythm; he took me with the same constant, torturous force til I was on the verge of begging him to stop. Only then did he find his release with an ugly grunt, his hips jerking a few last shallow thrusts. He drew away almost instantly, retrieving his garments from the floor and leaving me wrecked and shivering, exposed on the furs. My body ached and trembled, and I pressed my eyes closed as rational thought returned, and the cold stark truth of my actions laid heavy across my shoulders.
The monster did not return my clothing; instead he drew up the furs and tucked them in around me with surprising care, almost like a mother swaddling her child. “Sleep,” he said, “In the morning I will put my question to you again.”
“You will receive the same answer,” I muttered, wrapping myself tighter in the furs.
His disgusting, worm-like fingers caressed my hair, but he said nothing else. The warmth of fire and fur and the exertion my body had endured weighed down my eyelids, even as I was loathe to fall asleep; but against my will I was dragged down into the dark, my soul full to the very brim with hopeless despair.