Chapter Text
The condemnation reverberated through the sepulchral silence of the laboratory, more final than any thunderclap: he had failed. Not a setback, not a mere error of calculation, but a total, abyssal failure that seemed to resound within the very stones of the tower and echo through the void of his own being.
Years—no, an entire lifetime—of feverish study, of nights stolen from sleep and days consumed by a singular pursuit, collapsed in an instant, reduced to insignificant dust. The gilded dream that had sustained him, that had illuminated his mind with an almost prophetic light, was extinguished, leaving only the cold ashes of reality. And upon the chill iron gurney, the object of his most ardent longings and most terrible vigils, lay the tangible proof of his defeat.
There rested his creation, his work of ages, the sole aim to which his ambition had given name and form. It was perfect in its silent construction, a mural of beauty and inanimate power, and within that inert perfection dwelled its cruelest irony. The immobility was absolute. No tremor of life, no breath—however faint—disturbed the cold air surrounding that form. I contemplated that monument to my own madness, and every line of the body, every muscle I had selected with such meticulous care, now seemed a mute insult. All that I had done—the unnameable sacrifices, the vigils that had consumed my health, the barriers of decency and nature I had transgressed with impious hands—had all proved futile. Even after exhausting the darkest sources of knowledge, after dragging myself to the brink of the abyss itself and gazing into it, I remained impotent. The vital flame, that sublime mystery, continued to elude me, a mocking phantom that slipped through my fingers whenever I believed I had finally grasped it.
A lament, hoarse and animal, then burst from my chest—a sound scarcely human, more the howl of a wounded beast in its lair. Frustration, a volcano of dammed despair, erupted in a cry that tore through the stillness of the chamber.
I surged toward the gurney and, with all the strength agony granted me, struck blow after blow against the frozen chest of my work. My fists met only the cold impassivity of lifeless flesh, an organic marble that returned a dull echo to my fury. Each impact was a memorial to wasted years, to an existence diverted from its natural course and cast into an arid desert of obsession. I—Victor Frankenstein—after such arrogance, after heeding the seductive whispers of a scarlet angel in my dreams—a being of tainted light who had promised me the secrets of Eden itself—now revealed myself a fool. A tragically deluded innocent. That angel had been a masked demon, and its promise a sweet poison that had corroded my soul through all those years, leading me to this precipice of desolation.
The fury ebbed as swiftly as it had arisen, leaving in its wake a desolation so vast it made me stagger. My legs gave way, and I collapsed—not beside but beneath the gurney, like a supplicant seeking refuge in the shadow of a fallen idol. My brow met the cold metal of the support, and there, in that posture of abject defeat, the tears finally came. They were not a delicate weeping, but a silent, bitter torrent that washed my face and dampened the stone floor. I wept upon the unmoving chest of my creation, the creature’s skin, pale and smooth as alabaster, still damp with the fluids of galvanization and the rain that persisted in entering through the open roof of the tower. The body was cold—cold as the marble of a tombstone, dead with a finality that mocked all my efforts. And I, the creator, the failed god, had nothing left to offer but this impotence.
The darkness of the laboratory, once peopled by the dancing shadows of my hopes, had grown oppressive. Every vial, every instrument, every open book stood as a silent accuser. I could no longer bear the sight of that place. I was ruined within, emptied of purpose, of passion, even of sharp pain. There remained only a heavy void, an existential nausea. My sole objective, the star that had guided my errant vessel across forbidden seas, was extinguished. What was dawn without it? Merely the monotonous repetition of a day devoid of meaning. I had failed. I was a shame, a monument to failure not only before science, but before my own lineage and the expectations of the world.
A sigh that seemed to carry the last vestige of my soul escaped my lips. It was the sound of final resignation.
I rose, my body heavy as if made of lead, and made for the staircase that descended to the lower chambers. I did not trouble myself to take a candle. What did it matter if I stumbled in the darkness, if I tumbled down the steps and broke my neck? Such an end—swift and anonymous—would be a mercy compared to the torture of facing, beneath the crude light of day, the gaze of the world. All those who had doubted—the severe Professor Krempe, the colleagues who deemed my pursuit a morbid eccentricity, the acquaintances who whispered of my sanity—would, at last, be vindicated. Victor Frankenstein, the promising physician, reduced to a failed lunatic. Let the darkness swallow me, for it was now my only ally.
I passed through the door of my chamber like a somnambulist. I left it wide open, indifferent to the icy draft that coiled along the corridor and enveloped the room. Let it freeze me in my sleep! Let a fatal torpor seize me! Failure was a mantle colder than any winter, and I already wore it.
Impatient with formalities, I tore off my tunic—the heavy, filthy cloth, soaked with the laboratory’s rain and the sweat of my body. I rolled it up and hurled it into a corner with a gesture of revulsion. I would never wear it again. It was the uniform of my folly, and I wished never to behold its semblance.
Still shod in the boots that had trodden the mire of cemeteries and the dust of my profane temple, I climbed onto the bed. I did not lie down; I flung myself upon the pillows, my body falling like an inert burden. I sought no comfort from the blankets; physical discomfort was a pale echo—almost welcome—of the moral agony that consumed me. I left myself there, exposed to the chill of the room and to the deeper cold within.
And then, in the solitude of that bed, the spectres of conscience rose for their final assault. The image of my father—stern and derisive—formed before my closed eyes. I did not see him with affection, but as a judge upon his tomb. I imagined him not at peace, but wearing a bitter, silent laugh, mocking my misfortune. “Behold the son,” he would say to his companions of eternity, “who believed he could surpass the designs of the Creator! Who scorned a life of quiet virtue and worldly honor to play at God in the shadows. Look upon his triumph!” His imagined words cut sharper than any blade.
My poor mother, Caroline, so full of tenderness… I saw her in her coffin, not sleeping the sleep of the just, but turning her face away to weep eternal tears for her wayward son. She mourned not only my living death, but the wasted life, the noble opportunities I had spurned. I might have followed the gilded path of normalcy: a loving wife like Elizabeth, children who would have been my natural legacy, an illustrious career that would have ennobled the name Frankenstein. All this I had despised, casting it upon the pyre of my boundless ego. Arrogance—insane pride—a blind conviction, nurtured by the promises of that scarlet angel of my delusions, that I, and I alone, could bend the fundamental laws of existence, could steal the celestial fire and defeat Death at its own game.
What a fool! What a monumental, presumptuous fool I had been! Victor Hernandez Frankenstein—the middle name, an homage to a forgotten grandfather, now sounded like a brand of infamy. I was no titan, no modern Prometheus. I was a pygmy, an Icarus who, soaring on wings glued with the wax of illusions, saw them melt beneath the blazing sun of reality, plunging me not into the sea, but into a swamp of despair and self-loathing.
Exhaustion—the rightful child of so many vigils and of emotional depletion—at last began to assert its dominion. My eyes, burning and salted from weeping, closed. They were heavy as iron doors, dragging me into an abyss that was not sleep, but a swoon of the soul. The last conscious sensation was not relief, but the unbearable weight of a truth: I was nothing. A dissipating echo. A creator who had fashioned only an elaborate tomb for his own ambitions.
And thus Victor Frankenstein fell into slumber. But the world, indifferent to the collapse of a man, continued on its course. And in the silent laboratory, beneath the wan light of the moon beginning to filter through the skylight, something imperceptible to human sight—a residual electric tremor in disconnected wires, a final chemical contraction within artificial fibers, or perhaps the belated and tortuous fulfillment of a perverted natural law—began to act.
While the creator sank into the pit of his nightmares, within the cold chest of the creature upon the iron gurney, beneath the still-damp skin, a first, faint, and terrible pulsing made itself felt. It was not life as men know it. It was a mute scream of matter forced toward an unnatural destiny.
Failure, as Victor understood it, may have been merely asleep. And the dream—the one that would truly haunt his vigils and consume his days—was only just awakening.