A Letter From Victor Frankenstein to his Father
Dear father,
In accordance with your wishes I have taken pen in hand to write and tell you of my school work and my collogues. At first my time here was almost entirely consumed with study and would, in all likely hood, have continued in such a vein were it not for my acquaintanceship with two truly extra ordinary fellows.
The first of these is one of my class mates, a man of my approximate age who hails from Scotland. He is a truly fascinating gentleman by the name of Henry Jekyll. A mere wisp of a man, with mousey brown hair, clean cut and correct. Despite his small stature he is a man of interesting demeanor, and is subject to the most immense and, at times, shocking changes of mood. Many times I have seen him as languid and relaxed as a cat one moment and then to suddenly fly into a terrible rage and storm about the room upsetting everything in his path the next. I have, through my time with him however found the cause of this anger in him, for, though his family is quite well known and liked, Henry's ideologies have made him unpopular with the scientific community. He believes that human beings can be improved upon, be made to be stronger, faster, and perhaps even smarter than they are now, which is, in my opinion a noble goal. His methods are a secret even to me, I know only that he has, on more than one occasion, been forced to use his own body as a guinea pig in his experiments through lack of funds.
The second of these two singular people is a professor from the Netherlands, who has been a guest lecturer at the university. Abraham Van Helsing is his name, and although he preaches of ghosts and monsters from the darkness, I believe that he possesses a truly brilliant mind. Professor Van Helsing has on many occasions given lengthy tirades on the subject of undead vampires and blood thirsty werewolves and other such creatures, which although are the products superstitious peasants are none the less fascinating for, as we men of science know, all legends have basis in fact. Vampires, are the professor's personal favorite subject to lecture upon and these, at least, seem to hold some truth, as he has shown in his talks. In fact, it is not an exaggeration to say the professor has spent, what appears to be most of his life, collecting samples of vampires, or at least blood drinkers, leeches, bats, Venus fly traps and the like.
Both Henry and myself are riveted by Professor Van Helsing's stories, though I have little doubt for different reasons. Henry seems to have taken very much to heart the story of one Lawrence Talbot, who upon the night of the full moon became a beast, hungry for blood. More than anything, I think it is the possibility of such radical change which excites him, as it is said that the werewolf possesses immense strength and such is as I have said, one of his goals. As for me I am most intrigued by the idea that something that it otherwise dead, may become alive again, for this is the fundamental in the myth of the vampire. They are literally called the "undead" or the "living dead", and if the legend of the vampire as a blood drinker is at least based on truth, what if there is a chance that, by some means, we may be able to fend off death, perhaps defeat it all together. For is that not, after all, the purpose of medicine?
Forever your son,
Victor
