Title: A Life Never Meant To Be

Author: Holly Dane

Rating: PG to PG-13

Summary: Essay I wrote for English class. Victor's creature contemplates his sins and misfortunes as he prepares to put an end to his life - A life that never should have been.

Do you know what it is like to be unloved? I do. I have felt the cold stare of all mankind on me - I have seen the looks that men give to me, bitter enough to kill, and if looks could, they would have killed me with a mere glance. They have turned and run, they have cried in horror at the mere sight of my disfigurement. These people are but strangers to me, they know not who I am or where I came from, and by what I can tell they would not care. But they do not know better - they do not know that I never wished to be created. They know not that I am fashioned together with the body parts of those who were buried after their untimely end. They know not my plight or my sadness. But he does.

My creator knows all that I am, and all that it took to give me life. But it is not truly life, I know that now. I have read a book called The Bible and I have learned that man was never meant to be God. Men were never meant to make man, only God was meant to do that.

Yet he did it, my creator did. He wanted the power. He wanted to watch his creation, as he called it, rise from the medical table with new life - life that he had given. It was the single most devastating mistake he ever made, for the moment that I was given this cursed and artificial life, he had sealed the death of everyone he loved.

I tried to be kind and good natured, no one will ever know how hard I tried. No one. No one will know how I awoke with goodness and love in my dead heart. How I tried to be the jovial helper of man. How I tried to save that girl from drowning, and how I attempted to love the father who abandoned me. No one will know.

I cannot bear to think about that which I have done. The innocent souls I killed, the lives I destroyed. I never wanted to do it, any of it, but I was driven to commit these grizzly crimes. He made me do it. Victor made me do it. I was his son and he abandoned me, decided that I was a mistake - he forgot one thing. Although he and I both knew I was a mistake, I was still living. I still have a heart that beats, a mind that thinks, and although I am not sure, I do believe that I may have a soul, one that longs to be accepted and loved.

Oh, how I curse the day that those bolts of power brought me into this world. I am to be dead. I am sure of it. I am one who is fashioned together by those who led a full life, a human life. I am not human, I am the very embodiment of death itself. I have cold limbs and stretched skin, all fit over a frame that was never meant for me. I am mere fragments of those who were blessed with normalcy. They had love and humanity. Not I. I do not have these things and I never shall. From the moment that I took my first breath, sucked the air down into my shriveled, dead lungs, I was not normal. I was no creation of God. I was an experiment of man - a child of sin. I was no fallen angel, I was no kindred to man. I still do not know what I am. All I know is that God was not the one who bent gingerly over me and breathed his holy life into my waiting lungs. I was brought to life by a bolt of lightning - one that awakened my dead form and reanimated many a corpse.

After I discovered this, I wept for a long while. I knew not that it was this way in which I was created. I was no product of God, therefore, He himself could have never wished me upon this earth. He would have never doomed one in His likeness to walk the earth alone, hated and tortured and forever by himself.

I mourn for myself because no one else will. I sit and cry at night, my only companion the full moon, which bleeds its majestic rays of light onto my hideously deformed body. She is my only friend, the moon. Her light is the only one who keeps me company on those dreary, cold nights. She is the only one to ever love me.

During those nights, I have to force my eyes to stay open, for if I close them, I see before me a montage of all the evils I have committed. I see the young woman, Justine, sleeping in the hay; I see Victor's child brother gasp for air; I see Henry Clerval cry for help when no one can hear him; I see Elizabeth fight for her life as her porcelain skin drains of blood flow, her mane of golden curls tousled about her doll like face; and I see Victor, pale as a ghost, lying on the bed of that ship, his pulse stopped and his body dead.

Those are the moments that I realize my sins, but there is nothing I can do now. There is nothing that will ever change my evils. Nothing that will ever make little William smile again, or make the enticingly beautiful Elizabeth laugh merrily alongside poor Justine. I did onto others what had been done onto me. I killed those that my creator loved, so that finally, he could feel the pain I felt. So that he might know how it felt to be entirely alone.

But there is nothing I can do. I wish every day to take back that which I have done. Each and every morning, when the warm rays of the bright sun cast their light upon me, I wish that I had never been born... or created, or whatever wretched force brought me into this world as a curse. I never wanted to admit it to myself, but I am a curse, a curse of man. I myself, with all the horrible deeds I have done, am the very bane of man's existence. I am their monster, their wretch. That which I felt people wrongly accused me of, I became. I became the murder; I became the cold-hearted; I became the death bringer.

Above all, these are the thoughts that bring dewy tears to my pale, lifeless eyes. These are the ideas, the memories that haunt me. I hated Victor for abandoning me, yet because of it, I let myself become even worse that he. I became that which I had read of and hated. I always wanted to be the hero, but instead, I turned into the beast. What people said finally came true. I was a monster, and as I sit here I still am. I gave them all what they wanted - a vicious beast to hate. I let my hideous outside become the reflection of my inside. And to think, when I was new to the world, I believed that people judged me harshly for my appearance. I told myself that the outside of my shell was wrong and deceitful. Inside, I believed that I had been given the wrong package for my soul, because deep down, I was a creature of love and warmth, not one of cold calculation.

So why was I even born to this world. Why did my creator have to give me life, only to curse me with a half-life, a damned life - one of torment and loneliness? He never even loved me. From the moment by dead fingers twitched with life, he feared and abhorred me. But it was he who was at fault, he was to blame. If he hadn't conceived the notion of my creation, he wouldn't be lying in a cold grave. If he had just been content with God's plan. Why was I to be his child of sin? Why did he not have a true child, a human child - one of living tissue, flesh, and blood? He had a girl who loved him with her whole heart, but instead of creating a child of love with her, he decided to go behind her back and be unfaithful to her with science. I am the product of that infidelity.

So I ponder endlessly over why I am here. I wonder why I am to be the damned that walks in the night by himself, with not a friend, nor a love. I wonder why it was so hard for Victor to create me a love. He had a love, a ravishing beauty of his own, pure and kind and lovelier than any the world over, yet he denied me a wretch of a companion - one as ugly as I. He denied me my only partner, my only chance at happiness. So I denied him his.

So when I think about my life, I know not what may have happened had I chose the path of righteousness. I have not the slightest clue if I would have ever found a friend. But I do know this - I lived the life of one damned, and I killed the beautiful and the innocent, leaving in my wake, the heartache of my own father. I did that which brings fresh tears to my eyes, and I long for forgiveness - forgiveness I will never find. For I have sinned greater than any. I was not born of love or humanity, but of cold steel and dead flesh. I longed to be kind, yet I watched the life slip away from those who did nothing onto me.

So with the sorrow pouring over in my heart, and my eyes dripping with stale tears, I know it is time to put an end to all my torment and the torment I have caused humanity. So now, I look into the flickering flames of the fire that burns before me, triumphant and bright. I see it blaze with warmth and welcome. It beckons me enter into its solace. And with one final glance up at the moon, I turn and trudge towards the flame of death, ready to put an end to the life I lead, the life that should have never been.

Well, there you have it - the lament of the monster. Please leave me a review and tell me what you think of it. I would be very appreciative.