"Frankenstein, E."
My name is Ernest Benjamin Frankenstein, call me Ernie if you like, honestly you could call me Johnny the Leprechaun if it makes you happy, it really doesn't matter, but generally people go with Ernie.
Or rather, people used to go with Ernie, before they were stripped away one by one. I am only 16 and yet in that time I have lost more and been a victim of misery worse than that in the culmination of any old man's life. My life had been full of caring, loving, intelligent, and compassionate people. Good people, and apparently in this world such was a crime, punishable with death.
As a younger child my mother died of a sickness shortly after nursing my "cousin" back from it. Oh the agony! The despair I felt I thought insurmountable, but I did not yet realize the blessing in that that event was natural, and there were still many I loved to find comfort in. How dramatic, that the death of one's own mother now seems a minor speed bump, the pain minimal in comparison.
In these past years I have lost as I had not imagined possible. The first was my brother William, taken so unjustly, murdered he was! MURDERED, and at five, Five! His innocence supreme, his joyful spirit uncontained, his potential immeasurable, taking such life, so could be compared to Satan, shooting down a glowing angel from the heavens. And who, indeed, could be responsible for this, as if the pain of sweet and dear William's death were not enough? It was Justine, she so loving who had been taken with grace by family, she who had always radiated peace and kindness with so respectful an air, she betrayed me, she betrayed us all. And convicted she was death found its way to take another from me. I barely felt human anymore than, I could not process that these events really happened to me.
However, at the time there was a silver lining, a beacon of hope, if you buy into that sort of thing, as I did at the time, not yet tainted enough by misery to have that inert youthful innocence of irrepressible hope obliterated by reality, but I digress.
It was the returned presence of my brother that brought me even the slightest repercussions of happiness in this bleak time. He had been gone away to the university in Ingolstadt for several years and had took to not writing, not once did he pay a visit home, despite our constant inquires to his occupations and overall well-being. A year or so before the events with William, dear family friend, Henry Clerval had finally convinced his father to let him attend school, and relayed to us that Victor was indeed unwell. Overtime we received news that Victor's health increased under the care of Clerval and soon we even received a letter in his own hand.
I can not convey the joy expressed by my cousin, Elizabeth, when she at last read words from the much missed loved one. Furthermore it was that he was indeed planning to return home, although several accidents would cause delay.
True his final arrival was tainted by the fact that it was in response to the death of William, but a great nevertheless.
He was not himself though, even now I am clueless as what took place in those years he was away from us, but I noticed, more than the others perhaps, that the Victor who came back was not the same on who left. Something haunted him greatly, and there was a sickness in his air, as if he were slowly dying, and it was by a force so powerful and uncontrollable I deemed it nature, and did my best to push it out of my thoughts, for if it was indeed so there was nothing that could be done, and I had to enjoy what time I had.
But yes Victor was home, and although he did on occasion fall into fits where he became foreign to us and sought isolation, all the time he grew healthier, and I began to think, in the back of my head, where the thoughts of his impending death had been pushed, that perhaps it was to so inevitable.
One day after conversation with my father, Victor took us all for a surprise in saying that he necessitated a trip to England. My father, ever weary of his condition, had him agree to the companionship of Clerval on this journey and then he was off.
We only received letters of joy and wonder from Clerval at the sights they encountered and we were all infected with the feeling, sure things were finally looking up, but fate is a cruel friend.
Soon received news that Victor was sick again, his condition worse then ever, and in the same letter we were informed that our dear friend, bright and young Clerval, was dead, murdered.
"What curse," I asked myself, "has been cast upon me? What force has no mercy for the torment of my soul?" And come to pass how should these two events have come to notice in the same letter? It was from the prison, where Victor was being held, suspected of being Clerval's murderer.
I did not let my mind ponder this thought, I deemed it neither truth or false, remembering the account with Justine, but simply removed all thoughts around it from my mind making it as if Victor were dead too, or rather his existence was temporarily void. Since my earliest recollections I held my brother on a plate form, his inquisitive soul, intelligent mind, and romantic nature were all that I hoped to be, and I was sure to see him fall so would be my own destruction.
In this once instance I will record that luck did indeed strike upon me and when my father went to visit Victor, he returned with him, innocent and healthier to the degree he knew what was taking place about him. However there was a tangible anxiety in the air around him, as if he were haunted by a phantom very real and very dangerous to him, but all negative thoughts were pushed from my mind when his marriage to our cousin was announced.
Evil fate! There again it was only playing its torturous tricks on me. On the very night of our celebrations I was struck again. Like lightening were these attacks in the suddenness, swiftness, and destructiveness, but lightening is never supposed to strike the same place twice, and my attacks had been endless. Can you yet guess? Elizabeth was dead. Victor returned to us, and the news took my father.
I am sure it seems I fly through these deaths now, and you wonder where the lengthy explanations of those earlier are. In truth I can no longer truly reflect in detail, at that point in my life I entered a state of numbness, and my memories are covered with a thick fog; there are pains too much for the mind to allow.
But now everything is unbearably clear. Each tick of the clock is a dreadful dragging moment of agony forever imprinted upon me. I know exactly when I made this transition too, 1 year, 2 months, 5 days, 7 hours, 6 minutes, and 52 seconds ago…53…54…when Victor left.
It was the middle of the night when I was roused from a fitful sleep I had just fallen into still mourning the death of my father. Victor was standing over me, his eyes wild, and I realized he had gone mad, and that it had happened long ago. That which haunted him was his own deranged mind.
He had a suitcase in his hand and he swung me over his shoulder. We got in the carriage and were off. I wanted to ask where we were going but I was afraid, and overwhelmed by this sudden awareness after all that numbness.
We stopped in front of the Geneva home for orphaned boys. It was raining that night. I can still hear our steps sloshing across the sidewalk and up the front steps. We went straight to the headmaster's office and to my surprise a light was on inside. Victor told me to wait outside. I stood there just waiting, not in shock just calculating. It didn't make sense.
I heard some quick hushed words then Victor came back and placed his hands on either of my shoulders and looked at me with piercing eyes, desperate for understanding, "Ernest…"
His eyes pleaded with me and suddenly everything clicked in my head. He may be mad but he is my brother, and he was all I had. I also knew what was going on. "I know," I said, "you have to go, but you'll come back for me, when you're done doing whatever you have to do. I have to stay here when you do it but you'll come back for me." Why does it sound like I was trying to convince myself more than comfort him?
Anyway when I said that his eyes turned and I could no longer read what he was feeling. He got up and walked out. After a short moment I followed him. I do not know what possessed me to do so, I was not chasing after or trying to stop him. I just walked calmly out the door into the pouring rain, down the steps, and fell to my knees a couple paces further. "You'll come back for me…" I started repeating over and over, it was like a chant as I watched him climb into the carriage.
A clash of lightening coincided with the crack of the whip and the carriage was off, Victor never looked back.
Suddenly I was screaming "YOU'LL COME BACK FOR ME…" The phrase ripped itself from my throat without end, raging like fire. It only stopped when I collapsed out of breath on the wet pavement.
The headmaster had at some point joined me out in the rain, he leaned down and put his hand on my back and said, "Its time to come in Ernest," with a soft voice and gentle eyes.
I just stared at him, I couldn't seem to work my body, either to get up and follow him, for I really was ridiculously wet, or to tell him he was using the wrong voice. That voice was for the boys who came here for forever, not for your guest who was going to use your services for a short time whiles their caretaker was away.
He sighed and picked my frail frame of the ground and began to carry me inside. "There, there now, every thing is going to be fine. A strapping young lad like you will have more friends than you can count here before you know it. Don't worry."
These words were wrong too. They were comfort for those who needed comforting, they were…
"Frankenstein, E."
A chuckle ran through the class room and I looked up at the professor who was staring at me, apparently this wasn't the first time I'd been called. "Present." I called.
"In body but apparently not in mind!" the stout man snapped, and then raised a thin envelope, "If you would care to retrieve it, there is a letter here for you Mr. Frankenstein."
I got up and started walking down to isle to him. Around me I saw all the other kids, and continuing my reflection, they are the ones for whose the headmaster's words were meant that night, not me. "You'll come back for me…" I'd said, over and over again. I realize now that I was stuttering, trying to get out the rest of the sentence. "…because it's a lie." The sign on the door says "Geneva home for orphaned boys".
All those eyes that stared at me as I walked up the isle belonged here, I did not. Me existence here was a lie. They were alone. They had no one. I had Victor. I was not alone.
I took the letter from the professor's hand and opened it.
To Ernest Frankenstein,
I send this letter directly to you, you dear ill-fated young boy, because I know that there is no one it my go through first so that they may portray to you its gruesome news and soften the blow. On my expedition I picked up a man strangled on the ice, your brother, Victor. He was very sick and I am afraid has left us.
My dearest condolences to you, you unfortunate boy,
Robert Walton
Forgive me I was wrong. I have no one. I am alone; completely and utterly alone.
