Welcome everyone. Hope you've read up on your Shelley and watched your Whale, otherwise the first part of this story will be very informative. Enjoy and review.
Sitting on the school bus, Niall Warburton read "Frankenstein" by Mary Shelley. It was a fascinating read. It was a pity that most films were an imitator of the Whale film, seeing something like this on screen would be great! Of course, the book had been faithfully adapted for the screen but Niall was a bit young for that. The film in question was rated R, had he lived in Canada where it was rated 14A he would only have to wait a year to watch it instead of four years.
"Is Frankenstein terrorizing the townspeople yet?" Niall turned his head and there with his short neck extended was Howard Weinerman. Randy Cunningham had… Fallen asleep reading a book? It didn't even look like an interesting book. No title on the spine or the cover, nothing that could tell you what the book was about. It must have been a journal… A big journal!
"Frankenstein isn't the monster, it is the name of the man who created." Niall's comment only caused Howard to stare. "Although the nameless monster does refer to Victor Frankenstein as his father many times, at no point does he ever take the Frankenstein name… I guess 'Adam Frankenstein' didn't sound like a villainous name, even for a tragic anti-villain… Also Mary Shelley often referred to the monster as 'Adam' as I'm sure you've guessed."
"You're making that up! Why wouldn't he take the doctor's name? That makes no sense!"
"Victor wasn't a doctor. He didn't have any kind of doctorate. He was in fact a medical student."
"That I believe. A doctor wouldn't make a bumbling idiot."
"Actually, the monster was very intelligent and highly self-aware."
"Well, that makes sense. I guess a thing brought to life by lightning wouldn't be stupid."
"The book doesn't say how he was created…"
"Then it could have been black magic!" exclaimed Howard. "That would explain why he is pure evil from the start."
"But he wasn't! He tried very hard to be accepted and spent an entire winter secretly caring for a poor family. The rejection he faced by so many caused him to go bad."
Howard went silent for a minute. This conversation was nothing but Niall correcting him. "Has he killed Igor yet?"
"There is no such character in this and that character was called Fritz. Igor was a completely different character from a movie that isn't Shelley based."
Shaking his head, Howard took a pen out of his pocket and turned to the unconscious Randy. He would have written on Randy's face had it not been for Randy's awakening.
"Really?" asked Randy. "You wanted to write 'Garbanzo' on my forehead? What is it with you and that word anyway?"
"I only tried to do that once and 'Garbanzo' happens to be inherently funny." Replied Howard.
Randy rolled his eyes. Humor varied between people. He and Howard often found the same things funny but he couldn't find anything inherently funny about 'Garbanzo."
Being on a trip to Flackville was terrible. What was there even to see? If there was anything of interest there then why did students from Flackville come to Norrisville for a good time?
It was even worse by the time they arrived. Flackville was as boring looking a place as could be. Randy wasn't even sure why there were there. Slimovitz had just packed them off to Flackville for the day. Why? Wasn't that the billion-dollar question!
Sighing, Randy looked aside and saw many a lab coat-wearing people going in the same direction. They were of all kinds but yet there was no one that Randy noticed. Specifically the right hand of Hannibal McFist! Where was Viceroy? Could it have been possible that all of these scientists could have been from Flackville? Flackville's empirical body? It seemed likely. The only question was what they were all gathering for.
And then heard it! Someone mentioned Percy Shelley's daybooks! Percy Shelley was a poet, dramatist, essayist and novelist. The husband of Mary Shelley and a major influence for the character of Victor Frankenstein, Victor had been a penname of Percy's and he had appraised with current and magnetism as well as gunpowder and myriad chemical reactions and his rooms at Oxford University had been filled with scientific equipment.
If those were truly Percy Shelley's daybooks then besides poems and novels they must have had notes about his scientific experiments! If he had put down things about his experiments with gunpowder then it was dangerous. Gunpowder was explosive and if those experiments were to be modernized they could prove dangerous! They could make terrible weapons that could cause grievous harm and even death.
He might have been the Norrisville Ninja but since Flackville didn't seem to have a resident hero, it was up to him to step in!
As Randy ran off, a hooded figure watched from the rooftops. A boy entering the scene? It was unexpected but ultimately meaningless. He would obtain the daybooks of Percy Shelley and at long last, he would find companionship.