Hello again, dear reader(s?)! Please remember that use of cellphones while driving is illegal in California, that brushing your teeth twice daily is likely to improve dental health, and that Frankenstein is public domain. With this established, I (in no way whatsoever) claim ownership.


Chapter 1: The Forest Near Ingolstadt

"It is with considerable difficulty that I remember the original era of my being; all the events of that period appear confused and indistinct. A strange multiplicity of sensations seized me, and I saw, felt, heard, and smelt at the same time; and it was, indeed, a long time before i learned to distinguish between the operations of my various senses. By degrees, I remember, a stronger light pressed upon my nerves, so that I was obliged to shut my eyes. Darkness then came over me and troubled me, but hardly had I felt this when, by opening my eyes, as I now suppose, the light poured in upon me again. I walked and, I believe, descended, but presently I found a great alteration in my sensations. Before, dark and opaque bodies had surrounded me, impervious to my touch or sight; but I now found that I could wander on at liberty, with no obstacles which I could not either surmount or avoid. The light became more and more oppressive to me, and the heat wearying me as I walked, I sought a place where I could receive shade. This was the forest near Ingolstadt..." Frankenstein, Chapter 11


First, there is fire. That much, I remember clearly. I escape the oppressive light of day only to wander, purposeless, through the havens of moist shadow. At length, darkness falls once again upon my surroundings, and I am forced to contend against once more against the elements. The storm-shrouded night and the bitter wind that howls wicked and wild through rain-bent branches falls upon untried ears and unknowing eyes. Feet traverse a yielding ocean of damp pine needles, but I cannot understand them to be my own. Even the bundle that shivers and screams in my arms, the bundle I need to love me at all costs, does not yet actualize as the man I come to call father.

I walk, in other words, in ignorance of my own existance. I possess the form of an adult, but my mind is still infantile, animal, unaware of the boundary that divides the self from the other. Each footstep falls of its own accord, driven by desires I cannot quite capture. How can I? I have no words to hold them with! Yet, still I move forward. Something draws me through the spiralling towers of green, across the waves of pine needles, damp with the relentless rain, despite the wind beating in my ears, despite the lightning that howls with unprovoked fury, despite the weight that strains my untried arms; Something draws me, though I have know idea what "me" is.

That's when I see it, dancing between the trees. Like nothing else I've ever seen, it seems to laugh in spite of the storm, ignoring the wind and the rain and the lightning itself. I know not its nature, but a primal impulse pulls me in its direction. As I get ever closer, the feeling of sunlight, of the brightness in my earlier wanderings, wraps itself around my skin. Victor, who for some time has been vibrating wildly, is abating in his trembling the more I approach the flickering being of light. It is only when I am standing right next to it that I notice no water is falling upon me. An enclosure, seemingly of the earth I tread underfoot.

That is how I found the barrow, and the miraculous eternal flame that dwells within.


Victor once explained to me the nature of fire-that it is the result of oxygen's interaction with certain compounds, a reaction which releases energy in the form of light and extreme heat. Though men typically use wood as fuel, there are certain gases that rise from deep within the earth, gases that burn more cleanly and brightly than felled lumber. Fires that begin over veins of such gas never run out of fuel, and have been known to burn for hundreds, even thousands of years. Some ancient peoples went so far as to worship them; The towering barrow ensconcing the fire, no doubt, was erected by the teutonic warrior priests that once haunted this forest of night. I can now understand how incredibly fortunate we were to discover it. Without that constant flame, Victor and I would have died wandering through the immeasurable wilderness of pine.

I grew up in that tomb of miraculous light. My early days, drifting past like the clouds, seemed to exist only in terms of my increasing awareness of them. Letters, numbers, and constellations wheeled above my head, like conifer seeds borne aloft on an ever expanding thermal. Victor taught me how to read, how to count, and, perhaps most importantly for him, how to listen and comprehend. I was the one who gathered food, who boiled the water, who wrapped his torn back with bandages of vines; He rested, gathering his strength for some great, unfathomable purpose. Though one might decide this unfair, or go so far as to label it an, "unequal distribution of labor" (I shudder at the thought), you must realize that, for me it was not so. More than that-it was impossible. Lacking a standard of comparison, I could not envision any other reality.

How does one describe the springtime to a child born in autumn? His world is auburn and gold, with leaves supplanting rain and a shadow-born wind to tickle his nose. He cannot understand that the forest around him is dying, cannot fathom that the sun is abandoning him for fairer climes. Would it even be possible to describe rippling oceans of green, sunlight that slips into the shade and warms even the nighttime darkness? Decay is the only thing he has ever known.

That is how I saw Victor. His feet did not move, certainly. His skin retained a far different hue, yes. He did not even possess a body of my size. None of this, however, I attributed to any deficiency on his part, but to some fundamental difference in identity. Surely, the sunset must not be held to the pine as some concrete standard of perfection!

Those were my beliefs. In those precious months, those convictions upheld my very understanding of the world with utmost perfection. For the first and last time in my life, everything was right.

Which is why it started to go wrong.


I had been learning steadily for some time now. Impressions and sensations, for so long intangible and primal, had begun at last to coalesce into thoughts and words. Sensing my newfound capability, Victor's lessons began to increase in complexity. I was a voracious learner; it is not so hard, with no other occupation to accompany the sun's progress through the cosmos above.

The previous day, Victor and I had discovered something peculiar. In the farthest, darkest corner of the barrow, a partially exposed effigy of sticks and stone, greater by far than even my own imposing frame, rested in silence. A wicker man, Victor called it. Though buried beneath a mountain of ash, it's weathered granite face was crowned with a massive circlet of gold. Impassive eyes stared in contemplation at the light, as if considering how best to quench the eternal fire and return the world to slumber. Despite that, all I could think was how similar it looked to Victor. It had caused me to question. Victor and I were one thing; now a third being, so much like us in form had appeared. What, exactly, were we?

I would not leave Victor in peace for the next three nights, until he condescended to explain to me the field of taxonomy. There were differences, he claimed, between the trees and the shrubs, the squirrels and the great brown bears that I had so often turned aside with my not-lacking strength, differences that defined them and identified them as unique upon this Earth. Of the specie and genii, the families and kingdoms that held within them the sum of life.

The knowledge was intoxicating. Such vast complexity, such intricate weavings within the wiring of the world! And in the center of it all, God's chosen creation, Man! What wonder to behold!

All the while, my question polished itself in the recesses of my heart. Victor was a human. The old dead king was a human. What was I?

This troubled me. In this phase of delicate self-definition, in which the mind yet attempts to create for itself identity, how unnerving to discover that one HAS no identity! Many were the nights I puzzled over this quandary. One taste of knowledge had opened the floodgates, and now my heart was wearied by doubts and concerns. I implored the moon and the stars, the trees and the great blue sky, but they remained scornfully silent. I turned to Victor, in the end, though perhaps I would have been better pursuing the counsel of the sky.


"Do not trouble yourself with such things. You are-is that not enough for you?"

"No, Victor, it is not! I have seen you name the things which shine in the night, which shine in the day, and which crawl upon the earth in their untold numbers. I have seen from you wonders to strange to be believed, seen you exercise dominion over the forest itself. Yet, in the midst of all these things, you have not named me!"

"Is that truly all?" Victor seemed confused. "But I have already named you! You are Frankenstein!"

"You know fully well that's not what I mean! I am Frankenstein as much as you are Victor, but beneath that you are a human, and you have a place in this world. I have nothing!" The fire between us was beginning to burn more brightly, casting darker shadows upon the barrow walls. "What AM I?"

Victor was trembling with rage. "Fine. Here is the truth you pursue with such desperation. I don't KNOW what you are! You have no place because no such place exists! Within this God-given world of light, you were wrought in the darkness! You may search until the trees have rotted away, and the corpses of the stars have torn this land to pieces, but you will NEVER find a name!"

My vision was supplanted by red, and by fury broke all bounds. "LIAR!" I bellowed, and made to step across the searing heat to force from him truth, or lies, or any alternative to the horror he had set before me. My first step, however, scattered sparks across the enclosure, and a terrible thing began to occur.

In the corner of the barrow, the ash began to burn. Sparks melted through the ancient earth towards the heart of that terrible effigy, and as though reanimated by those fragments of pure energy, it began to stir.

Layers of ash fell from the wicker man as it rose, and the form of its body at last became clear-it was a cage of countless corpses, skeletons and mummies frozen in various states of decay by the stifling ash. Warped by the rising heat, surely, but to me they seemed to grasp at me through their cage. The creation's mass rose, held by twin pillars of bones and clawed arms that scraped against the walls of the barrow, until its granite brow reached the ceiling far above. Those eyes, heartless and dead, stared blankly upon the two helpless beings at its knees. I could not tell whether the howl I heard was the fire, the corpses, or the all-encompassing terror that beat against the inside of my head.

The wicker man groaned, and its foot lifted, then fell. It took another step, shaking the walls and the ground beneath us. And another. Its taloned hand reached towards us, seeking to crush us within the inferno of its grasp.

It was fire and death, and it would consume everything. All words left me, but Victor whispered just two.

"Save me."

I grabbed Victor and fled from that place, driven by heat and quakes and a roar like undying thunder into the darkness. Even after the trees began to thin, even after we burst into the open, moon-washed fields, I didn't stop running, and I didn't look back.


Within the rippling shadows of the forest, coiled between roots and fallen needles of pine, rested a hollow, hidden from scornful sun and unrelenting storm alike, an ancient stone chamber buried beneath the soaring trees, guarded by a ring of ponderous megaliths. A Germanic chief in some era long forgotten had erected this mound for his tomb; Carved from the bones of the primeval forest, this tomb lay forgotten, and in time, the forest consumed it once more. The skeleton once resting within had long since crumbled, and the dust danced amidst the beams of the setting sun. Centuries erased the barrow from human memory, and it slept through mortar shells and tank treads alike. It is not until the 21st century that four students, poring frantically through ancient manuscripts in search of a last-minute thesis, stumble across it once more. Eager to earn their place within the histories of the world, they wander between the towering trees, armed only with their minds and the meager remains of their student loans. Against all odds, they find it. These men and women marvel at the untouched treasures, the intricate carvings nestled safely within the moss. Alone, this barrow is more than enough to recompense their endeavor. They find, however, that another mystery is at hand: Gigantic footprints arrayed around a natural eternal flame, soulless stone eyes in a lifeless granite face, and notes, in still-legible German, scratched onto a small corner of the wall, telling of a fearful scientist, the monster he birthed, and the beginning of a voyage most perilous. They decide to wait before reporting the barrow; It seems they may have found a far more interesting doctorate...


It's like playing a literary "Where's Waldo?"; How many metaphors have I squeezed into one passage? Hell if I know.

I've been working on this chapter for some time. Beyond Frankenstein itself, I owe a good deal of inspiration to "Ardennes Forest," from "The Temple of El Alamein" manga by Hoshino Yukinobu.

Let it not be said that I'm not a completely ungrateful hack-off. I'm plenty grateful, all right.

Many thanks to those who have favorited, followed, and reviewed the story so far, even though it's been essentially a half-idea. I'm hoping this chapter has enough meat on it to be enjoyable. If you like what you see, review! If you don't, review anyways! I can only get better with your help!

Three months late and making no promises,

~Forkive