Victor sat back in his room, a child's corpse on his surgeon table as he stared at it in grief. Rebekah appeared at the entrance from his glass patio doors as she looked at the child, as well. "What happened to her?" she asked gently. "Her name was Karina. She had a brain tumor. I removed it a few hours after she passed," Victor replied. Rebekah looked back at a tired Victor as he smiled genuinely at her before turning back to the corpse. "It's not fair to still be in pain after you've passed when there's more than a few methods that could have been used to stop it, even reverse it," Victor sighed. "So...you truly can restore life?" Rebekah asked. "Only their bodies...it's always a new soul they carry. It's so interesting...one's life cycle. They might have a new soul, but you can teach them who they once were... You can make a copy of the original soul, but the memories were a once in a lifetime collection," Victor marveled.
"I've never quite met a thanophiliac. Only very informally with the writings of Poe," Rebekah said as she sat behind him on a chair. "His books...they support my quiet profession. It's not thanophilia at all. It's the ability to trick its origin. Just like the supernatural. I'm devoted to the living and that's what I do with my work. No one has to die if they're not ready," Victor said, placing a hand on top of Karina's. Rebekah smiled slightly as she watched him covered the girl with a blanket. "Six years old. Would you think she lived a full life?" Victor asked Rebekah.
"If I can ask...if the things I've heard about Frankenstein go as they do in everyone else's literary memory...what helped along your—skill?" Rebekah asked curiously. Victor turned to her in his seat as he looked over Rebekah's flawless features tenderly. "Love and war," he replied.
London, 1892
Death was a sweeping trend in the city, whether it was the sweeping epidemics of bronchitis or the one and only Jack the Ripper that worked quicker than any plague. Today, Victor was twenty years old—today, marked the tenth year of his mother's death. His fingers worked quick and gentle on the keys of his piano, a tender butterfly flying around rapidly in a jar just next to the music sheet dashboard. The ballroom was his only escape from his greedy uncle and aunt, the bodacious party-goers who'd cared for him since his mother's death and his faceless father broke the promise of return. Van Helsing, his mother said his surname was—he insisted she give Victor her surname, feared Victor would be sought out by Van Helsing's rivals. "Victor!" his aunt called. His playing grew more intense as the vexing sound of her cigar-ridden tone came closer and closer. She called his name again from the doorway. His playing came to an abrupt stop. "Mr. Kinton has arrived," she told him.
He sat face to face with a man in his late sixties, an ink jar sitting on the wooden table beside him and pen in his hand as he wrote something down in a journal. "Any...suicidal thoughts in the last ten days?" he asked Victor. Victor kept quiet although he shook his head faintly. Mr. Kinton, his psychiatrist, took a breath as he ended the answers to his questions with one last hard period. "Now. I want to talk about what you said earlier. About the girl you've been seeing—" "Mr. Kinton with all due respect, today I wasn't supposed to see you. Nor any day past today. My aunt should have told you I'm not longer a disturbed patient for you to nurture with comforting suggestion," Victor interrupted. "She did. But she, in turn, should have told you that you are to finish these sessions, or face an institution of treatment," Mr. Kinton responded. Victor was silent again. Mr. Kinton took off his spectacles as he examined the Frankenstein living room's grand fireplace, accented with gold and the finest black Cedarwood imported from Romania. "Victor, you were only recently diagnosed with schizophrenia. And you are fairly lucky it's treatable at all. Such cognitive dysfunctions you suffer from are not so adjustable. Going to an institution—in my opinion—is a waste," Kinton stated. Victor watched him blankly from over the top of the newspaper he was just beginning to read. "...Do you think the ripper really exists? Or is he a mental figure one can point fingers at?" Victor asked, "Cut up like pig parts at a butcher. Anyone could do that. But what about the person who's dead? Do you think they linger for a while after?"
Kinton blinked, unfazed by Victor's gruesome questioning. "It's very possible," he simply answered. Victor Frankenstein's obsession with the beyond lingered. He claimed there were others that walked on with the human race, drawing them like he did the portraits his uncle, a London policeman, had taken of recent kills. Kinton had seen these drawings, and Victor was the artist of his time, every detail of the human body so perfect they could have been real. "About the woman, Victor," Kinton reminded, "Your aunt said she's been visiting you a lot." "She's not been here in the flesh, Doctor," Victor said, lowering the papers for a moment to look at him. Victor's eyes carried dark bags, and his clothes riddled with wrinkles from being slept in. "Oh, so she's an imaginary friend of sorts? My daughter says those are the best kind," Kinton smiled. "I needn't you to give me the patronage meant for a child. She's in my head, and I know it's my defected brain. She tells me we're related...and for that fact, I am to beware. I haven't the slightest clue of what," Victor replied. Kinton frowned. "What does she look like?" Kinton asked. Victor was outstretching a piece of papyrus paper to Kinton before he could finish. Kinton looked it over, putting his spectacles back on to look at the girl's features. She had eyes as painfully sweet as a rabbit's, lips as faultless as Aphrodite's, and black hair like a raven's wings. Kinton chuckled slightly. "What's her name?" he asked. Victor held an impatient gaze as he leaned his face into his hand. "Abigail," he replied.
Victor had taken Rebekah out to the greenhouse trying to finish his story as he tended to the dying roses that hid among the living, much like his family among the locals in this god forsaken town. Rebekah was incredibly befuddled by the beauty of the greenhouse, stretching out like a hallway, cradling the perfection of the flowers Victor had raised himself. "Schizophrenia...you haven't the sign of it," Rebekah observed. Victor chuckled slightly. "That's the entire beast of the incident, so I thought," Victor replied, "As it turns out, Pecus was luring us together. Victor followed Abigail, Abigail followed me...it was a chain reaction…"
Rebekah frowned. "He expected you to fall apart on them. You were getting worse, weren't you?" She tried to guess. Victor cut out a fresh rose, examining it as he sighed. "I was actually beginning to learn the cost of my mental weakness," he replied.
London, 1892
His aunt and uncle yelled and ranted and bickered all day at the subject of Victor so loud he could hear it from down the street of his home. He'd taken up an education paid for by Dr. Kinton in the anatomy department of a local college for apprentices. The doctor thought it would help alleviate the gruesome of his imagination, perhaps even the woman he'd been seeing he described to be a ghost. Victor was gone from mornings to nights, fascinated by forensics and surgical careers of each of his new friends. One problem remained: Abigail's image interfered too greatly with his thoughts.
He placed a surgical knife to the deep burn marks of the corpse's torso on his dissection table, slowly cutting in with such precision that the professor behind him complimented him as he rarely ever did any other student. But it started and it paralyzed him like a madman's drink. "Victor," the heavenly ghost's voice called sweetly. She appeared in the shadows of the light-spotted room, bare from the waist up with only her long spiral curls to cover her breasts. "You're not real," Victor heard himself whisper. "Am I not?" She breathed, "Don't fool yourself...you've asked for me in your sleep. You've been looking for me in the crowded streets and you don't even realize it. You know me." Her voice suddenly morphed with another. She rolled her neck back lustfully, a pitch black snake slipping down out of the maze of curls falling down her chest. "You...know me," the snake's male voice bellowed. Victor drew himself out of the trance, dropping his tools with a loud clink. Looking down at the body he worked on, his breathing slowed, glancing at his surroundings to make sure no one quite saw his moment of madness. He winced as he went to rub his neck, a small noise of pain coming from deep within his chest as he pulled his fingers back to look at the blood. Its warmth was creeping down into the white henley he wore, stopping along the crease created by his suspender and continuing down his chest underneath the shirt. His brows furrowed at the bit of gold liquid mixed within the blood on his fingertips. Had he been bitten? By what? He didn't think insects were powerful enough to leave two big bites... No. This wasn't real and it would go away. It always went away.
The early hours had broken free once he'd begun to walk home. His bedroom had a single gaslight to brighten the room. He remembered he once had paintings and priceless vases and a bookshelf of all the greatest scientific elements in history. His uncle suggested they be moved elsewhere until his mental illness could be determined as harmful in Victor's behavior and actions. "Victor? is that you?" his aunt called. He slammed his bedroom door shut, setting aside his briefcase full of studies and rubbing the bridge of his nose. The apparition of Abigail was standing by his window like she had most other nights. "Victor?" she said gently. "...How can you sound so clear? Or is my madness fooling around with my reality?" he questioned. She stepped towards him, her messy updo falling loose; he noticed the solid mocha fillings of its overall black shine, and it seemed as though he could truly wrap every ringlet around his finger. "You think me a ghost?" she asked. "That's all you are... Like a child, you're my imaginary friend. Good grief, I do believe I need that institution," he said hoarsely. She began to reach out, Victor waiting for her weightless touch. A jolt shot through his body as the cold of her hand met his cheek. "I don't imagine you could feel that when it's imaginary," she said gently.
Her hand drifted down to his neck and she looked at his blood-streaked henley beneath his heavy coat. "I'm too late," she breathed. "Too late?" Victor questioned. He groaned again as her fingers hit the bite, looking back at her as she returned a worried look.
"...I thought it was a physical bite he had to give," Rebekah noted. Victor handed her one of the roses without looking at her. "...Pecus bites humans with ailment...my ailment wasn't physical like the rest of them. Which if Abigail or Niklaus hasn't told you, is why Hope was bitten. She was a terminally ill human," Victor explained. Rebekah's expression changed slowly as he sat next to her. "And that's a piece of my reasons for taking on my craft—the fact of it all is that Pecus was the very first supernatural being, and wanted to build his breed like humans built humans. But he chose only those who were in the painful transition to death. I want to know what it is about the sick and past dead that intrigues his tastebuds," Victor replied.
She looked at the rose with a red rush in her cheeks until she looked back at him. "There's another reason," she observed. He nodded. "If you visit me again, I'll gladly tell it," he said shyly. She smiled slightly as she stood with him, walking with him to the door while he lit a cigarette.
