What is life? Does life live in the veins, the blood, the tissue, the very matter that makes up a human being? Or an animal? Or a monster? Is it in the atoms that make up the breath one expels from their lungs? Or in the heartbeats in a chest? The answer isn't as simple as you may think it. Had he been his creator tom might have thought these were the things that made a life, or ended one. But that had been the doctors mistake. You can't amass a few pieces of people that used to be, string them together and call it life. Because once the last rites have been read and the soul has left the body, all you're left with is a hunk of dead meat. A corpse that has all the things that would seemingly mean life to a scholar or a doctor.
But that's where people get it wrong. They get it so wrong! You see life isn't about the flesh. It isn't in the bones, the muscles, the skin. Not in the way people think at least. Life may lie in these places but not as you'd expect. It's not in the pumping of blood that you see life, but in the way your blood goes cold when you're scared, or rises to the surface at the compliment of a crush.
Life isn't found in the mundane rising and falling of breaths in a chest. But in the way those breaths get trapped, until you fear you may explode. When they increase rapidly, swirling through your lungs before they can even be put to use.
Amalgamation of many things come together to create you in this world. You're born of pain. You're born of screaming and tears. Of ripping and stretching and tearing and people call it beautiful. Tom wonders if a baby knows it has been born. If it existed in darkness or light before it came to be in this world. He doesn't much think he existed at all before the doctor. He was never a baby. No one cried for him. No one laboured for him. But plenty had screamed.
His creator had wanted to create life, but he hadn't succeeded. It is as we previously discussed you see. Victor Frankenstein had always been a scholar and as such approached things in this manor. He'd remembered all the right parts, had assembled them in the correct order. The intricacies of the veins, the stretching and contracting of the muscles. Everything was scientifically correct.
But when that lightning had struck and the corpse animated and the monster was, no not born but forced into being. He had forgotten one aspect. The one thing you cannot steal from a grave. what no amount of science in the world would make victor capable of giving his monster. We may now answer what it is that makes a life. life is born of love. It is the very foundations of who we are. We kill for it, we survive for it.
Yes the 'good' doctor had definitely forgotten a vital ingredient when trying to create life that fateful day. For you see you cannot create a soul. Cannot force one into being. If you try it will be a twisted, dark, ragged thing, something you cannot even hope to liken to a soul. Tom was Dr Frankenstein's great failure, for you cannot have life without love. You cannot have love if you don't have a soul.
When he was first shocked into being by that lightning bolt, he was cold. Though he didn't yet know what cold was. It was dark, he didn't yet know that that meant night. His creator had looked upon him with horror. He didn't yet know what that meant. Could never have fathomed that that look had sealed his fate. Doomed him to a life of only cold, of eternal night.
He had reached out his pale hands, grasping at air as victor had thrown himself as far away as possible in the small space. All he had wanted was physical contact, the way a baby cries for his mothers touch. But he was cruelly denied, the man instead staring in horror at the abomination he had unleashed. Rising from the metal slab like a dark lord.
The rejection would be the first of many, and Tom did the first thing his instincts begged him to do. He ran.
Super short just to get the ball rolling. I wrote this during a mental breakdown at three in the morning and i hope you enjoy it. Reviews are always welcome. Constructive criticism is just as welcome. If you're reading this at all thanks so much!