Happy Halloween 2018! There'll be a few shout-outs to other Frankenstein adaptations or retellings; how many can you find?
Disclaimer: I'm not Mary Shelley, whether in ghost form or revived from the dead. Though Frankenstein is in the public domain, I don't own the story.
There were no dreams in that darkness. All that had happened before was still, black silence, and eternal peace.
So much sharper was the contrast, then, when she awoke in a burst of pain and light. Unable to breathe, utterly paralyzed, save for the rapid pounding of the newly awakened heart in her chest.
Light flashed above her, making her flinch. The simple motion sent sparks of pain through a new, raw nervous system, and she gasped. But that desperate gasp-how glorious, how cold and pure! Then another, and another, till the rhythms settled into a natural pattern in harmony with the thudding of her heart.
The creature lay on her back, blinking and slowly grasping her new reality, cold and stiff as it was. She experimented with movement, moving her uncooperative fingers until she could lift her hands over her eyes. Her head lolled from side to side after a moment, not content with just herself but with the immediate world.
As she made sense of light and dark, panting and shivering on the chilly surface beneath her skin, and then paused when a blurry shape moved and bent over her. A face. She relaxed for only a moment before the rest of the being's face twisted. The shape of the mouth sent an odd tightening through her chest despite the feeling of familiarity. Some flicker of instinct found the look … unsettling.
Then the room burst into flames, consuming the shape and everything around her.
If the tenement was loud at night, it was almost deafening during the morning, when its occupants came home from their labors or rose to begin them. Schneider, next door, started up another round of complaints at the noise and the light and his hangover, which woke Eva from her sleeping place on the floor.
She squinted at the ceiling and put the back of her hand to her forehead. "He wants quiet. Yet he shouts."
Up on the bed, Agatha moaned and pulled up her blanket higher at Eva's murmur. She whined something unintelligible in French, which made Eva smirk despite not understanding.
Her smirk slid from her lips as she thought back to her dream. Her nighttime visions were rare, probably because there wasn't much memory to draw from.
But this … the sensations, the face, the fire…
Someone else who believed in such things might call it a portent, while others might have dismissed it as a manifestation of fear.
Eva pressed her fingers harder against her skin. Maybe it was just fear. Not of the memory, but of her near miss when she'd left the tenement. Fire and pain surely awaited her if she were discovered by the general population.
She listened to Schneider complain up until he left, willing him to be silent. Reluctantly, Agatha rose, kicked off her blankets, and shuffled to the small stove.
"Too close," Eva said without looking up, already aware that Agatha was lighting the match near her face and hair. Her vision, Eva was both glad and devastated to learn, was rather poor.
"I'll be fine."
Eva grunted and got up off the floor. She reached to take the matches from Agatha before she could strike it and possibly ignite the wisps that had come loose from her braid.
As she did, Agatha pulled back much further than she needed to. The box almost fell to the floor, and Eva only just caught it.
Wearing a pinched expression Eva recognized as impatience, Agatha set down a pan on the stove with a clank. "Did anyone see you?"
Eva was silent. She crouched to light the stove.
"Last night. When you left. Did anyone see?"
She shook out the match, leaving a trail of smoke in the air.
"Eva." Agatha's voice could never really be harsh. It was too light and sweet. But she certainly could manage sternness and, even worse, disappointment.
Trying to keep her face neutral, Eva stood. She let her hair fall like a dark curtain between them. "Yes."
"Why? Why did you leave?"
"I remembered. A little, but … something."
Agatha nodded. At least she understood how vital this was, even for a small slip of memory. "What did they do?"
Eva's sigh rumbled in her throat, almost becoming a growl. "They shouted." As usual.
"They followed you?"
Her eyes, which even the nearsighted Agatha avoided, slid to the door. Even among the building's noise, they would have noticed someone trying to enter. "Obviously not. It was too dark."
"But under different circumstances, they might have," Agatha pried.
"Maybe. But…" Eva shrugged. "They would come for me, not you. I am the monster they fear."
"Don't call yourself that," Agatha scolded. "They are ignorant, small-minded, awful people, and you need not be like them."
Eva fidgeted with the handle of a spoon. "How," she asked, "do I grow, if I do not go out there?"
"You have books-"
"I learn," Eva interrupted, nodding in agreement, "from books. But I do not remember from books. I remembered…" She pointed to the window. "By going outside."
"And if that's not enough? What if it only brings you harm?" Agatha protested.
Both women turned sharply to the wall opposite M. Schneider's, interrupted by a cry of pain, rather than complaint, followed by a harsh and bitter remark. Though the tongue was foreign, Eva did not need to guess at the words' meaning.
Her pain, the foundation of her earliest existence, had shifted to others' bitterness. The ache of pain past and pain ongoing without a foreseeable end. And that bitterness bled into a vicious cycle that Eva was not unfamiliar with.
In the angry, fetid living quarters, that vicious cycle usually fell on women, children, and the weak.
Eva was halfway across the small flat before Agatha exclaimed, "Wait!"
The smaller woman raced to the door and flung out her arms. She planted herself in Eva's path, trembling. "Wait-you cannot!"
Again, a voice cried out.
"If I don't, whoever that is-" Eva jabbed a finger at the wall, "-will get hurt!"
"They'll hurt you, too!" Agatha looked wildly around the room as if to indicate the whole building. "Everyone will. All it will take is a scream, and our peace-fragile as it is-will be destroyed."
"I don't care." Eva's fists clenched. She wanted to push Agatha aside, to shatter the doors in her path, to confront the bringer of violence. With her presence alone, she would stop the attack, and a simple gesture would make sure it never occurred again.
"Leaving here will only cause you harm. For all you know, someone is still searching for you from last night." Eva felt guilt wrench her insides. "Creating a scene here could lead them to you!"
Despite her words and the thundering of her heart in her ears, she couldn't move. The horrified face from last night-from every night before she'd found Agatha-hovered before her eyes.
Eva rocked back on her heels. "I-I want to help." She heard her voice falter.
There was a shine to Agatha's eyes, but she did not move from the door. "I will go by later," she promised. "To make sure everything is all right after the husband leaves for work."
"Why not now?"
Her expression threatened to crumple around the mouth, the brows. "To go now would endanger you for certain-but it would also threaten the wife later, whenever you and I are not around. There is nothing more we can do."
"Why must it be so?"
At last, Agatha lowered her arms from the door. "I don't understand."
"I do not like inconsistency." Eva bit off each syllable. "Nor hypocrisy. Yet everyone seems to practice both, to the detriment of those around and beneath them. 'And deadlier far, our vices, whose deep taint with slow perdition murders the whole man, his body and his soul!'"
Her flatmate looked blank at the English poetry recitation, though Eva's voice had been clearer and more confident than usual.
Frustrated, Eva pursed her lips and tried again, halting, "Men say to do one thing, and they do the opposite when it suits them. Be a good example, but only in public. Give, but only to people you like. Be kind, except when someone is hideous." She froze as the last word left her mouth. Her teeth clenched, and she bowed her head.
"Their hypocrisy doesn't stop you from being kind," Agatha suggested as she crossed over to the tiny stove. "While you shouldn't be seen, you could help in small ways."
"I do not think humanity can be helped." Eva made a dismissive gesture.
"You speak like you're separate from our own race."
Eva rubbed her brow, watching the way the scars blurred in her vision with their proximity to her face. "My … existence-" she gestured to herself with her other hand, "-has given me different experiences from the rest of humanity."
For one, she doubted that most other people had had to spend a week in a kirkyard, hidden in a mausoleum with only the bones of its occupant for company, all while searchers called for blood. She doubted that most people knew what it was like to fear leaving their homes except under cover of darkness. Whether she was human beneath the deformity or not, she was still separate.
"Maybe," she began carefully, "being seen would help me remember. I am so different that someone might know."
Agatha quickly shook her head. "What if violence like this, not a storm, caused your accident? You might bring your former attacker back to you."
Eva made a sound of frustration. "So! I cannot help! I cannot seek out my own memories! I cannot even work to help pay for all this." She swept her hand at the tiny tenement. "What can I do, then? It is useless simply to wait for more lightning to strike my empty memory."
The tiny Frenchwoman closed her eyes and pressed her forehead into her palms. "I wish I could help you more, Eva. I am just afraid you'll get hurt." She drew in a breath and lifted her shoulders but not her eyes. "This situation cannot be helped. But if we're careful about it, and we avoid unnecessary risks, perhaps we can help yours."
"How?" Eva's voice was sullen.
"Well, you can't get very far in life without a name, can you? How will we find who you were safely?" Agatha laughed and lightly nudged Eva's shoulder to show that she was teasing. At least she seemed to have set aside, if not forgotten, the possible repercussions of Eva leaving.
"You gave me one," Eva reminded her.
"I meant that one you can remember. Your name. Your memories, if we can ever get them back."
Memories she'd had to go outside to recall, risking her safety and-by extension-Agatha's. Perhaps it wasn't worth it. So many people might go on without memories, learning to create new ones for herself.
Eva examined her hands again. The scars could fade in time. She could always affect a limp to hide the unnatural motion of her stride.
Her eyes were the real problem, though. Nothing could hide their unsettling appearance.
Agatha had set about making breakfast while Eva lost herself in thought. She turned on her heel and burst, "Mary?"
It was something of a game, at least to Agatha. An attempt to jar loose some lost bit of data. Her flatmate hoped hearing her original moniker-whatever it had been-would help draw out other secrets from the darkness.
"No, not familiar," Eva replied, deadpan.
How could she explain that her earliest names had been "demon" or "monster?" Or "Ahhhhwhatisthatthing?!"
Agatha wrinkled her nose in concentration. "Beatrice? Eliza? Jane?"
"You tried Jane before."
"And you're hardly trying at all," Agatha pointed out.
And Eva could not miss the deliberate change of subject. Again, she tapped the side of her head, hard and impatient. "These names, the information you give … Shovelfuls of dirt in a hole with no bottom. They bring up nothing."
"So," Agatha said, "you don't want to remember anything?" Her hands clenched at her skirt as if to emulate anger, but her round face only took on a look of pity, her eyes already shining with easily-summoned tears. "What if you have someone out there looking for you? A family? Don't they deserve to know what happened to you?"
Thunder rumbled across the sky again. Eva closed her eyes. What if those close to her had caused … this?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
If she ever even found out the truth, it would have to be something she'd resolve later. There was more to Agatha's emotional outburst, Eva knew. Death and an ocean had separated the woman from her family. Perhaps if her brother and his wife had not gone on to the Americas, if her father was not dead from heart failure following some terrible shock, she might not have tried so hard to restore Eva to her lost former self.
She drew out the chair from the table and sat, giving Agatha a penitent look under her lashes. "Try again?"
Agatha gave her a pout in response. But though she folded her arms, she answered, "Rebecca? Or Brona?"
"No."
"Lily?"
"No." Too fast; Agatha's expression was pinching again. Eva winced.
"One more," the Frenchwoman decided, her tone suggesting that she was done with the game for now. She bit at her lip, considering. "Victoria?"
Eva sighed. "Victoria is not…" Her words caught in her throat. Carefully, she mouthed the word again, feeling the catch of her teeth on her lower lip, the click of her tongue against the roof of her mouth.
A flash of cold blue-white light, accompanied by raw nerves and gasping breaths. A tiny room, the smell of death, a face. Her dream, just before the noise of her surroundings woke her.
But the name wasn't quite right…
Staring somewhere beyond Agatha, she murmured, "Victor?"
"You remember something?" demanded Agatha. "Victor? Who's Victor?" She dropped to her knees, taking one of Eva's scarred hands.
Yes, she did remember. But something about the memory, faint as it was, and the darkness behind it was … wrong. Wrong enough that Eva closed her mouth. Gave a small, apologetic smile and shook her head. Even with all the questions rattling her brain and squeezing her chest, Agatha wasn't likely to understand enough to give answers.
"I know no Victor … but I can ask around for you," Agatha insisted. "While I am at work." The implication being that Eva sit inside and wait.
She made a face. "Agatha-"
"And please, don't worry about not being able to work. I'll manage all right." As if reminded, a bell tolled the hour across the city, and she turned to get her things. See if you can remember anything else while I am gone today."
Eva took a step toward her. "What if-"
"And stay inside," Agatha said as she donned a linen jacket and a bonnet.
The door closed on Eva's protests.