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Disclaimer: I do not own this world or any of its characters. Thank you to Nick Dear, Danny Boyle, Mary & Percy Shelley, and all of the others who have shaped the world of Frankenstein, especially those who helped to make the 2011 National Theatre performance so incredible!
Victor was shivering in his sleep, his breath coming out in icy spurts that glowed blue in the bitter arctic air; this despite the fact that he was covered head to toe in a thick fur coat. His fitful sleep was being watched. A distance away, there was a something – a living, breathing something - lingering behind an ice mound and eyeing the shivering mass with curiosity.
Now, this something was not entirely sure what exactly it itself was, how exactly it should identify – it did not have a name, it did not have a home and, heartbreaking beyond measure, it did not have a friend. But if I was to describe this something, I would say that this something was a man, tall and slender with long, lean muscles and rough, battered skin – a very smart man, at that, who had read Paradise Lost and each of the Shakespearean tragedies, who adored the epic poems of Homer, and who could look at the stars and marvel at their magnitude for hours and hours without growing bored. A man with a big heart that thumped powerfully against his thin, bony chest and that yearned and dreamed and bled bled BLED – a heart that, if you could see it, would very likely be a sickly purple colour from being bruised and abused unrightfully by the evils of the world. And just like anything that lives and breathes and feels in this vast universe, this something was a creature – perhaps the most intriguing creature of all, so the Creature is what he shall be called.
The Creature hated Victor. It was a feeling so dark and sinister and all-encompassing that there were no words to properly convey it. And yet there was a larger part of the Creature that was drawn to Victor, that thirsted for his attentions and his voice and his gentle hands. Most of all, the Creature yearned to see Victor smile that smile that made his perfect porcelain skin wrinkle in pleasure but that never seemed to cross his features anymore. And it was this larger part that caused the Creature to crawl out from the security of his hiding spot to approach with careful, quiet steps the sleeping man. Slowly, gently, so as not to draw attention to himself, the Creature pulled off the dark fur coat that covered his long, lean frame and laid it across the man below him.
The Creature's light linen shirt and trousers billowed in the arctic wind but he did not mind the cold, found the icy wind as friendly as an embrace or a tickle – not that he had ever been embraced or tickled before, but he liked to imagine that they would feel as good as the wind against his tattered skin. He always thought that perhaps he liked the cold so much because he had a heart of ice; a bitter, resentful heart frozen by the taunts and ridicules and insults and rejections he had received from the very moment he was born. And yet, when his eyes caught the beauty of birds gliding along the arctic winds, feathers white as pure and untouched snows, he could not help but think that perhaps not everything that liked the cold was bad and so perhaps he himself was not so bad after all.
Victor's form was no longer shivering and the sleeping man rolled into the warmth of the furs with a contented sigh. The Creature watched the way the shadows played along Victor's face, the eloquent structure of his chiseled cheekbones, the soft dark golden curl that fell gently against his pale forehead. Victor was so beautiful, always so beautiful, and all the Creature wanted (all the Creature had ever wanted) was to share in that beauty, even if just a little. The Creature hesitated before running his large fingers along the ridges of his own face, so very different from Victor's; unlike Victor, the Creature's cheekbones were harsh and rough, obscured underneath sandpaper scars. The Creature's fingers then moved up to his high forehead where no curls fell gentle and soft but where he was instead greeted with the coarseness of blistered skin. Feeling a painful and all too familiar swelling in his heart, the Creature returned to his place behind the ice mound, wrapped his arms around his knees, burrowed his head into the coarse linen of his pants, and sobbed.
Usually when Victor awoke, he was greeted not only by the startling pink and orange hues of the rising sun but also by a deep-seated and icy cold ache in every muscle, joint, and bone of his body. This morning, though, he awoke to comfort and warmth that caressed him in a protective embrace the way his mother had once held him when he was a baby. As he sat up, a dark fur coat that was most certainly not his fell limply and heavily from his frame. He would have started in confusion except that it was at this moment, too, he heard a pitiful sound carrying across the arctic air, a mournful lament that occupied all his senses, sent his heart on edge, and filled his bones with a cold deeper than any that could be brought on by ice and snow. The arctic was a lonely place in its vast and endless nothingness, and Victor found his heavy spirit seeking out the source of this empty noise.
With an unsettled sigh, Victor packed up his small bundle of provisions, wrapped his fur coat even tighter around himself and stood up, his joints creaking stubbornly. The mysterious dark fur coat fell at his feet and he studied it with a newfound curiosity. It looked akin to one he had seen before, weeks ago, covering the body of the hideous, deformed beast that he had followed into the arctic and had lost amongst the snow and wind. This realization sent Victor's stomach tumbling in on itself, feeling more empty and hollow than it ever had before. Could whatever was making those haunting sounds….could the source of those sounds be the Creature? Victor added the dark fur coat to his minuscule pile of goods and walked forward with an energy he had not felt in weeks.
The harsh wind bit his cheeks raw but he pushed on and very soon the pathetic sounds led him to an ice mound. Crouching there, weeping so that his entire body shook violently, was the Creature. Well, Victor's first reaction was to shudder in disgust at the sight. His throat purred with detest for the crying form before him, and every inch of his body seemed to catch fire despite the frigid air. He burned with the darkest, dankest loathing at the sight of this pathetic pathetic PATHETIC crying mess. Every orifice was filled with the warmth of hatred…but then…then Victor remembered the feeling of waking up in warm comfort, warm comfort that the Creature had freely given in the form of a fur coat. Suddenly, the sight of this pathetic thing weeping into a flimsy linen shirt and trousers no longer sent Victor into waves of disgust but instead drowned him in waves of pity.
And then, breaking through the deep dark caverns of loneliness that had filled everything so entirely, the Creature sensed a light. A small light, warm and comforting, a gentle weight against his shoulder. Lifting his tear-stained face towards the light, he found himself looking into the brilliant bright eyes of Victor Frankenstein. The Creature gasped in a mixture of shock and fear, and began to pull away from what he now realized was the touch of Victor's hand on his shoulder. But then Victor smiled, a smile that sent his porcelain skin into wrinkles of mirth.
"Your eyes," Victor whispered then, studying the Creature's face intently. "Your eyes are beautiful. I never noticed before. How could I never have noticed?"
The Creature was at a loss for words. His throat constricted in a pleasurable sensation that made his heart patter giddily.
Victor's hand had moved from the Creature's battered shoulder to caress his scar-covered, tear-stained cheek. "Your eyes…they have so many colours," the golden haired man declared in wonder. "Blue, green, gold, and grey all wrapped into two small round orbs. Even more beautiful than the ocean."
Finally the Creature seemed to find his voice from somewhere in an undiscovered region of his stomach. "Odysseus travels the ocean in search of home."
Another joyful smile crossed Victor's face. "You've read The Odyssey?"
The Creature proudly nodded, a small but contented smile breaking across his scarred face.
The golden haired man continued to caress the Creature's cheek gently and, in that moment, the Creature saw the Heaven that he had once rejected as an impossible folly. Victor whispered in a warm tone that danced blissfully against the Creature's cheek, "I hope you find your way home, Odysseus." Then the warmth of Victor's hand was gone and he was quickly setting the dark fur coat in the Creature's lap before walking away into the light of the arctic sunshine.