CIRCLES OF SATAN

I woke up halfway, as the coachman reported, though I wasn’t entirely sure I had really dozed off. I wanted to stop the carriage, take in the British countryside, and rest from the jolting, but the clouds were gathering, and we decided it would be better to reach our destination before nightfall.

Or perhaps I just wanted to delay the inevitable encounter with Baron Frankenstein—no, I hadn’t heard any of the scary stories about him, but each time I was subjected to a new treatment, anxiety built up inside me, squeezing my throat, making it hard to breathe. Gathering the last drops of optimism, I literally forced myself to believe that this time, it would be different.

And it was. Though, not exactly in relation to my illness, which prevented me from moving properly, speaking clearly, and, generally... living.

Baron Frankenstein, whom I had briefly met in Edinburgh, greeted me quite warmly, strutting around the tower in an emerald robe and beige leggings, flustered, saying he hadn’t expected me today. He hospitably invited the coachman and me to the dining room, poured tea, and immediately asked if I knew that he was busy with his primary experiment and would attend to me as time allowed.

The examination was the following day, and I had time to arrange my room, try to insulate it from the winds that had just begun to rage in the north.

Victor and I pinned all our hopes on electricity—he believed that if electrodes were properly inserted into the right places on my body, I would be able to better control my movements. He was eager to study this aspect on a living person so that later…

I had heard a little about his experiment, and at dinner, he explained everything to me in detail.

Fear sent shivers down my spine. If everything worked out, the revived creature would breathe, move, perhaps even *feel itself*, but would it have a soul? How could one ignite that spark in something literally pieced together from the bodies of those killed in war?

To be honest, I couldn’t finish my dinner after all those... details. Victor didn’t even notice, his eyes burning with dreams and purpose, and being a dreamer myself, I understood him.

Thus began the weeks in his laboratory, the treatments, and the absence of other distractions. They didn’t fully cure me, but they did help. Of course, Victor devoted more time to his main creation than to me, but what worried me was something else—he had gradually stopped eating properly and, frankly, stopped taking care of himself altogether. After my arrival, I did what I could to tidy up the so-called kitchen and arranged for local farmers to supply meat and other produce, but I was the only one eating them—Victor managed to survive on just bread and milk.

But in time, he stopped eating even bread.

I would peek into the laboratory when he worked on that... Creature, cutting off limbs, pondering where to attach the electrodes. He did all of this with an intense passion, one I had hardly ever seen in anyone before. His mind burned with the work he loved so much.

It turned out this was my weak spot.

I would look out the window, at the soulless vastness, and suddenly... A thought, which had been intangible for the past few days, wandering in my body, my soul, finally took form, catching my breath when I saw familiar curls in the clouds. After a few deep breaths, I jumped from my chair, dropping the album with my clumsy attempts at writing—my hand had failed me again.

The realization of being in love never came easily to me; it seemed like a weakness, yet another one that I was ashamed of, another one that makes me feel like I lose control for one more thing, aside from my disobedient body.

The following days I became quieter, no longer visiting Victor outside of our procedures, no longer chattering about silly things during the rare moments he would go down to fetch milk. Like all men, he noticed nothing.

Everything I had ever dreamed of happened one beautiful morning. It started with my passionate kisses and ended with his all-encompassing presence throughout my body..

And after that... almost nothing changed, except that sometimes I would come to his bedroom at night, lie next to him, hold him from behind, hoping that he could relax, get some rest—he had started having trouble sleeping too.

We communicated more or less as we had before, except that sometimes I would plant a soft kiss on his scruffy cheek, or gently stroke his back. From time to time, I caught his gaze, as if he wanted to thank me for everything, but could not express it either in words or actions.

Closer to autumn, Harlander—the investor who had provided Victor with the funds for the laboratory—began to visit more frequently. At first, he took me for an incompetent servant, but when he learned about the treatment, he frowned, and from what I could overhear of their conversations, he almost ordered Victor to send me home, so as not to distract from work on the Creature. With every visit, I felt, I could almost *touch* with my skin, that he was on the brink of making that decision. But when Harlander left, I would go to my beloved, say nothing, just look into his eyes, then hug him.

One day, the breakthrough came. He finally figured out where to place the electrodes to bring the Creature to life. All that was left was to wait for the storm... But it seemed to be already raging, either in my soul or somewhere else, as long as soul wasn't important. I trembled, even though physically I felt fine. I had a sense of foreboding.

Everything started to rumble and shake, and Victor sent me down to the cellar, while he stayed upstairs with Harlander.

I huddled into an armchair and covered myself with a soft blanket.

That night, there were many lightning strikes, but one hit harder than all the others, and in that moment, it felt as if the tower had split in two, and I knew that Victor had succeeded.

The entire day passed like a dream—Victor didn’t come until closer to noon and led me out of the cellar, carefully, as if he didn’t want me to notice... Harlander’s body. But I guessed everything. Victor was deliberately attentive during our so-called breakfast, while I couldn’t bring myself to swallow a bite.

“You did it, didn’t you? I heard the lightning.”

He looked at me with those beautiful eyes, full of grief, nodded, and then covered his face with his hands.

Suddenly, a growl echoed from the laboratory. Victor jumped up and quickly walked in that direction, but as he passed, he touched my shoulder, and I flinched, turning toward him. This was nearly the first time he had initiated any touch since that morning, and I realized he was seeking support, someone to not be alone with his creation.

Unfortunately, I was more afraid of the Creature than he was and I hurried to close the door. I had no interest in the reanimated corpse, and somewhere deep in my soul, with each passing second, my fear grew — both for Victor and for myself, after all, if something happens, it will be much more difficult for me to defend myself.

He was gone for several hours, long and agonizing, but his voice, sometimes loudly speaking to the Creature, kept me from panicking.

He returned and sat back down at the table in the same position.

"Jacqueline,"—he moved closer and placed his hand on mine, looking into my eyes with those dark, familiar depths. I sighed—no longer the familiar fire that had once drawn me to him; for the first time, I saw resignation in them. "You need to leave. It’s still unreasonable, maybe even dangerous. I need to teach it... I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. I just..."

He began to cry into the dirty sleeve of his shirt. I stood up and hugged him from behind.

I wanted to argue, to say that I wouldn’t leave him alone, but we both understood the danger. Until the moment I left, I didn’t believe what was happening. It all seemed like a bad dream. On one hand, I tried not to leave Victor’s side, to spend every minute close to him; on the other, I didn’t show how much he had come to mean to me. He was silent, and only when I met them with the coachman, who had been found in the nearest village, did he allow himself to hug me, look into my eyes, and then briefly kiss my neck.

"I'm so sorry."

I could only hold him tighter, clutching what little remained alive in him, the hope that hadn’t yet left him, and force myself to believe that I would see him again, feel that fire that had once drawn me in...

I was leaving, and as the twilight settled with dense fog, I felt nauseous, as if I were making the wrong choice. But what else could I do, other than fall apart completely on the approach to Edinburgh, crying nonstop, feeling as though my entire being, all my emotions, had been left behind in the north, in that cold tower where the fire had burned recently. And not just in Victor’s eyes.

A week later, William and Elizabeth came to visit, aware of my treatment. I didn’t answer their questions, afraid to lift my eyes, red from endless tears. Seeing my condition, my aunt hurried to send them away, and I didn’t even know that they had immediately gone there, and when I realized, it was already too late.

They returned almost immediately. They—Victor and Elizabeth—because the Creature had attacked William, jealous of his own fiancée, and ran off into the forest, while Victor, losing his mind, had tried to subdue it. William had been left in the burning tower, struck by a piece of it, severely wounding Victor. I heard all of this from Elizabeth—she was sobbing on my shoulder as she desperately tried to explain the story. We both trembled, but deep down, I couldn’t help but feel relief that my Victor was alive, even if unconscious, and would need to recover. I would be there for him. Always.

But... But men—stubborn fools. Even when still weak, Victor whispered that he would go search for the Creature, but we didn’t pay much attention to it. Only when he could move more or less on his own did I begin to notice that he had something planned. Externally, nothing had changed—he still didn’t show much initiative, only holding my hand under his for long periods of time, but his thoughts were clearly elsewhere.

Gradually, while caring for him, I began to regain control over my own movements, and I felt as though I were glowing. Though I tried not to show it to him, because…

Day by day, he retreated further into himself, sinking deeper into the troubling thoughts that tormented him at night. I needed to pull him out of this state by any means, make him understand that, despite everything, he was important and loved. But... Everything happened just as in my pre-dawn nightmares—a cold bed, me running through the mansion, gasping for breath, waking the servants, Elizabeth, and finding neither him nor his belongings anywhere.

Of course, he didn’t return that day, nor the next night. Only the following day did we think to question the neighbors, and what they told us didn’t make sense in my mind—they had seen the Creature, two meters tall, peering into the windows of buildings. But the most terrifying part was that it whispered a name—not its creator’s, but Elizabeth’s. She had heard it firsthand, and the poor girl, trembling, pressed herself against me.

For a while, it was almost unbearable to flinch at every rustle, to feel that inexplicable, almost animalistic fear at every moment. Of course, Elizabeth had gone to the continent to be with her family, and I could scarcely imagine how she would live with it now...

As for me, I stayed in Edinburgh, alone with it all. With the fear that gripped my throat, almost the same as on the journey to the tower, only a hundred times stronger. With the hopeless waiting, when you can do nothing.

But hope lived in me—that Victor would return alive. And faith, too—what else could keep me afloat? What else could make me peer into the emptiness of the forest, expecting him to emerge from it any moment?

Love, though, that’s what kept me burning, not letting me give up when it seemed like there was no strength left to hope and believe. And most importantly, because of it, I sent my strength to Victor, like electric charges, hoping and believing in a miracle...

This fanfiction I've really written with my heart, yet without my hands, since, as my heroine, I have major health issues (CP) and manage to create with my fingers of foot.

I don't want you feel sorry for me, I just want you to realize what this work actually means to me❤️‍🔥

There's kinda discrepancies with the original screenplay of Frankenstein by Guillermo Del Toro.