#atok

In your previous life, you were a college student striving to get your degree in English Literature. You had your friends, your tuition fees, your exams and essays to stress about, and you had your books to read. It was a simple life. Nothing special, nothing extraordinary, just normal; you were no genius, nor a star. You were simply, you.

Which is why your current situation seemed very odd to you: you were not someone who would be considered a ‘main character’, so why had fate chosen you in particular? Why had you awakened in the body of an infant, with a mind far too developed for your biological age, after meeting an untimely death at the hands of a drunken driver?

It took all but three days to realise that this was not the afterlife, and that you had experienced the phenomenon known as reincarnation. Yet what puzzled you the most was the fact that you seemed to have reincarnated into the past rather than the future; from the antiquities surrounding your everyday life to the way your new family acted around you, you were certain that you had been reborn somewhere in Europe, between the 17th to 19th century.

In this life, you were named Evan Hartman the Second after your new father. Your father, who had insisted on naming you and raising you as a proper English gentleman in his ideal image, regardless of which sex you were born as. You see, Evan Hartman the First had long suffered from infertility, already at the age of forty four and having gone through three wives before marrying your mother as his last hope of begetting a child. Evan was a greedy man who detested the fact that his wealth would go to a cousin should he sire a daughter, and thus, upon learning of his young wife’s pregnancy, decreed that the babe born must be raised as his son and heir regardless of what they were.

You disliked that name, for it never quite felt like you; you were but an image of someone else’s making. And so you would call yourself your true name, (y/n) (l/n), the one you held on to from your previous life, dreaming of the day when you would be able to just be you again.

A week after your eleventh birthday, your family moved to Geneva, Switzerland. The reason behind this move was unclear to you, you briefly remember your father mentioning something about a business opportunity aboard, yet within the month your family had begun to settle into your new life. And it was here in Geneva where you had the revelation of a lifetime.

One morning, your father had introduced you to one of his associates and his son. His son, who’s name was Victor Frankenstein. As in, the protagonist of Mary Shelly’s novel, the one you had been studying for an essay before your untimely death, the one you now realise you had been reincarnated into, Frankenstein.

You have always felt pity towards Frankenstein’s creation: you felt sorry for his lonely existence and wished that someone had shown the Creature kindness for once in his life. You remember wondering, as you pondered over his analysis in your essay, whether the Creature could have remained a benevolent force if someone had shown him kindness for once in his life.

A question you would have the opportunity to answer for yourself now.

You had a plan: you were going to save the Creature and in doing so save others harmed by his hands. For why would you sit by idly and let tragedy strike when you had the opportunity to change fate? To do that though, you first had to befriend his creator. This was a process that proved to be surprisingly easy: all you had to do was engage in philosophical and scientific debates with him, and listen to his woes on the odd occasion when neither Henry or Elizabeth was available to him. 

Soon, Victor Frankenstein became one of your closest childhood friends, and so it was only natural for you to suggest living together when the both of you were accepted into Ingolstadt; you were no science major, but they did offer you a business program which you had gladly accepted, as it meant being able to keep tabs on Victor and make it far easier to approach the Creature after his birth.

The first two years of your life in Ingolstadt were relatively peaceful (with only a few close calls when Victor nearly discovered that he was not living with a man). Then, it happened. Victor Frankenstein had finally tampered with the laws of nature.

Your first meeting with the Creature was… not ideal to say the least. You were hoping to be there when he awakened, guiding him through the world and providing the comfort that his creator would fail to give. Instead, you were awakened in the middle of the night to the sounds of heavy, ragged breathing and the smell of what could only be described as waterlogged chemicals.

To the side of your bed stood a being unlike any other. His face was a visage of angelic beauty seen in renaissance paintings; with long black hair, lips the color of charcoal and eyes of molten gold, he emitted the grace of a prince of the underworld. His limbs, long and angular and so pale that you could see the veins running through them from the moonlight, were akin to that of a porcelain doll. His body, with reasonably well-defined muscles and skin omitting a greyish blue hue, was covered in stitch marks from where limbs were attached to the body and flesh was melded together. Individually, the parts that made up the whole were nothing short of beautiful: a perfectly symmetrical face, slender limbs and a strong but slim build. Each and every individual part of him was flawless, and that was the problem.

He was too perfect.

Humans, by nature, were not perfect creatures; little imperfections and microscopic flaws in their designs were what made them, well, human. And so the Creature, who, by design, had no such things, created an overwhelming sense of uncanniness to the human brain, for it failed to comprehend a being that was totally flawless. This uncanniness, in turn, meant that the Creature was hideous in the eyes of the human beholder, for their eyes recognised him as a distortion of humanity. It did not help that the Creature was so clearly made of the parts of the dead; all it did was fuel the sense of uncanniness, as someone dead should by no means be alive.

You fought the urge to scream, both from the shock of waking up to an unknown man staring at your face, and from the instinctual repulsion felt towards a being that looked like someone twisted a human being into a renaissance statue made of flesh. You knew that the Creature would undoubtedly be wounded by your repulsion, and becoming yet another human who shunned him was the last thing on your mind. Tentatively, you raised your hand towards the Creature, beckoning him to come closer to you. He, in response, eagerly shuffled forward, the smile on his face growing even larger, and reached out his own hand to envelop your own.

For a while, time seemed to freeze. You and the Creature stared into each other's eyes, his searching, yours understanding, and a mutual feeling of safety blooms between you: your mind no longer perceives him as a threat, and his heart rejoices at the warmth your hand provides. Then, the Creature begins to lean ever so slightly in your direction, raising his other hand towards your face as if to caress you.

Bang!

And just like that, the moment is ruined. A distraught Victor Frankenstein barges into your room and drags you out of the apartment by the very hand that had held the Creature’s own meer moments ago. Said being makes a noise the mix of a yelp and a growl upon your sudden departure, reaching out towards you and his creator in an act of desperation. His golden eyes find yours in the moment of flurry, and you swear that they are begging you to come back, to hold his hand once again and share with him the warmth of your being.

Yet you cannot answer the Creature’s silent pleas, as you are all but thrown outside, where an agitated Victor scrambles out explanations and confessions. When he is finished he takes a moment to assess your physical state, seemingly looking for any injuries that might have been inflicted by his creation. He does not discover any (but he does discover that you are not a man, and takes a few minutes begging the lord for forgiveness at having shared a home with someone of an opposing gender).

“Let me have him.”

Is what you say to the befuddled scientist.

“You clearly hold no favor towards this creation of yours and feel shame for his existence. Let me house this being, for I have inherited my father’s estates upon his death last June, one of which is all but abandoned deep within the Alps. Let me take the Creature there, where he will never be seen by you nor your peers ever again.”

At first, your friend is extremely skeptical about this plan, but after an hour of convincing, Victor finally relents and allows you to do as you see fit with his creation. Walking towards your shared apartment, you can’t help but feel giddy at the prospect of having changed the future for good.

Yet perhaps you had celebrated too soon, as by the time you arrive at your destination, the Creature is long gone; you should have known that such a confused and curious being would not stay put for long.

In the months that follow, you try desperately to locate the Creature, hoping to bring him home before he experiences one too many miseries that send him spiraling on a quest for revenge against the Creator who rejected him. You follow trails, rumors, suspicious folk tales, anything to get a hold of him; you put great use in your position as a merchant, utilising various connections across the world to get a hold of the Creature’s place of residence. Yet all proves to be futile in the end: no matter how hard you try, you just can’t seem to follow a trail long enough for you to actually reunite with your ever elusive friend.

And so, you are left with the hard truth: you failed. You failed at shielding the Creature from experiencing nothing but the cruelty of humanity, and now he will come back as hateful as he was in the original novel.

You want to scream; you were so damn close! If only Victor had not dragged you out that day, perhaps you truly could have changed fate for the better. But alas, perhaps some things are simply meant to be. Your next viable option for a better future would be to somehow prevent the murder of William Frankenstein, and convince Victor to create a companion for the Creature so that he may elope with her like he promised to do in the original novel.

Or so you thought.

It turns out that fate does not like you in the slightest, because you are now face to face with the unnervingly beautiful visage of the very being who had eluded you for so long. The Creature holds you in a vice-like grip, as if he is afraid you would disappear again, and cradles you against his chest.

“Oh my salvation, I have waited so long to be beholden to your warmth once more!”

The Creature rambles fervently.

“You who have shown neither contempt nor perjury towards my existence, you who had so eagerly held out your hand to encompass my own, you who were the only being not to scream at my wretched continence, I beg of you! Save me from this miserable loneliness, for no other will have me to hold as you once did.”