table until I either withered and died, or until some stranger discovered me and slaughtered me for being an ungodly creature. The cruelty of that was more than I could take, for if that were to happen I would never know if Friedrich Hoffmann and the dear woman whom I believed to have been my beloved truly existed or were merely figments of my imagination. And if my dear Johanna had existed, I would never have the opportunity to avenge her murder.
I wept silently then, and continued to weep until I was too exhausted for even that. Eventually night arrived, and I remained helpless and alone in that cursed room. That night, like every other night since Frankenstein brought me into the world, I lay awake without the hope of sleep to offer me a temporary reprieve from my misery.
A week passed without any change in my situation, except that I began to feel the slow gnawing of hunger and a horrible thirst, which confirmed my earlier thoughts about the ointment that Frankenstein had applied nightly to my body. The loneliness I felt was crushing. Even when Charlotte had been held outside of my view, I drew comfort knowing that a sympathetic soul resided only a few feet from me. The miserable nature of my new circumstances must have pushed me closer to madness, for I even found myself missing my host’s nightly satanic chanting.
Frankenstein’s abrupt departure and my abandonment made little sense, at least if I were truly as crucial to his plans as he and the Marquis had implied. What could possibly be the reason for these actions? A cold panic overtook me as I understood what must have happened. They had been discovered. That was the only explanation for these rash developments. Their fiendish plans had been discovered and they were now running for their lives.
A hopelessness welled up within me and I unleashed a horrible bellow, the coarseness and inhuman nature of the sound surprising me. I realized my cry might draw strangers to the dwelling and lead to my discovery, but I did not care. If strangers desired to slaughter me while I lay tied and helpless, I welcomed it. At least it would speed a possible reunion with Johanna, if she had in fact existed, and if Friedrich Hoffmann’s soul resided in my body as I prayed it did. I bellowed until I was hoarse, but it brought no visitors.
Just as a hopelessness had only minutes earlier taken me over, so did now an all-consuming rage. How could a merciful God allow these atrocities? And if the spirit residing in me was human, and if I was being tested in my faith as Job had been, how could any God put one of his unfortunate children through the horrors that I had endured? If I were Friedrich Hoffmann as I believed, maybe I hadn’t always been the most devout practitioner of faith, and maybe during my life I had leaned more toward science than the church, but I had always tried to live an honorable life. How could I have deserved this?
I bellowed again in rage, and stopped only when I realized the leather strap that had been tied around my chest had broken. The slow trickle of strength that had been ever so slowing ebbing back into my body must have turned into a raging torrent over the last few days, for in my rage I broke that strap, which was something not even a wild beast could have done. I sat up with ease and tore apart the strap that bound my legs to the table as easily as a child might have torn a paper ribbon.
I was free.
Clumsily, I fell to the floor, my legs feeling foreign to me. As I balanced on my feet and stood up, the top of my head brushed the very same wood-beam ceiling that I had spent so many hours staring at. What the Marquis had said was true. I was enormous in size, at least eight feet in height. For several moments I tottered on my feet before I gained my balance. With every breath I felt more strength in my legs, as if they were becoming more a part of me. I lifted my hands to my face and gasped at what I saw. As with the glimpse I had caught earlier of the rotted appendage that had been cut from me, these were monstrous hands. Large and gnarled, with that same unearthly translucent flesh, and matted black hair which grew out in clumps along my knuckles and even on my palms. But they were also strong and powerful. I could feel the strength in them as I squeezed them closed. I looked down at my legs and saw they were of the same nature.
Crouching so that my scalp didn’t hit the ceiling, I left the laboratory. The adjacent room appeared to be a sitting room. Like the laboratory it had been emptied. Beyond the sitting room was what must have been Frankenstein’s living quarters. I went through these rooms carefully, hoping to find something that would indicate where Frankenstein had fled, but these rooms, outside of a few scattered objects of worn furniture, had been emptied also. A dressing mirror rested on the floor of what must have been Frankenstein’s bedroom. Trepidation filled me as I crept toward the mirror. Nothing could have prepared me for the hideous apparition that looked back out at me as I bent low in front of the mirror. My face was that of a daemon. Twisted, distorted, the mouth an ugly knife-slit and the flesh that same strange grayish skin that covered my appendages and hands. A thing of nightmares. My eyes in particular were awful. Watery, and what in normal eyes are white, in mine a yellowish- bloody color. I could barely stand to look at myself, and I turned away from the mirror. I stood frozen for a long moment before searching the rest of Frankenstein’s quarters, but found nothing that could help me.
When I was done I went back to the laboratory so that I could take the blanket that had earlier covered my body, and wrapped it around my middle. I then exited the doorway that led out of the apartment, and found myself at the top of a staircase. Frankenstein must have rented the top floor of a rooming house. Why no one came to investigate my earlier bellowing, I couldn’t say. Perhaps Frankenstein had also rented the other floors so that he would have privacy, but I chose not to investigate. All I wanted to do was leave that cursed place. I bent low and made my way down that narrow staircase. The outer door led to an alley. I stepped outside and stood gasping in fresh air and feeling the sun’s warm rays upon my face as I looked heavenward. Noises from the street beyond reminded me of my situation. I stole quietly down the alley and saw the bustle of men and women as they made their way down the street, and as I watched them I realized I couldn’t leave this way, not without raising a mob against me. Instead I came up with another plan.
CHAPTER
7
I reentered Frankenstein’s laboratory. From there I climbed out of a window and lifted myself onto the roof. The pitch of the roof was steep, but it gave me little trouble and I scrambled to the top while keeping my body low so that anyone glancing upwards wouldn’t see me.
From my vantage point I could see several familiar sites that showed I was still in Ingolstadt: the magnificent tower of the Church of Our Lady, the old ducal castle, the Danube river flowing outside of the city’s walls. These sites alone should have provided me enough evidence that the memories I possessed were real, but I still felt a great uneasiness concerning how much of my memories I could trust. These sites could have been embedded into the mind of any person who had ever been to Ingolstadt. As much as seeing these cherished landmarks raised my spirits, they did not prove that the rest of what seemed so real to me had not been imagined.
I crouched at the top point of the roof and searched the neighborhood until I spotted what I needed, which was on this very same street. The houses were situated so that they were close to one another, and in some cases their roofs were connected, and I was able to climb from one roof to another until I reached my destination. I then climbed down the building I was on and entered a tailor shop. Once inside I secured the door and closed the curtains so that no one from outside could look in. The tailor, a small and thin middle-aged man with even less hair covering his pink scalp than what the Marquis had had, sat hunched at a table as he worked on the construction of a coat. He shouted out his surprise on realizing that someone had entered his store and closed the window curtains without his permission, and demanded to know the reason for this, his voice high-pitched and quavering with indignation. Once he looked up at me his face fell slack, his eyes as fearful as if any other wild beast had wandered into his store.
“You will make for me a pair of trousers,” I told him. “Also a hooded cape, with the hood large enough to hide my face.”
He gulped noticeably, his eyes blinking rapidly as he stared at me. When he could talk, his voice came out in a squeak.
“Who will pay for this?” he asked.
I laughed at his question. How could I not? The sound of my laughter was something horrible and it caused the tailor to shudder and the blood to drain from his face.
