what I had done. All the furniture within the room had been broken into pieces, and the wall that the mural had been painted on had been stripped to bare stone. The floor of the room was littered with rubble.
“You should have seen how they tried to scream when I punched holes through the mural and tore it apart,” I said. “You would have thought that they were truly living instead of figures painted on a wall. If I could have left the women alone I would have, but unfortunately that was not possible, for the men all ran and hid behind the women, or at least they tried to. I have to give you credit, not only did you instill in these painted men your dark soul, but also your cowardice. As you can see, I destroyed the entire wall, and when I broke apart their figures, their faces settled into death masks. I was going to burn these pieces, but I saved them for you to see.”
I picked up one of the fragments from the wall which showed the face of one of the malicious waltzing men, and he indeed looked like a corpse the way his eyes were closed and the trickle of blood that ran from his lips and the greenish tinge to his skin. Frankenstein looked at this but only blanched at its sight. I held him where he was so he could fully appreciate the extent of the damage that was done to the room, and then I dragged him to each of the closets off of the room so he that he could see that they were equally turned to rubble.
“You haven’t asked about your guests,” I said as I dragged him to the boudoirs on this floor so that he could see the destruction that was done to them. “They were here when I first arrived. This was when I still believed you were going to be convicted of Clervil’s murder. I am afraid most of them are probably dead now, although not exactly by my hand.”
Frankenstein hadn’t made a sound as I dragged him from room to room to see how I had left them in ruin. I turned him toward me to make sure he hadn’t passed out for I wanted him to fully appreciate the fate his guests had suffered, and when I saw that he was staring at me wide-eyed but too terrified to utter a word, I continued.
“I forced them each to select an illustration from your planned drama, and I promised them that I would act out those illustrations on their bodies if they did not within one hour’s time climb down the path by foot to the base of the cliff. In their haste many of them tumbled off the cliff, and their bodies could be seen until the snow covered them. The few that made it to the bottom might have survived, but given the way they were dressed and the fact that I hadn’t allowed them to take any supplies, I doubt they made it out of the Chamounix valley. Although, who knows? Perhaps one of them did. But it did seem a fitting ending for them given how anxious they were to see those illustrations acted out on others.”
Frankenstein showed no reaction to this, and I was afraid that he might have slipped into a state of shock. When I slapped him to see whether he was still with me, he asked in a thin but irritable voice whether that was necessary. Grinning harshly, I dragged him up the stairs so that he could see how I had turned the living quarters into a ruin of what they had been, with every piece of furniture destroyed and every wall demolished.
“You might be relieved to know that I made sure that your honored Marquis was sent by donkey wagon back to Paris,” I said. “I wanted him alive. I did very depraved things to him, things that I am sure must have made him insane, and I wanted him to be able to live out his miserable remaining years within a lunatic asylum. I made sure to escort him personally down the path, and gave the carriage driver explicit directions where to take him, although I asked him to take the donkey wagon instead of the horse carriage.”
“That is good,” Frankenstein uttered in his petulant drone. “I am glad the Marquis was sent in good health.”
I couldn’t tell whether he was being sarcastic with me or was just too numb to understand my words, but I continued with our tour. “You might also like to know that all of your prisoners were set free,” I said. “Not only that but I made sure that they were brought safely to Geneva. I used the wealth left behind by your guests so that these innocents would be compensated for what was done to them. It wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough, but at least it would guarantee their safe passage back to their homes and allow them to live out their lives in comfort, and maybe someday they will be able to forget the terror that you inflicted on them.”
“That was very generous of you, Friedrich.”
This was said sarcastically, and I trembled for a moment as I fought to keep from breaking his neck. Thank God for the wine I drank!
“Do not say my name again,” I warned him. “I won’t be killing you while I give you this tour, but if you say my name again I will start breaking your bones.”
He nodded his understanding of what I promised, and as I dragged him from room to room my temper eased.
“Fortunately none of the prisoners knew your name,” I continued, my voice calm again. “If they had you would have been imprisoned, and I would not be able to act out my plans. At first I was willing to let society punish you for what you have done to me and Johanna and all of your other victims. But over these past months since your release from that Irish prison, my thirst for vengeance has grown and has become something nearly insatiable. No, letting a court punish you will no longer do. And now I have an entirely different fate mapped out for you.”
We were done with the upper floors and I dragged him down the stone steps to the dungeon. When we arrived there he saw that his eight pillars of death had been left intact.
“Pick a number between one and eight,” I told him.
He began crying then. A pitiful whimpering cry. “Please, don’t,” he begged. “You have already ruined me. You don’t have to do any more.”
I struck the stone wall with all my might, and the stone cracked under the blow. “Pick your number!” I roared.
In his fright he picked the number four.
“Ah, a coward’s number,” I said, as I chained him to the fourth pillar. “This one is only a quick spike through the heart. There are so many more fitting numbers that you could have picked, but no one can ever say that I am not a man of my word. Or should I say, an abomination of my word.”
“I gave you life!” he cried out. “How can you act so unmercifully to the one who gave you life? And these crimes you accuse me of, they were for the greater good, both for medical knowledge, and to show the world its hypocrisy, for how can you expect man to evolve if they don’t understand the nature of their cruelty!”
I had to stand very still for otherwise I would have murdered him instantly. “How dare you say these words to me,” I said, my voice every bit as cruel and inhuman as anything Frankenstein had ever dreamt up. “You murdered Friedrich Hoffmann and Johanna Klemmen, and you did this not for any medical knowledge, but so that you could act as God and perform your unholy experiments. How can you dare to argue any high-minded reasons for what you were going to do to your prisoners? Evil men will always try to rationalize their acts with a higher purpose, but what you have said so far is rubbish. I saw the way you and your guests looked at these prisoners, I saw the anticipation and bloodlust burning in your faces. So do not dare tell me that you had any other reason for your planned drama than wanting to enjoy watching young girls and children defiled and murdered!”
With that I pulled the chain for this death machine. Frankenstein shrieked then, and looked flabbergasted when nothing happened.
“I disabled the gears to this evil machine,” I said. “If you had nine lives, then I gladly would have chained you to each of these pillars and let you experience each death. But you only have one life. What was it Shakespeare said?
I unchained him from the death machine. His eyelids fluttered for several moments and I thought he was going to collapse, but he struggled to regain his composure and he remained standing on his feet. Without a word to me he turned and headed toward the stone steps. While his legs appeared unsteady, he did not fall, and I followed behind him. As he walked through the castle toward the main gate, he paused as if he desired to ask me a question. I knew what that question would be—Where had I hidden his collection of occult books—for I heard him earlier when he was searching through his hidden cabinet. He wisely decided against asking me this question and continued to the gate. I was tempted to volunteer the information that I had burned his prized collection and that they were now only ashes, but decided that his not knowing so would create more inner turmoil. Of course, if I had told him this I would not have mentioned the page that I had torn from the most insidious of his collection. Once Frankenstein stepped outside, he attempted to muster some dignity as he turned to me.
He cleared his throat, and with his body stiff and his expression set in a stern fashion, said, “Let this end now. No good can come of this hatred laying waste to you. Let us both imagine that we have woken up from an evil dream and try from this moment to live in peace.”
I had never hated him more than I did at that moment. The two of us to live in peace? After what he had
