The Second Coming: A Frankenstein Companion Story

Part 1: In This Frozen Place

"So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; 

male and female he created them."

(Genesis 1:27)

The cave was colder than ice, but the woman in his arms was soft and warm. He could feel her life force ebbing away as scarlet blood soaked her wedding gown, blooming across her bodice like roses. He winced, remembering the white bandages of his early days in the dank tile cellar of his creator's laboratory, a poor excuse for clothing and completely insufficient to shield him from the frigid dampness of his interminable nights in solitary confinement. All he wanted was to keep her warmth inside her body, to shield her from the harsh winter air and the hostile predators lurking outside, both human and animal. He cradled her hands gently in his, wrapping his long, graceful fingers around the exposed skin. He was painfully aware that his circulation had never worked quite as well as it should and his hands were as cold as the slab of stone upon which Elizabeth lay, and yet she softened at his touch and her labored breathing eased for just a moment. She brought his fingers to her cheek, and as he closed his eyes to focus completely on the silky texture of her unmarred skin, she pressed something dry and crunchy into his palm. The leaf he had given her when she came to visit him in the cellar. He could practically smell the smoke of the candelabra, the melting wax, feel the lace of her nightgown brushing against his knee as she sat beside him and held his hand to her vocal chords to feel how they moved to articulate sounds. He had never forgotten that night. Clearly she hadn't either.

Elizabeth's eyelids fluttered, giving her the appearance of a broken porcelain doll. As she gazed up at the creature, she could see the tears glistening in the corners of his eyes and dripping down the sides of his sculpted Roman nose. She could see the deep sadness in those haunted brown eyes, sadness and love all swirled together and impossible to disentangle. He lowered his head gently until their foreheads touched, and she used her last ounce of strength to place a kiss on his cheekbone, tasting his salty skin as she ran her tongue over lips that were rapidly turning blue. Her kiss seemed to restore his powers of speech–his throat had been paralyzed from the moment the bullet left Victor's gun and lodged itself between her ribs.

"Elizabeth, please take me with you. I've finally found you and I can't lose you again," he croaked, his voice laden with sorrow.

"You will find me again, Adam." And she exhaled for the last time as her eyelids flickered shut.

Adam. She had given him what even his creator, the closest thing he had in the world to a father, had not–a name of his own. He held her until the very last bit of warmth had gone from her body, and then he reluctantly let go of her hand and brought his fingers to his neck.

"A-dam," he whispered, feeling the vibration of the sounds under his skin.

Adam didn't remember falling asleep, but he began to dream. Visions swam before his eyes of soldiers killed in battle, glassy-eyed, broken and blue, of horses embedded in ice, frozen in their final panicked moments. The soldiers whose bodies had been stripped and dismembered and stitched together to make him. He got these flashbacks sometimes of places he'd been to in another life, memories formed through the eyes of his brain's previous owner. He then thought back to the second chamber of the basement that had been his first home, the room with the colossal blocks of ice and the dead man on the slab with the back of his skull missing. Adam had watched things decompose in the dampness of his cellar, mostly rats that had slipped into the gutter and drowned. But that man lay there for weeks without changing a bit. Ice preserves the flesh, he thought, and an idea began to come together in his mind.

He had crossed Elizabeth's arms protectively over her chest and spread her auburn hair over the rock where she lay, but now he gathered her body in his arms again and carried her to a snowdrift at the edge of the cave. With great tenderness and care, he scooped snow over her body until all but her face was covered. Adam had a sudden flash of recollection–a woman, pale as milk, in a red casket that left only her face exposed. It felt different from all the soldiers' memories–was there something more in him besides the wreckage of the battlefield? His train of thought was interrupted by the crunching of footsteps on the snow-covered ground outside.

A disheveled man with olive skin and dark, curly hair burst into the cave, breathing heavily and brandishing a double-barreled shotgun. Adam straightened his spine and turned to face the man who had created him.

"She is gone, and I long to follow her," he said. "You have cursed me with life eternal, when I want nothing more than the release of death."

"Oh, if only I could kill you," Victor snarled, "You have done enough damage already–you ruin everything you touch, leaving nothing but carnage and destruction in your wake."

"I could say the same for you," Adam replied. "Was it not your bullet that still lies buried in her breast? You were the one that made me, and you are not absolved of the tragedies that have followed. But I have conceived of a way for you to seek redemption, if such a thing is still possible."

"Pray tell." Victor felt his blood run cold. An electric tingle ran down his spine just like it had on the day Harlander offered to finance his mad endeavor, what was to be the apotheosis of his scientific career. How things had fallen. And yet, all reason be damned, he was desperate to repeat his experiment. Had he not learned his lesson?

"Using the same method you employed to animate expired flesh into the living, breathing, conscious creature standing before you, bring her back from the dead. She will have a special bond with you if this mission is successful–she will be beholden to you, maybe even enamored. Your souls will be linked, your fates entwined, just as mine is to yours. Whether we like it or not, we are drawn to one another, like magnets, by an unstoppable force."

Victor paused for a moment to consider this request. He crossed over to where the creature stood and stopped dead in his tracks at the sight of Elizabeth lying in the snow. The snow turning red around her, like the blood-red wood of the box his mother was buried in. He could still see her bone-white face in the oval frame, so peaceful, as if she were merely resting. Elizabeth looked the same. She had hardly been gone for long–why shouldn't he help her reawaken? Surely her soul had not yet crossed into the underworld, past the point of no return. Perhaps she would come back an angel rather than a wretch. In that moment, he knew he had no choice but to try. God help his soul, he had to. He turned to Adam, flames of morbid curiosity dancing in his eyes.

"Help me carry her to the tower."