Till The Clock Strikes Gone

18 | dear Eliza

William stared at his wedding ring. He was lying in his bed with an arm underneath his head as he moved the ring round and round. Harvey had asked him not to wear it for obvious reasons but now, William couldn't see the use of it for it had degraded to a mere piece of jewellery. He held the ring in his left hand, between his thumb and forefinger. He brought it closer to his left eye and through it, peered at the ceiling.

The white ceiling was the only wall without the graffiti that he had been gifted with. However, there was a crack that was appearing in the middle of the roof and for a moment, William imagined how relieving it would be if the roof collapsed while he was asleep and crushed him underneath the pile of concrete. Imagination was a fatal thing. It was tough to realize when it had left the brain and crept through the veins until it destroyed the existence of a soul from inside out.

If only he could die.

He had his book, 'Frankenstein', lying open on his bare chest. It was opened to the last page and placed upside down. He had finished reading it for the umpteenth time in his life. It was his only solace. His father, Joseph Ray, had introduced his mother to the book. His mother, who couldn't read due to her dyslexia, was troubled when he read it to her for the first time. What troubled Judith Ray the most was the death of Victor Frankenstein's little brother, William Frankenstein, a boy of five, who was unfortunate enough to have suffered death by strangulation at the hands of the wretch his older brother had created.

Judith had found the book devastating due to the death of that happy, playful child and she had often found herself wondering how William would have grown up to be. Her wishes to see William Frankenstein grow up were fulfilled when she held her newborn boy for the first time. His bright blue eyes, just like the doomed fictional child, made her name her baby boy William Ray.

He never told the story to anyone. Not even his wife knew it. He had slowly and cautiously lost that story as he grew up. It's not like he disliked speaking about it but the usual routine of being made fun of made him discard the narration. It would never hurt to be named after a character Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley had invented because Mary Shelley was William's second mother.

He was eight when he first stumbled upon her creation, 'Frankenstein'. He was young and could only understand a few parts of the book but as he grew up, he kept reading it. He read it every day until he finally completed the book and was so overwhelmed by it that it became his favourite. He read many books after that but Frankenstein was what had given birth to the author in him and thus, Mary Shelly became his mother.

Mother. Mom.

That thought made William put the ring down and he got up to sit. He picked up his book which had slid down to lie on his lap and placed it on the bedside table, putting the ring on top. The small diamond shone as the faint afternoon sun rays hit it.

Mom.

If only she was here but she wasn't; she was dead. His mother was dead and she would no longer speak to him, hold him or give him advice. She was gone, except she wasn't. She was still here, alive and breathing, in a little house at Hilltown. She was probably binge-watching Friends, sitting on the couch in the hall and laughing her heart out.

He wanted to call her, to hear her voice, to let her know that her daughter-in-law, who she loved and adored like a child born out of her womb was now just...gone.

Eliza.

He felt his heart sink as he thought of her. He hadn't talked to her in three days. The snow had started to fall and William was glad when he found that his poor shelter at least had a heater.