《The Dread Legacies》


 Chapter 1: Victoria Frankenstein

    Frankensteins have a status that their wealth provides where their homes and castles were among even the envy of royalty, whose voices shudder when they rumor the Frankenstein name in whispers to both the wives and their title holding husbands. Amid November¡¯s autumn the year 1805 where in high society the children are safe to roam the corridors within their warm manors and city homes. To grow plump with meals their mothers never cook them and shop of new attire regularly to wear the finest clothes that they can afford a tailor to seam for them. Surely there are those who cry in secret at the resentment of a passive family groomed by its society. Those cries are subdued by the remedy of lavish balls, exquisite and expensive theater and the hourly doses of wines and spirits. It cannot be denied that these people are living comfortably while enjoying the splendors of the world. With loyal subjects to handle mundane everyday tasks it frees up their time to find leisure, to enjoy the arts, to taste the abundance of food served freely and actively attend parties and weddings. Yet in theses crowds of crystal cups and silk dresses there is no Frankenstein. Nor are they found in quiet corners or private dinners. Not within the lecture halls or university class rooms. England has not seen a Frankenstein amidst its streets in eighteen years.


    Far from society in the southwest of Germany, bordering France, the Frankenstein castle resides. A Schloss castle with seven stories looms mountainous on a rock in the middle of a massive lake. Complete with flying buttresses, countless towers, domes and wings. A truly visionary love-letter to Gothic architecture. A mighty landmark for the Frankenstein¡¯s symbol of status.


    Thick forest and wild mountain range lay on the opposite side of the lake from the castle resembling an oil painting of yellows and hazel hues where the green of spring is dying.


    As the evening makes its comfortable arrival the castle lives silently with emptiness. Without a soul to see the setting sun pass through its hundreds of windows. No maids, no cooks, no loyal servants have roamed these halls in some weeks and the quiet that rests on the walls is one shrouded in mourning. An abandoned grave yard of bouquets can be found in the ballroom. Their dried up and withered corpses gone unloved. Piles of melted candles can be seen crowding the corners of a few rooms. The stillness of time throughout the castle, black fabric draped across portraits, mirrors, and scattered furniture has left nothing more than the solemn silence of a once illustrious home.


    As the dawn is snuffed out by a starless night sky; a woman of forty-four with black hair is asleep against a window pane in a stone-quiet hall. She inhales the frost that passes like a phantom through the window. It brushes her cheek and nose. In time the stone walls absorb the cold. Without urgency Victoria Frankenstein awakes raising the lids of her deep set eyes and through the window she views her castle grounds in the throws of night. Her body resting on an icy cushioned window nook. The comforts of wealth have clearly taken care of her as she appears younger than her age with fair skin. For a moment she is still and all is calm. Reflecting in her eyes is a crackle of lightning that scrapes across smoky black clouds. An electrical storm is rising. She then brings her legs off the nook and marches with a haste through the halls. The walls are adorned with hanging oil lamps that are not lit with ornate patterns of callous shadows from floor to ceiling. She passes them one after another journeying to the other side of the castle. Her clothes are a custom stitching opposed to the common fashion of wearing a fall front gown or tubular skirt she instead wears a pair of dark trousers, a tweed vest and a simple, long cotton coat that have been tailored to her body and designed by her own personal seamstress. Her hair loosely wafting behind her before reaching the master bedroom.


    What is meant to be a bedroom doubles as a library where each wall is covered up by dark wood bookshelves; each one filled with red leather bound journals in row after row. Each journal is guaranteed to be filled with her documentation and notes. There is a window that reaches from floor to ceiling, climbing a precise twenty-five feet. Aggressively she draws the curtains back on it. Living beside the window is a writing desk. The loyal tools of her workshop are loose parchment paper, a quill and ink and a loop handle candle stick holder all neatly prepared on top of her desk. Before she can light the candle a silent tide of light splashes the drafty room in a blink. A light explodes to life on the match stick she uses to ignite the desk¡¯s candle.


    Adjusting the quill between her fingers she eagerly sits down to a blank sheet of paper. In a moment she ponders how there is a razor judgment for a woman who has such wealth and still makes no allegiances with the men who wish to grow their fortunes larger. To add to her position she is alone in her ancestral home which leaves many to speculate suspicions especially in high society. ¡°Hmm¡­ Then what a rare and fortunate position I must be in.¡± she thinks, ¡°A rare case of one such woman. To be alone with her thoughts and allowed to think unhindered. With the wealth to make actions of her ideas. Monstrous ideas. Committed as any man, I am, only because I live as... the other¡±


    She starts writing with her ink dipped quill in the weak glow of dying candle light. She sits at her desk assertively, writing every word with self appointed discipline. She can smell stale musk when wetting the hemp parchment paper with every line of ink. Her black wavy hair falls to one side resting on a shoulder. The music of rain hitting the glass of her windows can he heard coinciding with the quiet scratching sound her quill makes when writing. She writes:


    ¡°I, Victoria Frankenstein, on this the year 1800 and the 5th. November the 5th, believe it is of the upmost importance to journal additional details before I conduct my experiment in any case of misfortune throughout. I have, for twenty-two years, researched rare cases of a disease. From these cases I have taken blood from men and woman for further studies. The samples origins ¨C Egypt, The year 1700 and 83.


    A man with this disease was mummified. The disease allowed him to survive thousands of years in dormant as long as his organs remained removed from his body. He was the most powerful of all cases I have ever encountered. His blood, immortal. I expand on this case in further detail in my journal labeled ¡®King of the dead¡¯.


    Point Pleasant, The Americas, The year 1700 and 84.


    This case is still shrouded in grand mystery. Blood was obtained from a massive creature that was black and winged with red eyes. I have documented this encounter in further detail in my journal labeled ¡®Point Pleasant¡¯.


    Gevaudan, France, The year 1700 and 85.


    A woman who was relieved of ailments or any harm by her disease also would suffer to a frontal lobe takeover while her body underwent a flooding of hormones of both estrogen and testosterone and adrenaline in the night of full moons. I expand on this case in my journal labeled ¡®Beast of Gevaudan¡¯.


    Lastly, I have obtained blood from my love of 19 years, Voivode. He is a man truly cursed with every purposeful enrichment of the phrase. There is a tremendous amount of similarities his version of this disease shares with a variety of illnesses. His pale complexion could define him as having the white plague but he shares no other symptom, and defies the end result of the disease which is death. Rabies has a common connection to a painful sensitivity to sunlight. Thus, his case has more than just a sensitivity to sunlight. It whittles his body, destroys his flesh and rumples him into a chard living-carcass. Porphyria causes a hyper sensitivity to light as well but never to a damaging extreme such as he experiences. There must be an ingestion of blood if he is ever to be damaged by the sun in order to recover therefore an absence of the need for blood is his general everyday living. In spite of these factors Voivode is immortal. I expand further on his case in my journals ¡°The son of the dragon¡±.


    All four cases are like any disease with damning drawbacks but in all four cases there is a profoundly rare healing factor that I hope and dream I can enable in dead human tissue. I am far from understanding how this blood and disease truly functions and if there is any such way to manipulate it but if I could it would mean an advancement in medicine that would give the recently deceased a second chance at life. A cure to child illnesses possibly those as such as measles. The potential is there for bettering the well being of all human life. There is no fathom to limitless progress humanity can propel to. The death of the young who potentially hold answers and keys to creating a Utopian future can be given a second chance to gift us with their imagination. Less creativity and love will be lost so we all can rise higher as the human collective. No mother will have to lose their child again. Evidently no child will have to lose their mother to have life.


    My motivation overflows with a terrible exuberance in my every waking day. To see success in a one in a trillion probability would mean more than changing the world, more than the advancements of medicine and more than a bright and bold future. In truth what is most important to me is that it would mean I would get back the heart I lost in this world. The love in me this world extinguished.


    It is with tremendous shame and dismay that I must disclose a wretched confession. In the past day I have grave robbed the body of a Mathys Holl, who has passed in the last week. He met his demise in an accident as he came to collapse under a wind mills water wheel. He suffered cranial damage in the back and top of his skull destroying his brain. I transplanted into him a brain and eyes. I have surgically implanted 4 electricity conduits into the body. Two on either side of the torso. I have also combined the blood of all four previously mentioned cases. The result was a biological lumination that I believe is two chemicals that I have known to be common in sea life was present in two separate collections of blood. With only enough to fill two vials after mixing. I will be injecting one full vial into the body while it lay in a vat of water. Soon after I will engage an electrical current from a battery that will be connected to the four electricity conduits in the torso. Allowing for electricity to course through the body.


    To further explain, in the year 1700 and 96 I began funding the experiments of Alessandro Volta. He is an Italian Physicist that was working to invent a machine that will produce electricity over a long period of time, steadily. I take no credit for his work having only been present for his experiments eight or so visits in under ten years. When he finally invented the voltaic pile in the year 1700 and 99 we worked together in secret to create a version of the voltaic pile that produced 100-200 watts instead of 1-2 watts which is what his invention initially supplied. We eventually became successful and I posses such one machine that I have named ¡®the box¡±. I will use it to produce a steady current of electricity into the body through the electricity conduits in the torso for over the course of six hours. The hope is that the end result will be the aforementioned disease in the combined vials of blood will take hold of the cells while they are surging with a steady current of electricity. Allowing for the cells to adopt the diseases regenerative affects and heal the dead cells back to life. If there is no problematic occurrences and I am without harm I shall return to record my findings. This concludes my record.¡±


    Placing the quill beside the ink jar, Victoria turns to get up from the desk but half way up she stops herself and a hurt curried on the love of her heart now runs through her, drenching her eyes in longing. Gently, she sits back down. Her hand resting on the desk calmly drifts over to pick up the quill once again. Her eyes gloss with sentiment as the point of the quill starts a new page. She writes, ¡°I said goodbye to my love today. I watched from my windows as his charcoal black horses took his carriage through the castle gates. I stared with painful concentration hoping I could somehow see through the charter¡¯s black painted windows and maybe catch a glimpse of him once more. I watched him leave; though I am not unfamiliar with the sight it does not make it any less difficult. I stayed long after he was gone when the sun peeked over the horizon. I looked on till I fell asleep against the pane.¡±


    Lightning flashes but thunder cannot be heard. The blinding pulse of the lightning does not distract Victoria. Her hand pens with indomitable determination, ¡°His travels will take him far from me. Though it is nothing I wouldn¡¯t expect for the legacy he is building is far greater than any fictional giant. I also think about my legacy. I wonder what the world will write of me 200 years from now. I know they will tell of how I advanced mankind with such unmatched haste. Children will idolize me as the hero they strive to someday be. I will lay here in my bed tonight and I will not cry for what I have lost! I will not cry for the absence of my love. My father, the glorious man that he was, always said ¡®Death follows Frankensteins, so I say let him follow for I will never slow, I will never halt. Every inch of my being, until my last breath, will constantly strive to fulfill my dreams. I will get back to my heaven. I will get back my life. As I doze off I will be imagining what history will write of me as someday they will erect a monument in my likeness as a memorial of my achievements. Doctor Victoria Frankenstein. The angel of life. I dream¡­ so often it becomes a wool over my eyes. A facade of mountains built with delusions of grandeur that when it fades a dull colorless perspective remains. The tightening of a noose can be felt then, around my neck and I shed stinging forced tears. I dream. And I dream, because I carry with me a moratorium. Inside it holds the tomb of my mother, whom I have never known for she passed shortly after I was born. The child I lost while still in my womb. The tomb of my father who perished in Egypt the winter of the year 1700 and 83. A lifetime of lovers who came years before my current companion, Voivode, are all but corpses now. I dream because they cannot. I dream because if they could still be here they would want me to dream. For them I keep my dreams protected in a chamber I keep near my heart. Impenetrable and invulnerable to corruption and never in need of the sustenance of glory or ego. It was my grief of being followed by loss that I desired to spite death themselves. The beauty of my memories has tarnished therefore thy moral boundaries I have crossed to see the happiest part of my life returned to me mustn''t be to no avail. This will be a home again.¡±


    Victoria gets up from her desk to then dress down. She collects the recently written pages and closes them inside a red leather bound journal putting a flattened white lotus flower in the pack of the pages before closing it.


    Only wearing her under garments she walks with haste across the castle to the bergfried. Defined as the tallest tower in the castle and usually reserved to be constructed in the middle of an architecture, is found instead at the back of the Frankenstein castle. She steps into a room built to be sealed for sanitation. She walks over to a wall where there are four tubs filled with water and she begins a process of washing and rinsing vigorously from the tips of her fingers on up to her elbows. She does the process twice before putting on a second pair of under garments that look tailored for a man which then she proceeds to put on a pair of rubber overalls followed by a long white lab coat that is similar to that of a male doctors coat but with alterations to fit her body type. She fits a hair cover and surgical mask on and then slips on black rubber gloves that reach up past her elbows and exits this sanitary room through a second door, with her journal tucked under her arm.


    The large body of a corpse lies under a white sheet on a metal table that is hanging off the ground by five feet. In the darkness light flashes from the heedless dancing of lightning proceeded with thunder sending a tremble through the Frankenstein castle. The strobes of light fill the room till Victoria enters and she begins to flip switches on a board that is in direct control of an electrical source that brings to life bulbs beaming with illumination in every corner of the room¡¯s darkness. The technology in this room alone isn¡¯t just made up of prototypes but the newest inventions from all over the world that only one with the means to find them and the wealth to obtain them could have. This is a laboratory that is also built like a sanitary room but on a larger scale. There is a frightening coldness to the white cleanliness of the floors and walls. Victoria takes every step with purpose as well as every movement of her hand is lead with a predetermined plan. Operating with a choreography practiced in the playground of her thoughts a thousand times over. She prepares four syringes by extracting a few ounces from a vial that glows a milky blue. She turns on a machine that begins to produce sounds of crackling electricity. The large voltaic pile she named ¡°The box¡±.


    Beneath the metal table that the massive corpse of a man resides on is a tub large enough to lower the table into. She stands against the wall twisting the knob of a faucet. The faucet is connected to pipes that lead to the tub under the corpse. The tub begins to fill with water and after she shuts the water off; Victoria lowers the metal table into the tub. She approaches the tub and pulls back the sheet to see the face of the corpse and she adjusts the table making sure the nose and mouth are not submerged. She grabs the sheet to cover the face of the corpse once more and pauses to stare at it. Just then lightning and thunder chase after the other and it demands Victoria¡¯s attention. She looks to the window in the ceiling and slowly covers the corpse¡¯s face with the sheet.


    She speaks to herself aloud while staring out the window, ¡°Like the mysteries of what electricity is, so is the uncertainty or truth to the extent of which we can control life and death. We can see it, make use of it, feel storms of the heart and try to capture it in words. But there is no maker of magic or nature. We do, in action, to undue it¡¯s mysteries, and make less fear of the unknown.¡±


    If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    Through the castle gates, across the lime stone bridge and down a twisty road, there resides the gates of an old medival Bavarian town down the hill. Little rain from the storm has happened upon its ensemble of colorful half timbered houses. The Autumn breeze carries bright foliage through the winding narrow alleys. The towns¡¯ people are made up of women wearing high waist gowns with long muslin skirts and men in dim or dark colored breeches with some in long, loose and coarse overcoats and others in tweed vests and jackets. They come out of their homes and crowd the twisty cobblestone streets for the voltage of lightning strikes can be heard coming from the thunder storm over the Frankenstein castle. Between every explosion of thunder a wave of fear courses through the towns people resulting in shutters slamming shut on the flowers that pour over window boxes, while the crowd that is growing outside collectively gasp and clutch their chests. The town is wrought with hanging street signs that start to violently sway with unwanted screeches of iron.


    The towns folk are gripping with fear at each BOOM that echoes through the sky. Villagers have crowded into the town square. A man, with an intense scowl, in leather shoes and dark colored lederhosen covered in dirt and drenched from the rain emerges into the crowd. He is carrying a torch that he uses a near by lantern to ignite and walks through the crowd raising his torch as he screams, ¡°The devil is in our community! Victoria Frankenstein commits acts of heresy as we all stand by, we allow that heretical perversity to grow in the land of our lord. Exodus 22:18: thou shalt not suffer a witch to live! She is the last of her lineage. She is alone inside the Frankenstein castle! For years she has been behind those walls, dwelling, hiding a secrecy of her life. Under the guidance and protection of God I have suspected her of WITCHCRAFT! She must be persecuted!¡± his final words horse with venom. A wave of gasps passes over the towns people.


    ¡°Turn away not now for the works of evil are at hand! Turn away not and see before you now the proof! See before you with your eyes the truth. If Victoria is left unimpeded, who knows how strong her companionship with the devil will get. It is up to us to destroy her evil and the evil of her allegiance with the devil!¡±


    An older man with a gray fretted beard screams from the back of the crowd, ¡°What acts of heresy do you submit Victoria has done?¡±


    The town crier swings his lanky body around with his torch and screams back without hesitation, ¡°We have all bared witness to the carriage, the one that blends in the darkness of night. The Devil himself comes to the Witch Frankenstein to bestow his bidding onto her. He has finally instructed her to do the most unspeakable! She grave robbed the body of Mathys Holl! His funeral was not but six days ago! I had come in from fishing last midnight to see her hauling his body. Tonight I dug up his grave and my suspicions were confirmed. There lie no man, but an empty coffin! These eyes are the son of a witch hunter, a child of god. My bloodline can be followed back to that of a crusader! There is no lie I wish to speak!¡°


    He points to a gaunt young woman with similar features to his own, ¡°That is my sister.¡± then he points to a rigid looking man with wrinkles that betray his age, ¡°and my brother!¡± He continues to gesture to various people in the crowd, ¡°My family founded this town generations ago leading us all into God¡¯s gentle light.¡±. His brows furrow as he looks onward, ¡°That storm lay over top her castle because it is with her that god is angered and we will all perish to a witches will lest we rise now!¡±.


    In the laboratory Victoria drives the needle of a syringe between the corpse¡¯s ribs and empties it into the body. She then places the syringe in a copper pan with three other used syringes. There is one snake like cable connected to ¡°the box¡±. She drags it over to then clamp four loose wires at the end of the cable to each of the four conduits in the corpses torso. Four chains are connected to the corners and hold up the metal table.


    The chains are part of a pulley mechanism that hoist the metal table higher or lower. The hoist is securely fastened to the ceiling¡­ near the only window in the lab. When Victoria clamps the box¡¯s cable to the conduits, small fragments of iron begin to stand on end on the chain near the ceiling where the chain and the hoist meet.


    In the town below a commotion brews where it took little effort for most of the towns people to be persuaded to persecute Victoria. With the children tucked away in their homes, they gathered with torches and pitchforks. Together they ascend from the town, up the twisty roads and across the limestone bridge to the Frankenstein castle as a down pour begins.


    The mob reaches the castle and attempts to set it ablaze. They find it difficult in torrent of rain, but continue to try as a group of eight men breaks off to use near by lumber as a battering ram on the castle doors.


    Victoria cannot hear the pounding at her castle doors over the deafening humming sound ¡°the box¡± makes entwined with the thunder over the laboratory roof.


    Eventually the mob realizes they are no match for the doors and fire starting is impossible in the rain. They decide to make a ramp to the second story window where one man climbs up to break the window and climbs inside to open the castle doors for the mob. Once inside they begin scattering throughout the castle, setting fires and gathering curtains and furniture to set ablaze against the walls.


    A small group gather to attempt to set a painting of Victoria on fire that is near the entrance. It is a challenge as it is on a stone wall between stone pillars and 20 feet out of reach. They give up on problem solving and move on, leaving the portrait alone.


    Inside of the laboratory Victoria stands beside ¡°the box¡± and watches a rod that protrudes from the top of the boxe¡¯s housing. The rod is 3 feet long with a sphere at the end. Here in this moment as she waits patiently beside the box while holding her journal on one side of her; she slowly peers over her laboratory from one side to the other stopping on the giant corpse of a man that is hoisted in a tub. Here in this moment does she recognize doubt in her ethics. After a moment of self reflection she speaks passionately aloud, ¡°Be my choice wrong or with greater or harsher judgment than that of 350 years of illogical and unethical torture and murder of all who perished under persecution of witchcraft? The world is covered in homes where the dead spirits stage life scorched by fires used to burn those at the stake. Weary of innocent souls drained from the beauty of time. If I am to be found immoral than my immorality sits at the distance of the moon from that of the practices of slavery for there is no closeness in comparison. It is of the greatest immorality to say ¡®give me your life agreed or I shall take it by force, and with your life in my hands I care not how it is fumbled or crushed; only that you provide your indentured servitude- with suffering or not- till you can not be used to provide anymore.¡¯ My tampering of dead flesh and reanimation brings no pain, creates no harm, and cowers in comparison to the monstrously rudimentary practices of medicine, healthcare and doctors and physicians and hospitals alike.


    She screams, ¡°Listen to me now! If the forces at work truly disagree with my experiments may Zeus himself ride down on bolts of lightning to punish me!¡±


    It¡¯s then that she sees static electricity form around the sphere in which she instantly grabs a lever on the box and flips it like a switch. She watches as electricity is sent through the cable to the conduits.


    Her eyes follow the electricity in the few seconds it takes to travel. She see electricity form out of the water and begin to climb the chains. But then her eyes follow the chains to the ceiling where the hoist is fastened. An alarming sense runs through her that a mistake has escaped her and there is a dangerous precedence in her oversight.


    The window in the ceiling glows brighter than the bulbs and whiteness of the room.


    With the electricity in the air the hair all over her body stands on end. The metal tray and the syringes that were in it levitate sparking of static.


    Millions of miles away¡­ in the darkness. Empty space of unimaginable size is home to a void outside of our galaxy. In the maddening orchestra of stars, a violent collision of a dwarf planet and a moon begins. It is catastrophic devastation in the wake of these two celestial juggernauts colliding. The decomposition of organic matter releases blasts. The absolute annihilation sparks the conception of an energy. This energy makes a cosmic ray that is shot out into space as it is projected by a devastating shock wave the collision creates. This high energy particle travels at super speed through space. It enters our galaxy. Eventually it enters our solar system. Unbeknownst to Victoria she is about to experience a phenomena event and be the only person to see up-close a lightning strike when combined with an impossible particle. A cosmic ray is traveling from extragalactic reaches of space and it carries with it levels greater than exa-electron volts which is measured to be millions of times more energy than anything that humans can produce on earth. It enters the atmosphere and intertwines with a lightning bolt.


    In milliseconds that lightning bolt breaks through the window in the ceiling and rides down the chain hoist. It travels through the metal table, the corpse, the water and into the cable. The large voltaic pile absorbs the electrical current and overcharges. With a flash and a bang ¡°the box¡± explodes with electricity and fire sending Victoria to the floor and knocking her unconscious momentarily. She is alarmingly awakened far from a comfortable heat. Having breathed in smoke she coughs desperately in search for air. In between each attempt to inhale oxygen she combs the laboratory with her eyes looking for her experiment but sees only fire and destruction as well as a wall of smoke. Through the haze her fingertips lightly skim through the debris of the explosion. Broken glass and ash can be felt as she coughs and moves about until she feels an all too familiar binding by her foot; she sees her journal that she picks up before the flames become unbearable, and the air unbreathable. She wants to find a way to save her experiment. She wants to cross the raging fire to the other side of the laboratory but she knows the high cost would mean her life. She needs more time and then surely there would be nothing that could stop her but there is no time as the fire tyrannically burns to temperatures she can not grapple with. She is left with no choice but to escape with her life now. A clear path to the exit can be seen when she turns around and she cautiously makes her way to the door to leave the lab but stops just before exiting. She turns back, dropping her shoulders as she begins to cry.


    ¡°Forgive me!¡± She yells into the fire and smoke, ¡°Forgive me!¡± she yells through the tears, ¡°Forgive me!¡± She yells with heartbreak riding on the trembling decibels of her words.


    She runs through the halls of her castle without questioning how the fires reached the other wings. An ever unraveling disappointment of failure takes hold of her as she navigates to escape the burning castle.


    She ponders, ¡°Is this where God has disowned me? Has he been here all along and I ignored the presence he took so I may foolishly keep the dead I could not let go? Here I voyage from my deeds without God. My Punishments could be as severe as hearing only noise in the grace of music and I would wallow knowing I deserved it.¡±


    Her sorrowing makes her fall ill as she continues onward down flights of stairs. She continues in thought, ¡°An arrow pulled back, and with my guiding hand it was shot. Shot with good intention and confidence in it¡¯s success but still only just the one arrow. Only one opportunity to hit the target. The brain, it was a person, there was a life there. Memories no one can have. Now, they never will. The days where there were rain instead of sun and the lungs were filled with petrichor. The warm meals with family, never a night alone or without a full stomach. The warming touch of sunlight on the eyes in spring.¡±


    She pauses to weep, grabbing on to a door frame to hold her from falling while gripping her journal to her chest. She weeps uncontrollably as though she has never wept. As though she was attending a funeral.


    She presses forward as the flames have followed her and push her out into the gardens. She keeps going stumbling minimally as she continues in her provoked thoughts, ¡°Burden me! I wanted it! I wished for it and sought it out. Burden me with something to love. A child to give love and a purpose to never tire of. Burden me I asked, I demanded, I am strong enough I said. Remove my hand, burn me with frost, drown me in fire and I will show you the meaning of loving and to love. Burden me. I will never tire. Death follows Frankenstein¡¯s.¡±


    Now standing at the back of the castle gardens she watches as all the castle windows spill over with flames.


    ¡°Is this God?¡± She ponders, ¡°Is he ashamed I ask, then he provided, and I could not live up to my self anointed merit? Or was my oversight so horrendously epochal that no act of divine punishment was needed? Or was the hand that sows a puppeteer to my decisions?¡±


    The Fire has grown to be so big that the heat from the flames are too much for Victoria that even standing at the back of the gardens is unbearable.


    Victoria takes to a stairwell that leads to a pier. She dashes to a rowboat at the end of the pier and climbs aboard frantically, setting her journal down in the boat and rowing out onto the lake. She cries as she rows watching her ancestral castle burn down. A castle 300 years old castle that took 200 years to build and only one Victoria Frankenstein to burn it down.


    As she reaches the middle of the lake she sees something escape the flames and emerge onto a balcony under a row of flying buttresses on the seventh story of the wing next to the laboratory. She stops rowing and stands in the boat. There is a massive figure silhouetted by the fires. She pauses in awe before celebrating accomplishment with a gasp and a jump.


    ¡°Alive? He¡¯s... ALIVE!¡±


    But her celebration is short lived when a few men arrive on the balcony. Victoria watches in confusion from the middle of the lake as the men proceed to attack her experiment mercilessly. Victoria is filled with horror already as she can only stand and watch when the tides turn. A silence smothers the world, as the rain recedes and the clatter of thunder takes a pause when Victoria¡¯s creation explodes with power in retaliation, tearing five men apart.


    Her palm impulsively reaches out before her in shock. Her fingers are stretched apart and she can see her hand and arm silhouetted by the fire that engulfs her castle. Slivers of light can be seen emitting from the body of her massive creation¡­ like a monster. The same mysterious light can barely be seen glowing from its eyes. A flood of questions and curiosities whirl like the winds on a tornado in Victoria¡¯s mind.


    She asks herself, ¡°Have I birthed a titan so unstoppable?¡± In the moments as she watches. Victoria tries to decipher what she can of her creation from its movement in the dark. She hones in on some of those thoughts in the hurricane of her mind, ¡°I imagine there is no world that finds itself safe from a creation such as this. 100 feet tall, immeasurable strength and no limits to what more they are capable of. With the blood of all four subjects that I manipulated in an attempt to remove or reduce the drawbacks of the disease and combine them in a single body, there are 4 truths I foresee of my creation¡¯s biology. One, there is no wound it can not heal from as their cells regenerate as fast as a breath. Two, unbridled strength with muscle fibers that imitate the density of steal. Three, mutation. There is not enough I could record in my years of research to understand why different individuals reacted in a unique way to the disease. But there was a pattern, and in three cases they had a mutation that made them deadlier. Four, it will be immune to illness, disease, starvation and mortal wounds. It is immortal. I grow sicker within my bowels and breathing to the sheer imagining my own creation arriving before me. What misery I imbued on it. Is there pain it feels? Is pain a sense for it? How much pain have I caused it? For whatever the motivation may be, I can not conceive that our meeting will be without a shared resemblance to the effortless removal of a mans entrails and dismantling of the human form in one smooth swinging motion. How dare I ask only now, Was I wrong? How beautiful a creature, to curse the world like a form of arts opposite, plant a gaze on horror which unsettles the soul but inflicts a towering fear to turn away. Like soldiers at war, two children in a uniform and placed on the battlefield to look each other in the eyes. Deter their eyes from the other could mean an opponents opportunity to strike the killing blow of a blade entering the heart. They fear to turn away lest doom come for them. So is the fear my creation inflicts. I can feel... the summer of my life begins to drain from my hair, a woman of forty-four sees more in the lessening of ability than that of growing ambition. There now lies among the lost, ones fearlessness to endure.¡±


    Panic rises in her as more towns people arrive to meet the horrors of her creation¡¯s rampage. She can feel that chamber near her heart that holds her dreams, be crushed. The walls that hold up her dreamers soul were before now unbowed and impossible to abandon. Now they beckon to forfeit as those walls begin to crumble and collapse. Single handed gore and blood shed like shes never seen is spread across the balcony. She sinks into an ocean of emotions disappearing further into a darkness that light and air fear from as she drowns in despair. There is no breath she could take that could breathe life back into her broken dreams.


    Lightning strikes, bursting in the sky like an orchestra for nature reaching crescendos whenever the towns people are split up the middle and cut down by Victoria¡¯s creation. From the middle of the lake she stands in her row boat under the dark of night while being pelted by the rain looking on with terror into the flames. She feels the death of a part of her within but also the birth of an unexplored era.


    The birth of dread.


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 Chapter 2

    Winter of 1816


    The winter winds in the North pole¡¯s mid-day lifts millions of snow particles in wave after wave of flurry''s giving the appearance of ghosts dancing on the tundra. In the miles of desolate pale landscape, a figure travels on foot against the resistance of freezing 8 mile an hour winds. Bundled in layers of furs and wool, the figure presses onward attempting to see through a pair of goggles that are continuously obscured with snow and frost. The Figure pauses and takes notice to a ship protruding out of the ice. They start to run and upon arriving they see it is a 1400¡¯s shipwrecked Italian Tudor Carrack frozen in the ice. A ladder is built into the side of the ship and the figure climbs aboard. They find the steps that lead to a quarter deck meant for officers and they descend. The quarters are bare, with only the wood of bed frames, empty chests and cabinets left behind. A ghost frozen in glass of its former glory days preserved forever antiquated. They ascend to the top deck and enter the captains quarters.


    There they find a room dawning 200 year old artifacts. A mattress still resides on the frame here and beside it is a small iron fire pit with three legs. In front of the window that rests at the stern of the ship a captains desk is fastened to the floor accompanied by a chair. They return to the officers quarters and they pull apart a bed frame, using the weight of the empty chests occasionally to break the boards into smaller pieces. Now with a stock pile to burn, they use the small iron fire pit and stack bundled wood inside of it. The figure takes off their layers, removing their fur hood then head wrap and goggles. It is Victoria Frankenstein, 11 years older.


    Still mostly bundled up in layers of fur she opens the messenger bag she carries and pulls out a journal. With a lockets chain book marking the last time she has journaled. she unwraps the leather binding and opens the journal. Inside is a flat pressed white lotus flower withered shrunk. She flips through the pages to the saved page with the locket and chain. The date reads:


    Spring, 1805


    It¡¯s clear she hasn''t journaled since that night her ancestral castle burned down Eleven years ago. With a fire burning in the small iron furnace she sits at the captains desk. From out of her satchel she retrieves a tin cup and a bottle of brandy nearing its end. One shot of the brandy is poured for herself with the fumes lingering on the roof of her mouth and in the back of her throat for some time after she desperately drinks her pour. Then she pulls out a bottle of black ink that appears to have frozen, and sets it in the tin cup. She sets the tin cup on top of the stove to wait for the ink to thaw. After sometime the temperature in the room is noticeably warmer and she sees the ink has thawed completely. Using her furs she wraps a protective layer around the ink to keep from burning her hands. She places the ink on the desk and pours a few drops of brandy in it. Using the quill she stirs the brandy into the ink insuring the ink wont freeze again. With the quill dipped she prompts to put ink to paper but the point of the quill sits idle just above the paper. Victoria stares straight ahead while she is paused in contemplation. Tears welt up in her eyes and just as quick her eyes slam shut for she painfully considers what she is about to write. The black ink christens the page of a new entry as Victoria writes:


    ¡°Winter, 1816. In the event of my demise these are my last confessions and testaments. I am trapped in the North Pole doth nearer to Jan¡¯ry¡¯s start I feel the presence of my doom get closer. I have discovered this ship frozen in the ice and I am unable to refrain from making comparisons. This once great vessel, filled with dreams and ideals of grander to carve a path in history to new discoveries. To have been so instrumental in igniting hope among many in the future ¨C now destined to lay frozen and forgotten by the world. What a cruel, yet just fate for something that has potentially stolen the lives of dozens who had pledged their trust within it. We mirror each other in both the adventurous lives we have lived and the icy demise it reached and I am soon to see. It seems the stars and the planets put repetition in our path to remind us or to make us face the irony of our choices. My choices, I still question my choices. I chose to tamper with life and death therefore I created a monster. I know my monster is coming. It''s been eleven years since my initial attempt to elude the angry child I gave birth to but their vengeance was unwavering. Like Pasiphae, forever known as the witch who brought forth a destructive creature, feasting on the lives of mortals... I believed here in the arctic I could finally elude the monster but at the sacrifice of my own survival. With my rations depleted and my strength fading I foresee my fate is close at hand for the cold is the wrath of nature that has no match. This may be my last opportunity to record the terrors of my creation. The lives they took and my regret for what I''ve done.¡±


    The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.


    Both of her fists pound on the desk. She is as chipped and as cracked as unkempt fragile porcelain as a regret filled sorrow spills out of her wretch while she grinds her teeth in tears. Eyes clenched tightly closed; she fights to calm herself back into her seat. When her eyes have finally relaxed she opens them to continue journaling.


    ¡°I am devoid of deserving. A storm of gloom has followed me and in time devoured my seasons where golden autumns lived and gentle fragile snowfall once made joy soar. Now consumed by the maws of hell bleeding dry my life¡¯s accomplishments and infecting the hollow sky to build an exclusion from the inherent pleasures of the moon and the sun truly depriving me of worth. I replay the carnage and imagine what revenge seeks to find me. I shed all merit for repentance and I choose to use my last efforts to document the events that led me to flee across the world to my death. I carry the voices of what once was my friends, my neighbors, their children. All who¡¯d perished in my monsters wake haunt me, as the spirits I foreordained to destruction. May their existence be known. Geertrudia De Coperslaeger, The woman who housed me and called me sister. Her Husband Jacop, mt childhood friend. Their dear young daughters, Susanna and Madelief. Bernardo, the brave man who gave his life to protect his village. A noble man, a man I was coming to love. Near the golden inlet of the Zwin north sea coast where hills were hugged by forest there was a village that is no longer there that was called Rode Heuvels in the Autumn of 1813. I compare my rash, cold and confined childhood to how freely children were in this village. Often I felt blanketed with gratefulness to see children safely be children. To never know the cruel shadow casted by witch hunts, a veering ugly world of callas prejudice and the inability to feel safe that was not so long ago. So oblivious to the crude black spot in history. It still glows in my memory, for to live in it was to lift you up and spark embers of hope in even the truly desolate despairing. A quaint little village that prospered despite its lack of vast resources. Be there no mistaking, the life of this small town carried wholeheartedly the potential for growth. It could plainly be seen by how nurtured and free the children were. How they were creating together and how seldom the children were scolded for just being children. The fields of hills flourishing with the large green leaves of red mammoth fodder beats, rippled for acres on the kiss of every breeze. A farming village where there was a sense of a true community where everyone took part in making their village thrive. Everyone made sure that no one went hungry. Everyone did their part to help one another. In essence, it was perceived by me an example of a society reaching perfection.¡±


    She sits in the captain''s quarters journaling at the desk with the small iron fire pit at her side. The 400 year old Italian cargo ship still creaks with every draft threatening the life of warmth no more fragile than the flame on a candle. But for now Victoria has found a small corner of comfort for someone who arrived with nothing in a hopeless North pole.


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 Chapter 3

    The Kingdom of Holland, 1813


    Three years earlier.


    Beige sheets get caught like ship sails in the wind as Victoria stands under a clothes line. She is in a dutch made dress that shares the color of dark red earthly clay with a mostly white apron around the skirt that she acquired some time ago as a charitable gift. She picks up another beige sheet and while holding it up to be hung she stops to savor the burning orange light of this windy November day. Sometimes the clouds travel in front of the sun blocking its warmth and for a few minutes it pays as a reminder how much its buttery glow will be missed in the coming months. It is the first time she is experiencing autumn in this village.


    With more clothes needing to be hung out to dry she continues at the clothes line. Behind her there is a house that is wood framed with a brick exterior and a grambel roof with centered dutch doors. It is similar to most of the homes in small villages that can scarcely be found in the kingdom of Holland. She spends a moment longer to breathe in the sight of the red mammoth beat fields. She see the wind run its hands through the clouds, along the fields and across the trees. She knows this will soon be a world of harvesting before the world goes into wintering. Just as cold as ocean water a tidal wave of northern winds stampedes over Victoria. With her eyes closed she takes in the fresh air and for as long as the wind passes, she is still. Never turning away from the force of nature.


    After throwing another sheet over the line she takes a step forward and nudges some rocks with her foot. She looks down and lingers over what formations have been made with a few stones and pebbles. Mosaic¡¯s formed into the images of a dog and a horse. She is stagnant peering over the work. She can hear the clatter of small feet skipping, ¡°Did I do good?¡± A child no older than nine says from behind her. ¡°Yes child.¡± Victoria spiritedly responds, ¡°Very brilliant, child.¡±


    She thinks about the stones that have passed through children''s hands. Victoria reminisces about how shielded her childhood was and the comparison of how freely children are here in this village; in this time. How grateful she is to see children safely be children when the world they live in is not made for it.


    ¡°Susanna?¡± Victoria calls out to the girl. The girl comes to her side entwining their arms. ¡°Yes beautiful Victoria?¡± Victoria flattered, laughs tilting her head back. With her hand over her chest she asks, ¡°Why the compliment child?¡±


    Susanna shrugs and answers, ¡°I heard my mother telling father you were a woman of fifty-two. Well I stomped my foot, I spoke aloud to mother and father protestant. I don¡¯t believe them insulting you like that. You are far to beautiful to be a woman in her fifties. But they are not liars. Shortly I believed them. I hope that I am as beautiful as you when I am a woman of fifty.¡±


    Victoria, flattered, looks over Susanna¡¯s long, broad face where she saw her wide nose, her blue eyes that gleam bright with all the artistry of stained-glass windows and her innocent radiant skin. ¡°Brilliant child, carry with you forever an immortal goodness that ne¡¯er crack nor parts at the seams as near¡¯er to what you carry now and you will always be beautiful.¡±


    From inside the house the raspy voice of a woman calls out with a Dutch accent in English, ¡°Victoria?! Come, I have a deed!¡±


    Susanna gasps positively excited at the sound of her mothers voice. She unwinds her arm from Victoria¡¯s and with all the agility of a rabbit dashes inside calling out to her mother before even entering through the door. Victoria takes one last look at the horizon to see herself reflected back as the season¡¯s changing is her mirror. Like the earth she is fragile, and its life will soon seek refuge from the cold. But she has found her refuge in the hands of caretakers. The machine of her life built up momentum in her spring and fueled and greased by her own conducting hands through her summer and autumn to never stop. Her wintering has begun and she looks on acknowledging it. Hoping she will allow for it. To put her stubbornness aside and accept that she is getting old. As a cool breeze sends a chill through her she hopes she can accept it and still have the endurance to enable in action all the knowledge she has obtained. The strength to fully live, in all of its eluding beauty, through her last season.


    Victoria finally makes her way inside, ¡°Geertrudia, what deed can I be of help with?¡± Victoria inquires. While in a rocking chair Geertrudia has her daughter Susanna sitting on her knee. Beside the chair stands a smaller girl by the age of seven in a dark brown tweed dress and white bonnet. She is a smaller version of Susanna with plumper cheeks that swallow her eyes up when she grins and as Victoria connects eyes with her they share a smile together and Victoria greets her with a, ¡°Hello Madelief.¡±


    Madelief walks over to her and reaches her tiny hand out to grip Victoria¡¯s dress with stubby fingers rubbing her thumb across the fabric repeatedly. Geertrudia, who is a slim woman with hands conditioned in toil has a fixed smile that rests inside her pale complexion with wavy auburn hair pouring out of the sides and back of a sky blue bonnet. Motherly in presence and friendly in manner she focuses her attention on Victoria as two men enter the front door of the house.


    ¡°This evening is near¡¯er to your first arrival one year ago. We wish to celebrate you being with us for one year by cooking you a dinner full of splendor.¡±


    Geertrudia¡¯s husband is one of the men that entered the house. He is tall and slender with wide shoulders and a plump long nose on an already long oval face. The wrinkles that ripple on the sides of his mouth as he smiles neighbor the crows feet beside his eyes giving hint that he is in close age to Victoria. He speaks in a British accent from across the house, ¡°No better a reason to have a grand meal.¡±


    ¡°Jacop is right.¡± Geertrudia says, ¡°You have grown to be a part of our family. My husband and I cherish you. Our girls look up to you. You are worthy of a feast.¡±


    ¡°I am grateful for you.¡± Victoria responds. ¡°There has been no time in my life where I¡¯ve known so many wholehearted people. Nor have I had better friends than I have had here.¡±


    In reciprocation of Victoria¡¯s gratitude Geertrudia responds, ¡°As we are grateful for you. I have made arrangements to retrieve vegetables from the others in the village. Bernardo has agreed to spare us a few carrots from his garden. Will you do me the chore and go to Bernardo for the carrots he has promised?¡±


    Susanna jumps off her mothers knee to then ask in her soft British accent, ¡°Can I join miss Victoria on her walk, mother?¡± Geertudia tells her that it is up to Victoria. Victoria, with a charming smile gives Susanna a nod and reaches out her palm gesturing to take her hand.


    Geertrudia picks up Madelief before saying, ¡°We will get started on dinner while you get carrots from Bernardo.¡±


    Just then Jacop can be heard asking the other man he came in with, ¡°Knelis? Where is the axe we keep near the wood?¡± Knelis has fragile eyes and soft features for a man in his thirties. With both hands he brushes back his long blond hair and with a thick dutch accent he responds, ¡°It broke earlier today while I was using it at Gerben¡¯s home.¡± Jacob scoffs, ¡°Geertrudia! Your brother broke our axe.¡±


    Geertrudia stands up, ¡°Its alright Jacop, Knelis will go to Ignaas to have us made up two axes in place of the one he broke. Isn¡¯t that right Knelis?¡±


    Knelis nods in agreement as Victoria turns to Geertrudia, ¡°We are off. We shall return soon with carrots.¡±


    Victoria and Susanna step out into the street of Rode Heuvals. It looks like a growing village with dirt roads and little brick paving around the foundation of homes and buildings. Their home is near the village gates and they pass through t


    ¡°Plenty!¡± Victoria says humored by the whims of this young girl. She has always been secure in her confidence and such a question would never puncture her ego. She responds with a soft delicate demeanor, ¡°None of which I wish to ruminate about for I do not dwell in the realm of my villains. They need no hand in finding me. Mistake it not for when they do, it will be my realm they are in and it will be my force of nature they will have to answer to.¡± Victoria can see out of the corner of her eye that Susanna somewhat pouts and turns her face away to hide it as though she was being disciplined for asking. Victoria stops in the street and kneels down in front of Susanna.


    ¡°But just this once I will tell you of a love of mine I had some years ago,¡± Smiling at Susanna like it was their secret. Victoria grabs her hands, ¡°He was gentle and he appreciated the light of life in people. He would call me the sunlight of his life. You see, he was a sad man as well. It was an illness that plagued his waking life damning him to the world of night because he was allergic to the sun.¡±


    ¡°No.¡± Susanna gasps.


    ¡°I¡¯m afraid so. Even being in the shadows of a room that let in a single ray of sunlight blinded his eyes. So I made the quiet mid-night hours feel like a world filled with life, just to see him smile.¡±


    Victoria stands up and they continue walking, passing the water pump that is in the middle of a beaten circular path at the entrance to the village.


    ¡°Where is he now?¡± Susanna Asks.


    Reluctantly she answers with an obvious lie, ¡°It has been some years since his departure.¡±


    ¡°He died?!¡±


    ¡°Yes, you see he was taken by his illness.¡±


    ¡°Oh Miss. Victoria! Both a story of love and woe. What was his name?¡±


    ¡°Voivode. He had lost all the members of his family before he could learn his surname. So all he had was one name.¡±


    ¡°Voivode¡­ stupendous.¡± Susanna says and it makes Victoria laugh lightly finding a joy in learning that Susanna knows such a word as stupendous.


    ¡°I wish I were to have met him. He sounds handsome and charming.¡±


    ¡°He was bruiting, often quiet, opinionated¡­ intelligent and understanding. He made it easy to love with little fret to get in the way of it. He was... irresistibly charming, loving, kind... and¡­ at times... terribly sad. He was¡­ beautiful. He was a kind man as well which t¡¯was most important to me. I recall he would gift me my favorite flower every year for my birthday.¡±


    ¡°What is your favorite flower?¡±


    ¡°A white lotus.¡±


    They continue into the condensed streets. Here the houses are closer together and more of the villagers can be seen working near their homes. There is a pulse where the whole community is actively working in progress of the town. Victoria can see in almost every person a motivation that contributes to help the growth of all in the community. She recognized decisions were made without doubt. She knew that it wasn¡¯t only her small village that moved like bees in a hive. She had seen this before in the greater cities of the Dutch republic during the late 1700¡¯s when their trade market was among the richest in the world before Napoleonic rule transpired. Now trades were weak and growth was difficult in this era but within this village there was a prosperity of hope that drove its life.


    Susanna energetically jumps, ¡°You said earlier, I do not dwell in the realm of my villains, and I had a thought. I love stories of Villains. They are always so much more to me than stories of monsters.¡±


    Now caught in confusion Victoria stops in her steps to reply, ¡°Now it is you who must praytell, I see no separation of the two. How do you perceive such a notion? Art not both the antagonist?¡±


    ¡°Not to I.¡± Susanna says, ¡°The story of little red riding hood, the wolf is clearly a monster to be feared. But all the story, he wants to convince her that he is not what she thinks. He is not the monster at all, he lies. So is the same for all tales of monsters. The baba yaga wants children. But, to steal them away to the woods the monster has to make the children believe it is not a monster. My father tells me the stories he learned in his schooling about the Greek mythos of Hercules. All who he faced and defeated were without doubt that he, the mighty Hercules, was their enemy. Villains make me excited because they can be told different ways. The great lion Hercules faces fought him because it was his nature to fight or eat. The cyclops, truly only protecting his small corner of the earth where it could live without bother. Most villains know they are the villain, some perceive they are the hero justifying wrong doing for the sake of the good. Then there are the ones that can not see they are doing villainy at all. It is quite evident to me that all monsters are the same. Always taking with no end to their evil. Wretchedly repeating their stories where they lie about not being a monster, but they really are. To which no means to ever be human. It¡¯s boring!¡±


    ¡°You are quite a brilliant child.¡± Victoria says as they start to walk again. Susana continues, ¡°I want to learn more about mythos. I have heard the Greek mythos and the Romans. Truly¡­ truly I wish to learn of the Irish and Scottish mythos. What wonders lay waiting there.¡±


    ¡°I know of a few I gladly will tell of.¡± Victoria says to Susanna to which the child eagerly nods and says, ¡°Yes! Please!¡±


    ¡°Well Susanna, I can tell you of a Goddess that Scottish peoples would say, we are in the presence of. Beira, the queen of winter, and to some the goddess of harvest. They say she made the mountains, carved the creeks, and drinks from a spring of youth to live young and free all year till she ages in winter. Tis then when she is pale as the fields snow. The winter is her power, what she was made from. She takes from the earth to harvest for herself for the coming year.¡±


    They enter off the street through a short gate where a path leads to a small wooden home as Victoria continues, ¡°When she makes her presence known then it is time to harvest. Lo¡¯ she does not come without fear for there are people who call her by another name.¡±


    As Victoria and Susanna reach the door of the small home the door is opened by its residence before either one can raise a hand to knock. The man who greets them is tall and slim. An Italian man with black hair where gray is coming in on one side. Appearing to be in his 50¡¯s his skin is tight on his long face where he adorns a bushy peppered mustache. He smiles at them with his half draped eyelids and immovable eyes and begins to speak in Italian but quickly stops himself to continue to speak in English with an Italian accent.


    ¡°Victoria¡­ Susanna. Victoria you warm me like the afternoon sun with your beauty. What do I owe the pleasure, if not for the act to say hello?¡±


    ¡°By me, be tis the first I hath seen of your heartfelt compliments Bernardo.¡±


    ¡°I trust, dear Victoria, they are well received.¡±


    ¡°In kind, when they will be, I assure you I will voice it.¡±The author''s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    ¡°I mean no harm of it. Truly¡±


    ¡°Nor do I feel harmed. Your company is still sought by me, dearest Bernardo. Be it understood we are in the presence of Susanna and she is a child who deserves to be acknowledged. I invite you to compliment me in other ways. In her presence or without. In kind of course.¡±


    ¡°Of course. My apologies Victoria-¡± Victoria is gesturing with her pointer finger down at Susanna, ¡°My apologies¡­ Young Susanna.¡±


    Susanna nods her head to accept Bernardo¡¯s apology and in the same instance she turns to Victoria befuddled, ¡°Why is Mr. Bernardo apologizing to me?¡±


    Victoria and Bernardo share a light laugh.


    ¡°Perhaps there is a difficulty in explaining. Rest assured, not knowing the reasoning of an apology is far better than to never receive the one you deserve.¡± Victoria turns her attention back to Bernardo.


    ¡°Bernardo we have come to retrieve the carrots you promised Geertrudia.¡±


    ¡°Yes, of course. I thought it so of being the true reason you were here but I enjoyed playing a fool shortly, I must admit.¡±


    Bernardo steps away into his home to then return with a small burlap sack tied off with a hemp string. As he hands Victoria the sack he tells her there are five carrots just as Geertrudia asked for. It is just then that Bernardo, Victoria, and Susanna take notice to the romping of feet and noisy ruffling of high waist skirts. They all turn to see two teenage girls running through the street toward Bernardo¡¯s home. They stop at the gate winded and gasping for air.


    Bernardo hollers out to them, ¡°Has something happened?¡±


    ¡°Yes Mr. Bernardo.¡± one of them says in between catching their breath. Victoria walks over to them, ¡°Yvonne? Zoe? What hath transpired?¡± Yvonne a girl of nine-teen and her seven-teen year old sister Zoe are more than just out of breath. Their eyes red and wet from crying with tremors still in their voices. They go back and forth taking turns explaining what the matter is while speaking in English with Dutch accents.


    They explain that their mother, Wilhelmina, is the mid wife for Ambroos. Her water had broken not an hour ago. After preparing Ambroos to deliver, Wilhelmina began to recognize that something was wrong. Soon Ambroos¡¯s cries of pain would be the tell tale signs of birthing complications. The two girls look to each other before one of them says, ¡°She didn¡¯t know who to go to. You were the only one she could ask. Our father is there trying to convince Pepijn to rear their child into the world¡­ to no avail.¡±


    Victoria straightens up and for a moment stares above the homes into the sky. ¡°Will you help her?¡± Yvonne asks as she wipes away at an endless stream of tears.


    Victoria looks to them both and takes a few seconds to make eye contact with them one at a time and without making them wait for a reply any longer she responds, ¡°Without a doubt.¡±


    Victoria, still holding Susanna¡¯s hand exits the yard gate. She hands Zoe the burlap sack of carrots, ¡°Zoe, take Susanna home and tell Geertrudia what hath transpired. Hurry go along now.¡± Victoria then turns around to holler at Bernardo, ¡°Mr. Bernardo! I need your assistance in this urgent matter, if you so oblige.¡±


    He nods agreeing to be of assistance and Victoria continues, ¡°Good. Please gather your carpentry tools along with any spirits you may have. Meet me at the home of Gerben as soon as humanly possible.¡±


    He launches back into his home closing the door behind him.


    ¡°Yvonne,¡± Victoria says as she turns to the young girl again, ¡°I need you to retrieve the root of a yam and the root of a cassava. Do you understand?¡±


    She nods yes and Victoria commands, ¡°Now tell me what I asked you to retrieve.¡±


    ¡°Miss. Victoria asked me to retrieve the root of a yam and the root of a cassava.¡±


    ¡°Brilliant Child. Now tell me what I asked you to retrieve again.¡±


    ¡°You asked me to retrieve the root of a yam and the root of a cassava.¡±


    ¡°Brilliant child! I need them as soon as humanly possible. Bring them straight to Ambroos¡¯s home, now go!¡±


    Yvonne goes off running and Victoria hurries in the opposite direction, heading further into town.


    Inside Ambroos¡¯s home a young dutch man named Gerben is raising a drenched towel from a bowl that he wrings out. He gently lays it over top Ambroos¡¯ forehead as she lay in a bed that has been placed in the living room. The contractions put her in pain that make her eyes bulge and her hands shoot to her hips and stomach forcing a gut wrenching scream. Everyone in the room cringes at the sound. On the other side of the bed is Tessa, a fragile woman in her 30¡¯s who is joined by the midwife Wilhelmina, her elder mother Anuschka, and two other elder woman in their eighties and nineties who reside at the foot of the bed in prayer. Their arms entwined while a fourth elderly woman in her sixties stands behind them. Across the room, Ignaas, a tall bulky man in a black leather apron with a bright blond beard is in a stern and rocky conversation with a slimmer man named Pepijn whom is dressed in a dirt coated farmers smauk. In Dutch Ignaas is working out how Pepijn can use his knowledge that he has in assisting the horses in birthing to help Ambroos with her birthing complications but Pepijn is not confident in rearing the birth of the child.


    While they continue their heated discussion the front door to the house opens and enters a middle aged spanish man named Kasper. His hands still dirty from tending to the fields today. He is holding the hand of his wife, Jacintha. She has auburn hair pulled under her white bonnet and with her head slightly tilted downward she follows behind her husband. They give a nod to all and stand against the wall at the back of the room.


    Ambroos screams fill the room. They could pull tears from the eyes like an audible extraction. Some flinch at her cries of, ¡°It hurts! Help me! The pain! Make It stop! Save me!¡±


    Her husband Gerben caresses her face and holds her hand trying to soothe her but he is unsure how much actually is getting through to her. He is on the verge of tears and struggling with his composure.


    Anuschka, Wilhelmina¡¯s elder mother, takes pause from prayer after one of Ambroos¡¯s ground shaking cries.


    Anuschka announces across the bed in Dutch, ¡°Gerben. It¡¯s time to say goodbye. Take this time now for fear, my child, there may be no time again.¡±


    He contemplates that Anuschka might be right. His tears can be held back no more and he holds Ambroos¡¯ hand against his face as he cries like the sun will burn out. He is powerless. Gerben falls weak and crumbles onto the beds edge. Kasper and Jacintha watch and begin to hold each other closer. Ignaas and Pepijn stop mid conversation at the sound of Gerben falling apart. Both men drop their heads and become quiet.


    Wilhelmina tells Ambroos through her weeping, ¡°I¡¯m so sorry. Forgive me my dear Ambroos.¡± She then falls into Tessa¡¯s shoulder where her wailing is muffled.


    The room is filled with a tension. Weary anticipation builds like a sickness in everyone tying their stomachs in knots and making them nauseous for the heartbreak to come. An air thick with change that an era of heavy melancholy descends on them. Gerben cries to Ambroos, ¡°If ever I have stolen any of your days, I am sorry. If ever I have given you a day without love, I am sorry. Dearest, My dearest Ambroos. Where will love live in this world if you are no longer here. I am sorry ever you wished more of me. You were the reason food was good and the air filled my lungs. Without you! Without you my dearest Ambroos, fire will lose its warmth.¡±


    The front door swings open again and Victoria enters the house. Only Jacintha and kasper look up while the rest grieve. Wilhelmina feels the light touch of a hand on her shoulder. She looks back to see Victoria standing over her.


    ¡°Oh Victoria, I did what I could.¡±


    Victoria reaches over to feel Ambroos¡¯ stomach. ¡°Worry not. For your goodness is recognized.¡± Victoria raises her voice to get the attention of the room, ¡°There is still hope. Gerben! With your approval, I would like to conduct an operation that has seen the survival of both the mother and child. An operation that has been practiced in the African region of Uganda for hundreds of years. I know this operation to be reliable. With help... I can save the life of your wife and child.¡±


    ¡°Then there is no time to waste!¡± Geertrudia says from the open door. Standing with her is Jacop and Zoe.


    Victoria looks to Geertrudia to acknowledge her and then looks to Gerben who gives her a nod of approval.


    ¡°Ambroos,¡± Victoria says while turning to grab her hand, ¡°You are the only person in this room for which their wants truly matter. I trust myself. I know myself to shatter disbelief upon reaching the fruition of my ambitions. Grant me your trust and tell me this is what you want and I will hesitate no longer.¡±


    Ambroos, heaving in pain, fights to stare Victoria in the eyes. She stares assessing, sweat stinging her eyes and pain drilling through her chest and up her neck. ¡°Miss. Victoria¡­ I grant you my trust. Do what you must¡­ but against all odds... save my baby. If nothing else... th-that... is all I truly want.¡±


    Victoria then faces everyone in the room, ¡°Like all things in life, there is no guarantee this will be successful.


    With Bernardo on one side and Wilhelmina on the other Victoria takes a sharp cleaned blade and cuts Ambroos¡¯ lower abdomen. She makes incisions through multiple layers one after the other. First through her skin then fat. When she arrives at muscle she cuts it vertically. She pushes the muscle aside and using hooks she has Wilhelmina and Bernardo pull the muscle aside only slightly. Another layer of tissue is exposed now, another cut, now another set of hooks for Bernardo and Wilhelmina to use occupying both of their hands. Victoria is at a point where she must operate with no assistance. She reaches in through the muscle and tissue to the uterus wall. Another cut. With her hand she separates the incision to see the amniotic sac. One more layer. She must be slow, only to cut the layer of tissue and nothing more. Just one more layer deeper... into Ambroos¡¯ body... with a carpenters blade.

 Chapter 4

    Chapter 4


    A red leather bound journal tied closed rests on Victoria¡¯s lap. She sits in her room that is bare with the exception of her bed and a trunk of clothes. Sitting on her bed she stares at the wall where the afternoon sunlight lays. The curtains of her open window rising and falling with the light breeze that enters. She can smell much of the field in the air that can be found just right outside of the village. The scent chills her nose and it reminds her of a woman she used to know. It was during a short time she spent in the South of France when she was twenty-four. Perhaps this is a good time in the day to take a walk and ruminate for a while if she is going to think on young love.


    Victoria heads down stairs and before reaching the bottom she can hear Susanna and Madelief laughing with each other and parading through the house in their child sized clogs. Dutch styled wooden shoes that were clacking against the wood boarded floors with their running. Upon entering the room she looked at the clogs and can see Susanna¡¯s were red and Madelief¡¯s were a fair blue. Geertrudia comes inside from the back door, her arms soaking and covered in suds.


    Victoria calls out to her, ¡°Geertrudia? Let me carry some of your load. Is there enough work from Ambroos¡¯ and Gerben¡¯s clothes that I may help you with the wash?¡± Geertrudia casually dries her arms on an apron she has tied around her waist and gives her an earnest smile where her cheeks swallow her eyes up. Victoria recognizes that little Madelief shares the same qualities in her smile. Geertrudia¡¯s presence is that of a cup filled with joy, keeping high spirits in strenuous labor. With a worked up sweat she replies, ¡°No. Don¡¯t you worry about any of that Miss. Victoria. I¡¯m still so grateful for you taking care of Ambroos.¡±


    Susanna and Madelief run up to Victoria on either side, Susanna wrapping around her arm and Madelief grabbing hold of her skirt. The girls laugh and giggle about it. Victoria gives the girls a smile to then give her attention back to Geertrudia, ¡°I am just as grateful I was of help but please allow me to assist you somehow.¡±


    ¡°You are such a sister to me. How I adore you Victoria. How about a walk with the girls? They could use the play and I would be the happier to be without the hammering of clogs for a short while.¡±


    Geertrudia starts a laugh that Victoria joins her in. Susanna jitters excited with the idea and Victoria responds, ¡°We will take a walk through the fields then¡­ maybe twice, for your mother¡¯s sake.¡± This ignites the young girls into a jumping fit that explodes with the clatter of wooden clogs.


    There is a path woven in the dirt around the fields. The red mammoth beats comfortably sit under the leaves shade. Susanna and Madelief freely frolic close to Victoria. She stares at the fields and the yellowing of the red mammoth beat leaves. Every time the wind picks up Victoria times her breath so she may breathe in deep to catch what new scent rides the draft. The air is as cooling as river water while the sun a gentle hugging warmth. The fields remind her of her time in Gevaudan, France. The wet dew that would linger on the morning world. How it would drip from every flower pedal and blade of grass. She thinks how in the evenings the bugs would join together to serenade the setting sun. There were few moments during her time there when she didn¡¯t enjoy the weather. Even when it would rain it was always welcoming and comfortable. Petrichor rising with a powerful fragrance to be what she would call ¡°the smell of rain.¡±


    The way she kissed her for the first time in the rain. Victoria, smiles with a blush as she reminisces of the woman from Gevaudan. Her name was Simone Plourde. A woman raised from childhood to know only a life in the country. Her wild dark brown hair always tied up in a bun. Her cynical remarks that knew no mercy for any such person, place or object. All of life was pain and she reminded everyone to never forget it. But Victoria knew there was an untouched heart within her that was eager to be felt. A despair to finally see the energy she used for anger be used instead to love. How fierce she would love if she were ever to be sought after. Before they ever touched lips she was not sure Simone could tell that her heart beat with all an armies percussion each time they grew nearer. Nor could Victoria read Simone. There were initial moments of undeniable goodness that sparked a desire to pursue her heart but Simone was a bruiting one with much downtrodden dismay to express. If there was ever a moment displaying affection for Victoria early in their friendship, it was hidden well behind a rough facade. Victoria will never know what inspired Simone that night and why she grabbed her face to kiss her. There was a passion there that had built up so much she could feel that it was unbearable for her to refrain from any longer. She can remember Simone¡¯s eyes when she pulled back to look at her, barely visible in the dark fraught with fear that her actions were wrong. But Victoria was a young and fearless woman. A Frankenstein who always took what they wanted in life. A young Victoria in her twenties staring back at Simone with a rising passion and excitement, contemplating pulling Simone back to her. She tells herself in her head ¡°Death follows Frankensteins.¡± to then pull Simone in for an embrace. Drenched, they tightly hold each other close. Simone began to cry with alleviation that she was well received.


    Victoria thinks to herself, ¡°I had found, with an impossible luck, another soul whose kindness merited kindling. Much like that of my first young love. But then it was another woman who risked life and death with the act of a kiss. A woman who secretly stood in her own inflections outside the paths set forth for woman. I had found another¡­ other¡±. It has been twenty years and in that time much reflection has transpired. I was in love with Simone. She was like the stars to me. Often hiding in the dark and overlooked in the presence of the moon but given attention they could be loved for their wonder. Regrettably, like the stars, she travels with a condemnation to one day rapidly burn out. One less light to observe in wonder as all of night will forever grow darker.¡±


    Susanna screams! Victoria tears away from journeying through her memories, having forgotten for a short time she was taking this walk with the girls. Susanna¡¯s giggling soon follows as the girls continue their ongoing tickle match. Victoria watches their white cotton dutch kaps bob up and down as they trot, skip and run in circles. Today their dresses are identical, like most days, with Madelief¡¯s being about two sizes smaller. Their presence is enjoyed by Victoria and for her it does not hinder her ruminations. It cannot be summed up by having a strong tolerance for children but an ever willed appreciation for seeing a child experience what is simply, living. It was bottomless how much she adored children. She was lucky to be paying attention the way she does and has seen many times children experience the short moments that make childhood memorable. How they can travel with wonder flying wildly from one blind plan of joy to the next. No, they are of no bother and Victoria laughs off the scare. She continues her thoughts. She thinks about how crops and farmland always remind her of Simone. This is the second time in the past few days that she has found herself revisiting the memories of a past love. Maybe it has something to do with Bernardo. He has voiced quite an interest in the past few weeks. Maybe it is his presence that uncovers these thoughts. It is admirable that even though Victoria is the reason that his pursuit has been playfully drawn out and time consuming, he persists, and this makes her think that he can maintain an interest which is flattering to her. She knows that Italians and the English have plenty of differences in their customs and maybe he is afraid to stumble on one that causes disrespect. Or he is just too gentle a man to make an advancement in his pursuit of her. None the less she believes they should spend some time getting to know each other if this slow bloom is to feel healthy in its ascension- she stops. She stops walking. She stops thinking. Her first new thought to be pondered is ¡°Is it time? Can it be time... to let love flourish once again?¡± she asks her self knowing she is still far from feeling as powerful a spirit such as love, for Bernardo. But these ideas of courting a partner, they lead to time spent in the presence of another giving up themselves. In those waking hours when a person makes themselves vulnerable for another, that is where love tends to grow.


    Victoria and the girls soon return to the village. It is a bright day out with the aroma of frost in the northern winds making the approaching winter apparent. As they reach the entrance they can see that the village is active as many are getting their daily tasks done. Pepijn is taking a break from keeping up the stables to retrieve water from the well. Nearby, Knelis can be seen swiping his straight hair out of his eyes in front of the blacksmiths workshop. He then picks up two freshly made axes that he takes across the village entrance. Pepijn, pulls the bucket from the well and uses his hand to cup the water to drink. In doing so he loses his balance, but Knelis is there to pull him back avoiding a fall into the well. Pepijn starts laughing as he shows Knelis his gratitude with a few good pats.


    Benji, the local fisherman, can be seen leaving a bundle of fish wrapped in cloth at a nearby house. Most likely he has recently returned from a fishing trip and is delivering a requested catch. Even from this distance Victoria can tell it is Benji the fisherman, not because of his height or his reddening leather skin but because he carries around a load of feeble wretched years. No one person can say he is unpleasant to deal with since he already makes himself scarce therefore its difficult to speak ill of a man who is never seen. Still, to Victoria there is much to analyze of someone who makes themselves unwelcoming. Her and the girls meet with Knelis before the house. Always such a quiet man he smiles and nods to greet them all.If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it.


    ¡°Knelis,¡± Victoria asks, ¡°Where may I find Jacop at this hour?¡± He raises his arm and points across the way. ¡°The black smith shop?¡± Victoria asks. He smiles and nods in response. ¡°Thank you Knelis. Girls. Follow your uncle inside.¡± She walks over and steps inside to see Jacop and Ignaas talking. Ignaas reaches up to dip his hands in a bucket of water that he hangs on a hook from the ceiling.


    Jacop greets her with a, ¡°Good day Victoria. How are you this afternoon?¡±


    ¡°Reminiscent in fact. I had a thought. If you don¡¯t mind me pulling you away from Ignaas for a moment.¡±


    ¡°Not at all. Ignaas.¡± Jacop calls out, ¡°I will return shortly.¡± The two of them step outside together. ¡°What can I assist you with Victoria?¡± Jacop asks with serious inquiry.


    ¡°Back in England, when you were my families financier, I requested that you take on a task to travel to France. Do you recall?¡±


    ¡°I recall, yes.¡±


    ¡°In your travel did you ever meet with Simone Plourde.¡± Jacop thinks on it for a moment.


    ¡°I do not recall her presence. It was the oldest ¨C a young lad and four other children, I believe. No Simone that I recall. Why do you ask?¡±


    Victoria replies with a smile, ¡°I felt I could not think on anything but the past as of today. My old friend came up in my memories and I couldn¡¯t keep from my curiosities of how your dealings with her transpired.¡±


    ¡°Well I¡¯m sure when she returned home she was happy to see you took care of her family.¡± Jacop reassures Victoria who nods agreeably. Jacop takes a moment to study her to see the flow of hope and mild disappointment claim her features.


    ¡°Is there anything more you wish to discuss?¡± he asks expectantly. Victoria¡¯s eyes shoot up to meet him, ¡°No, nothing more. I just never found the time to ask of her until now.¡±


    With a stand in his voice he says,¡°I¡¯ve never known you to hide your intentions away. Professionally speaking, I know it is not my place to pry ¨C but as your oldest friend, I see you have tucked so much of yourself away in the crevices of your thoughts. You have been with my family and I for some time now, and I am all the happier to have you with us, but I gather the sense that you have changed beyond the general pains of life and experience,¡± he says, every word with earnest intention. Victoria recalls the day they met in Bruges a year ago; how serendipitous to have crossed paths. She had been traveling for years; living off the kindness of strangers. Trying to balance between survival and societal politeness as to not to overstay a welcome. How her body moved mechanically in this time from exhaustion so deep it had buried itself in her bones it seemed. She gave little answer and half truths when Jacop asked what came of her and her home; she should have known better then to think it was a substantial answer for him. She thinks to herself, ¡°Ever since he found me he went on to explain that his father and mother had passed under a decade ago, and his sister met an unfortunate demise in an untimely accident. He had not seen them since he left his life in England and quit as my financier to move to the Dutch Republic in 1802 to marry Geertrudia. My father would bring me to his family home so he may discuss business with his father in my early age. I remember we shared notes on subjects in our shared studies. There were quarters we spent together in his family¡¯s library. We grew up together, frequently audient of each other¡¯s innocent banters. I can still remember the way his soft boyish face looks even with laborous wrinkles of his older years finely pressed into his features. While he stands in front of me his hand is lightly resting over his stomach. I can see the deepened cracks in his fingertips where the skin has dried, a testament to his long hours of work in the fields, with the villagers and in his home. And though his hands may be strong, they are no longer boyish, evident our friendship is an old one and more so that there is little that has survived from when we were young but that of whence our friendship came. We are each others eldest remaining filiar remnants. Quite the rarest of friendships to uphold.¡±


    Victoria assures Jacop, placing her hand on his arm, ¡°What you have observed rings some truth, Jacop, and I full heartedly apologize for any concern it may have caused you. There is a lifetime of woes that are best kept in the shadows of time, lest it take away from the second chance that has been bestowed upon me here and now. I have much to enjoy, all thanks to you and yours,¡± Urging him to believe all is well. Jacop gives a reluctant nod, not all too convinced that there is nothing more than the curious inquiry, but of acceptance that all is as well as she claims. ¡°I will see you at home,¡± she says bidding farewell.


    Continuing her walk Victoria passes through the streets and just as she is about to come upon Bernardo¡¯s house he steps out his front door. He has in his hand his wooden tool carrying case. It only takes him a short single glance to detect her strolling by. As he closes the door behind him he yells to her, ¡°Victoria!¡± She stops to wave and in seeing him come towards her with purpose she waits still for him to arrive. ¡°Victoria. The whole of my day will be fraught with duties. I am quite glad to have been gifted with even a chance to see you.¡± He reaches for her hand to hold it for a moment. It is far less than a hand shake and not nearly firm enough to feel like she was being forced to simply hold his hand. Delicately Bernardo holds her hand up between them with her fingers latched over his. Bernardo continues, ¡°Even for a glance it shall be enough of a meal to fill my heart. I pray I may not be starved of you come tomorrow.¡±


    Victoria¡¯s brows lift together till there is no where left for them to go. As she bashfully closes her eyes she asks, ¡°Prey tell, what duties keep you today?¡± Bernardo lets go of her hand. Their fingers only having touched for a few short seconds now come apart. In that small time Victoria could feel her heart beat a hundred thousand times. She could feel a cooking warmth rise in her chest and a hot flash fill her face. The way she fought herself to not be closer to his body the way she wanted to. The amount of restraint she found in order for her self discipline to prevail was at first in need of scrounging. She felt strange having so many things occur in that small moment she touched his fingers. Perhaps, she notices, its because she had stopped breathing. As she inhales a breath she thinks to herself, ¡°I have put soup to boil and had been done with it sooner than the length of holding his hand felt.¡±


    Bernardo replies to her, ¡°I must rebuild the steps in the home of Kasper and Jacintha. Their two sons have seemingly worn them down to be unbearable. I must be on my way. I will see you again soon.¡± Briefly she watches him walk down the street and then continues on. Her walk has led up to Ambroos¡¯s and Gerben¡¯s home. She sees Gerben step outside.


    ¡°Good afternoon Victoria.¡± Victoria waves, ¡°I have come by to see that Ambroos is healing properly.¡±


    ¡°Ah yes. You are welcome to go inside and see but I cannot stay. I must hurry up to the wind mill to see Albertus. He has asked for mine and Jacops help today.¡± Victoria nods in understanding as he passes by and she walks inside to see Ambroos asleep with her new born daughter on their bed that is still placed in the living room. Victoria walks up to her bedside quietly. She sees they are both resting comfortably. Watching over them in reverence for the gentle nature of Ambroos nurturing her baby she decides to not disturb them. Lingering enough to bring a longing tear to her eye, she turns to leave. She wipes away the tears just as fast as they fall. There it is in her vision of life what she defines as a world half grey. To feel only half joy, feel only half warmth, smell faint all the perfumes of the world because she lives a life of wanting what she knows she can never have.


    ¡°Victoria,¡± Ambroos softly says. Victoria turns back and whispers, ¡°Ambroos. I came to see how you were healing. I will come back another time.¡± in a quiet hoarse voice Ambroos says, ¡°I¡¯m healing. Gerben makes sure of my rest. He is good.¡± Victoria smiles at her.


    ¡°That is very good. Very good. What have you named her?¡±


    ¡°We have not decided on one yet. Umm¡­ Misses?¡±


    ¡°Yes Ambroos?¡±


    ¡°I ponder quite often of you. How I wish to thank you for what you have done. How does a woman come to know what you know?¡±


    ¡°I learned it, my friend. A long time ago. Taught to me by other women.¡±


    ¡°You will have to tell me someday of what else you learned. Teach me what I ought to know. For I hope that someday, my daughter will be as incredible as you. Do tell, how does a woman become a doctor the way you have?¡± Victoria gives pause before answering as she realizes the truth in what she plans to say.


    ¡°I am not a doctor. Where I came from, Woman¡­ are not allowed to study in universities. Therefore they can never obtain higher titles such as doctor.¡± Victoria nods while smirking of self disappointment.


    ¡°Get your rest now.¡± Victoria says.


    ¡°Victoria,¡± Ambroos raises her head to look into Victoria¡¯s eyes with her tired ones.


    ¡°You are an incredible woman.¡± Victoria nods accepting her compliment be it reluctantly and tells Ambroos, ¡°Yes, as are you. Get your rest now Ambroos. I will see you soon.¡±


    Ambroos nestles close to her baby, not needing further convincing. Victoria allows herself only a second to admire the sight, mother and child ¨C a sight she has seen over the years in medical studies and travels, yet now in this moment feels so foreign to observe. The tender love of a new life was nothing short of incredible.


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 Chapter 5: A FUTURE MADE BY KIND CHILDREN

    It is so early the sun is not up and a cold dawn fosters frost on the grass and the vapors of Victoria¡¯s breath can be seen in the air. She walks in the north just outside of the village on a dirt trail. It is a path that leads to a small school house. A tall one story large enough to hold a town gathering still its bones look to be pushing 200 years and when Victoria steps inside Susanna and Madelief push past her, stopping to hand her yellow chrysanthemum flowers. One flower each, Susanna and Madelief hand them to her one at a time. The Chrysanthemum¡¯s are an art of nature with bold yellow hues, radiant vivid textures with both flowers sharing a deep blossom. Clearly keen thought and care was put into the picking of these flowers.


    With an elegance and fragility that she reserves for children, Victoria gracefully accepts the flowers and Susanna and Madelief sit at their desks. As Victoria walks to the front of class there is no other sound that can be heard in the room except for the wooden floor boards grimly moaning with creaks under her steps. There is a stern authority to her that lives within an unwritten law and unspoken vows that even though she never voices to retain control most feel an unquestionable respect for her, especially the children.


    ¡°Miss. Victoria?¡± Victoria takes notice that Yvonne gives other students glances and that the whole class is wide eyed giving off an anxiety that Victoria reads making her concerned.


    ¡°We¡­ want to know¡­ if¡­ you could teach us¡­¡± Just then Kasper walks in with his son, Augusto, a young man of sixteen. They both stand by the door, hesitant to step further, as if they were intruding. Kasper¡¯s straw hat gripped in front of his farming smock with soil covered hands. His body bent in embarrassment, for risk of being turned away.


    In a Spanish accent, Kasper interrupts the conversation, ¡°Miss. Victoria. Is there room for my son to sit? I hope to pull him out of the fields so that he may learn under your school lessons in the mornings from now on.¡±


    ¡°It is my wish to also be here Miss. Victoria.¡± Augusto innocently adds. Victoria responds in Spanish, ¡°Of course. There is plenty of room,¡±


    ¡°Ah, knowledgeable in language as well!¡± Kasper remarks with newfound confidence. ¡°Thank you Miss. Victoria. Augusto, take a seat my son. Learn,¡± he gently pats Augusto¡¯s cheek affectionately.


    After Kasper leaves Augusto settles into a near by desk. Victoria says to Yvonne, ¡°As I was saying, there is only one lesson a day. Let us not be too hasty, and today we shall continue with grammar.¡± But before Victoria can continue Yvonne speaks up again, ¡°All of us are interested in learning about¡­¡± Victoria looks over all the children in the classroom before Yvonne continues, ¡°Well, we want to learn about trust.¡±


    ¡°Trust?¡± Victoria questions with both her eye brows arching high, ¡°I, think we can humor this for a little while. The definition of trust is not something that will take up an entire lesson.¡±


    Victoria walks away from her desk to be closer to the students. Looking over the eyes of the children its as if they all asked why and now sit in wait for their answer.


    ¡°I see.¡± to then spend a moment in silence with the classroom.


    As she leans against her desk she addresses them,¡°There is no short answer in such a request. I can give many answers and I can give my answer. The one answer that holds meaning with me. Even if so, there are few in this class that will grasp my words. This is equally a profoundly important matter and a difficult one to navigate.¡± Augusto gently speaks up and in a Spanish accent, ¡°Well, teach us despite. The eldest of us can do our part to learn it. Therefore we can do our part to teach it to the youth of us.¡± His classmates unanimously agree with him. Victoria is speechless to her students eagerness. She ponders intensely piecing together a strategy with her collective knowledge like a chess player planning their next four moves. She straightens up and speaks with the well versed melody of a string quartet.


    The Song of Lord Halewijn, or Heer Halewijn?¡±


    All but Augusto raises their hands and Victoria continues, ¡°A maiden hears a song in the night. The lure of lord Halewijn and becomes enchanted. She knows that all young maidens who hath sought out this enchanting lord were never to return. Still, she is swooned and wishes to seek him out. With only the permission of her brother, promising so long she keep her integrity in tact by taking a sword so she may protect herself lest misfortune should fall upon her, she then pursues the lure of lord Halewijn deep into the woods. When she finds him she cries satisfied with the man he is and the loving gentle nature he portrays. Soon they ride further into the labrynth of the woods where he leads her to a gallow field.¡± Victoria recites a verse:


    ¡®Then they arrived at the gallows field


    with many women''s corpses hanging there


    with many women''s corpses hanging there.¡¯


    Victoria continues, ¡°This is the importance of the story. In this moment we must recognize that no maiden hath returned to her home and family because the Lord Halewijn hath lured them all to their murder. It is here in the story that our fair maiden flourishes in her strength to stay true to her integrity and moves forward with vigor to act swiftly against her villain. She acts as so because she portrays the idol of what must be done lest we all fall victim to deception. Our maiden challenges him to death by combat and while he is distracted by her ruse she beheads Lord Halewijn with the sword she bared. Our maiden was the only maiden to return home. Many a maiden had to die so fear would happen within our maiden. T¡¯was fear that lead her to her survival. The Song of Lord Halewijn is a lesson we sing about to remind all that the paths of curiosity can be traveled till our survival is threatened. We sing to remind us to fear not death till you foolishly temp it. We sing to remind the children whom yet to come, that there is no trust where there is harm and to see with all your integrity when your trust is in danger of deception. Fear the knight or the lord as in our fair maiden¡¯s story, fear them who enchant us with whims and loving satisfaction but with the same hands will harm others. It is with those words I wish for you to grow remembering to feed a world where truth is greater than all those who choose to deceive. If you are to be, then you will build a world of which there is less deception. There will always be fear, thus truly unnerving is a world where we must fear without rest from it. Even worse, if what we are to fear is so masked by deception that we no longer know how to recognize what should be feared; then not only will men, women, and children fall but so shall kings for you can not rule a world that can no longer survive.¡±


    Yvonne raises her hand, ¡°Yes Yvonne?¡± Victoria says calling on her and Yvonne replies, ¡°I was there yesterday when Ambroos was giving birth. Why¡­ why did my parents trust you? Why did all the elders trust you? My mother sent me to find you, but I knew not why. I soon saw you had knowledge others¡¯ve yet to gain. Is knowledge noble of trust?¡±


    Victoria smiles at Yvonne and before she can answer, Zoe speaks up to answer Yvonne, ¡°It¡¯s because she is the angel of life. I heard father call her that.¡±


    Turning around for only a moment, Victoria is moved almost to tears. She collects herself and represses her tears to then return to the attention of the class.


    very one of the adults in the room trusting me. Understand, because I sought out Ambroos¡¯s wishes and considerate with good intent, everyone found within themselves more reason to trust me. This is most important of all¡­ I would never have gone through with the operation t¡¯was a void of trust in me held by Ambroos. And lest we forget, I in turn, put my trust in everyone there. We leaned into each other with a common goal to strive for.¡± Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.


    ***


    Sometime later Victoria lets out the day¡¯s school session and while watching the children walk back to the village together their laughter echoes. Bernardo surprises Victoria by saying, ¡°I¡¯m afraid sometimes.¡± She jumps only slightly and quickly recovers to respond to Bernardo with a little chuckle, ¡°You! You, Mr. Bernardo. What could you be afraid of?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m afraid these children don¡¯t know pain. Without it they wont seek fantastic elements. What imagination can be made without pain? Nor will they dream so largely to affect the world. The parents here all intend to put an end to their children¡¯s pain. Shield them from the blight of Napoleon¡¯s era. Woe, for the future of imagination will suffer. For grand imagination is born from pain.¡±


    Victoria Frankenstein takes a step to the side and in a firm stance rebuttals, ¡°No. Far from it. Mr. Bernardo, that is no way to think. I hath seen what terrible hearts and minds parented, therefore damning people to a lifelong pain. Those same people with their incurable pain are thee that history is written about. It is with enthusiasm I say, I am eager to see what will become of a world built from the imagination of kind children. It is the only world we have yet to see.¡±


    Bernardo and Victoria look on watching the children as they take the path back to town. Augusto picks up Madelief and puts her on his shoulders, her little shriek of excitement as she hangs on to his head. Victoria sympathized with the connection these children have with each other. A connection kids hold with no intention of severing the ties that bind. An unseen knit made from the yarn of innocence overlapping for them now while they are unknowing of what it feels like to be incomplete without the presence of even one of the children.


    Bernardo reaches over to Victoria to hand her a yellow Chrysanthemum flower. Victoria takes notice and with a blush rising in her face she turns away while reaching to take the flower.


    ¡°By my heart, Bernardo. It is with a flustered hand I receive this token of affection, if indeed tis what you intend.¡±


    ¡°Miss. Victoria,¡± Bernardo replies, ¡°It is what I intend. A small gesture I admit. Please let it carry the weight of a great gesture for this is all a poor Italian man has to offer.¡±


    With a raise of Victoria¡¯s hand she gestures towards the school, ¡°Understand, every school day, Susanna and Madelief travel to the pond in the woods north of town because tis where a batch of Chrysanthemums grow. They pick the prettiest ones to gift me and still, your offered flower has warmed me. Both in my chest and my comfort.¡±


    An involuntary bashful grin grows across Victoria¡¯s face as a shine of pinkness blooms over her lips. ¡°Now that,¡± Victoria declares, ¡°Mr. Bernardo, is most respectful. An invite ¡®tis I do intend to oblige you with. Lest the cold become too overbearing.¡±


    ¡°I long for the day¡­ amore mio.¡± Quickly, Bernardo straightens up , remembered something, ¡°Ah, yes! Jacop and Geertrudia informed me a feast will be held to celebrate you. T¡¯was meant for yesterday. What say of thy Misses for me to join in the festivities?¡±


    ¡°Please, Mr. Bernardo. The feast therefore would lack being called such if you are not present.¡±


    ***


    Later that evening the sound of joyous celebration could be heard within Jacop and Geertrudia¡¯s home. Victoria is seated to the right of Jacop, who takes his place at the head of the of the large wooden table that stretches long. It adorns a clay pot filled with soup and a ladle, a near empty tray of sliced bread and pitchers of Rhine wine. The guests sit around the table before their plates of fish that have been stripped to the bone. A weaved basket holds remnants of cabbage, potatoes, carrots and red mammoth beats. Seated beside Victoria is Bernardo, picking morsels of food out of his teeth, more than satisfied with the meal. Ignaas sitting opposite of Jacop pours another cup for Wilhelmina, seated to the left of him. Geertrudia looks on in amusement to the left of Jacop, as conversation is had. Knelis sips his wine in cheerful silence beside his sister.


    Geertrudia speaks up across the laughter of the table at Victoria, ¡°And this is when you were all children? You and Jacop?¡± Jacop replies, ¡°Yes! Very young children.¡± Victoria has a laugh that is charming and unburdened in this moment. She has a freedom to her like a person who has never known the restraints of another who would be controlling, or even that of fearlessness that would never allow for it. After she lets out a laugh she responds, ¡°Yes! Yes Jacop, we should recognize you were very young. Let that be the defense of the argument for throwing your fathers books out of the fourth story window into your mother¡¯s garden. Let it also be the defense for your misdeeds against poor Grandfather Roderic.¡±


    Jacop dead pan stares at Victoria before grabbing a pitcher of Rhine wine to refill his glass, ¡°Oh heavens. You really do know me too well.¡± Geertrudia questions, ¡°You fulfilled misdeeds on your Grandfather?¡±


    ¡°Yes,¡± Jacop replies, ¡°Well you see, I had this Grandfather Roderic. Tis was often in his old age that he would be terribly forgetful. Then there came a day where in our library I was reading with young Victoria and I could not hold my bladder. Here is thy terrible misdeed, I had chosen not to relieve myself in private but instead I urinated on the library floor¡­¡± Victoria speaks up with, ¡°Directly behind poor Grandfather Roderic¡¯s chair!¡± ¡®Jacop my dear boy¡­ hath thou pissed on thy floor in the library?¡¯ ¡®No Grandfather Roderic. Don¡¯t you remember? You did that. Just now.¡± Wilhelmina lets out a cackle, Ignaas proceeds to laugh. Knelis spills a bit of his drink as he bursts with amusement.


    ¡°Jacop!¡± Geertrudia exclaims, ¡°How terrible!¡±


    ¡°Ye twas not but a child!¡± He says in his defense. Victoria, laughing, adds, ¡°A very young child¡­ of ten!¡±


    ¡°Jacop!¡± Geertrudia exclaims again over the laughter at the table.


    After a moment when the laughter begins to die down Geertudia turns to Victoria, ¡°You really have known Jacob since you were children?¡±


    ¡°Since childhood, yes. Jacop¡¯s father worked with my father and because women were not aloud to have an education in Britain I would join Jacop in private tutoring.¡±


    ¡°There is more.¡± Jacop says, ¡°Victoria¡¯s father insisted on round the clock tutoring. She was the disciple to a many educated men. Her father saw to that. She took on lessons for hours long after our lessons together had ended. Fencing as well as sword fighting and hand to hand combat from soldiers. She learned from engineers, chemists, natural philosophers, Cultivators of science. Barbers in all their workings, doctors, surgeons. All teachers from all over the world. There is no mind like a Frankenstein¡¯s my father used to say.¡±


    ¡°You learned from surgeons?¡± Geertrudia asks, ¡°That is why you were able to save my sister and her child?¡±


    ¡°Yes, simply put. There is far more a depth to the knowledge of the procedure I conducted for your sister. When I was sixteen my father took me to learn hunting with a Ugandan tribe in Africa. He supplied them with seeds, food supplies and tools. In exchange they taught us their customs. There was never a moment he was not beside me in the hunts. It was there I learned that when a woman has birthing complications they perform the procedure to extract the child through the belly. The Ugandan people have been practicing this for over two-hundred years. In between hunting I would learn and eventually perform the operation.¡±


    ¡°How many women did you save?¡± Wilhelmina asks. Victoria takes a pause, ¡°How many¡­ women? I saved¡­ two-hundred & seventy-seven women. Ambroos is the two-hundred & seventy-eighth.¡±


    It is only the women at the table who become misty eyed. Wilhelmina involuntarily has streams run down her face. The table becomes silent, not a gasp nor a pout. Utterly moved to learn that so many lives were saved.


    ¡°But I wish it were more. I returned to Britain with an ambition to convince the British institutions of medicine to adopt these practices and they turned me away. They weren¡¯t going to listen to a woman, let alone a girl. It¡¯s this zeitgeist of dehumanizing women that has stopped us from maturing in medical practices. This procedure would have saved my mother.¡± she says slightly dropping her head, ¡°My mother passed in my birth.¡±


    Victoria stands with all the anxiousness of slowly erupting geyser. She pulls her hands in towards her while sliding her palms across the table. She uses her finger tips to nervously tap at her hips before running her hands down her sides.


    Jacop leans forward in his seat, ¡°Victoria? What burdens you?¡±


    ¡°This world Jacop.¡± She answers. ¡°A world of knowledge out there and still the doors are closed to giving this knowledge to the whole of humanity. Simply because it is not a man who came to discover it. I was educated by my father because there is a stronghold on the world and women are owned and what is in Rule is to deny a woman accessibility to the public streets. Living such a normal life no different from that of livestock. Products shelved for fathers and husbands. I am stricken with disgust to learn of any woman that was not allowed an education. Tutors needed to be accommodated with enough wealth to buy a village in order for me to learn about medicine. Men? The holders of rationale? Where doth we look for rational thought when my education came at the cost of a fortune. Only behind closed doors was I allowed to learn lest the world of men lay there eyes on a women equal in their capacity to be rational, self-governing and powerful. This world built a wall of men standing guard for generations to keep women from growing along side them as equals. My mother documented the witch hunts that lasted three-hundred & sixty years. A Phenomenon of accusations and convictions that saw the murder of hundreds of thousands of women. Imagine if those hands were given the same education as men. How much higher the people of the world would have grown. The world that of which could have been. The morale that would hath grown unhindered in communities everywhere for their would have been no mourning over the corpses of mothers and duaghter and sisters. The helping hands that would doth be within reach for progress and support. The presence of women hath been diminished and silenced where given opportunity there would have been seen their contributions to the advancement of this world still in its adolescence. To disappointment we now suffer for it is with a pain the body can¡¯t recognize that lives in the legacies of mothers, daughters and sisters. For hath such a history never came about and a world where the minds of women and men work together, raising kind children, building communities, then the course of history would find itself in a flourishing direction today. If it was so, medicine would hath seen a better proper hygienic routine and with more minds to practice the science of medicine. My mother¡­ my mother¡­ may have survived giving birth to me.¡± Victoria with all the eyes of the guests watching her with un-breaking attention thinks to herself ¡°These people, they will find no reverence in my shunning discussion.¡± and then she says to everyone, ¡°I apologize. I hath run away with my thoughts. Please forgive me. Please, do not think me informal, I¡­ I will turn in for the night.¡± She makes her way to the stairs and with her back turned Geertrudia calls her name.


    ¡°Victoria! Do not forget, you saved the life of a mother and her child yesterday. You see a world without new medicine. For my sister¡­ my niece¡­ for me. You are the new medicine.¡±


    ¡°I am no good to the world now.¡± Victoria thinks to herself and then replies, ¡°Your compliment is well received Geertrudia. Thank you for tonight. But I must rest now.¡± Victoria continues up the stairs to her room where the night of festivities ends for her, she lays awake staring at the dark corner of the ceiling. She gives a withered sigh, fighting back the warm tears of anger and disappointment. ¡°How ungrateful of me,¡± she thinks, ¡°to ruin the celebration with my problems. To call out on the world¡¯s flaws and how it has wronged the likes of me. I am no better than those I speak ill of, staining the night with my blackened heart. What use am I to the world, old and now indifferent to the efforts of those who truly seek enjoyment in their days. What hospitality could I possibly hope to expect by sunlight? Perhaps it would be in everyone¡¯s best interest to cast myself out ¨C to spare kind people of an old woman¡¯s ramblings.¡± The night grows later, as Victoria resolves to leave come morning. Her eyes flutter shut as she drifts to sleep, her heart heavy with the gravity of her emotions.


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 Chapter 6: THE HOPE UNDESERVED

    The dim glow of first light shares the room with Victoria as she sits on her bed having already gotten dressed prior to the light of day. The silence within the house coincides with her thoughts and she prepares herself to tell Jacop and Geertrudia that she will be departing. She plans to head west to Bruges and from there seek out work to sustain a room for herself. ¡°This town and these people need not be bothered with my unquiet passions.¡± she thinks.


    It¡¯s then that she hears commotion downstairs. This is quite peculiar for this is not within the usual hours of which the house becomes alive. What is more, the voices are not of Susanna nor tiny Madelief nor their mother Geertrudia. It sounds as though a group has gathered downstairs.


    Victoria leaves her room to descend the staircase. Only after a few steps she can begin to see that many have gathered in the living room including Geertrudia, Jacop and their daughters. The guests have filled the down stairs leaving many to stand. As Victoria makes her presence known the room becomes quiet. She refrains from coming off the stairs.


    Geertrudia comes through the crowd to address her, ¡°Victoria, come¡­ there is much to discuss.¡±


    She holds her hand out but Victoria holds her palm up in decline. ¡°I will save you the burden. I am truly sorry to all of you for my outburst. This place is a haven for the kind and there was no merit to your witness of passionate squabble. I have decided to leave. Be a burden to your home and your family no longer.¡±


    Jacop steps forward and in a voice for all to hear, ¡°You could not be more wrong, dear friend. It is quite the opposite. There are things I know about you, things you never told me still I know them. I know you lost a child in the womb in your youth. I know not a year later your father perished in Egypt. I know you sold your family¡¯s properties including your childhood home. Furthermore I know your ancestral castle was raided and burned down by Napoleon''s De La Police. Frankenstiens have fallen far from grace.¡±


    They both came from a world familiar with high society where it was common practice to veil your misfortune lest you fall victim to the perception of a weak status. But here among the struggling small village there is no status to uphold only a common ground all the community can find in bonding. To know the person who holds the ties that bind them. The gears of Victoria¡¯s analytics are turning as she sees this in Jacop¡¯s choice to speak of her personal life so openly among everyone. Jacop turns to all in the house and continues, ¡°My old friend forgive me for speaking out of turn with what you carry but we all here know burden. To carry on, in the face of an uncertain world. Even a world we don¡¯t agree with. I know the long life you¡¯ve lived because I have been your friend. I have shared your time. I know what pain is and letting go. My friend, learn as I have learned, for here you are not alone. See that this can be the last place you call home.¡±


    Victoria takes a second look at the faces in the room and there is no dismay expressed on them. She has misunderstood the reaction these people are having to her. Geertrudia steps past Jacop to grab Victoria¡¯s hand. She holds it in between both of her hands and tells Victoria, ¡°Jacop and I bartered with Bernardo. He owns the vacant house next to his. We took ownership of it and we are giving it to you. We wanted to surprise you last night. Victoria, we want you to stay. Be a doctor, a cultivator of science, the Rhode Heuvals school teacher. Be our friend, be my sister. This is your home now.¡±


    The room is quiet as everyone looks to Victoria waiting for her to break the silence. Victoria perceives within that she has found a place that has everything one needs. As time goes on there will be fewer and fewer corners of the world where she can feel safe and comfortable. Eventually, time will no longer favor her. A new light paints this world for her as she finds there are still new moments in this life to find, for she is a woman who has nothing, yet in this moment she has everything. She has come to believe this village is the best example she has seen as a society with kind people raising kind children. She could never have hoped for a better place to settle nor imagined a place where she would be useful in her old age. Conflicted still, there lingers a feeling that all this is the works of fiction where in, that she is favored by fortune to be embraced so tremendously. There is no shaking that despite a prosperous opportunity there is a heavy cloud of ill weather, like a hope undeserved.


    Victoria then feels little Susanna wrap around her leg. She looks down to see her big eyes staring back. Susanna asks, ¡°Are you leaving me?¡±


    Victoria responds with tears that break the levee, ¡°No. I¡¯m staying.¡±


    Geertrudia lets out a holler that ignites celebration in the rest of the room as everyone rejoices in her decision.


    ***


    As days go by Victoria moves furniture that has been gifted to her by various friends into her new home. Victoria is a vigorous workhorse for her age as the men and young helpers find out as they become exhausted quickly where she is energized till the late hours. She finds time to work with Ignaas and Laurens to have a few tools made for her and in a day or so she will come get them when they are ready.


    One evening Jacop and Geertrudia visit Victoria¡¯s door. Bernardo is just finishing up moving a table inside. Victoria sees Bernardo out when she hears Jacop say with a cheerful laugh, ¡°Death follows Frankenstein''s, huh?¡± Victoria looks at Jacob before closing her eyes whilst giving him a nod.


    ¡°For what purpose hath you spoken such words to Victoria?¡± Geertrudia asks. ¡°My love, that is her family crest. What are the words Victoria? Boundless¡­ unbridled power of will¡­ endless¡­¡± Victoria interrupts to correct him, ¡°Boundless, unbridled power of will, limitless leornian¡±


    Wagging his finger Jacop nods, ¡°Ah yes! Limitless leornian! Inspiring, truly. You see, Death follows Frankensteins is their family motto for how they are hard workers. They work till their muscles burn, and never tire till they have reached their goals. They work like death is following them. It is their lineage.¡±


    ¡°Can I say that when I grow tired yet am still eager to gain?¡± Geertrudia asks Victoria. Victoria raises her hand out as she responds, ¡°Yes! Please do! I hope it brings you encouragement whenever needed.¡±


    Bernardo had stopped to listen but now bids so-long, continuing on home. Jacop and Geertrudia had only been by to see how she was settling in. After a brief conversation they also head up the road for the evening. As Victoria returns inside she speaks to herself, ¡°He misspoke. Jacop said ¡®they¡¯ and ¡®them¡¯ as though there are more Frankensteins. Thus he is terribly wrong yet my heart becomes too weary to mention for I am the last Frankenstein. I am the death of my family name.¡±


    ***


    The next day Victoria arrives at Geertrudia¡¯s door to collect freshly picked crops that were promised. Lightly knocking she is then answered by Susanna. Geertrudia can be seen in the kitchen tying up a burlap sack bulky with red mammoth fodder beets. She is glowing at the sight of Victoria walking through the house to her with an open mouth smile. It is possible she is more joyous in Victoria¡¯s company but she makes it difficult to tell as Geertrudia is always blissfully radiant. As she hands Victoria the sack Susanna dishearteningly asks, ¡°Now that you no longer live with us, does that mean you wont be tucking me in anymore?¡± Victoria and Geertrudia look at each other and laugh. Geertrudia says to Susanna, ¡°She is moving a few houses away. You will still see her.¡± Victoria holds Susanna¡¯s hand when she tells her, ¡°I will still come tuck you into bed whenever you like.¡±


    ¡°Tonight?¡± Susanna chucks out. Victoria finds it all adorable and nods in agreement. ¡°Give me your word?¡± Susanna questions. Victoria kneels down to be eye to eye with her and with a loving smile she says, ¡°You have my word.¡±


    When Victoria steps outside she is met with the presence of Bernardo. He accompanies her to Ignaas¡¯s blacksmith workshop that resides opposite of Jacop and Geertrudia¡¯s home on the other side of the well. She had requested glass blown decanters and metal frames to elevate them. Laurens, a young Spanish man of nineteen, and eldest son of Kasper and Jacintha is an apprentice for Ignaas. He puts four glass decanters in individual burlap sacks so they can be carried without breaking. He is known to have a serious expression; often focused on the work needing to get done. Laurens¡¯s dark complexion brightens with his polite smile as he passes the sacks to Victoria. Victoria recalls overhearing Zoe and Yvonne fawning over Laurens, who, with his laborious work had transformed into a strapping young man wherein forfeiting the long and lanky limbs of adolescence for a well toned build. Victoria could see the love and care that went into raising an astute son. With every visit to Ignaas¡¯s shop, she could see the glimmer of pride in Lauren¡¯s work as he improved his skill; and with Augusto expressing his admiration for his brother¡¯s craftsmanship during morning lessons.


    ¡°I hope thous father Kaspar is in good health¡± Victoria comments to Laurens in Spanish. He replies in English, ¡°He has fallen ill today, nothing too fierce that he needs a barber¡¯s call, but still much rest is needed.¡± Bernardo gently takes the burlap sacks off of Victoria¡¯s hands as she focuses on the news learned.


    ¡°Shame. Please give him my best and come calling if he needs further attention.¡±


    ¡°Will do Miss. Victoria.¡± Luarens responds.


    Upon arriving at Victoria¡¯s new house Bernardo places the burlap sacks down to then become curious when he sees a leather bound journal so unique it screams at him cross the room from the desk it rests on. ¡°What is it you write in there?¡± Bernardo inquires. She looks up just as he points and she takes pause before responding.


    ¡°What is written in there is the life I had. A time I truly fear to forget.¡±


    Bernardo walks over and as he takes a seat his lanky long figure bows at his torso as he presumes,¡°You were married.¡±


    That wall she has kept up was there to protect others from her but if it never comes down then no one will be allowed to know who she is. She brings that wall down now.


    ¡°I was married once.¡± She replies.


    ¡°There must be a devastating reason why you are no longer married.¡±


    ¡°No. Why we no longer are married was not devastating.¡±


    ¡°Then I assume there were no children.¡±


    ¡°There was.¡±


    ¡°Forgive me. I did not intend to dishearteningly mention.¡±


    ¡°No. It¡¯s fine that you asked. I¡¯ve lost two children.¡±


    ¡°The children¡­ they... are what you are afraid to forget?¡±


    Victoria looks over at him and smiles with glossy eyes, ¡°That is the first question you''ve asked about my previous life. You are quite magical Bernardo for I¡¯ve never known anyone to get so many answers out of me without asking a single question.¡± She leans on the wall beside the window, ¡°You are wrong. That is not what is in my journal that I fear to forget¡­ thus you are right¡­ I am¡­ afraid¡­ afraid to forget them. Afraid to forget her. I take her with me though it was ages ago she perished in the womb. I think of her life, moments she never got. I think of the gentle loving creature she very well could have been. There were nights I dreamed of her. I dreamed that my little baby came to life again; That it had only been cold and that I rubbed her before the fire and¡­¡± She pauses as she stares out the window and slips into a world of thoughts filled with moments that never happened.


    Stories she¡¯s told her self that began with ¡®what if¡¯. A little girl that cried for her mother in the dark of the night. A young daughter that wanted more than anything to be just like her. She floats in thoughts of scenarios she has created where her baby stayed here in this life and she watched her grow. In her imagination her daughter grew to be a whimsical Frankenstein and still her heart would break, like all hearts are bound to. In these dreamed up moments she held her now grown baby to comfort her unavoidable pain. A chance to be her daughter¡¯s nurturing mother when she needed it. Hoping for a chance to give her daughter the arms of safety. A feeling of embrace that life never granted her from her own mother. Bernardo¡¯s voice brings her out of her imagination.


    ¡°You rubbed her before the fire, and?¡±


    ¡°She lived.¡±


    ¡°Did you love the father of your baby?¡±


    ¡°Thus I felt no hate for that man, still to my dismay there was no love either. No, I knew true love shortly after my husband and I parted.¡±


    ¡°A man who is known by you as the worthy presence of love, is a man who deserved to be named.¡±


    ¡°His name. His name was Qansuh.¡±


    Qansuh. His name is an oil painting on the canvas of her memories that she recollects clearly. The right side of his face is turned toward the late afternoon sun. Light shines through his iris to make the hazel of his eye appear illuminated like the floor of a pond that has caught the golds and browns of autumn foliage with water as clear as glass flowing over it.


    She turns to Bernardo, ¡°He was a young Egyptian man that worked for my father. Though my father had hired him as an assistant for some years, I on the other hand only knew his presence for six months. You must know, Though Qansuh was my first true love, I have known love to flourish many times.¡±


    ¡°Pray tell, what was the last you¡¯ve felt of love?¡±


    ¡°That is eight years.¡±


    ¡°I see. Wed?¡±


    ¡°Unwed.¡±


    ¡°How long was your love?¡±


    ¡°The most I¡¯ve seen of love, one of eight-teen years.¡±


    ¡°That is painful to lose.¡±


    ¡°It is.¡±


    ¡°If you will allow me to dissect, what was his name?¡±


    ¡°His name was Voivode.¡±


    Outside she sees a man walking into Bernardo¡¯s yard. A little man fraught with the stress of labor that makes up a diverse topography in the structure of his face. His arms are dehydrated of fat giving the appearance of his skin shrink wrapped around the formations of the muscles. He has slung over his shoulder a fisherman¡¯s coat bundled around boots and other clothing. He glances up to see Victoria watching him only to peer back with an unwelcoming fixed sneer.


    ¡°It seems Benji has returned, he is making haste to your door.¡± Bernardo gets up from his seat. ¡°I shall see what news my friend has for me from his past days. Dear Victoria, I do wish to return and continue our discussion. You are truly worth the time, my time, for certain; is never squandered with you.¡±


    It is then that they both hear a knock at the door. Victoria answers to see Jacop and Knelis. Bernardo greets them and steps out to return to his home. Jacop has all the calm pleasantness about him as a visitor arriving for a friendly cup of afternoon tea. Knelis in comparison has eyes that move with insecurity and all the confusion of an all encompassing uncertainty.


    Jacop, taking his hat off to her and then returning it to his head says, ¡°Good afternoon. Me and Knelis have come to drop off fire wood and brush.¡± residing behind the two men is a cart filled with chopped wood and burlap sacks of shrubbery. I have noticed a frost ever so slightly crawling off my window pane this morning and in the past days. I foresee colder evenings. We will set firewood here beside your door paired with a sack of sticks and shrubbery to help with the lighting of it. If ever you need more call upon us and fear not a bother. We wish everyone a preparedness for winter.¡±


    ¡°You are saints Jacop and Knelis. Your work is met with my gratitude.¡± Though Jacop¡¯s demeanor doesn¡¯t change much to nod in gratitude to her compliment, there is an obvious change in Knelis¡¯s terribly anxious behavior as Victoria¡¯s words then change him to be soothed bringing out a calm bashful side of him.


    Still standing at her porch she watches as Jacop and Knelis continue on to other houses. In German, a man can be heard speaking to Victoria from the opposite end of the street, ¡°Good afternoon Victoria.¡±


    She sees a middle aged man walking towards her. He strides purposefully as though to chat in passing on his way to other priorities. His hair a lighter blond covered with a tweed cap. His build is quite bulky with all the sculpting of a Greek statue equiped with bulging shoulders and gigantic hands.


    ¡°Have you seen Ignaas today? I need his assistance and fear the day is done for his work.¡±


    She replies in German, ¡°I have seen him, Albertus. His day of work continues, fear not. You will find him with his apprentice Luarens, in his blacksmith shop.¡±


    ¡°You are quite helpful Victoria! I am grateful for you.¡± he replies and continues to walk up the street.


    Returning inside, she looks over her gifted wooden table set that resides within the kitchen where pans and mugs hang from an iron framed rack within convenient reach above it. Her desk is in a room adjacent, placed against the wall. The room is an open space with newly built wood boarded floors and bare lumber beams along the wall. After picking up her journal she takes a seat at the kitchen table. Both of her hands lay over the journal. It is bound with leather to enclose the pages entirely with extended space where the spine should be. Three ties are all there is to bound it closed.This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    A gentle knock is heard and Victoria calls for them to enter. Bernardo enters and Joins her at the table.


    ¡°All is well with Benji I presume.¡±


    ¡°Yes,¡± Bernardo responds, ¡°I hear fishing is bountiful. Do tell of the time you visit from your journal. I am most eager to hear of it¡±


    ¡°I assure thee, the bindings of this journal have not been untied in ten years.¡±


    ¡°Forgive ones lack of deduction. I have grown curious Victoria. Jacop spoke of a family motto of yours. How did it go?¡±


    ¡°Ah, yes. Death¡­ follows Frankensteins.¡±


    Bernardo raises his brows, ¡°Tis a bit curious indeed. Bleak even.¡±


    ¡°Yes,¡± Victoria nods, ¡°Well you see my father was born 38 years after the Frankenstein Lordship was sold. The family branched off with most finding positions as Abbesses, prince-bishops and canons. So when he fell in love with my mother, a girl who detested the church in all its forms for its grotesque killing of women during the witch trials, he whisked her away to England. She herself was about to suffer to the witch trials here in Germany and he saved her. He started a new by even going as far to change his family crest. Thus henceforth, death follows Frankensteins. It was more of a¡­ ¡®non ti fermare, dai!¡¯ if you will. A moving cause! Words to propel our spirits as a people. To live colossally now for death is not far.¡±


    ¡°What a man of legend. Truly, he merited praise?¡±


    ¡°Indeed, there was no man more blinded by optimism than he. Blindness I inherited. It was one anchor that made him great and still was a terrible flaw in the end.¡±


    Bernardo sees she is not easily overrun by her emotion but still there is a heart that resides within her. Her face cannot hide all the tells of her jaded thoughts. He stands from his seat, ¡°I forgot. I have a surprise for you.¡± He opens the front door and retrieves a bottle of wine he had left outside. ¡°A celebratory drink with me?¡±


    ¡°A marvelous idea. A celebratory drink.¡± she says. After getting two glasses, he opens the wine. A wave of dark merlot wine crashes in the glasses and she takes the glass Bernardo offers her from across the table. He raises his glass to toast, ¡°To your new home.¡±


    She smiles, charmed, ¡°To my home.¡± They hold a gaze for each other as they respect the toast with a sip. Her smile grows larger as she breaks the gaze, ¡°There has been so much said of me and so little of you Bernardo,¡± She says with a blush. Bernardo shakes his head, ¡°There is nothing I wish to say that is more important than you.¡± Victoria, a fifty-two year old woman and yet in this moment she is blooming with a warmness she feels in her fingers and chest that she thought was feeling only reserved for the young. Maybe there is still a spirit for childlike wonder yet to be seen in these years. It has been so long since she sat down alone at a table as the sky sang with darkening oranges and paint strokes of purple. No pressing matters of any sort to interrupt two people comfortable in each others company.


    ¡°Please,¡± Bernardo insists, ¡°Tell me more of your father. You loved him?¡±


    ¡°Truly. My father, Johannes Frankenstein, lived charitably. Where the sun rose, to its fall, breaths only taken of his virtues. He stood everyday in opposition to society and still too great to be outcast or ostracized. He walked as though my mother was beside him, making decision with her perspective at the forefront. Making good on all dealings of my development. The most loving father, truly. It is now, in my years age brings a resentment for him. How can I say this? I see the spite I have is not for him but for his optimism. For our family crest. Death follows Frankensteins, should be seen as a warning. Our curse to bear.¡±


    Bernardo pouring himself another glass says, ¡°That is quite the confession. I believe those are not easy words for an astounding woman such as yourself to permit me to hear. If you may allow, I must confess. I run from a past in Italy I am not proud of.¡±


    ¡°Before you is a woman. Nor judge nor congregation to submit you to trial. Only a woman.¡±


    ¡°A beautiful woman.¡± Bernardo raises his glass once again, ¡°With your best wishes at heart I do hope you will welcome my compliments.¡±


    ¡°Of course. They are welcomed this evening.¡±


    ¡°There is a story you should know of me. One of shame. In Italy¡­ I have known Benji half my life. We were lucky as young boys to survive. See we lived like rats in the streets. We took what we wanted. But we took on work as men and began to know a life where we didn¡¯t take what we wanted. Victoria, see, we took, relentlessly we took. Till one day our coin, our beds, our food... we earned. Truly earning out weighs taking. Benji grew to be a fine fisherman and a fair trader. One evening he was met with an unfair trader. I found him in an argument of the utter most lack of rationale. This man who towered over Benji hits him again, again, again. I hit the man to help Benji.¡±


    Victoria grabs the merlot and while calmly pouring herself a glass she interrupts, ¡°You killed him.¡±


    ¡°I did not mean to, I swear it. This man¡­ I then discover¡­ is a French soldier in Emperor Napoleon''s army. It was 1805 when we fled Italy, never to return. That is how we ended up here¡±


    ¡°1805?¡±


    ¡°Yes¡­ have I upset you? I do not speak of my crimes without regret. I simply have no desire to keep anything from you.¡±


    ¡°I am not upset. For I too have blood on my hands. Bernardo. Your secrets are safe with me. Grant me the same trust for what I am about to tell you, you must promise me you will never speak of to anyone.¡±


    ¡°You have my word Victoria.¡±


    Victoria adjusts back in her seat while contemplating where to begin. She has a worrisome glint in her eyes as she makes eye contact with Bernardo before speaking up, ¡°It was in the year of 1800 and the 5th... in the south west of Germany... a man died. His head crushed in a water mill. I went against nature to apply natural science and used the variant forms of mutational blood to attempt resurrecting a man who¡¯d died.¡±


    Victoria spends some time explaining the vivid details of her life¡¯s work studying a disease in four subjects over the course of twenty-three years. She tells him about her work explaining the vial of blood that she injected the corpse with and how it was his revival that led to the events that transpired that night in 1805.


    She continues, ¡°People from Mill Valley, the town nearest to the castle had come to my rescue. They were to never find me, nye, instead they were met with an unfortunate demise. The dead man was once again given life but what resided within him was no longer the will of a man. The combination of the diseases in the blood latched to the tissue and was the key ingredient to bring life to a soulless creature. I was foolish not to deduce such an outcome. I eluded the fires and escaped on a row boat in time. ¡®Tis where I saw my creature when its unimaginable strength tore my rescuers limb from limb. Heartbroken and mortified, I took my row boat across the river. In hopes my creature would not find me. I continued on through the forest around the mountains. Hoping I would journey back to Mill Valley. Five days travel t¡¯was the length before I reached the town on foot. There was a town no more. The buildings and homes were met with collapse if they weren¡¯t reduced to a smoldering pile of black soot. People were pressed into the road lifeless along with the parts of men. I could hear the barking of abandoned dogs. The gnawing of the bearded vultures on the bones of people. Crackling of still burning fires accompanied my own screams. A thought that still bothers me is there was no one left. No one to bury the bodies. No one to tell of the horrors. Not a soul was spared. I walked in search of survivors. I walked for only a short time of the carnage, in fear ones Juggernaut was still there. I have been eluding my crimes till this day. I never sought out Voivode when I left. Thus the fear of leading my creature to him to share the same demise as the town of Mill Valley t¡¯was too unbearable a weight. I abandoned him without a word.¡±


    Captivated, Bernardo stares at Victoria as he processes everything. A spark of realization hits him, ¡°And this is the other child? A child you created?¡± Bernardo questions.


    ¡°Yes.¡± Victoria says, eyes downcast. A twinge of pain as she utters the confirmation.


    Quickly a confusion overtakes the moment of triumph as he reaches for the wine bottle to pour himself a glass. He asks, ¡°What is this word you are saying? Jugger- Jugger?¡±


    ¡°Juggernaut. It is a word that has been made from the name of the Hindu god- Jagannath. In Dutch it would be Torpedobootjager.¡±


    Bernardo translates, ¡°Destroyer.¡±


    There is a body language there. One she reads within her expectations. There is an unchanged emotion that carries in his voice. A calmness one has when one is unmoved. It shares a place with other men. Men who didn''t see her father¡¯s name. Men who didn''t see her social status. Men who can easily despise her. Despise her for recognizing their own intellect in her. Despise her for being more educated than them. Men who didn¡¯t see a trustworthy person. Men who didn¡¯t see a truthful person. Men who didn¡¯t see a person. Just a woman. ¡°No. Of course,¡± she thinks, ¡°What could a woman say that holds water in a physical world?¡± She smiles remembering that unless he has broken from the emergent development this world makes men by - then he is as all men are to act, as though they are cursed to view others as less for their eagerness to be defined as the one true image of a man. As though they are on a pedestal even when they are on even grounds or lower. They could be dead, six feet below in their coffin¡¯s and still believe they are the lion of their domain where all are less powerful and beneath them. She aims to not be a mirror image of the very thing she despises and chooses quality of spirit over combating personalities for you can change a man with all the same effort that you can change the wood in a tree. You can water it and keep it healthy or deprive it of nutrient and make it sickly. Both would take time and care. Both would be upon ones decision.


    ¡°Do you believe me?¡± She asks.


    ¡°I do.¡± He replies. Within her thoughts she analyzes him. Compares him to other men when they are faced with new knowledge. They become intrigued. They inquire. There is a disposition to disprove or find more proof in order to validate or invalidate. With Bernardo she sees none. Possibly he is no more than a product of the world of men. Where the mindset is ¡°what is there to prove or disprove if it comes from a woman?¡±


    Breaking from the thought she puts the journal in her hands,¡°Yes. Well, this is all I have from those times. This journal and,¡± She unties the three laces that have kept the journal sealed. Bernardo watches as a glow projects over his face. Victoria holds up a small glowing vial that was tucked into the leather bindings fold.


    An awe comes over Bernardo as he stares in wonder at the light it generates for it is a kind he never before has known.


    ¡°Like a jar of fireflies.¡± He says. The vial produces a blue glow that at its center is a vibrant milky white color.


    Gently, Victoria places the vial back in the spine and folds the leather over once again as she says, ¡°It glows such due to a biological lumination. There are many animals in the world that have this ability to create light. In mixing all four blood vials together a chemical reaction caused them to glow. This is the twin to the amalgamation I injected my creature with.¡±


    Bernardo is trying to keep himself grounded as he says unsettled with provoked thoughts, ¡°Victoria, my days are filled with carpentry, I made the chairs we sit in. Your experiment is if not the most, truly incredible story I¡¯ve ever come across. You, my dear are a rarity. I have seen adventure and joy in meeting you. There is so much I wish to learn of you. Curiosity fills me. Pray tell, what were to happen if someone consumed that vial?¡±


    She raises her brows put off by the thought. ¡°There is no telling what would happen to the human body if someone were to take this vial into themselves. Possibly become catatonic. Die? Or worse, become a monster. I know it gave life to my creation but it is now a long forgotten resemblance of what man it used to be, only a shell now for an unstoppable rage. Now there is a lumbering creature roaming this world evoking ill will on poor unknown souls.¡±


    ¡°I perceive that unknown... must be grim for you.¡±


    ¡°Quite. I am afraid because I know everything about it and in the detailed workings of its perfection. I am not afraid of not knowing what it can do but instead that there is nothing that can be done for it has no weaknesses. It carries the amalgamation of four diseases that made their hosts the strongest beings to ever have walked the earth. It is the blood of titans, that reside within that one creature. I see now I should have not pursued such a goal to revive life. I wont be the last to do so. It has been with deep reflection that I am aware I squandered time, when time was abundant to live within gratitude of my dire time granted with others.¡±


    Bernardo replies, ¡°Truly, I am sorry. I know how much you risk speaking from an unbound tongue. In the company of greater authorities for God you would have been shunned lest they heard you speak blasphemy, prosecuted you may even. I assure you my intentions were not to ask questions to only bring you anything but frustration. That is farthest from my wishes. You are such a wonder Victoria. There are few moments in my days when I don¡¯t think of you.¡±


    ¡°Your words are well received Bernardo. Understand, I am without the regard of the rest of the world for I am still so passionate in my words and I truthfully do not care who hears me. I have seen and felt so much turmoil I fear nothing to speak with all of my sharp tongue. It could be anyone, it could even be you who turns me in, convicts me for parading out of societies place to have me prosecuted or quieted. I no longer care. I will speak when I wish and I will fear no man or law that wishes to make me feel less than a human.¡±


    The warm atmosphere of Bernardo¡¯s palm covers the back of Victoria¡¯s hand that has been resting on the table. She looks at her hand as a natural blush fills her face and she feels the rough dry calluses on Bernardo¡¯s fingers as he softly slides them into her palm. He leans in merely inches from her face with a longing disposition.


    ¡°Bernardo?¡± spoken softly under her breath. Beginning to breathe heavily she can feel the warmth of his breath enter her nose and mouth creating a desire to taste his kiss. She upholds her strength to conceal every indication of the libidinous feelings that are overrunning her.


    ¡°Thy dearest Victoria, never. Never. Never. I have seen your mind conveyed like architecture with every new sentence you speak. The very sound of your voice carries convictions of poetry. You damn your family motto and think far less of your name but it is they who are right, there is no mind like a Frankenstein¡¯s. No woman or man has done what I have seen you do. There is no assistance I can provide to make you see. For I have never. Never. Seen such a woman. You are¡­ extraordinary. Therefore I would much rather take your place for a crime of speaking or blasphemy than turn away knowing this world is losing you. I would give it all for-¡±


    She collides with him, cutting off his last words. She puts her lips on him, pressing against his lips with both of their skin radiating a feverish heat. They hold this long slow press together. Lingering here as those emotions of yearning, wanting, pining and lust build a flood of endorphins. They kiss and kiss as they stand and in a vigorous way they energetically put their hands all over each other like a race with themselves to feel the new places of someone else.


    He lifts her onto the table and buries his face into her neck kissing her fiercely from behind her ear down to her collar bone.


    Victoria feels his hands retreat from traveling over her body and instead they make their efforts to disrobe his trousers. She stops him before he can bare himself. She thinks how this is where she would like their affections to lead to, but she will need more than an evening of conversation and a bottle of wine before allowing anyone to have a getting of her body. She understands she aroused him and herself but this is still a pace she intends to keep slow, where slow is her comfortable passage for her heart to fall in love.


    ¡°Thy dearest Bernardo,¡± She softly says while they both are frozen still. ¡°My intentions are very much to find union with you. Respectfully I must elude you this evening not to displeasure. I would not be the extraordinary woman you speak of if I stopped being a woman of my word. Young Susanna hath asked of me earlier this day a promise to see her put to bed... this evening. I will not break my promise to that child.¡±


    She makes her way off the table and around Bernardo who is as stiff as the stone of a statue. Both in the entirety of his body and the parts of him still covered by trousers.


    ¡°I am sorry.¡± Victoria says as she presses out the wrinkled up parts of her skirt. She looks upon his face to then suppress any laugh or snicker for the stone like way he is reacting is quite humorous to her. She kisses his cheek quickly, ¡°Thank you for understanding.¡± She then makes her way for the front door and she leaves saying, ¡°Please, on the morrow, see me whenever possible. I bid thee good night thy dearest Bernardo.¡± She closes the door and Bernardo is still standing pressed against the kitchen table with his hands gripping the waistband of his tweed trousers. But now he is alone as he only loosens up enough to turn his head in complete bewilderment.


    ***


    Sometime later Victoria is with Susanna at her bed as she brushes Susanna¡¯s hair. Susanna, already in her night gown acts with a discipline to her routine as she sits up straight to make brushing her hair more convenient for Victoria.


    ¡°I saw Albertus today!¡± Susanna exclaims. ¡°So hath I!¡± Victoria replies. ¡°He is always working on the mill. It is quite rare to see him in town with his mother, Anushka¡± Susanna continues, ¡°He is always so kind to me. He says I am the most beautiful girl he¡¯s ever seen. My father helped Albertus at the windmill today. I will make windmills for all of the kingdom of the Netherlands when I grow up. I want to make windmills and ships. Truly someday shall I build a grand castle. I will it!¡±


    The mere learning of Susanna¡¯s vocabulary growing brings Victoria the purest joy in a way that is like feeling awoken from caffeine as though it is the first time consuming it. She tilts her head back to laugh before saying, ¡°Brilliant child when did you ever begin to say, I will it?¡±


    ¡°Why today. I over heard Father say it to Mother. Thus again, when Laurens Spoke to Yvonne. I will it! Tis powerful as it speaks to the spirit of greatness, does it not?¡±


    ¡°So it does child.¡±


    ¡°Yvonne and Laurens look at each other the way my mother and father do. I see they are in love. Do you remember the first time you fell in love Miss. Victoria?¡±


    ¡°I do.¡±


    ¡°What was it like?¡±


    ¡°What was it like? Hmm¡­ I can still remember like it was the day before. I can still remember him. His name was Qansuh. I could hear his voice while losing attention of the world around me to journey in his eyes. I can hear the humming bass of his voice but I am unable to make out his words. Forever, the memory of his voice ignites a nostalgia of when I saw him for the first time. Rays of a dying day¡¯s sun peered down on him for its remaining moments. The air had no choice but to be still as I felt the tide of his oceanic pull take me in. A gravity coursed through me, pulling me like the magnetic force of two planets inevitable to collide. Through my heart. The booming power of the cosmos only gently whispering there is no where else you are supposed to be but with him. Like my soul knew that I would love him and that I have only been waiting for him. To love him and be loved by him so much that I want to say his name before I die so that it is the last thing I feel on my lips.¡±


    Susanna climbs under her blanket, ¡°So beautiful. I can¡¯t wait to be in love.¡± Victoria smiles at Susanna, and it is with the expectancy of a child''s eagerness to press forward that Susanna quickly moves on, ¡°Miss. Victoria, will you sing me a lullaby?¡±


    ¡°Of course.¡± Victoria answers laughing off Susanna¡¯s near sighted attention to Victoria¡¯s vulnerability as she picks up the candle stick holder by the finger loop. She looks upward as she considers a song. Her eyes become watered over with tears when she thinks of a song her father had once sung to her as a child. She sings:


    ¡°ay he grow sturdy through my crooning, may he flourish through my crooning! May he put down strong foundations as roots, may he spread branches wide like a sakir plant! May his heart be as pure as a white lotus.


    from this you know our whereabouts; among those resplendent apple trees overhanging the river, may someone who passes by reach out his hand, may someone lying there raise his hand. My son, sleep will overtake you, sleep will settle on you.


    Sleep come, sleep come, sleep come to my son, sleep hasten to my son! Put to sleep his open eyes, settle your hand upon his sparkling eyes ¨C as for his murmuring tongue, let the murmuring not spoil his sleep.


    May he fill your lap with emmer while I sweeten miniature cheeses for you, those cheeses that are the healer of mankind, that are the healer of mankind, and of thy son, the son of a good man.


    In my garden, it is the lettuces that I have watered, and among the lettuces it is the worlds lettuce that I have chopped. Eat this lettuce! Through my crooning, appear for him a wife, appear for him a wife, and appear for him a son! May a happy nursemaid chatter with him, may a happy nursemaid aid him!


    Through my crooning appear a wife for my son, and may she bear him a son so sweet. May his wife lie in his warm embrace, and may his son lie in his outstretched arms. May his wife be happy with him, and may his son be happy with him. May his young wife be happy in his embrace, and may his son grow vigorously on his gentle knees.


    I am restless, troubled, quite silent, gazing at the stars, as the crescent moon shines on my face. Your bones might be arrayed on the wall! The man of the wall might shed tears for you! The mongoose might beat the drums for you! The gecko might gouge its cheeks for you! The fly might gash its lips for you! The lizard might tear out its tongue for you!


    May the lullaby make us flourish! May the lullaby make us thrive! When you flourish, when you thrive, when you labor to the shaking of churns, in your late day find sweet sleep, find the sweet bed my son.


    May a wife be your support, and may a son be your fortune. May winnowed grain be your lover, and may the goddess of grain be your aid. May you have an eloquent protective goddess. May you be brought up to a reign of favorable days. May you smile upon festivals.


    My son is new born to life, he knows nothing. He does not know the length of his old age. I cry as the crescent moon shines on my face. He does not know the dwelling of the 1000 days.


    May you discover, May you eat,


    My son, May you be, May you be¡­ good¡±


    Susanna, laying in bed with her eyes wide open, ¡°I wish to learn all the words to that song. It is amongst my favorite song to ever hear. Miss. Victoria, My thoughts soar as high as the birds. I have so much I ponder, I have so much to say.¡±


    ¡°I am here Susanna. What is it you wish to mention?¡±


    ¡°There was a man who was one hundred feet tall! He was near the windmill this morning. Thou thinks him a fisherman who hath wandered too far from the shore.¡±


    ¡°I see, and what clues might have brought you to that conclusion?¡±


    ¡°Well, he was wearing a fisherman¡¯s coat and boots.¡±


    ¡°I suspect he was nothing more than a fisherman who does dealings with Benji.¡±


    Susanna, sighs, ¡°You are right Miss. Victoria. I see things from a far and make a grand story of the little I truly know.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s ok Susanna. Night to thee.¡±


    ¡°Miss. Victoria? Before you take your leave. You told me of the Goddess Cailleach you spoke of two names the Scottish called her by. One of them was the Goddess of winter. Praytell, What is thous other name?¡±


    ¡°Well young Susanna, the echoes of clanging could be heard on the mountain sides from the human skulls she wore on her clothes as they banged together. She wildly rode a speeding white wolf as she rose a hammer made of human flesh. Her winters brought storms and death that took the life from all the world. They called her...¡± Victoria blows out the candle, ¡°...The destroyer.¡±

 Chapter 7: THE LOST GIRLS

    The Lost Girls


    The fading health of pale yellow chrysanthemum flowers are displayed upon a desk in the school house. Victoria stands before the class starting the day¡¯s lesson. This morning was quieter. Susanna and Madelief are not here. No laughter to be heard. No impulsive off topic comments. Today¡¯s lesson is cursive practice. Victoria is sure they are late. The school day ends. Two seats empty all day.


    Victoria knocks. Her knuckles clacking against blue paint with urgency. Geertrudia¡¯s front door swings open rapidly. ¡°Victoria?!¡± Geertrudia says unexpected, ¡°You knock with distress sister¡­ distressed is how you look. What could be the matter?¡±


    It seems there is no need to raise alarm for Geertrudia¡¯s state is calm therefore Victoria is certain the girls have simply taken off from school to help their mother at home.


    ¡°Forgive me, I am merely curious of the welfare of young Susanna and Madelief for their absence today at school did not go unnoticed by me.¡± Victoria says with a tone of her worries being quelled.


    No words arose. Soon Victoria looks up. She sees the paralyzing confusion that adorns Geertrudia¡¯s eyes. ¡°To school they went. Thou hast not seen my girls?¡± Victoria grabs Geertrudia¡¯s hands ¡°Not this day. On days previous, doth occurred but a few tardiness, yet still Susanna and Madelief arrive. Always.¡±


    Geertrudia looks out beyond her door. Peering over the surrounding fields she speaks ina quiet muster and asks rhetorically, ¡°My girls are gone?¡±


    ***


    Most of the residents have gathered at the village entrance around the well. Jacob who can be seen to be frustrated talks with Ignaas and Benji. On the outside of the crowd Victoria Stands with Geertrudia, comforting her. Bernardo walks up to Victoria, ¡°What hath transpired?¡±


    ¡°Thus, Susanna and Madelief, They are lost. Jacop is formulating a plan to comb the fields and the woods to find the girls.¡±


    ¡°Well, we must do everything we can to find them. How can I be of help?¡± Victoria reaches one hand over to entwine her fingers in his hand, ¡°All will be well. Let us do as Jacop wishes. They will be found.¡±


    Just then, Jacob speaks up to all who¡¯ve gathered, ¡°We will search in three¡¯s. My wife will remain here doth they return. Miss Victoria come join Benji and Tessa.¡±


    Pressure closes on both her hands. Letting go of Bernardo¡¯s, she hugs Geertrudia and reassures her they will find her girls.


    A page of words is written on Bernardo¡¯s face. Victoria turns back briefly to see ten thousand words conveyed in his look knowing they are longing to be read. Words she can already hear in his voice. Words she knows she hasn''t had the pleasure of listening to in eight years such that be soft pleasures of a vulnerable hearts poetry. She imagines how someday he may say ¡°you are safe, you are free.¡± ¡°I need you, I love you.¡± Even as she joins her search party she can still feel his eyes follow her. Holding onto every second she is within sight.


    Jacop instructs Victoria, Tessa and Benji that they will be the group that goes to the east. They will pass the windmill and begin their search in the woods. Knelis walks up with with oil lamps he collected from around the village and hands one to each of them. Their party travels out of Rhode Heuvals. Across the fields. Past the wind mill. Into the woods.


    It is past mid-day and the skies are grey and cloudy but there is still daylight making the woods easy to navigate. As they comb through the trees Victoria reminisces about a day back in summer that she spent with Susanna and Madelief. That day she unfolded a sheet to lay down near the pond. Eagerly Susanna and Madelief picked food from a basket Victoria had brought. They sat together surrounded by blooming yellow chrysanthemum flowers. The branches provided the shade and the breeze gave a fragrance while the water emitted a chill. They ate and then they played. Madelief would not go near the water. Her mother taught her plenty of times to avoid it without her near. Every once in a while she would walk near the ponds edge and wag her finger as though to say, ¡°no no no.¡±


    Eventually the girls played together as Victoria read while laying on the sheet they laid out. With critical thinking running in the background Victoria strolled over the words in her wilted copy of Marry Wollstonecraft¡¯s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. She is on chapter 2: The Prevailing Opinion of a Sexual Character Discussed.


    She remembers there being a quietness that filled their space in the trees. On that calm day she lowered the book to see Madelief and Susanna had fallen asleep. Holding one another, they found comfort and dozed off in the grass near the sheet.


    As Victoria thinks about that day she smiles to herself amused to recollect the two girls preferring the grass rather than their picnic sheet.


    She speaks up, ¡°There is somewhere I wish to search for them. A pond near¡¯r to the north that they are familiar with. I believe-¡±


    ¡°No.¡± Benji says with a deep growling voice over her, without so much as looking in her direction when he speaks.


    ¡°Benji,¡± Victoria responds with no submission in her voice, ¡°we are here to find the children.¡±


    ¡°No, I say, woman!¡± once again he keeps with facing in the same direction as his next step. Victoria is perturbed with his abrupt aggression and says as she stops walking, ¡°Thank you for acknowledging that I am a woman. How observant of you. Now allow me to acknowledge you for what I observe, child.¡±


    He spins around, ¡°What did you say?!¡±


    ¡°Finally you face me.¡± she says before he gets so close all she can see is him.


    ¡°You will mind your tongue lest you beg to be struck in the name of God, wom-¡± Victoria brings herself only an inch from his face where all he can see are her eyes.


    ¡°Sir, you have one opportunity to refrain from threatening me yet again. Break your will to do so and I will show you what I do when I can no longer use my words to resolve a conflict.¡±


    He is trembling, infuriated. Tessa watches with amazement how Victoria can stand up for herself with every intention to intimidate and still remain calm with not so much as furrowing her brow or scowling. In this moment Benji resembles that of a rabid dog becoming defensive in the presence of a lion.


    ¡°You test me and-¡± Benji barks but Victoria speaks over him, ¡°More threats, child?¡± He glares at her with a paper thin squint inside his sun scorched crows feet.


    ¡°Find yourself removed before me, or you will learn why I am without fear such. That, sir, is a threat.¡±


    Benji flings himself around and continues to walk his previous path. Victoria takes a step forward about to argue for her suggestion of where to search. Tessa lightly puts her hand on her arm.


    ¡°Victoria. I believe we are able to divide to search other places. But if we need more than two people we would be lacking. Furthermore, suppose we do divide. What if Benji found them? Do we want Benji to uncover the girls by himself?¡±


    It¡¯s not a thought Victoria has to spend too much time on and she replies, ¡°No. I suppose not.¡±


    ¡°Very well.¡± Tessa says as she entwines her arm with Victoria¡¯s. They walk together step in step. ¡°Victoria? How does one learn to become so¡­ fearless, as you?¡±


    ¡°I suppose, in short. I am not fearless. Simply put, my wishes are behind fear and I suppose, I want it more than I am afraid. ¡±


    ¡°That I am sure of. Miss. Victoria, maybe on our way back we can search where you wanted.¡±This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.


    Though Benji stays at a distance their party remains together even if not close to one another. They tread through the Zwin woods. They cross patches where there are clearings in the trees untouched by the world where the animals have only ever known the deep privacy of its peace. They linger around ponds looking for any signs that the girls were there. Soon they reenter the thick of the trees and bushes. Tessa and Benji noticeably are having difficulty. For them the trees are a struggle to tread through. They are more focused on the obstacles of nature. Victoria is not compromised by it though. Multitasking proves no challenge. Keen are her observation skills as she takes in the vivid details of what she sees and hones in on the sounds of the environment. She is able to maneuver through the woods and effectively search simultaneously.


    ***


    Sometime passes when they happen upon a shore. Victoria sees the ocean reaching out to a setting sun on the horizon. Black clouds can be seen accumulating. Victoria catches a glimpse of electricity flashing in the clouds.


    ¡°Is this the Zwin north sea coast?¡± Victoria asks Benji. He ignores her.


    ¡°Benji. These girls would never come to such a place. Listen to me. They didn¡¯t come this far.¡±


    He faces her from a distance. After a long pause where he coldly stares at her, he says, ¡°Those girls were simple. I have no doubts they wandered free, do be expectant as I am. They are no more than drowned foolishly. You will come to see, it is what I expect. Without doubt the ocean is the mouth they perished in.¡±


    ¡°You believe them dead?¡± Victoria asks.


    ¡°They are only children. You must know they are dead as well.¡±


    ¡°I believe no such thing! To believe them simple is only a testament to how little you knew them. Truly an ignorant thought. I saw children who-¡±


    ¡°Gab on you wretched woman.¡± Benji says as he waves her off and continues onto the shore. Victoria screams at Benji, ¡°You will continue by yourself sir. I knew them better and I am for certain they would never have come this far!¡± She then returns to the woods, west bound. As time passes she can hear Tessa not far behind.


    Soon the dark of night takes over the world.


    Victoria is in a part of the woods that is easier to walk through when she decides to stop and light her oil lamp. She can see the light of Tessa and Benji¡¯s oil lamps when she looks over her shoulder. The shine of one lamp is noticeably closer.


    She enters the clearing her party had past earlier. Soon, she is within the confines of trees again, and three lanterns can be seen glowing in the distance. Their lights get closer. As though they stand still. Victoria now sees three people. They hold their lanterns up. It¡¯s Pepijn, Kaspar and Jacintha. As she joins them they inform her that their terrain was less restricting. They wanted to search more and their search led them here. Tessa and Benji soon join them.


    Benji only speaks to Kasper, ¡°The oil will soon fade and we will be without light. Let us return while we can still see where we are going.¡± kaspar and Jacintha look to each other and begin to nod in agreement.


    ¡°Wait.¡± Victoria says. ¡°There is one more place to search-¡±


    ¡°Art thou deaf? The lamps oil runs dry soon-¡± Benji says raising his voice at her.


    ¡°There is still a pond young Susanna and Madelief were very fond of-¡±


    ¡°We aren¡¯t going. Quit with your incessantly trite whims-¡±


    ¡°Then return sir!¡± Victoria barks, raising her voice to Benji. ¡°Return empty handed and tell Jacop and Geertrudia of your dismissal of their girls lives. But be it they hath not perished I will not allow for them to spend even one night, scared and cold, beneath the open sky.¡±


    Benji unhesitantly coils his free hand around his shoulder, preparing to back hand her, ¡°I warned you woman!¡± he makes his hand as flat and as stiff as a paddle. But his wrist never leaves such as a foot in distance from his chest. Gripping his arm is Victoria¡¯s hand. He wants to swing at her and when he realizes that wont work he tries to break free of her hold only to fail at that as well for now he discovers Victoria out matches him in strength. Even when he attempts to shove her back She is unaffected by his force. With a haste, Kasper steps between them nudging Benji back in the process. He points at Benji, ¡°There is no need for your violence sir. Especially to Miss. Victoria who did nothing to earn it.¡±


    Jacintha says to Victoria, ¡°My lady, whatever is the matter.¡± Victoria replies, ¡°There is a pond. Morning after morning they have visited. One, I have known them to doze off near. They could be there resting. It is but a chance. But a good chance, I am certain of it.¡±


    Kasper joins them, ¡°Let us search this pond. I assure you, the lamps will remain lit. Lead the way. We will join you.¡±


    After looking Kasper over for a sign of sincerity Kasper reads truthful and Victoria hesitates not a moment more. She leads the party through the woods. Even Benji follows close behind. The onyx clouds hold reign over the sky eating the light of the woods to then drown it in the trench of an ocean¡¯s deep black. The kindle of their lanterns seemingly fights to illuminate even their foreground. Proving to be a mere dim glow.


    As they arrive in the area of the pond Victoria takes pause to look around for any sign of the girls. Using the weak glow their lanterns emit the rest of them move forward. Benji is taking hesitant steps. He¡¯s going to the pond. The party now behind him. They continue searching the clearing. He raises his oil lamp. He stops and shudders. There is man. His figure is large. Broad shoulders wrapped in a fisherman¡¯s coat. Black hair parted down the middle with stitches. The man sits at the ponds edge. Benji gets a little closer. He can almost see something. Pale. In each arm he cradles Susanna and Madelief whose faces harness a pale lifelessness that even the oil lamps dim glow can convey.


    Like a siren blaring with alarm, Victoria, along with the rest of the party are surprised with the accosting scream Jacintha bellows out in horror as she discovers the girls are but corpses now. As Kasper and Tessa come to her aid she cries, ¡°Young Susanna! Young Madelief! No! No!¡±


    ¡°God help us.¡± Kasper exclaims pulling Jacintha¡¯s closer.


    Benji waves his lamp towards their motionless faces once over and says, ¡°They smell of death.¡±


    Victoria sees the side of Madelief¡¯s face. She thinks about Madelief¡¯s little fingers rubbing the fabric of her skirt with a smile that pinched her eyes shut. She thinks about Susanna jumping under her covers last night, eager to spout about her endless inquiries.


    Pale. Pale are their faces. So pale they glow in comparison to the night. Their heads rest within the mans elbows as though he lulled them to sleep. They look peaceful with their eyes closed wrapped inside his cradle.


    A collective weeping emerges from Tessa, Kasper and Jacintha. Though it can¡¯t be seen, Benji¡¯s snarl is so deep it can be heard obscuring his howl as he asks, ¡°Did you commit this monstrosity?¡± to which a soundless void rounds their senses. A grim song of which there is no melody or tune.


    ¡°Sir!¡± Benji yells, ¡°Why don¡¯t you answer me? Have you fallen ill?¡±


    ¡°He asked you a question!¡± Kasper yells.


    Benji becomes even more aggressive and screams upon an unhearing world with more pressing questions, ¡°Who are you traveler?! Tell me thy name!¡± to which Benji then kicks him in the back with his heel. For Benji it was like kicking a boulder or a tree stump. As he dissolves into more of a panicked fear Benji screams again, ¡°Tell me thy name!¡±


    Victoria knows it¡¯s name. She knows that of magic and nature know its name. Lightning and fire know its name. A conqueror with no pursuit of any monument. A menace for tragedy. The ruling hand of judgment. Death knows its name. It is not tethered to the heart of man. It¡¯s life is unnatural as well as its mind that has once before expired only to be reanimated. It is that as much as artificial. With its one objective intelligence it will be the folly of man for it will make not a victory of death but a direction completed.


    She thinks to herself, ¡°I know not how to receive it.¡± She has options, but if chosen could create moral dilemmas. She could be mistaken and this is merely a man. If she is right and she is un-moving she will meet her demise where she stands. To run would be to abandon her party to suffer the unimaginable. She is paralyzed in a web where each thread is its own immaculate colosseum. Some filled with pain and others with fear. A shock to her system as she both processes the death of the girls and also has her heart fills with grave dread.


    The man gently sets the bodies of the girls on the ground before him. He Then rises slowly. There is a haunting about its shape that brings with it a sense of coming misfortune. Such a monstrous stature that all pleasure of the living resign and the party finds themselves deviated from grounded reality.


    As the man turns around the lights of the oil lamps run dry to show the party only a glimpse of it¡¯s deceased appearance. Both hideous and gloomy with almost translucent dead flesh and ailed black lips. The vale of darkness dictates what can be seen now. The party groans and gasps just as Benji growls out, ¡°MONSTER!¡±


    ¡°The sum of my fears have found me and vengeance could not have presented itself more fare to what I deserve.¡± Victoria contemplates, ¡°The horns of death play for me. I am as all things in it¡¯s presence are, meek. Predestined to be doomed as it is just before to burn a perilous path. I see no world contending in its presence. This creature sets a precedence from the tales of Beowulf to the Greek odysseys to the folk lore of boogeymen in which the villains of stories will look to my creature to see defined what the world intends, when they say¡­ monster.¡±


    Fierce north winds carry the fragrance of ocean spray and dried leaves. Now drowned is the world in coal black gloomy terror. Lightning hatefully makes its presence known as though it awoke with anger from a long sleep. With a wild disorder, thunder rings out like war trumpets blown with the passion of blood filled lungs. The search party trembles like powerless mortals with every bolt that strikes the dirt of the earth making all of creation shake. The black clouds are impregnated with electricity. With no rain an electrical storm boils. Just as the light dances above and the woods light up in white flashes for seconds at a time, the dark figure of the man begins to glow. A milky white light of bio-luminescence ignites from inside his veins. It flows around the edges of his face, through his chest and hands before filling his eyes. It¡¯s still patient energy dies a quick death and it¡¯s rage builds with the storm.


    There is no denying for her now, that is no man. That thing is Victoria¡¯s creation. It takes a hold of Benji, clasping his head between the palms of it¡¯s hands. A collective gasp is belt out by all and only when there is an in-between of rolling thunder where the quiet overtakes the night once more the creature speaks. It stares into Benji¡¯s eyes and with a gaping maw repeats back to him, ¡°Monster.¡±


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 Chapter 8: A TRAVELER COMES

    Chapter 8


    CONTENT WARNING:


    This content contains mature situations, violence, and what some may consider gore and inappropriate for children. Discretion is STRONGLY advised.


    It is a grueling half hour of rough terrain where the skirt of her dress is a maddening drawback as it gets snagged on twigs and thorns again and again. In one instance Victoria is tripped by her undermining skirt and she is planted, chest to ground.


    d? Where are my girls?¡±


    y  to quickly assume something was wrong. After all, she knows in her heart her daughters are coming back. It¡¯s only a matter of time¡­ but time goes on as she searches Victoria¡¯s eyes for more answers. Answers she wants. Answers she never finds.


    Geertrudia¡¯s body begins to tremble;


    Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.


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 Chapter 9: VICTORIAS JUGGERNAUT

    STRONGLY advised.


    He is wearing a fisherman''s attire, consisting of a long sleeved dark coat, worn down overalls and muddied boots.


    Victoria sees everyone''s exhaustion and yells, ¡°Our efforts are futile. I will run and retrieve a horse. We can attempt to drag him out of the village!¡± Jacop responds to her, ¡°Quickly go! Get two if Pepijn can be found there. We need more men!¡±


    Victoria is sprinting through the Village. Down the roads and around corners. When she reaches the stables she finds Pepijn Inside. Wasting no time she moves frantically void of hesitation in her movement as she prepares a horse for her to take. All the while she is yelling at Pepijn in Dutch explaining for him to follow her with rope and a horse. Victoria makes a lasso of their ropes to which then they mount their horses and leave the stables together, riding through the Village.


    Luarens¡¯s muscles burn and have grown fatigued. He jabs with his pitchfork twice winding up to jab again. The monster grabs the handle of the pitchfork, pulling Laurens in. Everyone breaks away as the monster hits Luarens. He is hit with such power and force it lifts him off his feet and he crashes into Geertrudia. Her head hits the ground with a bounce leaving her unconscious.


    Kasper hears horses. He turns. Only for a second. Two riders barely visible. Victoria and Pepijn. The galloping is relieving. Reinforcements have arrived. He turns back and the monster¡¯s hands grab him. The monster¡¯s hands lift him. All yell furiously in protest but it is pointless. The monster folds him in half¡­ and it folds him again. Dropping his quiet dead body at its feet with a dull thud adding punctuation to the creature¡¯s discard of Kasper, effortless and unwarranted of notice as if it were simply dropping a small stone. If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.


    Victoria screams like she¡¯s tearing her vocal cords, ¡°No!¡± Pepijn¡¯s horse wont go any further as he pulls back on the reigns. Victoria continues forward with vigor and lassos a rope around the monster¡¯s neck. She jumps off her horse. Aggressively smacking its hide. The horse cuts through the night as it runs into the fields. The monster is violently toppled, pulled off of its feet. But using only its hands it quickly tears the rope off of its neck. It stands as lightning strikes.


    ¡°Impossible!¡± Jacop exclaims angered. Pepijn dismounts from his horse on the other side of the well. He tosses a bundle of ropes over to Jacop before throwing his rope in a lasso to ensnare the creature¡¯s arm. Jacop quickly throws his rope to lasso its neck.


    Temperatures only get lower and the dry air makes Jacop and Pepijn¡¯s hands drier. They pull on the ropes with what might they still have in their bodies. It makes the skin beside their fingernails crack and bleed. Ignaas joins Pepijn. Grabbing hold of the rope he helps him pull. But he becomes dismal with the awareness that three men are no match against this creature.


    After Ignaas hits the ground Jacop stammers over with a frustrated clumsiness to help him come to his feet. Ignaas could see the monster there, behind Jacop rising to its full stature. Ignaas, feeling exhausted, reasons with himself that there was never going to be an opportunity where he was faster, or stronger than this creature. It was never far behind and it was frightening to feel that the greatest desideratum of the monster is to have utter decimation pass through its hands.


    The men see with a hopelessness the speed in which it runs toward them. Their guts liquefy and their eyes buldge as the monster¡¯s terror stampedes at them.


    A lasso grips the monster¡¯s ankle.  Victoria sends Pepijn¡¯s horse running off with the rope tied to its saddle. Again the monster¡¯s feet are pulled out from underneath it. It¡¯s body is dragged violently. As the monster passes Victoria she raises her axe above her head and with the same fury as lightning she swings down. Her axe hits the side of its face barely causing injury.


    Geertrudia opens her eyes to see Victoria cut at the monster as it is dragged away. Jacop grabs Geertrudia by her arms and brings her to her feet. He pleas with her to run, ¡°Run. Running is the only way to survive.¡±


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 Chapter 10: IN DESTRUCTIONS WAKE

    Chapter 10


    In  Destruction¡¯s  Wake


    CONTENT WARNING:


    This content contains mature situations, violence,


    and what some may consider gore and inappropriate for children.


    Discretion is STRONGLY advised.


    In her perilous run Geertrudia is a banshee wailing with a grief that haunts the soul as she goes to Jacop. The fires rage and the light rises and falls as she slides across the ground. She pours of sorrowful tears before Jacop. The face of his torso is splayed open where its torn of flesh and muscle. His bare heart still in tact beats rapidly but what consciousness there may be in Jacop has given way to shock.


    ¡°Jacop,¡± She cries. ¡°Jacop, no.¡± Her voice now speaking with softer words. Geertrudia stares in his eyes with denial on her heart and draws a caress along his face, ¡°My love. My Jacop.¡± all the while Victoria has come to stand behind her.  They see his heart beat slower. Eventually coming to a stop. Mourning consumes them both.  Giving her arm a tug, Victoria gently and slowly implies their time to depart. They must get up. They must go. They need to go. Her implications become more forceful where Geertrudia is unmoving over Jacob¡¯s dead body. They need to go now. ¡°Geertrudia,¡± Victoria says through tears, ¡°We need to run.¡±


    Finally she is able to pull Geertrudia away though she is in a crippling devastation. She gets her to her feet and they walk together up through the streets of the village while staying weary of the fires. Geertrudia wallows to the point of retching. Victoria can barely catch her breath between crying and coughing as the cold night air dries out her throat.


    They reach Victoria¡¯s house where a cart was left out front. It was used to gather red mammoth beats earlier in the day and was surely abandoned in order to join the efforts to search for the girls. Once inside, Geertrudia stands at the window keeping watch for the monster anticipating its approach. The lightning storms glimmer passes over the village preceding the vivid details of Rhode Heuvals return to darkness. The fires are spreading and their light shines a dim shimmer in through the windows.


    Just then the hammering of heavy rain drops can be heard coming from the roof. Victoria is at her desk where she retrieves her red leather journal. She opens it to see the glowing vial beaming of light. It is alive with activity. She closes up the journal once again. When she turns around she can see Geertrudia at the window.  Geertrudia¡¯s tears glittering like starlight as they fall. Her eyes riddled with fear are wide as they appear to be clawing their way out of the sockets. In a world of dark-orange and red she stands in the coming fires snare. The light is animated with raindrops distorting the window pane. Looking over her from the dark side of the room Victoria wants to call out to her.


    Raising her hand she goes to speak but not air nor words come up. Taking a breath she tries again but she can not conceive a thought. There are no words of comfort.  There is nothing. The words are gone. Victoria can only be silent while enduring the empathy she has. She knows how it feels to lose the love of your life. She knows how it feels to lose a child. But their experiences will never compare no matter how close in similarity they are. Even harsher is the reality that Victoria certainly couldn¡¯t know how it feels to lose her whole world in one night. For all her academic knowledge and all her skills she sees her impact on the world reflected in Geertrudia¡¯s life. What can she do for now she has nothing. She has no new knowledge to dispense.  No words that could sow the wounds. Nothing to offer to kill the pain. ¡°What can I do for thy sister?¡± She asks herself. Sorrow tremors over her heart knowing there will be no reminders of Jacop and the girls. How will she remember them except with the horror she is left with? With the options that are left Victoria weighs there will be nothing but to flee this night. Everything must be left behind. Geertrudia must leave everything behind. Victoria sheds tears for her. Powerless to watch Geertrudia¡¯s life be torn from her. Forced out of her home, robbed of her girls and made to watch her husband be killed in front of her.


    She is deeply empathetic and still she is unable to find any path to be beside her and comfort her. What can she do when she is to blame for all her loss? There is no telling how far down this hole is but Victoria wants more than anything to get back some resemblance of Geertrudia¡¯s life. How irrational she knows it is. There is no natural science that could resurrect her hopes, whims and wishes. It is impossible. This is not a world of magic in which it can be whisked back to the way it was before today. This world is only made sense of when reason can be defined. Reason brings about truths and the truth is unmistakable. Victoria sees Geertrudia in the ruins of herself and none of her is recognizable. Seeing the death of joy in a woman made of it is gutting. The night brings an approaching tiredness that she embodies. Who stands there now is a woman in her place wearily crafted together of assertiveness and terror that is the caffeine that keeps her cautious.


    She can¡¯t even help her understand how to recover. Today, tomorrow or any other day for when it was of her own experience Victoria was younger. She still had a life to return to. She still had comforts and wealth to aid in her healing. Her and her family didn¡¯t deserve this. Geertrudia survives now as a mother without children and a wife without a husband.  Where does home exist after this?


    The rain dwindles down the fires to smoldering embers. The colossal presence of night returns draping the village in giant darkness. With an unnerving anxiousness Geertrudia begins shaking and tapping her palms against the wall as she whispers to Victoria in a quiet urgency, ¡°It¡¯s comes¡­ Victoria it comes.¡±


    The creature walks with a menacing deliberation. Stalking with almost a chase like mindset through the street. Its luminescence glows blue in the pelting rain which carries dread that sets off alarms within Geertrudia. It will never give way to surprise for it¡¯s light leaves little to the unknown committing atrocities clear as day without ducking into the shadow, unimpeded by morale. The down pours veil has put out the flames on its clothes having burned away its black murky hair, the sleeves of its long fisherman¡¯s coat up to their mid forearms; and the pant legs half way up their shins.


    Victoria rushes to pull her away from the window, stopping to see what she sees. Now looking out the window she remarks to herself, ¡°The unnatural glow lights up its form- I have created an Adonis. Beautiful and monstrous; never succumbing to a mere mortals ailments such as illness or fatigue. I have seen the death and perfection of humanity and I have unwittingly unleashed him into the world.¡±


    With a grip on Geertrudia¡¯s sleeve Victoria pulls her back. Hiding them both in the shadows against the wall. Just then they hear Laurens and Albertus from outside. Albertus can be heard yelling but his words are indistinguishable. Soon there is a loud scraping across the ground. For a brief moment all that can be heard is the droplets echoing.


    Then suddenly all silence is broken. Crashing noise erupts. The cart from in front of the house explodes through the wall. Shattering wood screams. Fierce unmitigated devastation happens rapidly. Victoria and Geertrudia are thrown to floor and covered in debris.  The sound of countless collisions of wood is deafening. Splintered beams and broken bricks disperse. Unsuppressed clatter of rain intrudes. The small space condenses more. The warmth of the house escapes with the unforgiving weather taking over.If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.


    The wreckage quickly fixes. Stagnation lingers. Then Victoria¡¯s arm emerges. She uncovers her head. As soon as she is able to open her eyes and lift her head she sees the figure of a man cutting through the rain fall- in flight.


    It is Albertus. He soars horizontally. Cascading like a chicken that has been flung. Feet first his body hits the floor. But the distance he flew built up too much momentum and his inertia forces his journey to continue.  After landing his body tumbles across the red mammoth beets, shards of wood and wet. Stopping as he plunges into the wall.  As he recovers he drunkenly searches the debris. His movement wild like a cat chasing shadows. Finally his search ends and he rises with both his hands narrowing tightly around the handle of an axe.


    The cart lays on its side in the middle of Victoria¡¯s house. Albertus beside it readies his stance for a fight. A disquieting incandescence draws near. A cold pale glow enters the gaping hole in the wall and everything in destruction¡¯s wake reflects it. As Victoria backs away in fear she can hear the Shudders of fright come from Geertrudia. The sight of the creature as it sets foot in the house reminds her of the hopelessness she felt the first time she laid eyes on Napoleon''s De la police. Uncertainty of her safety gripped her soul when she was in the clutches of their malice regime. But this was a greater evil. For when in the clutches of this monster¡¯s dread she knew what it wanted. She has seen it¡¯s intention within in actions that there is but one goal. To scorch the earth.


    Victoria can hear her through the rain fall. She looks her over to see a shard of wood has pierced Geertrudia¡¯s abdomen. Pushing off the debris she takes Geetrudia¡¯s hand all the while uncovering her. From outside Laurens rears his head in the hole in the wall. From where Victoria is she can see him but he can barely see the women in the blackness of the house especially when he is distracted by the phenomenon of the monster.


    From his gut Albertus screams to Laurens in Latin, ¡°Run! Run and find the others. By god get as far as you can from this place!¡± Luarens hesitates briefly before giving a nod and running away. Victoria pulls Geertrudia whom then lets out an agonizing cry. Victoria turns to see if that got the attention of her monster.  It was enough to draw it¡¯s attention. Victoria and her monster lock eyes.


    In this moment they are only fifteen feet apart and there is a temporary stillness. Her inquisitive brain spins cognitive thoughts of her collective knowledge to critically think. No mind like a Frankenstein¡¯s as she thinks with a heightened velocity. Though only a second or two passes it is enough as she mentally documents theories. It¡¯s hair has burned away leaving nothing to obscure its eyes. Inside they are protected from the rain and there is little obstacle but the pressing constraints of time to analyze the monster.


    Victoria recalls reading her mothers records of the witch trials where in one entry she wrote of a man who was a prominent skeptic of allegations of witchcraft. An English physician named William Harvey. He reached his death at the age of 79 in 1657 but in his lifetime he was publicly recognized for a report that led to the subsequent pardoning of four woman who stood trial for witchcraft. That was in a time when a death sentence was guaranteed for woman who were accused. He would go on to write the book:


    ¡°An Anatomical Dissertation Upon the Movement of the Heart and Blood in Animals¡±


    In where he writes about recognizing the flow of blood rapidly traveling around the human body and diagramming a single system of arteries and veins. That map of the human circulatory system is evident as it radiates under the monster¡¯s glassy skin. Within the diversity of its venation and the burning flare of its eyes she recognizes the light is generating from countless tiny flashes that hold its fairly uniform luminescence.


    A repetitious glint of lightning is hauntingly quiet but while Victoria¡¯s creature is seen in it¡¯s company those billions of tiny flashes explode with burning flares. She thinks how the ghostly glow coursing through it¡¯s body could be bacteria trapped in a constant decay and regeneration affect. In another recollection it was during her travels to the America¡¯s that she recorded one specific evening. An evening where darkness reigned and her ship was cutting through light in the water. She would later come to understand that the algae in the ocean¡¯s far recesses created light in defense of feeling threatened.


    ¡°Is the electricity provoking the disease?¡± Victoria asks herself.


    There is no time to ponder more as the axe Albertus wields ravages the creatures neck while its turned away. Albertus jerks at the axe intentionally tearing as much flesh as he can. The gore is abstract from what Victoria can see because it¡¯s flesh tears with a momentary blood loss only to close back up in healing with the blood dripping like white lava made of gleaming opaline. Where every part that is beyond it¡¯s light is contrasted in darkness. With the axe retrieved Albertus swings again but with the intention to dismember the creatures arm.


    The skin breaks. Blood spills. Albertus is shaken with disbelief when the axe bounces like a black smith hammer against an anvil off of the creatures arm.


    Victoria recognizes this. She remarks to herself that it¡¯s muscle fibers have a density of metal.  To fall victim to a precise strike from the monster would mean instant death. An orchestra of thunder plays on like nature makes endeavors to warn all life that they walk amongst the unkillable. Still Albertus is not convinced it is beyond defeat. Committed he continues to engage in a death defying battle.


    The stressed voice of Bernardo is heard, ¡°Victoria.¡± soaking from the rain he climbs inside the house.


    ¡°Victoria.¡± he says again. He drops to his knees to wrap his arms around her. He pulls back placing her face in his palms, ¡°Victoria, are you hurt?¡± Victoria can see anguish in him. His apprehension for her welfare stirs her heart. Still her concern lies in her selflessness and she replies, ¡°It is Geertrudia. She is hurt. We need to save her.¡± They both lift her and carry her out of the house. Bernardo can see at a glance the red leather of Victoria¡¯s Journal. He leaves them both momentarily to grab it.


    As the three of them make their way up the street Victoria looks back one last time. The monster presses forward in nonstop momentum using all parts of itself as a potential weapon of bludgeoning. Albertus is outmatched and as he becomes overwhelmed in an instance his forearm becomes broken folding over itself like a deep rubber boot. The proof of it¡¯s monstrous nature can be seen in it¡¯s sure fire decisions to inflict harm. Without remorse. Without hesitation. Average men falter under equally physically demanding conditions. The monster instead propels forward with an endless battery. Both made of energy, both unpredictable, both dangerous.


    The monster pounds Albertus¡¯s collar bone forming a hump in his back. With certainty parts of his bones have turned to dust. Before Albertus can collapse from the fatal blow the creature grabs him by his head. He swings Albertus making him horizontal. The monster spins him around. In a vicious undertaking, the monster repeatedly belts the limp body of Albertus against the walls of the house. Thrashing him at the floor and against the cart till the man was mostly broken bones. A once tall and handsome dutch man who was ideal in his strength and health has been reduced to a tenderized slab of veal. She contemplates to herself momentarily that her monster is the monster of monsters for it is the sleepless and relentless undoing of good men. Victoria weeps in terror and remorse for the dark is a kindness as it hides what vivid mutilation her monster bestows where the light makes visible enough to comprehend Albertus¡¯s lamentable misfortune.


    THANK YOU FOR READING!


    For updates and news about the Dread Legacies follow us on Instagram


    http://www.instagram.com/the_dread_legacies</a>


    You can check out the playlist for The Dread Legacies to listen to the music that inspired the story on Spotify and Youtube.

 Chapter 11: THE MAKER

    CONTENT WARNING:


    This content contains mature situations, violence,


    and what some may consider gore and inappropriate for children.


    Discretion is advised.


    Chapter 11


    The  Maker


    A new born baby. Her soft features radiate. Her fragile eyes are shut, resting heavily with a baby bonnet around her face. Her tiny fingers, blushed and warm, curled into her palms. The new mother, Ambroos lays in bed while she lovingly swaddles her daughter. With her husband Gerbin peacefully unconscious in bed beside her and her home without a single candle¡¯s flame she absorbs the intimacy of her sleeping world. Bathing in the ambiance of rainfall and strobes of lightning as it walks past her window from time to time. She is impulsive when the urge hits her to kiss her babies head. Ambroos doesn¡¯t wish to disturb the stillness in the room and elevates efforts in her small movements to peck her baby on the head quietly and slowly. Lingering over her head after to sniff the pureness. It is distinctively far from the odor Gerbin produces after he has worked all day in the fields or when he has come home from days of hunting. It is not like the odor of her clothes when they have been sullied with the prying of salty sweat nor is it like the smell of clothes that have dried from being washed. There are many scents in the world endless in delicious aroma and equally endless in putrid foulness. No, there is none greater a sensation than that of the essence that can be detected in the scent of innocence. Impossible to replicate. Devoid of toil. It is absent in their domain to be whittled with years of exhaustion carrying dreary unhappiness to the end of their day. No salt of the earth weighs on them. The notion is unfeasible to ever be drenched in the ocean of a broken heart. To be new to the world and know not of those pains. Ambroos knows there is no other smell like it in the world. It is purity.


    ¡°How long now¡± she wonders. How long before she can begin to feed herself? How long till she is able to crawl away from me? How much longer will my baby be a baby and the day comes when she speaks her first words that dawn a beginning of when she no longer needs me? Irrational, she knows, what a quizzical concept. She could as simply never be in such a quandary for since she can remember she was close with her mother even up to her last days. There are truly worse happenstances like those of her sister Geertrudia. She coils at the maddening thought. If her daughter was unable to be found there is no force of nature that could keep her from doing whatever it takes to find her. Her husband is able bodied now but she knows he has not seen what enablement she can be capable of. In previous years Gerbin had once fallen ill to the consumption of poisonous berries. She aided him back to health for weeks. Nurturing him as he vomited. Feeding him when he couldn¡¯t eat. Cleaning his bowel movements from his sheets. She was adamant about her consistent care sleeping at his bedside most nights. He knows her efforts are what saw his health return. He knows she would rather wither to a stalk of wheat before letting him die. She loves like she is growing an orchard with prolific trees. Unwavering with her attendance never allowing their strength to fade. She gardens with a labor of love to then patiently see in time what beauty flourishes. How she admires Geertrudia and Jacop¡¯s union. With such an example to look up to she mustn''t be far off from loving in a way to keep it strong and healthy she hopes.


    There is a sound of trudging feet and heavy heaving that joins the clatter of rain fall. The front door swings open. It cracks in meeting with the wall.  The sound of wind and rain overwhelm the room.


    Gerbin awakes and frantically leaves the bed in a terrible wildness. Quickly lighting a lantern. Victoria enters their home first leading the way with Geertrudia¡¯s arm draped over her and Bernardo¡¯s neck. Once inside Gerbin shuts the door whilst bombarding them with questions. His confused anger turns to worry and concern when he realizes the weight of the matter when he looks over Geertrudia¡¯s wound. They lay Geertrudia in the bed. She is soaked from the rain and her bleeding quickly changes the color of the white sheets. Ambroos gets up from the bed while cradling her daughter to pacify her from waking. Ambroos is launched into a grievous state.


    ¡°Geetrudia!¡± She wallows involuntarily, ¡°What hath transpired?¡± raising the question to Victoria. ¡°Who did this to my sister!?¡± Gerbin goes to her side to soothe and comfort her. Bernardo tells them about the monster in the village ending with a confused, ¡°I don¡¯t know where it came from. I had never seen anything like it before in my life, except¡­¡± He stops and turns to Victoria. ¡°...Except that glow.¡± Victoria is sitting on the bed with Geertrudia. They are looking staring into each others eyes with Victoria¡¯s filled with remorse and shame and Geertrudia¡¯s burning with resentment. Their hands locked together.


    She knows Geertrudia wants her to confess to them what the monster is. ¡°What? What is it?¡± Ambroos presses. Geetrudia asks her, ¡°Why did you do it? Why did you make it?¡±


    ¡°Why did I do it?¡± She remarks. She ponders all the while sniffling and catching her breath. Shedding unwanted tears she replies, ¡°So that¡­ so that I may have a child again. So I may be a mother again.¡±


    ¡°What do you mean?¡± Ambroos inquires, ¡°I don¡¯t understand.¡±


    Bernardo answers Ambroos, ¡°My god, she made that monster. In the streets, it¡¯s destroying the town. It just killed Albertus. It is a giant. Made of both the darkness and rivers of light.¡±


    ¡°Victoria?¡± Ambroos poses for her to explain sharply, ¡°Do Bernardo¡¯s words ring true? Hath thou conceived such a child?¡±


    ¡°Tis, true. Be forewarned, the imagination may find no tether in my explaining that in the stead of a natural womb my monster found its rearing in the cold destruction of my natural science laboratory.¡±


    Victoria stands up to face Bernardo, Ambroos and Gerbin. ¡°I fled in fear eight years ago to share the same notions of why I flee tonight just the same. By account of my eyes of the past and the present I know of this monster to be the first of its kind in that it is the ever progressing flow of carnage that is unable to be reasoned with. Unkillable, with wave after wave it will only heal no matter not even with the deadliest blow. Still it persists for it hath most long forgotten its connection to humanity. I am afraid to face such a monster. I am afraid¡­ of a monster that murders... with a terrible inability to reason.¡±


    Victoria goes into explaining the demise of Susanna and Madelief and all who have perished thus far leading up to their arrival to the couple¡¯s home.


    All the while the rain halts despite the electrical storm still bustling with activity. Regardless of the downpour it was not enough to put out the fires. Thudding steps in the quiet streets of the village. The monster¡¯s beacon like presence can be seen from a far as it makes a destination leading out of town. In the dark of the fields it is being watched. Staying low to the ground three pairs of eyes survey cautiously from a far as the monster flattens a path toward the windmill.


    Augustus whispers, ¡°Let us move.¡± Yvonne and Zoe shoot up from the ground. Together with haste they nimbly make flight. Their noses are numb. Their breath is heavy. Though the mud has intruded their shoes they strive back to the village with a determination unhindered in spite of the autumn¡¯s ruthless elements.


    Back inside Gerbin and Ambroos home, Gerbin is frustrated and proclaims, ¡°Surely it can be killed.¡±


    Victoria replies to him, ¡°It¡¯s lifespan can¡¯t be measured nor have I known death to come to those who share the same disease. There was one man I studied who had been alive as long as 5000 years. There was no fatal wound he could not recover from.¡±.


    All in the room are floored and momentary silence chokes them. Gerbin stomps his foot forward, ¡°How? In what world are such things possible?¡±


    Ambroos steps in front of her husband still cradling their child. Her capturing look puts him at pause. Beckoning him to be of some understanding. ¡°Love, it is our world where all things can be made possible.¡± Ambroos says to Gerbin. She continues, ¡°I laid splayed open upon a bed where henceforth Victoria reared our child to the light of life. My thoughts were of goodbyes. I was confident in my death for there be none a return from feeling the autumn¡¯s stony draft kiss my innards.¡± Gerbin¡¯s eyes swell up, ¡°She staved off death to me. Now my love, have you ever known that to be possible? Lest, I am here. An impossible¡­ possibility.¡± with tears beginning to shoot down his cheeks he pulls Ambroos close kissing her head repeatedly.


    Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.    ¡°Despite my words,¡± Ambroos says turning back to Victoria, ¡°Tis quite a feat. I myself am struggling to comprehend how it is feasible. Be there some explanation?¡±


    Victoria starts to tear the top layer of her dress into ribbons while she says,¡°I concocted a mix of blood, each cursed with the same disease. What resulted was an abominable change in the main constituents genetic characteristics. Though theoretical I hypothesize that these mutations are hereditary. In some cases it was also recessive.¡± Victoria can see she has frustrated the men but Ambroos has a set conviction to follow along and she says, ¡°Elaborate the meaning of recessive.¡±


    Victoria continues to wrap the ribbons of fabric around Geertrudia¡¯s wound as she responds,     ¡°Meaning, they only have a reaction where there are two copies where as some cases were dormant, others aught bear a single copy as enough to enable a reaction. To achieve my hypothesis I was lucky enough to encounter a hand-full of generations that are carriers... in my lifetime. This is how I was able to explore the underlying mechanics of their physiology and most importantly their disease. They all share closely similar traits.¡± Victoria is interrupted by Bernardo, ¡°There is no time for this flapping.¡±


    Gerbin asserts, ¡°We should listen to Bernardo. Be it we are in danger? We mustn¡¯t squander time to act. Now surely it has a weakness.¡±


    Victoria ponders briefly, ¡°Possibly. I fell witness to it be stopped momentarily when it was hit around it¡¯s neck.¡± Victoria temporarily looks back to make eye contact with Bernardo to see that he looks to be brewing ideas. Victoria continues speaking, ¡°But getting close enough would mean certain death. That is how Jacop and Albertus met their fates.¡±


    ¡°What of fire?¡± Gerbin exclaims, ¡°Nothing survives fire. If thus be made our weapon, we could out number it. Surely, that could work, yes?¡± Gerbin presents his idea putting his hunting mindset to work. Victoria considers his ideas before responding, ¡°Fire does slow it down. We saw it buried in a mountain of flames. Still it only allowed us but a few short minutes to elude it. Please we must make haste. Gather a few items of food to carry-¡± She is cut off by the sound of the front door opening once more. Agustus, Yvonne and Zoe step inside.


    ¡°Children,¡± Gerbin says relieved, ¡°What hath transpired?¡± Yvonne comes forward, ¡°We have taken all the children to the school. Along with what elders would come.¡±


    Victoria smiles at Yvonne, ¡°You brilliant child.¡±


    Yvonne continues, ¡°It was I, Zoe and Agustus who heeded your cries. Our mothers trusted your warning as well. They stayed behind to gather food and blankets thus we must seek refuge.¡±


    Zoe says, ¡°We returned to help Gerbin and Ambroos get to the school.¡±. Yvonne asks, ¡°What do we do now?¡±


    Bernardo answers quickly speaking over top Victoria¡¯s answer as he says, ¡°We fight!¡± and she says,¡°We go west.¡± Victoria gets up from Geertrudia¡¯s side again, ¡°No... we go west. There is a town half a days travel. Staying still is not an option.¡±


    Agustus speaks up to affirm, ¡°The monster. It presses on towards the wind mill. We saw it as we crossed the fields not but moments ago. Let us take our leave before its return.¡±


    Victoria is the only one of the adults who acknowledges Agustus and she is the only one to respond to him, ¡°Brillaint child, you are most correct. Let us take our leave. Shortly after I have gathered supplies I will be joining the rest of you.¡±


    Bernardo aggressively inserts himself in front of Victoria,¡°This is your doing! You should stay and see its end! Obey me, you shall not flee.¡± Victoria may hold fear within her in some part but not to the same commands beheld on dogs. Though she feels angered she is a calm stone skinned presence.


    ¡°Fear not, I will stay here with you. I will fight beside you.¡± Bernardo claims as though that is of some reassurance.


    ¡°There is no glory to be found here-¡± Victoria barely gets a few words out as Bernardo grabs her by the shoulders and rattles her. She has ignited in Bernardo a hysterical rage. Like not being listened to caused an outburst during a time of great frustration for him.


    ¡°You will stay! You will kill the monster!¡± She punches him to the ground. It doesn¡¯t end there for her as she stands over him repeatedly punching Bernardo maneuvering around his safeguarding hands. She stops when he starts to cry. In between his whimpering he says, ¡°On my mother¡¯s love¡­ on my mother¡¯s love... I have to do everything I can. This is my¡­ my home. My only home. I must defend it.¡±


    ¡°Then you are a fool and you will perish at the monster¡¯s hands.¡±


    Bernardo continues as she steps off of him, ¡°By my god I live in Rhode Heuvals. My home is Rhode Heuvals. I will die for Rhode Heuvals. Revenge for Susanna, and Madeleif... Benji! That is foolish? I care not then, They deserve retribution.¡± Bernardo says. Gerbin retrieves clothes and while putting on trousers he says, ¡°I will stay and fight.¡±


    Ambroos drops her head and steps over to Geertrudia. Victoria argues with Gerbin, ¡°You mustn¡¯t!¡±


    ¡°It was not long ago she was with child! She is not able to make such a voyage.¡± He exclaims gesturing to Ambroos. They continue to argue as Ambroos kneels down after looking over her sister. Now crying she presses her head against Geertrudia¡¯s listening to her struggling to breathe now.


    She holds her baby up, ¡°Geertrudia¡­ her name is Geertrudia. We chose it today.¡± Ambroos tells her older sister. She takes a look at her sister to see a faint smile as she learns her niece¡¯s name. Ambroos realizes she will soon lose her. She presses their foreheads together, ¡°I love thee. There is a paradise in knowing sisterhood. I¡­ I love thee.¡± Ambroos soon contemplates that her husband will meet a similar fate. That notion is as devastating to her as the sky falling. What a shame for if there is no return of Gerbin then their daughter will have to grow up never knowing either of her parents. She thinks to herself, ¡°For I will be a hollowed out woman and not even the ghost of me will come to rise. We will walk and with one hand I will hold her hand and the other will be resting on his gravestone. How will my beloved rest in death if I am crying over his grave forever.¡±


    Bernardo has since gotten up from the floor and continued in the conversation with Victoria and Gerbin. Victoria sees on his face he is crafting some kind of plan. He asks her in a quiet voice up close, ¡°What if I drink the vial? The twin?¡±


    ¡°Then you risk dying.¡± Victoria whispers back.


    ¡°Would it allow me the same strength?¡±


    ¡°There is no telling what it would do to you. You will not take it.¡±


    Ambroos walks up but her vision is narrowed to only Gerbin. She tells him, ¡°I have lost my brothers, my nieces. Soon to be my sister. We will flee our home in refuge. I... will not... forfeit you. I will not submit all of my given love for a foolish gallant act. I will not allow you to die.¡± She tells him, ¡°What joy will come in watching our daughter grow up if it is only accompanied by the sadness of your absence. Food will be flavorless. You said that to me, remember? I will fall deaf to the beauty of music without you. How dare you not suspect that I love thee at the same or just as much. I never knew you to be a cruel man. Lest you fight, and perish, you will be void of a kind legacy as you will perform the cruelest act upon me. To take my heart with you to the grave.¡± She sobs.


    ¡°Vi...Victoria¡­ Vi...Vi...Victoria.¡± Geertrudia almost inconceivable, calls out for Victoria. The room turns to Victoria and they all idle to watch her go to Geetrudia¡¯s bedside. The air is thick with turmoil that now is anticipated to worsen. With the oil lamp resting against the wall the room is a flames orange that stretches itself to reach the dark corners with its bouncing light. Ambroos can not contain herself and collapses into weeping. Victoria kneels down beside the bed and all in the room move in closer. Victoria gently holds Geertrudia¡¯s hand. With her chest weak and her face warm from concealing the dam of tears Victoria asks, ¡°Yes Geertrudia? What is it?¡±


    ¡°Zum donnerwetter. Zum donnerwetter.¡± She mutters which is Dutch for ¡®god dam you¡± she says it again faint, soft even but still the clearest she has said it, ¡°Zum donnerwetter.¡± As immediately as after the spoken word she quickly inhales and spits a mouth full of blood in Victoria¡¯s face. The room moans with dismayed surprise. When Victoria has wiped her eyes and is able to look up again Geertrudia is unmoving. Slumped slightly with her eyes lazily hanging open.  Ambroos wails as the quiet of the room reinforces the passing of her sister.


    Victoria¡¯s thoughts tare into her, ¡°It is I. I am the wretched maker. It is the cruelty of my negligence. I have let my ego drown to the bottom of the ocean to see this woman take what resentment she had and get her last say. I have no hate to give. Only lament, regret and shame that I have made myself worthy of recompense.¡±


    With a thud and rushing feet the front door swings open. Victoria gets up to investigate. Her journal lays on the floor sprawled open face down. She drops to her knees, flipping over her journal. The vial¡­ the twin, it¡¯s gone. Gerbin announces, ¡°It¡¯s Bernardo. He has left us.¡±


    Victoria quakes and utters under her breath, ¡°Bernardo... no.¡±


    THANK YOU FOR READING!


    For updates and news about the Dread Legacies follow us on Instagram


    http://www.instagram.com/the_dread_legacies</a>


    You can check out the playlist for The Dread Legacies to listen to the music that inspired the story on Spotify and Youtube.

 AT THE GRAVE OF DREAMS

    CONTENT WARNING:


    This content contains mature situations, violence,


    and what some may consider gore and inappropriate for children.


    Discretion is advised.


    Chapter 12


    At  The  Grave  Of  Dreams


    Wilhelmina steps outside her house just as Bernardo runs through the village. He screams frantically, ¡°Everyone! Grab your lanterns! Grab your torches! The monster runs for the windmill!¡± Jacintha and Tessa step out of their homes as well to see Bernardo as he continues, ¡°As one we must burn it down! Let us take revenge! Let us burn the monster!¡± Bernardo continues to the stables. Victoria is running. Chasing after Bernardo. She arrives in time to see him fire from the stables on horse back. He is holding a lit oil lamp riding in the direction of the windmill. Before she can reach the stables another horse runs out galloping into the open fields. Once inside she finds there are no more horses. She continues running. She goes after him trying to scream to get his attention but the cold is stealing her voice. Her muscles burn in exhaustion. Bernardo stops his horse just down from the windmill. He hears Victoria in the distance. ¡°Stop! Refrain from this Bernardo! Please!¡±


    She sees the glow of the vial in Bernardo¡¯s hand. ¡°No!¡± She screams mid sprint. He pulls the cork on the glass vial and it¡¯s ultra violet glow disappears behind Bernardo¡¯s lips. With having drunken the vial she stops. Her jaw ajar unsure of what to do now. She can¡¯t stop what ever is about to happen.


    ¡°What did you do?¡± She utters wearied.


    Bernardo rides up to the windmill. He dismounts with his horse tame enough to idle without him. Only a moment is spent assessing if his horse will run off. As he turns around the eight foot monster has stepped out of the windmill and stands before Bernardo. He looks upon it afflicted with fear while staring at the fireflies that flow through it¡¯s veins.


    It grabs the horse with both hands trapping Bernardo in the middle. In the commotion he lets go of the oil lamp. It drops at his feet. Breaking. His legs catch fire. The flames spread quick engulfing mostly his clothes. Fighting the flames he breaks loose from between the monster and the horse. For a short time he runs blazing as a human pyre.


    Victoria is catatonic as she watches helpless. Her heart steps outside her body now. Laying witness to the monster¡¯s astonishing physical power as it grips the horse by its neck. In a single turn around it is able to lift the horse off its feet. Swinging the horse horizontally like taking an axe to a tree. To Bernardo¡¯s misfortune he is in the way of its course. With a bludgeoning blow the horse¡¯s hide clobbers him. The thrashing hurls him thirty feet or so closer to Victoria. Breaking through her paralysis she runs to him. Both overwrought and brittle she crumbles as the resilience left in her burns out. Paying no mind to the mob of running villagers behind her. Their oil lamps and torches emerge on the wind mill like a herd of flaming birds soaring through the field.


    Bernardo is a screaming bonfire as he lay burning to death. Victoria weeps while watching on her knees. Palms up and powerless. She cries to him, ¡°Bernardo! Bernardo!¡± She weeps under his screams. To her, his screams challenge the thunder that bellows. Never has a sound cut away at her skin the way his screaming does now.


    Suddenly his arms and legs stretch three times their length. In the mortifying sight Bernardo begins to kick and flail making Victoria cower backwards. She watches as his body changes inside of the flames. She can see morphing happen as his face grows with bone marrow. A snout extends out tearing the skin on his face. Within it there are teeth on top of teeth that sprout in rows of sharp daggers pushing out the normal teeth all at once.  Then a phthalo green spreads in the form of elaborate scales like a snake skin. Taking on a dragon like appearance. Soon Bernardo¡¯s body starts to bulge as every muscle in his anatomy is growing. The muscles grow four times there normal size pulsing with vascularity. The growth turns into bloating and all his body becomes bulbous. With each change Bernardo reacts. He feels everything. The excruciating pain of his bones growing and his skin stretching¡­ and tearing¡­ and burning. The fire changes color and the flames lash in a deep vermilion red as a chemical like aura distorts the smokes plume. Countless large blisters start to rise before bursting with black ichor. Each pop sloshes and splashes when it explodes. Skin and muscle become untethered to the bone falling away piece by piece. The agony of his screams draw gradually toward an end. His bones crackle as they turn to cinders.


    After watching the horror of Bernardo¡¯s demise she is shattered. Her nose scorched in the scent of his torched body that carries the aroma of rusted iron and rotten potatoes. Sobbing, she trembles in the cold. Only kept warm by the fire on Bernardo¡¯s bones. The language of fire is all she can hear as it rustles.


    Darting past her is the mob of villagers as they descend on the windmill. The monster has disappeared inside. When they reach its foundation they begin to set the windmill on fire. They use their torches and smash their lanterns against it.


    Victoria considers walking over to the windmill and burning inside. She ponders to herself, ¡°I see no reason why I should not be in there as well. Tis me whom should be burned at the stake. Oh mother, I am sorry.  I know you would shun such speech but I speak so fowl having given the world nothing but a creature of desecration. Father... I am sorry. You wanted but goodness from me but it is with a weary heart to which I propose that the goodness will die with children and has died with what life you made of goodness. There is no goodness my guilty soul can claim now.¡±


    Within the flames the monster emerges once again. It¡¯s figure silhouetted. It¡¯s emanation piercing the inferno. Making a victory in its defiance of death. Calling attention to its firm will and pure force it returns outside. Making a mockery of such a dangerous element as fire by passing through it unimpressed. The villagers that make up the crowd gawk in seeing the monster¡¯s mountainous body. They stare in disbelief of it¡¯s radiance.


    The electrical storm is at it¡¯s angriest when it starts to discharge bolts of lightning. Lightning that is attracted to the monster. Lightning that then cracks the ground multiple times. Bombarding around the wind mill. Victoria takes notice that the onslaught of electricity is in fact causing a reaction in which the monster¡¯s lumination brightens. The brighter its veins glow, it seems the more violent and uncontrollable her creation becomes.


    The blitz of lightning bolts sets off the monster into a rampage. It goes from one villager to the next. The first few were slow to react and were robbed of the possibility to escape it¡¯s vicious wrath. The creature drops it¡¯s closed fist down on a woman¡¯s head that unimpeded it¡¯s inertia. Deflating any boning. The creature¡¯s knuckles cut through the air colliding with a man holding a torch. The assault is so calamitous that the right side of his torso is obliterated removing his peck, shoulder and arm all at once. The man falls, dropping on his torch and setting him on fire. The creature reaches both palms out to grab a man by his rib cage. It lifts him off the ground. Like a dough it squeezes through him till the man is torn in half.Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.


    Shock seizes Victoria. Her hands shake involuntarily. She could decide to get up and run away if she wanted but instead she is staying in place. As still as stone. Willing herself not to move from this spot and be the recorder of testimony. Documenting the horrors. Viewing the bane of gore as it massacres the people of Rhode Heuvals. She holds herself responsible and therefore will not allow the benefit of looking away from the slaughter.


    Villagers run to elude the brutality of its clutches and in a ferocious tirade it tramples them. Tearing people limb from limb. Squashing bodies beneath it¡¯s feet. Flattening some. Crushing others with their bare hands. Folding people in on themselves. There are few screams because the monster kills with a speed of eradication that leaves no time to express pain. The witnessing of a tyrant stomping out the existence of those it deems void of value.


    For Victoria her thoughts have always been ever-voicing. But for a few moments that inner voice remains quiet. She wishes silence in her punishment to remember everything about this tragedy. Soon, her cognition becomes ever-voicing again when she thinks to herself, ¡°I have rode through the sand storms of Egypt. Crossed the ocean to the Americas. Lived in luxuries that sound as profound as dreams to commoners. I have loved, I have seen love, I have been loved. Plentiful have been my trials and tribulations. A many harrowing battles. Some as a fighter and some of wit. Now, I anchor in the carnage storm. Clear here that inside thine life I have felt never such a ruination was my experience in all days on all my battle fields. Being chased by death had the presence of fear. There was a scared me that visited through time. Never like this. Such powerlessness. Unforeseeable Hopelessness. To witness what I never have seen before. At the undesirable destination here lie the graves of my dreams. All that was once flourishing is now put under for to be the soil of flowers. Time will watch them be abandoned and overrun with the dried up death of greenery. I sigh with sickness in my heart as I look at it. Look at it. My juggernaut. It kills, decimates entirely without so much as an ounce of anger nor joy. Labor of love can not define it either. It stalks, thrashes and bustles mindlessly. Not a bead of sweat in sight on it¡¯s glassy skin. Perhaps it is the disease. A force of nature running its course. Acting involuntarily and yet still, knowing that this could be a possibility¡­ It does not change that I am in hate with it. Resentful¡­ regretful. I wish I never gave birth to the destroyer of the world. I relinquish my welcoming heart for it. For the forever of nights darkness, for the forever of daylights burn, till time steals the remembering of the names of the trees and the air of the world depletes and all life that has ever been known is choked out. The pain of wanting you gone goes on for a forever and it is in that means of forever that I will be in hate with thee. My child. This monster I¡¯ve created. Perhaps... it is more. Is there some inconceivable connection it has to nature? Truly a key to titanhood. Does it command the storm itself? Does it lay waste with purpose? Some goal it is unable to communicate? Or quite possibly, is there someone in there? Imprisoned. Tortuously transformed. Incapable of control? I wish I could know truly. Still I relinquish my love because of it. For in truth I hold some semblance of pride. It disgusts me. My creation, it is strong, without contest. It is alive. Alive in a way an inquisitor would define. Alive... it¡¯s alive. Moving forward with momentum exceeding expectations. How extraordinary that none of the foreseen drawbacks of motor functions, strength or speed are ever made present. How amazing. What a tremendous achievement. How fucking revolting. I decline with no anodynes. Fall away from things enamoured. I refute pretensions of pride therefore, any that of joy as well. I will be haunted for the precedence of my days with the sight of the emergence of that celestial fire that burns in its veins from under its lucent skin and the hot white pits of its eyes.¡±


    The windmill¡¯s fire is like a giant dancing in the storm. Victoria grips the grass and soil while swaying because her body is drunk. Her nerves are stinging spider bites. Her eyes wrung out of tears and her throat ripping dry. She would stand and walk to death now if only the ground would stop spinning back and forth.


    ¡°No. There is no blame better placed then upon ones head. I did this. These people gave me a life again and I took theirs away. As I watch the monster tear through them I wish for bolts of lightning to strike me down and punish me. There is no world coming that changes for the better. No world I could possibly create. Hence forth as I look upon a maker of death how foolish, cruel and stupid I am to have ever envisaged a destiny where one is to be idolized as an angel. I am ill of thee... that within thine self... there was ever a foolish conception... to dream.¡±


    ***


    1816, Antarctica.


    Victoria stops from journaling to acknowledge that her fire has been out for some time. The will to keep it going has evaded her. It may be a seal on her fate if she does not keep the fire burning. Then again, she knows that. With hurt on her heart from recollecting the past she continues to journal. Damning herself on purpose.  She writes, ¡°As I rest upon the dirt, with my hands I grip the earth with panic as a drunken disorient takes over me. I feel nauseated and a dizzying spin disrupts my body. It was a sensation of gravity giving way. It was then I had finally given up. These weren¡¯t deaths. These were my neighbors and the flame of their lives were snuffed out in an evening. My neighbors, my friends. I still wish I had the strength then to get up. I wanted so terribly to give myself unto it. To let it do what I had feared most. To deny me my story and any legacy I could hope to have. I ran from death not simply in fear of a painful demise in truth I feared most to be erased. I lived with a hunger to obtain an extraordinary life. How awfully foolish of me to have squandered the last eleven years depriving myself of all its beauties. I remember nights of painting in the winter and the candle light reflecting off the windows. The dancing in the ballroom when we could dance till we fell asleep listening to the band play their cello¡¯s. But mostly sitting in spring at the edge of my garden, enjoying the heart of my life in the warm smell of flowers as they bathed in the sun. I feared all this to be erased. Lest I forget the horror, under the shroud of night¡¯s maw, I forfeited what was left of my dreams. Tis then I heard a quiet voice say, ¡°Miss Victoria.¡± as they grabbed my arm and help me to my feet. It was Knelis. He had survived with only a broken arm. He found me and rushed me away while there was still time to spare our lives. I did stop one last time to look back. Now arrayed in red, the grass, the water and all reflected the red of the windmill varnished in fire. The blood in the field glistened.  The Juggernaut stood victorious in the fiery scene surrounded by death. Its wretchedness to never be brought to justice.


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 THE YEAR WITHOUT A SUMMER

    CONTENT WARNING:


    This content contains mature situations, violence,


    and what some may consider gore and inappropriate for children.


    Discretion is advised.


    Chapter 13


    The  Year Without  A  Summer


    1816, The Arctic.


    Urgently the quill darts out word after word across each line like a messenger running out of time. Victoria writes, ¡°I traveled with knelis to the city of Knokke. He had frequented Knokke with Jacop to do trades and knew where to find a place for us to sleep. We had caught up with Ambroos, Gerbin and the children shortly upon arriving. Ambroos made a discussion and to the kids and Gerbin she stated that there was no monster. She past a creed that it was a traveling troop of the de police on their course back to France and she spoke fictitiously about the de police burning down the village and casting us into refuge. Ambroos spoke with conviction that this was the story they would tell from now on and that there would be no mention of me.  A couple days after our arrival we were in the local market. There was a moment that in the crowds of traders and salesmen and patrons, I saw it. Hiding in a shroud. At least It seemed that way till traders began to converse with it. Maybe I wanted to see it again. Vexed with its presence imbued on my eyes the scare was enough to send me running. I knew then I must go for I have seen what lives are destroyed by the death that follows me. I purposefully left that night without a word to anyone. I kept moving with this sense that I was in chase. Certain I caught a glimpse of it again and again in every town I stopped in. I left The Kingdom of the Netherlands to find that the world was changing as a once unstoppable Napoleonic army had now fully rescinded to France. No matter, I was nimble in my transactions otherwise to also avoid the violence of Napoleon''s contrived de police as I was south bound through France. Finally when I was in Italy, I boarded a fishing vessel. Working on the vessel till we reached the Arctic where briefly the ship became stuck. Eventually when it became free from the ice I off boarded before its departure back to Italy. Stranding myself in the Arctic tundra plotting to lure my creature. There is no telling if my creature still follows me. It is a position poised in paranoia. This running has persisted for three years. I am finally without rations. With the amount of time I have spent in rumination along the way I made a decision to trick my creature into following me to a place of no return. If my paranoia is eventually validated then I will have lured it away from the world, unable to harm another living soul trapping it in the Arctic. Other thoughts had crossed my mind in my ruminations such as what I was truly afraid of. Death was a simple enough answer that long sufficed the question till I recognized it was not death at all. Nor was it the absolutely violent disembowelment that my creature is capable of. I discovered within myself over time I am afraid I will never have a page in history. What I am most afraid of, is dying, insignificant. In my pursuit I have merely done such as that. Sinking lower than the feared title and I have less than what could be named infamy. I have erased myself. I have become titleless there for I have become nothing. A lifetime of research and academia, a valiant toil to gain the title I deserve. It was in those late hours where I paced in retrospect that I stumbled upon this epiphany to give up protecting myself for a dream I will never see. It was time to take action and do what needs to be done to stop the unstoppable. To put an end to my creatures treachery and quell my fears of a dismal future. A future where it will surpass us all. Where, an intelligent being with common place knowledge that was made by humans, cannot be used to better mankind in our search for advancing natural sciences, efficient medicine and human progress but instead eradicates the need for people. Beautiful, diverse, creative, loving, dreaming, wondrous people. Now I am here. Trapped in the furthest reaches of the Arctic with no hope to escape alive. This is the best chance I have to do the right thing. Now I must give up these thoughts as my ink will soon come to freeze I will close my last log remembering, him. My greatest love. My final hopes as my life fades into the colossal embrace of winter¡¯s breast are that I can gather the strength to see in my memory his eyes for the last time. All of my years obsessing, looking to create a medicine for you, an aid, a cure. I have followed one prospective clue to the next traveling all over to find answers, for you. I suppose I could not ask to change the past for there is no telling if I was endowed with more time, with you. For how history transpired easily how fickle life truly is, I just as fairly could have been dammed to less time with the gift of you. There are people living the whole of their lives in happiness. It does not matter if it is a quiet simple life or that of which lived in high society. There is truly a possibility of their unhindered happiness. I have regrettably let the pockets in which the years of happiness resided, escape me. The years in which happiness was its most powerful. My life with you was a small number of years, no will can make those years obtainable again. Happiness lives within small chambers of life. I see now everything was only obstacles leading to the chambers being found. I invite every life to learn appreciation for those small chambers for it is always with devastation that all of existence comes to reclaim them. The most powerful I have ever felt happiness t¡¯was with you. Your kindness was a life force in you that whimsical stories have been written to be unattainable. Therefore how astonishing it was to receive you freely. The way you looked for me in all spaces and my name spoken by you felt deeply supernatural. I would never know a greater absolute love. It was all for you my darling F-¡±


    Impulsively she gasps to then turn as still with all the stillness of a ship frozen in ice. The ink has frozen. Victoria tries to scratch the rest of the name but she quivers and her attempt is weak never to finish the name. She looks over the captains quarters acknowledging that it is a dark 300 year old ice box. The cold has long set in as she closes the journal. Of all the ways the earth takes life back by swallowing it in its nature, Victoria thinks, a tomb of ice is the one she would be most amenable to. Between the battle of drowning in water, the vicious submission to fire and the gruesome disorient of poison, freezing is where death makes you a bed and coos you to rest for sleep is where you¡¯ll find peace. The cold is a blanket that never gets warm and the colder you get the more you abide to the dose of sleep. Not realizing how weak she¡¯s become she attempts to stand up when both her legs give out and she falls to the floor.


    Victoria finds she is overexerted as her efforts are great to get up but without fruition. To what need, she thinks to herself, ¡°Welcome this with dignity. My duress is pitiful thus why pile on more shame. I resign in this way not without shame. If my father could be in this room¡­ if he could see me I know I would feel ashamed. If he were to be in this room¡­ he would¡­ he would¡­ he would pick me up. He would tell me there is nothing to be ashamed of. I can hear his voice still- Bear the brunt of the worlds bold brass as all the world must, do it with integrity and do it without fear, tis doth there be no condoned shame if neither were in thyne possession for the worlds brass cometh unimpeded. It shall come for us all. Tis then thus thou beith without fight, then I see no shame in a soul who hath beith afraid. There is no shame in death. Seeith woe, and I seeith hate but there beith no soul of any woman or man who walks with goodness and still denounce to those in dying to be shameful. Be not concerned with the words nor notions of those who ne¡¯er gardened within thyne self a bed of goodness to prosper. Nurture your goodness. Your trees, flowers, food ¨C all substance of you, in your willing, beith the goodness for others for there is more the world holds, thee has but power in every trickle of time to give the world more good. For there is more than only the brass of the world.- My father embodied kindness and goodness like a morning spent in the shade of trees. A reliever of harshness, he made it easy to be around him. He was an easy man to love. He would see himself die than sooner allow for anyone to be in his stead. He was only ever pressing about a few ideologies. That death follows Frankensteins, that life was made for living and from I can recall most is that the proliferation of goodness is always worthy. You could deem someone worthy by their goodness. You could deem any fight worthy if it saw the preservation of goodness. You could deem self sacrifice worthy in a means of protecting goodness. You could deem love worthy if only goodness is what flourished.


    A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.    My father, how I have wronged you. I have been careless with your legacy giving way for it to be carried off like a voice on a draft. Yet still despite my horrid pain in lament I know there is no act I could be expected to perform in which you would not cloak me in your pride.


    I still remember when he told me that he has seen imperfection with his eyes as much as he has breathed air. But has only ever known perfection to be invisible, played with in pretend, dressed in wardrobes of metaphor for what a collection of imperfect things looks like together. Never imposing perfection on me. Even at the heights of my childhood when I saw other girls be punished for going against what is expected of them my father encouraged me to do everything. He wanted me to obtain all the trappings of an educated man. That I ought to strive to be more than that even. To be a woman of erudition. That the sole purpose of my life was to be defined by me. Not to serve a husband and bear his children. The influence my mother had on my father was so impeccably vigorous that he implemented her ideologies daily from my upbringing of never lacking in education to a household order founded in reason.  I saw him never in a moment to make a decision in which he was separated from himself. A great amount of his essential nature was rooted in the beliefs of kindness and goodness built with iron clad fervor for his positivity that no ideology could combat. No matter the presence of wretchedness and foulness in an army of words they would be met with no opposing infantry but instead an unassailable structure commanding acquiescence. Therefore when it was apparent he was conducting himself in what could be my mothers wishes and the whole of his self had to be put aside he did so happily, without ego, without strife. My father never remarried after my mother¡¯s passing nor have I ever known of him taking on another lover or mistress. My father and I traveled together quite often and on one of our journeys to the inherited ancestral Frankenstein castle I recall him explaining how my mother fondly missed the motherly nature of Germany. She spoke of it often of wanting to return there all the years their love bloomed and he had promised one day he would take her and she could feel the warmth of Germany¡¯s bosom again. It brought him great lament to keep his word not once while she was still alive. He chose the words engraved on her headstone plaque that resided under the feet of a statue chiseled in her likeness where her naked body is draped in a thin fabric while she cups a lotus flower before her face. The words engraved read-  The whole of her life was spent weaving her love into others. Thus in truth there is still so much of her here.


    Possibly it was his way of keeping her alive, allowing her a legacy by evoking her foundations in me, for me to then impress those same foundations on the world. Unbeknownst to me till later in life twas his application of love for my mother that I would adopt. I would never disown the memory of a love and in my conviction have seen no reason why I shall not preserve each of their legacies. All except¡­ my fathers, I suppose. My father, my gentle beautiful father. The nights we would read together by candle light. Oh father¡­ I still feel the warmth of the room with you near. You in your chair and I in the window nook. Some nights by oil lamp and a many by the flicker of candle light. Some times till I fell a sleep against the glass. How quiet and impervious happiness was then. If only I could here you reassure me again, now. If only.¡±


    She starts to pay close attention to her heart. She feels a slowness. A delay. Her pulse creeps to a pause frequently but she pushes for it to speed up breathing with struggle. In a moment there is a long pause to her heart beat that jolts her awake when it picks back up. She momentarily opens her eyes with a hazy screen over her vision. She realizes she has spent hours with her heart beat in observation. Her eyes ease close once again with her coat and gear visibly frosted over it is with positivism that Victoria is on the brink of freezing to death. The sensation of a hand running under her head compels her to attend consciousness. She can tell it is an immense hand in the way it pillows her head in size or so it feels. She opens her eyes to a slit. What she sees kneeling down before her in a red hooded shroud is her creature. A lonely tear falls out with no resources left to drop much else. Strange. There is no pain. She remembers the violent thrashing of the creature glowing with radiance. There is no glow. There is no thrashing. Absent is the expected grip of its crushing palms. This creature is considerate in that its hands and movement are gentle. With her vision blurred she tries to fix her sight and open her eyes more.


    The creature removes its hood. That black stringy hair has grown back except where the stitches reside on its scalp in the middle and across and it drapes the creatures pale, almost translucid face. She can¡¯t see clearly but she knows it perceives her with a curiosity. While propping her head off the floor she hears it say in a deep, resonant, Scottish accent, ¡°Mother.¡±


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 Chapter 14: THE HOUSE OF STRAYS

    Trigger Warning:


    This chapter contains themes of violence and sexual trauma that may be upsetting for some readers.


    Discretion is strongly advised.


    Chapter 14


    The  House  Of  Strays


    A low hanging tree branch showering in mid-day sunlight along with the rest of the green growth in this spring time meadow is hovering tranquilly at rest. The yellows of minuscule flowers that grow in the grass make the greens look lighter. The vibrancy of all the colors creates a blissful haze. The low hanging branch is swatted by a young child¡¯s hand as they hurry through the area. Moving the branch and other plants out of their path. Their breathing is heavy, pausing for swallows to keep their throat from drying out. It is a young boy and he keeps moving forward seemingly in search of a new route to take while passing up dead ends. The tweed overalls he wears come half way up his shins. His black leather shoes are small, close to the size of a six year old¡¯s. Cutting through a puddle, the child ignores it to continue running for his life. With his mouth agape and his cheeks and brow under his light brown hair cooking pink as a dog¡¯s paw it is evident this endeavor has been going on for quite some time. The outright imperativeness of his nerve-racking disposition paints the implication of a dire situation.


    He comes to a stop, pushing down the body of loose shrubbery. There he sees before looking up he has unveiled a pair of gigantic, leather, cobbled shoes. He lifts his head to see that in those shoes is the creature.


    It is standing upright dressed in merlot red wool clothes. The child is diminished meager in the creatures mountainous form. The black of the shadow¡¯s triangle under its eyes. A dark place in the meadow hidden away from the sun. Under dimness. Glooming is its semi-transparent skin in a grey deceased shade. Those prominent blue veins of its cardiovascular system scarcely hide. Black somber hair, long with the matte of a wolf¡¯s, bloodless marshy yellow eyes and ivory teeth that showed of a brighter state in contrast behind thin black lips. There is no running now, they are done for.


    ¡°I found you!¡± with his tiny voice the boy yells. With his tiny voice the boy laughs. So tremendous a laugh that it is filled with all the might in his tiny stomach. Pushed to its absolute limit only to produce a mighty-tiny laugh. Playfully he accosts the creature whom then falls back into the shrubbery as it is clearly rendered powerless to the young boy¡¯s attack. The boy tugs at the creature¡¯s shirt, throttles it¡¯s wrists, restrains it from getting up. Surrendering to every manipulation the boy directs it to move for he was just too powerful. Laughing all the while in the conquering of the creature. Doomed, there was no way they could win against the likes of the mighty-tiny boy.


    Sitting in a rocking chair, now closer to dusk, the creature grips a book with the boy asleep in their lap. Tuckered out from an afternoon of terrorizing the creature in the meadows. Behind the rocking chair is a clothesline where a petite woman in a white dress wrapped in a blue apron who has burnished red hair hangs clothes to dry.


    In the evening the creature sits at a dinner table still gripping the same book. A window rests at its back as it sits on a bench built into the wall. Docile, it eats slowly and with refined social behavior, unlike the two children at the table. He sits across from the woman who is feeding a young girl who looks to be four. In a Scottish accent the boy asks the woman with a snarl on his nose but without any peculiarities of anger, ¡°Will you Feed me as well?¡± without losing their place in the book the creature spears a potato on their plate and raises the fork to the boys mouth. With a mighty laugh the boy chomps the potato off the fork. The woman looks upon them indulging in the contemplation of her evident happiness.


    Shortly after dinner has concluded; the tapping of a dog¡¯s nails on the wood boarded floors can be heard in high performance from the lounge room across from the dining room. The young boy riles up his giant leonberger dog.


    The dog has a thick coat with a lion mane like fluff and their fur is a charcoal color around their face and mane with the rest of their body in a reddish-brown fur. The dog¡¯s beady bright yellow eyes follow the bouncy boy. As he trots so does his fur bounce delighting the four year old girl as professed in her giggling. The book the creature has been reading is closed now, sitting on the bench beside them. The red headed woman still sitting across from them talks to the creature with a zeal using their hands to animate their overzealous expression at times.


    It is the spring of 1810 in the Southeast of Germany and the following morning as dawn¡¯s light cuts across the alder and pine forest canopy the creature sits outside near the front door. No book, just clasping their hands together while watching the sunrise. There is a thought there as they look on but it is not displayed as the creature appears dead when in stillness. A gloomy expressionless face forever adorns them. The metal clanks on the door latch as it opens. Red hair parted down the middle and loosely falling to her mid-back the woman of the house steps outside and takes a seat. Her skin is of a pale complexion and her chin comes to a point. She adjusts her arisaid dress lifting the green skirt off the ground and wrapping it around her legs and then covering up her shoulders with a red and white tartan. The two look at each other and she smiles with a high smile as she looks at the creature with her deep set eyes. The creature stares back with it¡¯s droopy downturned eyes and it says to her, ¡°This morning has gifted me with my memory.¡±


    With a spring the woman sits upright in her chair, eagerly awaiting for them to continue.


    Fire. Thunder. Destruction. The creature speaks of the night it was created in 1805. It opens it¡¯s eyes to blistering white flames that have charred the floors and walls black. Too powerful to be put out by the rain that falls in from a destroyed ceiling.


    ¡°I was born into a laboratory amidst a disaster.¡± Shortly after waking it remembers the feeling of an uncontrollable rage run through their body. They remember the thunder¡¯s roar and the lightning¡¯s blinding flash scared them. This extreme anger was involuntary and felt like it was dictated by a force of nature. They explored beyond the laboratory to a high balcony. There they were confronted by people. People they would never recognize. People they relentlessly killed.


    ¡°I remember the lightning dispersing like the dance of two lovers coming to an end.¡±.


    The creature says in their deep course Scottish accent, ¡°I remember for that is when I stopped being afraid.¡±.


    The creature stumbles through the burning castle and eventually make their way down stairs.  Nearing the front entrance they stop to look at a large painting hanging in a room, ¡°The painting is of a woman. There was a plaque on the bottom. It read -Victoria. The rest had been scorched black.¡±


    ¡°If I was born of fire, in that castle, and she was the master of that castle. Than thus be the basis for my imaginative assumption that there is no other who can claim to be my giver of life. Till I can know more, Victoria is my mother.¡±.


    The creature walks out the front doors. They turn around to see the castle is fully lost in fire. The pants they were wearing had been burned off. They wander across the bridge, down a winding road to the arch entrance of the town Mill Valley.  In the rain they cry out. ¡°I plead for help for I felt remorse. The heart I sensed in my chest yearned in repentance. I grieved as I recalled then to what atrocities I had committed moments prior and I sorrowfully sought help. I didn¡¯t know what was happening to me. I had no control when I killed those people. I could hardly speak when as eager as I had been to understand. I felt as if I was born. A child¡¯s mind, naked, alone and scared.¡±.


    A crowd begins to grow. The town¡¯s people gawk and sneer with disgust. Some shudder. They group into a mob, screaming with intent to run the creature off all while toting mindless religious chants like immoral extremists. The creature overwhelmed, eludes the vile mob as it disappears in the forests tree-line outside of town.


    ¡°I never returned lest I cause another uproar amongst those people. I recall their fear. They were as alone and as afraid as me. As I recall it, they were not children however they¡¯re actions conveyed they were in their minds, children still. Aged by time in wrinkled shells with no merit of wisdom withheld.¡±


    The creature awakes the following day to a frost covered wilderness, ¡°Fragile. The frost breaking in my step. Crumbling away at a touch. The grass, flowers, the leaves without control yielding in submission to a force of nature that froze them. I know now I share their burden to be an organism in life that must endure what nature dictates. I saw then I was delicate. Equating my pain to that of flowers suffering in winter. I perceive now it was then that I had only the one comparison to reflect my woe upon. Be it what may what twas true then thus holds true now. Taking it upon myself to make a nature in of myself of the same nature as the flower. What quiet peace the flower must timelessly be acclaiming in natures inescapable silent serenade. I wish not to be in the realm of red handed death. The maker of fear. I want a stillness. I wish to be the flower admiring the meadows. Lost are my wishes on the listening ears of nature, I am sure. I know now it is only a season away that I must helplessly watch a beautiful thing suffer as the flower freezes over again against it¡¯s will.¡±


    Over the course of the winter of 1805 into 1806 the creature traveled from the southwest of Germany to the Southeast living in the woods the entire way. One morning, late January, while the red haired woman was chopping wood near her wooden cabin she saw the eight foot naked creature walking through the forest. Frightened she takes her axe with her to confront it. Yelling, with her axe raised the creature cowers and she restrains herself to recognize this unfortunate creature abandoned in the snow.


    While it feared from getting a rise out of her, she put down the axe and welcomed the creature to come with her. It was a slow process but she did everything she could to foster a calm atmosphere. Once she could get them inside she helped clean them and clothe them. Over the span of the next four years she taught it to speak and read. High in comprehension the creature elevated at both quickly. She was gentle, patient and understanding. Despite that the creature was able to communicate now they were having trouble recollecting who they were and where they had come from, forgetting so much of the traumatic killings at their hands and the town that ran them off. It was a year after their arrival that in a lesson of reading the creature heard the name of a character in a book of Hesiod¡¯s ¡°Theogony¡±.


    ¡°I like¡­ this name. I choose to this¡­ for-for-for to my name.¡± The red haired woman nods in approval and says, ¡°Prometheus? Very well, we have found you a name. A beautiful name for a beautiful person. Prometheus.¡±


    The red haired woman likes to sit with Prometheus after breakfast has concluded and see if there is more that they remember. When a dead end is met she continues to find out how far Prometheus¡¯s progress has come. She lingers with them after dinner as well. This is almost an unspoken tradition that holds up week after week to then continue over the years. On one occasion Prometheus asks her, ¡°Catriona? How did you get here? How did you and your children come to be living in the forest?¡±.


    Usually enthusiastic to talk, Catriona pauses for a moment to look at her children who are in the other room. ¡°I was a girl in Scotland when I was traveling with my family. I am not sure how they died but I awoke to find both my father and mother had passed. I wandered till I found the nearest village where a widow took me in. She showed me kindness. She said she gave me the love that was meant for the children she ne¡¯er had. I came of age and a traveler came into the village and stole my heart. I married him soon after and traveled with him. We traveled for years together and I was without exhaust  for his company thus be my many cups of joy. William was his name. He was Germanic so time came to return to his home. It was when we were passing through Germany that we discovered two abandoned children.¡± She points to the children in the other room, ¡°I named them both. William and Adelaide. William was two, Adelaide was under a year at least. William new the fondness of my heart as I lay eyes on abandoned children and saw the child of myself. I thought of all the futures that would be destroyed and I wanted to give my effort to care for them for I knew, that for the children, being abandoned will surely destroy their world. He would not bare to have me lament. Therefore we took them under our own. Soon we arrived in this our home and it was not long after that William fell ill. He passed peacefully in the night. Six months had passed since then when you arrived in the snow. Sickly, naked. You appeared hurt. The world had abandoned you. I could not simply disregard you so easily.¡±.


    In the years to pass Prometheus would recall glimpses of a memory and they would try to recollect the rest but it has been without success. Till now.


    The red haired woman, Catriona, and the creature, Prometheus bask with the morning sun having climbed to suspend over the forest during their conversation in 1810; Prometheus concludes, ¡°I see it fit to ready myself for departure. You have no reason to feel safe with me having learned the atrocities of my past actions. I should not make you to live with it. I deem I shall try to find the woman in the painting thus it has been so long now I cannot recall how to get back. I am certain of one thing, I greatly perceive myself the same as what the town¡¯s people screamed at me when they shunned me to the forest- a monster.¡±


    She shakes her head in disagreement. ¡°I have seen what is positive of your nature. I have examined you carefully in many possible actions. I accept without doubt that goodness is what is true of you. It is evident as many times as my hand is wet when I pull it from the river. I shall prove it; What is your favorite color?¡± She asks. Prometheus says, ¡°Red, I have grown an affinity for the sight of your hair.¡±


    She blushes and continues, ¡°Well¡­ What is your favorite food to eat?¡±


    They respond, ¡°Your gingerbread in winter.¡±


    ¡°There is no makings of a bad person within you. No Deficiency of morals. You process qualities in a remarkable degree that never find a place in the hearts of men else where. You are no monster. Even the sight of you is beautiful. You will be staying. You will feel the warmth of light here and feel your belly full here. You are wanted here. I want you here.¡±


    This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it ¡°This is a happy life here.¡±


    ¡°This life together is perfect.¡± She says. Prometheus decides to abide by Catriona¡¯s wishes and they did not leave. The forest provided a new wonder everyday to appreciate the rest of summer. When Autumn came its dry copper colored leaves piled around the cabin and their fragrance perfumed the icy air.


    The winter of 1810 abruptly arrived and the cold was callous burdening Catriona¡¯s health and the health of William. The illness forced them to be bedridden most of the season. Prometheus took on Adalaide¡¯s care along with all the house work. Prometheus fed Catriona hot meals and soup to help her regain her strength. Some days she seemed to get better to only fall back into crippling sickness the next day. William got better before Catriona and was most eager to be a helping hand at any moment for Prometheus. With winter soon coming to an end Catriona awoke one morning having finally beaten her illness. The light of her softness bloomed once more throughout the house. Nights of conversations after dinner continued and games made up of chase and tickles with the children periodically occurred in the warmth before the fire place on endlessly white days. The laughter of William and Adalaide defined the moments they obtained memories of joy and that joy added a key ingredient to the fortitude of those walls where happiness forever lived untouchable.


    It was spring now.


    ¡°Come with me!¡± Catriona exclaimed at Prometheus. She took them by the hand out into the first spring rains. ¡°Can you feel that? That is what beauty feels like.¡±


    ¡°I can.¡± Prometheus says, ¡°Each drop plays a cord in me as though I was a piano. Nature makes music that can ne¡¯er be heard, only recited for the soul to feel.¡±


    Catriona stops moving to stare at Prometheus in the heavy down pour trying as much as she can to look at him. ¡°A soul. The beautiful song of rain for a beautiful soul.¡± She lays her arm from her elbow to her fingertips against Prometheus¡¯s chest. She pulls at their shirt with no force, as a gesture to lean down. Prometheus leans down. Catriona slowly presses her lips into theirs. She pulls away to look Prometheus over.


    ¡°Can you feel me?¡±


    Hours pass long after they returned inside and dried in front of the fireplace. They both reside in brown leather chairs. Prometheus says to her, ¡°Your beauty is of a strong nature. In Earnest and in truth, ones self is void of sexual desire. There is a love I am capable of though I am not sure what days may need to be to pass where I conceive an affection to give you in return. To speak of what is materialized, there is no lover¡¯s passion I can compose therefore I am not a being that has set an endeavor to mate, nor any desire to find one.  I may not look it though I profess my wonder for life is within its infancy. There is a winter I wish to see on the abyssal waters of the ocean. Rain on the a vast desert. The life of spring in lands that see only snow. There is much to discover of myself. So much I must learn of myself if I am ever to find the woman in the painting. Victoria.  I am trying to discover the sweetness of life I can obtain despite the lack of bitterness. I feel sensation and not pain. Those are answers surely she holds. Therefore to find her I must leave here.¡±


    Catriona was wounded. To love and not be loved in return is a monster no matter how it is gained. Not but an hour and a half on horse back is a town to the east and on a visit she happened to run into a fisherman she has twice purchased from in the past. In their conversation he tells her that he will be traveling to work in Burges, in the kingdom of Holland to fish in the North Sea.


    In her return home she tells Prometheus, ¡°I spoke with the fisherman today. He is traveling up Germany soon to fish near the Kingdom of Holland. I asked him if he needed a second working hand. I professed I knew of someone who wants to travel.¡± With her eyes wet she looks at Prometheus from across the dining room. ¡°Do you want to leave?¡±


    In a decent timely manner he responds, ¡°I would rather much like that.¡± Softly said, withdrawing enthusiasm for Catriona¡¯s pain is all too obvious.


    The next week Catriona, William and Adalaide took Prometheus to town where they were seeing them off. Before he would load into the fisherman¡¯s carriage Prometheus lingered. William cried and it made Catriona struggle to fight back her own tears. William asks, ¡°When will you be back?¡±


    Catriona answers William, ¡°They are not coming back.¡± shocked William says in his mighty-tiny voice, ¡°You must! You must come back! I will miss you terribly! I love you father.¡±


    Catriona breaks, weeping into William as she picks him up. It is the first he has ever proclaimed Prometheus as his father. Prometheus will go out into the unwelcoming world to learn more of themselves without certainty there will ever be another place where they are as wanted and as loved as they are here.


    Catriona feels the gentle touch of Prometheus¡¯s immense hand persuading her to turn, she looks up to see them presented before her. They lean down and say, ¡°I will come home to you again. I love you Catriona.¡± They slowly lean in. Catriona is without hesitation and collides into them to kiss with verve.


    ¡°Here I have a name. A family. Here is where I will find the perfect life of a quiet flower. I will come back to thou.¡±


    ¡°You will?¡± she says through tears. ¡°I will.¡± She hears them say. The three of them watch as Prometheus is carried away by the carriage growing smaller and smaller till they disappear into the hills.


    The dangerous North Seas, October 1813. Wave after angry wave punches the fishing trawler. White mist exploding up against the ship relentlessly. The rough waves toss the small vessel around as if with a ruthless vendetta. Both The fisherman and Prometheus are in the cabin when the purple ocean sky lights up in a blink when lightning carves through it.


    ¡°No¡± Prometheus says terrified. ¡°What?¡± The fisherman asks, ¡°What is it? Are you afraid of a little lightning?¡± the fisherman fights to steer the wheel when he begins to lose his grounding in logic from what he is seeing. Prometheus holds out their hands when their veins bloom of an ultra-violet blue light with a milky white color at its center. The light rises as it permeates through their veins. All the while flashes of lightning and the acoustic shocks of thunder are echoing in the creatures transformation.


    ¡°Lightning¡­ Lightning bad.¡± Prometheus musters before the glow branches on the sides of their face and their eyes shine like lighthouse beacons. An angry zombified face overcomes Prometheus as they attack the fisherman. His screams are drowned out by the ships wood as it gives way to the roaring ocean waves under the booming thunder of a North Sea storm.


    The Zwin North Sea Coast, November 1813. Ten days later meshed with sand and wooden debris of the fishing trawler Prometheus lies on the shore. Moved only by the pulse of the tide. As they stand up they are grieving for they remember killing the fisherman. Weeping, rendering them unmotivated to leave the shores as they remorse in their guilty conscience.


    It is still dark just before the sun is to rise and Prometheus, still wearing his fisherman attire walks off shore into the Zwin forest. Crossing the forest they come to the tree-line where a windmill can be seen nearby. Before reaching the wind mill Prometheus notices two little girls heading in their direction. Afraid, they turn back to the forest to hide within its canopy. They come to a pond. They pass by its still waters and find shrubbery to conceal themselves in about a hundred or so feet from the pond.  They lay in the grass in leisure. Most of the hours are spent in fear of when the next storm will come, when they will again be rendered futile to the forces of nature. How Prometheus wishes they could understand the occurrence more and why it happens. Maybe then they could piece together a way to counteract it. For to watch in protest of it all and still feel so worthless in the wake of an absolute super power digs out a cavern in the heart. A powerlessness in looking upon the helpless as they are slaughtered. Prometheus is highly cognitive and perceives the sorrow and pain of people with an intelligent empathy. Prometheus philosophizes in their rumination that immorality is the state where intelligence is absent. How cognizant, comprehensive, reasonable, and intelligent can one truly be if one was never educated in the many understandings of empathy. They fear the lightning because in it¡¯s presence Prometheus is robbed of all their intelligence to be only a brute destructive force fueled in temper. No empathy, humanity, or intelligence prevails.


    Nightfall comes and goes and as a new morning arrives before the sun can dawn on the day Prometheus hears a scream. The colors of the forest are dulled in a grim dim vision. The sky grey with stirring phantom clouds.


    A child''s scream echoes again. There is a crying. Then there is the crying of a second child. Prometheus can see that a light frost decorates the trees and leaves. They must lay still in an effort to not draw attention to themselves. The sound of cries abruptly stops. Their is something rustling in the leaves and the grass near the pond. Twigs can be heard snapping. The noise of grass being brushed over repeatedly. Slowly Prometheus sits up attempting to make as little noise as possible. A dreary blue light is flowing through the air.


    Peering through the shrubs that conceal them, they see an unpleasant man. It is Benji. He stands up from the ponds edge. His trousers around his calves. As he pulls them up, a taller man who is thin in stature comes up from off the ground. He turns around and Prometheus can see he has half lid eyes, a bushy mustache with grey peppered in his black hair. He is smiling as he pulls up his untied trousers to cover up his naked groin. Prometheus hears Benji say, ¡°The village will be in strife when they find what you¡¯ve done to these simple girls.¡±


    ¡°And you will hang with me for your inexorable actions.¡± He says, laughing. Benji says with a smile, ¡°Maybe we are wrong Bernardo. Perhaps they will award us for ridding the village of the burden of looking after the simpletons.¡± Together a laugh erupts between Bernardo and Benji as they fix their trousers. Bernardo commands, ¡°Come, together we will put there corpses in the pond and cover them in loose grass. All shall fail to manifest foul intentions. Tis within there, they will be stupefied being none the wiser.¡±


    As Benji walks closer to the pond he questions, ¡°What of that incessant woman? Victoria?¡±


    Bernardo replies, ¡°You need not worry, brother. I have proven myself to be quite a valuable distraction. Knowledgeable as she may be, that bitch could never reach the heights of a man¡¯s knowledge.¡±


    Together Bernardo and Benji toss two bodies in the pond like emptied plates discarded half haphazardly after dining. These men make little effort to shroud the bodies in loose branches and grass. The same way one could kick dirt over a mess like it wasn¡¯t an atrocity.


    Prometheus waits in silence for more than a half hour after the two men have long gone. When they were sure the men had gone far enough they come out of concealment, rising out of the shrubbery. Slowly they make their way to the pond. In the clearing¡¯s eerie silence Prometheus can hear leaves crunch under every step. Blades of grass encased in frost snap. They feel their heart beat faster as they become more and more afraid of what they¡¯ll come to find. Their worrisome breath growing louder adding to the few ominous sounds they can hear. When Prometheus sets their eyes on the pond there is a few seconds of stillness within them. Anyone would need to take pause the way Prometheus does in order to understand what they were looking at.  A combination of all of natures materials made out to be a collage or even abstract art. How one can look on an oil painting to then take the time to decipher the brush strokes of each color. Like the mind unfolding the image till it becomes clear and an epiphany hits. Prometheus sees in the water, under the twigs and branches with loose grass and chrysanthemum flowers shrewdly skewed about, there are the sides of pale white faces. They barely float above the water. Motionless.


    Without sparing another thought Prometheus explodes into a flight of distress plunging into the pond. Walls of water are thrown around as they tear through the pond to get to the children. Careful not to hurt them they are still gentle to remove the shrubs that cover their bodies.


    With a conscious courtesy Prometheus puts each child in the fold of their elbow and carries the young girls bodies out of the pond. They look at them and see how much they resemble the mighty-tiny William and Adalaide. Prometheus cannot refrain from weeping, stopping time and time again to sob. They shake them repeatedly, the smallness of their bodies feeling all too familiar, ¡°Wake up. You are safe now. I have got you¡­ you¡­ you, you are not abandoned. Be mighty, children, do not fret. You are¡­  safe,¡± Prometheus can¡¯t control the sorrow that exerts their face as they cry the tears of an empathetic father, ¡°Now¡­ you are safe, now.¡± they cry to the trees, to the up rooted chrysanthemums, to the settling waters of the pond. For there is no life in the girls to hear the creatures harrowing cries.


    The sun moves up but a greyness keeps the day from harnessing a warmth. Prometheus never lets them go. Lamenting over a thousand futures lost. Mourning the world destroyed. Prometheus never leaves them, even as dusk occurs. They sit with their legs folded out for hours often swaying them in cradle. A cradle Prometheus wants more than anything for them to feel instead of whatever their last pain may have been. Prometheus never leaves them, even as darkness settles on their eyes. They remain there with the girls. Never abandoning them. Holding their bodies¡­ till a storm came.


    Dim orange light resonates from the oil lamps behind Prometheus. They lay the two girls down to rest on the shore of the pond. They see the lightning flashing through the forests canopy in the distance. Prometheus is in such a state of remorse it has become an agony in which it is the most pain they have ever felt. They recognize Benji¡¯s voice when he calls him ¡°monster¡±.  Turning around, Prometheus knows it is out of their control what will come as that burning bright light travels through their body and they say, ¡°Monster.¡± They hears gangs of thunder crashing in ten¡¯s ferociously attacking the night before blacking out.


    When they come to consciousness early sun has risen and there is the makings of a wind mill burned down around them. Smoke still searing from the embers. Exploring the fields they find bodies and parts of bodies and burned bodies. It is a horror and they soon remember that all of this was their doing. Prometheus understands this and takes some time to grieve in regret. After some time Prometheus thinks to themselves, ¡°One who is intelligent in empathetic, and one who is empathetic feels remorse. I cant change what I have done therefore the goodwill within can still be ethical and do right by the ones I have wronged. Prometheus gathers every last one of the bodies and digs them an individual grave. They use planks to mark where the graves lie without anything engraved on them. Except for Susanna¡¯s and Madelief¡¯s, who he buried close together side by side with an engraving on their plank:


    ¡°Here lies two mighty girls.¡±


    Prometheus travels west. While in the town of Knokke, there in the crowd they catch only a glimpse but they know it is Victoria. A face that is imprinted on their mind. That lives in thoughts and dreams that cant be explained. Mother or not there is no one else with a key to who they are or how they were born. Prometheus never stops in pursuit to find her as she leaves the Kingdom of Hollands and descends down the border of France keeping close in step all the way to heart of the Arctic.


    THANK YOU FOR READING!


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 AN ANSWER TO DREAMS

    Chapter 15


    Her monster cradles her gently and while holding her head they say, ¡°Mother¡±. Prometheus looks on her dying body with harmless curiosity. She thinks as she feels her creation hold her by her shoulder with their other hand, ¡°The torture that I must have a moment to prepare myself for the prime evil horrors is true justice for my crimes. It was impudent to even persist in chase with the endurance of what I have known to be its impenetrable spirit.¡±


    Prometheus asks, ¡°Are you Victoria? The master of the castle in Germany? I have come a long way to find you.¡± Victoria can barely react though within her self awareness she in not without alarm to be asked a question by her creation.


    ¡°I am,¡± She replies with much struggle, ¡°I am¡­ she. Victoria. I was once the master of a house in the south of Germany. Is there...n-n-n¡­ no malice? Y-y-you are here¡­ to enact¡­ revenge. Are you not?¡±


    With a calm conduct they reply, ¡°Any expectations of malicious intent are found solely within ones imagination therefore are placed upon me without positiveness.¡±


    Victoria self reflects in her thoughts, ¡°Is this my creature? The blood soaked titan from whence I saw what was like lightning glow within its blood and tremble in its hands? Where is thous carried dread sentencing for the wretched human crime of meddling with the realm of creation between gods and man? Their voice alone is baffling like music etched with raw emotion that brings my heart to tears as they speak refined and dignified with an elegant opinion. It is more. It is alive.¡±


    ¡°Victoria,¡± Prometheus says, ¡°I have known you in my dreams; a face that I saw in the fires to which I was born in. I have seen you in a thousand dreams gone unexplained. I have learned much of the world, through the comfort of books and have named you in comparison to those literature''s that taught me. By those standards you resemble the mother. Are you my creator? In all these terrains of the world¡¯s map is their anything that holds me in connection to you?¡±


    A tear like drip falls from the corner of her eye as she fights to nod ¡°yes¡±. Prometheus is overcome with a weeping joy. ¡°I have wanted for more than three thousand days to know you. To be in your presence and learn what will I was made for. I have long ago decided who I want to be. There is no longer a part of who I am that you can influence to reflect the parts of you. Know, and know from thy stance your knowing is from thy good will despite my abandonment by you. Know, that I am not a long forgotten shred of what was once human. I am a forgotten person. I am loving. I am loved. I am compassionate. I am good. I am not a monster. Thus I am also not without remorse and regret as there is an illness within me that dictates at the inescapable whims of nature. Powerless, there is no controlling it. You are my creator? Should I call you demon? For why else would a good soul abandon a child and leave them to die? Are you void of love? Furthermore are you void of love for me? Be it that there may be no validity to these notions, propose it is a wrong thought and you are merited to dream in an idols form. Provide evidence that I was not made to be ones property but in truth a wanted child. Give me a name. Name me as thous own wanted, loved thing! It is what I deserve. For I am no creature, nor monster. I am a person.¡±


    She sees now she has wasted so much time running from her regrets. Victoria Frankenstein sheds a tear and after a struggle to muster words she raises her hand, reaching to rest her palm upon their cheek but with her strength fading she falls short. Her creation leans closer and rests their face in her palm as she then caress their cheek with her thumb. Laying on the floor beside Prometheus she can see her journal. She must have knocked it off the desk when she fell.


    She reaches for it. Prometheus deduces that she wants to pick it up and they hand it to her. There is no thought and feeling that is without the knowledge that she will soon be met with her demise and Victoria sees the ripples of her actions, the good of her father¡¯s name and her last chance to do right by him and do right by the life of her creation. Victoria pushes her journal into their chest and says, ¡°You¡­ you are of the family name Frankenstein. You were wanted... in your creation. Your¡­ n-n-name... is¡­ Frankenstein. You were wanted. You are loved.¡±


    She remarks to herself within her thoughts for her lips are too weak to speak, ¡°I was wrong to allow my fears¡¯ dominance over my dreams. I have wasted my remaining years selfish and hard-hearted where I could have seen that small chamber of happiness once again. Now is no time to make a shallow artifice appear as a dilemma. In death all is without dilemma. Instead there is a parallel of joy and misery in knowing the success of reviving life that is evident in a healthy and promising child, and being too late to know of it.¡±The author''s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    She wipes away the tears Prometheus sheds in being shaken with fulfillment. Finding the beauty in good nature of their long sought maker. Victoria says, ¡°Find it. Within my journal¡­ find the answers you seek. In my instruction you may¡­ fall in love with mercy. Learn from me¡­ how dangerous is the neglect of even one child. My choices would be what punished me. By my conscience mistake you were bound to be ruled with what nature demands.¡±


    Her eyes slightly roll back as she grows weaker and she fights to keep consciousness. All her words become faint. With the energy she gathers she says as clearly as she can while looking into their celestial eyes, ¡°You are an impossible possibility. The universe is a raging rapid that overtakes us all. Yet¡­ here you are. My brilliant child. The universe, stilling the waters of all its moving parts¡­ for you¡­ to be here.¡±


    It is with the last of all her strength she tell them ahead of fainting, ¡°There are so many apologies you did not receive. Ones the child in you deserves and what you have become are owed. I must leave you now but not without what you are owed. I am sorry. My impossible child. I am sorry for my mistakes where you were made to bear misfortune. You will come to see the hardest thing to find in this world is kindness. Make more of it for those who need see it exists for themselves.¡±


    ¡°Mother?¡± Prometheus says as Victoria closes her eyes. ¡°Mother why did you make me?¡±


    But there is no answer. For a moment she opens her eyes and the foggy sheen has left and for the first time she lays her sight upon her creation¡¯s eyes with clarity. Her thoughts evoked would be the answer if she could find the strength to speak.


    Her voice echoes the walls of her mind, ¡°Why were you made? I could not bare it to go on in this life without seeing you again. Without seeing those perfect familiar eyes again. My brilliant child.¡±


    As she re-closes her eyes never to reopen them she can feel her fears resign. The gentle cradle of her creation holding her head and body close in lament. The doses of sleep weigh heavy and the cold slows what beating life she has left. Abandoning ambition and submitting her spirit¡¯s flame.


    There is an echoless abyss where she conveys her last thoughts speaking to herself, ¡°My heart is so tired. I feel my heart as its strength stops. I feel no pain and I did not anticipate a painless departure. It is more like a sensation of being a child again. I am a child again. I can see it so vividly. I can feel it like it¡¯s happening. Reliving a moment I know true to be of my past but I feel it consciously as though it is happening now. I am a child, falling asleep at the window nook of my childhood home in England. I can feel that heavy exhaustion steal my power and weigh down my eyelids. More than a familiar place, it is one and the same. It is just like an evening where I had dozed off against the window in the library. As I lay there drifting further into slumber I feel the firm arms of my father as he carefully lifts me up. I know he means to carry me through the house to lay me down in my bed. As we pass through the hallways I can smell each candles¡¯ smoke when he blows out their flame as we pass. I hear the soles of his shoes tap the wood boarded floors. The creak in each step as we ascend the stairs. I feel me rest my head against his chest as I wrap my thin arms around his shoulders. As we enter my bedroom I feel a pleasant draft coming from my open window. A grateful emotion gently blankets me knowing that a loving, caring soul such as he is taking my tired burden off of me. Safely carrying me to a peaceful rest. I thank my father but my words sound far away barely to be heard, I thank him for everything he¡¯s done. He lowers me down with a cautionary handling as though I was a fragile egg. He overexerts himself to see that I am laid down softly. While I lay there suspended in a painless bed of comfort I feel him still there caressing my hair for the last time. Before I drift off into that void of unconscious darkness I hear the deepness of his kind voice softly say, ¡°Dream now.¡±


    Prometheus holds Victoria¡¯s lifeless body. Cradling her close while brushing her hair back. In the frozen dead shell of the ship the wind of the Arctic tundra seems too large as it whistles outside. Prometheus weeps for what wishes there can no longer be. The answers they still seek. The want that still resides within them. They cry and that is the pain Prometheus can feel as they are subjected to the unrelenting whiteness of the room. There is a beating heart underneath their chest and it yearns for wounds of it¡¯s young self. Those moments alone from when they first opened their eyes and began to be alive echo throughout their being. They come upon a lonely age that leaves them feeling hollow. A spiritual fear. The wild wind makes the ships wood bramble. With time Prometheus ruminates in their lament, ¡°Their is a hollowness as barren as abandoned catacombs to wonder what small corners I may ever find again where love will welcome me. What kindness there may have been of her to bestow on what child she thought of me to be. A kindness of her I can no longer know. Surely I must accept this as a punishment with integrity. What life is more deserving than that to be in the mud with the filth casted out. I am no rabid dog, an animal, fighting to survive and acting as though I¡¯ve never known the love of a mother. I am willing to be punished for my crimes. Though there is a timelessness in me. No older do I feel nor decline of vitality. Somehow I know that time will wash over me like the passing of rain and I may remain paying for my atrocities in morality. No urgencies or treating time as though fickle and short. Therefore I cannot allow in of myself to bear resemblance to the monster nature makes of me. There are no eyes that will set on me and see what lives of naturalness. Earthy be my flesh and my touch as cold as clay. Grotesque and abnormal, to be the embodiment of all the worlds fears. Victoria¡­ what kindness more was there of you. What more kindness will I find?¡±


    There is still so much more they wanted and they can feel it now as any hope to know the nurture their young self needed is snuffed out. The time and the effort to reconcile is positively an impossible eventuality. Those may be what the tears are for, not losing someone they hardly knew, but knowing there will always be a part of themselves that now can never be whole. What dreams must end.


    ****


    End of Book 1: Victoria Frankenstein


    October 2025.


    We will begin posting chapters February 17<sup>th.</sup>


    Thanks for reading!

 The Van Helsings Logs:

    Two men are seated at a black marble desk with one crystal white light shining down over them. They are dwarfed by the high ceilings of this office. Office? Can it be deemed worthy of being called an office when it¡¯s walls are empty and like a box, sits devoid of windows? An unwelcoming environment where no sense of life has painted the room ¨C no laugh shared ¨C nor idle chit chat of home life expressed, only calculated orders and business has ever existed in this space. This room is as callous as the outside of the building with all the greys that gloom the room except for Victoria Frankenstein¡¯s red leather bound journal that rests on the desk. At the moment it¡¯s what is in the room that feels the most alive .


    ; arved on his left profile is a four claw scar reaching from his eye to the base of his neck. The markings are spread wide at the front of his face and combine near his shoulder. The light in the room deepens the shadows of the raised skin of the scar making them prominent here. His voice is deceiving in that it is polite with poise and though abrasive in volume it is clearly respective and light, seeming to overcome what gravel that lives there.


    . To brief you, Victoria begins by writing about the event of 1805 in which an accident occurs-


    cuts in. Ezra stops talking and adjusts himself to listen like an obedient soldier. The ancient man is in a dark blue suit with a long black coat almost clergyman like. Dark grey gloves cover his hands that have a metal button on the wrist with the letters ¡°V.H.¡± on them. Thick short strands of his platinum white hair scarcely poke out from under the dark blue homberg hat he is wearing. Large blue eyes with a voided stare sit inside sunken sockets. Rumple old rubbery skin makes up his emotionless face. He continues while looking at Ezra unblinking, ¡°That is how I understand it. Listen, I am certain I will hear about the contents of this journal with precise analysis. No piece of information in those journals is ever overlooked, examined to the point of dizzying exhaustion, all secrets squeezed out and fizzed out, without a question of missing any dark corner. I will read every report in its entirety, every single word of the foundation to no end and I will understand it with its lines of exactitude. What I won¡¯t find in those reports is a single opinion. If there is a person of opinion with an exquisite mind in this world wide organization I trust it is with you. Those eyes are never without the turning of gears and I would rather extract those thoughts than spend a moment with you shilling out more object classifications, security protocols and procedures. Longitudes & latitudes, Proximity¡¯s & perimeters, cold and sharp technical jargon. What are you afraid of Ezra? What did you find in that journal that is absolutely terrifying?¡±If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

 BOOK 2: SON OF THE DRAGON

    Chapter 1


    NEW YORK CITY 1971. Baying brutishly there is an animal on the loose stalking an aristocratic ceremony room. Green smoke that glows like storm clouds pours around across the floors and kisses the walls. The smoke is like a gas where the light of the ritualistic candles cannot penetrate its murky body. Lurking against the wall in the few shadows the candles make, a mountainous beast prowls. A baritone growl descends near the ceiling and vibrates the floor with it¡¯s bass. With a quake in every step coursing through the foundation, it tests the limitations of the fine hard wood floors that shine with a finish that enhances its opulence.  epitomizing the grandeur reflecting the gilded age era. The presence of the monster is an aggressive contrast. The shape of its darkness appears preternatural like a demon of ancient legend inflicting prehistoric, tyrannical intimidation.


    Robed figures with faces shrouded in hoods are close to huddled nearer to the rooms center. Their eyes grow black with a stuttering void as dark as their immorality is conveyed. A covenant that begins to disappear one by one in the green fog as it drowns the room. Their eerie stillness is an uncanny valley where certainly there should be no reason for their frozen state still they appear as though caught in Medusa''s stare.


    Slipping around in a watery bright red puddle of blood is a man who lie tied up and bleeding from the neck. He is without a hooded shroud but instead wears blue jeans, work boots and a bright blue oil stained shirt branded by a mechanic shop. The covenant is encircling him as the green fog like gas casts over them all.


    In seconds the dense fog reduces visibility to green plumes from floor to ceiling. The man who was tied up, forcefully opens a door that leads to a hallway eluding the room that is drowned in green gas. Now his ties that bind him are broken and he moves free. He can feel the presence of something paralytic ravaging inside his body. With every breath of that green smoke his muscles coagulate. His brain is a cooking oven filled with rats pinballing off the walls to escape as he hopelessly looses control of his motor functions. Awareness never diminishes as he fights, opposing a kind of living-rigor-mortis. He knows his heart is in tact even as he hits the ground and his bones are restricted from moving even if he wants them too. With each breath of the hallways clean air he regains control of his body, getting back on his feet eager to flee.


    His war torn face stretches in agony while dashing through corridors till he finds stairs. This somoan mans broad shoulders could take up the space of 2 or 3 men.  With blood loss the flight of stairs are a perilous venture next to his lofty height that inconveniences him here. He fights to the bone to climb them expeditiously. At the top of the steps there is a hall as deep and as empty and as brisk as a graveyard. At its end a darkened door lie in wait. Even though his clothes are soaked in blood the alarming sight of his muscular build charging through the foyer could send anyone into a frightened hysteria. In reaching the door he is met with dismay to find that it is locked. Wasting no time he leaps at the door shoulder first. It is not enough in his weakened condition to slam into it repeatedly but by his conviction it is a matter of escaping or dying behind this door.


    Changing his tactics he begins kicking where the door knob meets the wall, hacking with his heel again and again. It is as time consuming as actually chopping down a tree. Finally it starts to crack and splinter. Surely a few more kicks will break it open. With vigor he stresses more effort in this kick and it separates the latch from the rest of the door, blowing it open. He jumps the sandstone steps escaping this upper east side townhome. He crashes onto the side walk as he looses more of his strength and his blood. But there is somewhere he must be. He is fading. He knows it. His time is up. Only one thing is important now. He stands to his full elevated height and with a leap forward he runs.


    He passes townhomes till he reaches storefronts and past that are grimy street where there are more chain link fences than trees and the hot fumes from nearby manholes replace the air. ¡°But I have to keep going¡± he keeps telling himself. ¡°I cannot give up. There is only one glory for me.¡±


    The street lamps dress the morning mist to look like copper smoke. The man blinks in and out of darkness while passing under the street lamps.  City block after city block, blood drips on those cold glistening sidewalk slabs that have known many diversities and still rest indifferent to his suffering.


    It is August 7th and in the Earth¡¯s umbral shadow a blood moon fascinates the clear skies in a moment of celestial observation. Red numbers flash on an alarm clock in a darkened room. ¡®5:00 A.M.¡¯ blinking in unison with a blaring beeping. There is a boy sleeping who stands up out of bed to turn off the alarm. An eleven year old who then plunges into a rigorous routine. 16 ounces of water, 30 pushups, 100 squats, 500 situps and complex static stretches mixed in between. Whatever roots they sprouted from neglected to teach him what childhood is. The lights are on in his room and from the florescent lights in the ceiling to the UV lamps in each corner you would be pressed to find a shadow of darkness among the space. Painted on the wall in gold is a motivational motto: GLORY IS IN THE BLOOD. He mutters it from time to time, between reps, between sets, in moments of rest. A child burning red with determination. Their sweat is the grease on a well oiled machine. Still they are just a child, and for some it would seem they are one whose chosen to abandon the joys of youth. On the contrary, this boy quite enjoys every waking moment in their laborious pursuit. Preparing to drive every muscle to failure, to burn his energy to complete exhaustion, to starve for days on end, whatever necessary to someday achieve glory.


    If you come across this story on Amazon, it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it.


    He runs down the stairwell of his apartment complex with a duffle bag slung over his shoulder. Hand wraps are fixed around his knuckles and wrists. White tube socks two sizes too big are folded over themselves while peeking out of beaten up green and yellow sneakers tattered in dirt and old sweat.


    Behind this red bricked apartment complex there is a boxing ring with workout equipment, punching bags, speed bags and jump ropes scattered about. First the boy picks up, keeping things organized and putting equipment away. With a push broom he goes over the concrete and with a corn broom he sweeps the ring.  He bags up what trash he gathered and tosses it in near by dumpsters. From out of his duffle bag he pulls a banner that when spread out reads:


    Order of the dragon


    There is a circular logo on it. The chain links fences that surround the back of the complex are locked closed. The boy takes the fabric banner to the fence nearest to the ring and ties up each corner to a link on the fence.  As he loops old shoe strings through links there is movement from the alley on the other side of the fence that catches his eye. The shadows are formless and impossible to decipher. Finally he sees with clarity as a blood coated hand stretches out into the course yellow of the street lights. It is the man who not long ago was running through the night. Running for his life. For his glory. The alley¡¯s darkness is peeled back to reveal his face as the man collapses forward having come as far as his body could take him.


    ¡°Dad?¡± The boy says. ¡°Dad!¡± The boy screams. Quickly he shoots a look to the bulking chains that wrap the gate; a closed iron padlock connects them. Turning back, the boy immediately jumps to scale the fence. At the top he screams for help multiple times before he jumps off of the fence. His right ankle takes all of the weight, twisting it. Its only when he stands to take one step forward does he realize he sprained it. The pain is unexpected and it explodes in a shock wave. He falls forward onto both elbows. Bludgeoning pain now shoots up through his arms into his neck. But he cant stop. He cant give up. This pain is unimportant. He presses forward with determination to get to his father. Standing once again he wastes no time to limp as fast as possible. Blood streams down his forearms from both open gashes. ¡°Help! Somebody help!¡± He screams over and over. In reaching his father the boy kneels down to then catch himself with both hands. ¡°Dad.¡± He cries. He lifts his father¡¯s head and shifts around to eventually hold him in his lap.


    ¡°What happened?¡± He grabs on to his father¡¯s bicep continually pulling him closer. His hand slipping over his father¡¯s blood and covering up a circular tattoo of a dragon eating its own tail. ¡°Dad, What do I do? I don¡¯t know what to do. You have to tell me.¡± Squeals crack his voice as it fights to be clear with every word. ¡°Dad please. Please.¡±


    Through drowsy hooded eyes He looks up at his son. First pulling his hand close to his chest he raises it to palm the side of his son¡¯s head. Every time feels like the first time he held him. He is so proud of his son. He has known since the day of his birth that the rest of his time in this life will only be the story he gets to share with this child. It was when he became a father that he saw a count down had begun and he knew he had to choose what is worth spending his time on. The decision was without difficulty for he saw that his son was the glory of his life. Words fly to the tongue and he would speak if he wasn¡¯t drunk with blood loss.


    ¡°Dad, I¡¯m sorry. I don¡¯t know what to do.¡± The man becomes noticeably weaker as his hand begins to drift. They stare at each other with the father taking a good look at the only thing he loves. ¡°Son¡­¡± the man says choking on his blood.


    The boy watches his father¡¯s lips stop moving. His eyes begin to still with absent life. His hand collapses and his blood soaked knuckles plop on the alley¡¯s concrete.


    The boy¡¯s mouth is ajar in disbelief. The pause he takes while staring at his father lingers for quite a long moment. When he snaps out of it he screams, ¡°Help! Someone! Please help me!¡± He struggles to breath through snot and tears distort his sight but as he looks over his father he sees the wound on his neck.


    The two puncture wounds that overflow like bloody faucets stare back at him. Giant black holes filled with mystery that the boy cant comprehend. The pain that grips the back of his eyes in not enough to tear him away. ¡°What do I do?¡± he whimpers to himself while holding his father. Covered in the wet of blood he smells its odor of faint rusted iron notes. There is an obsession brewing within the way he is staring. There is a darkness he feels is imbued on the wound with an evil unknown. He stares in torment, perplexed by the abyssal holes at the base of his fathers neck. A thought stirs, ¡°The supernatural? His death is a children''s story told as lore. A costume to wear on Halloween.¡± But this child knows there was a time when people lived in fear. The legends told of infamy. The dead rising from their graves to drink the warm life of blood. Garlic hung over doorways and crosses were made in mass. He know the stories well so it¡¯s easy for him to remember. Remember there was a time when people were still afraid. Afraid of vampires.

 Book 2: Ch.2

    :


    Chapter 2


    San Francisco, California. October, 2023. A partial lunar eclipse unfolded on the 28</sup>.


    As it stands the world and all its people are more connected at this moment than any time in history by the advent of technology and the Internets use of social media and online communities. That divides us the most. D


    In sleek waves her straight black hair reaches to her shoulder blades catching the light with each purposeful step. The bathroom becomes a sanctuary of quiet reflection when she closes the door and the music recedes. Groggily,held the mysteries of a life fully lived or that somewhere in her there was a fiery spirit that defies apology. Still she is sorry and a mourning continues to reside.


    Inside, Frances stands over the sink, splashing her face with cool water. She peers into her own reflection, tracing the delicate map of the wrinkles. Looking past her vital, and clean skin treating all the things that disappoint herself, like they are the only things present. To her they look like canyons, destined to deepen with time. She scrutinizes the white brightness of her eyes with the lack there of. She rationalizes hidden tales of tiny battles won from day to day, defining her endurance and change. ¡°Life goes on. This is aging. This is what it looks like,¡± she muses, feeling the delicate tension between resentment and acceptance. In the quiet storm of introspection, she grapples with a deep-seated dread, Is this mundane routine all that life has in store? Surrounded by endless possibilities to pursue... some kind of story and still I stay here. Holding onto this. Security. Safety net... Safety. She recalls the wasted vibrancy of her twenties when she was confined to a desk. 4000 days of that blend together like a collage of the uneventful. She mourns the solitary journey of a metropolis where 800,000 souls pass through everyday without a word. She left her cold life in San Diego behind, only to be invisible here. She moved here because this city was supposed to be full of connection. It probably is. Just not for her. ¡°You are still a person, Frances,¡± she whispers, a silent promise of resilience.


    Pausing at the law firm¡¯s entrance, Frances feels, for a hopeful moment, an expectant presence in the air. Her eyes dart about, as if anticipating a rendezvous. But when no one materializes, a wistful melancholy tugs at her heart. With a heavy sigh, she retreats inside.


    This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.


    Traversing the half-wall corridors she soon steps into the break room. She finds two colleagues deep in whispered conversation. One, a short brunette who shares a similar olive skin tone with Frances; the other, a statuesque ash blonde who a majority of the time is expressionless to maintain a heavily glamorous makeup look. Frances begins to bubble with a playful enthusiasm shooting a warm smile and wave at the two women. Their murmurs turn towards the grisly murder of Jolean, a colleague who was found lifeless by a local woman who was on her morning jog. The subject catches Frances off guard and her smile falls away. They speak about Jolean¡¯s neck marred by two piercing puncture wounds eerily reminiscent of a vampire¡¯s bite.


    ¡°Vampires? Really?¡± the blonde questions with uncertainty.


    Its more than likely a psycho who lived near her. Stalked her and one day grew the nerve to kill her.¡±


    While reaching into the employee fridge Frances opens her lunch bag that has two water bottles and a plastic container. In this moment a bemused thought crosses her mind. ¡°What an odd dance between fear and fascination,¡± she muses silently and then out loud Frances lets slip, ¡°Vampires aren¡¯t real.¡±


    Frances stumbles over her explanation, ¡°I¡ªI just meant¡­ they aren¡¯t real.¡±


    The brunette arches a knowing smile, ¡°Right, vampires aren¡¯t real. We all know that. Was that all?¡±


    A brief, banal interruption occurs as the blonde, in a burst of quirky generosity, reveals a poster she printed of a creature resembling a t-rex.


    ¡°


    In narrow eyed confusion the brunette responds, ¡° That is not a t-rex. It looks more like an A.I. generated crocodile,¡± the brunette chides.


    Frances interjects with a spark of erudition, ¡°In fact, it¡¯s a Kaprosuchus. An extinct crocodyliform from the Late Cretaceous period. They were creatures that most likely were semiaquatic. Reaching lengths of about 12 feet and may have stood 6 feet tall. Though,¡± She laughs to herself, ¡°C


    The blonde lights up with curiosity, ¡°Why do you know so much about this?¡±


    ¡°When I was younger, it was my special interest.¡± Frances confides, her voice firm against the casual banter.


    A momentary glance of sympathy is exchanged between the two women.tirring unsaid understandings.  Frances, unruffled, nods,


    Their brief exchange leaves an uncomfortable hush trailing behind as the trio disperses without speaking another word. Alone once more, Frances feels the oppressive flicker of harsh fluorescent lights and a growing pressure beneath of a subtle, almost spectral itch, beneath her skin. In the silence of the nearly empty room, as she nibbles on her lunch, a poignant ache of isolation and longing tightens around her heart. She ponders whether her unique nature is the reason these fleeting connections remain so elusive. Could there be souls out there who would embrace her truth. ¡®Or is this fragile act of being human a curse bestowed upon those who yearn to connect?¡¯


    She continues to eat in the absence of sound with her water bottle sitting in front of her and the second water bottle placed across from her as she sits in solitude at the table.


    At day¡¯s end, Frances emerges from the law firm. Pausing on the threshold, she closes her eyes, inhaling deeply with a forlorn resignation. Her eyes open, glassy, searching for a presence. Taking a moment to wait for someone who isn¡¯t coming, for the last time. With heavy steps, she moves on.


    Hours later, across the city in a dimly lit taekwondo dojo, Frances transforms. Her lithe form moves with the precision and elegance of years spent mastering martial arts. In a graceful dance of power and technique, she outmaneuvers her seasoned instructor. He is a living monument of battle-scarred tenacity. He throws his spiky knuckles at her only to have Frances counter them again and again. The jagged joints of his wrists and ankles spinning through the air looking for a new creative way to break through her defense only to be met with failure. Each strike, each parry is a testament to her inner fire, culminating in a decisive blow that earns not scorn, but admiration. Elegantly, he submits to loss and ends today¡¯s lesson by congratulating her on her well earned skill.


    Night descends, and Frances returns home to prepare for an evening out.


    Tonight, Earth stands precisely between the Sun and Jupiter in a rare cosmic alignment, the Waning Gibbous moon cascades its silver luminescence over a lone, spectral figure. It is the same man from the morning. Now accompanied by two equally ominous companions whom are cloaked in darkness and intent. They observe Frances from the shadows as her car reverses onto the street and disappears into the night.


    He keeps his eye on her, examining every inch, looking for weapons and anything that connects to the internet until she exits onto the street. In her absence, he