Adam, My Monster

Dross

Victor Frankenstein rested his head against the train window and closed his eyes.

He looked younger than he was.

The scars on him had faded to near invisibility.

There were silvery rings over the joints of each finger and wrist: a bisection that followed the line of his throat.

His ears, nose, and eyes were not spared, the path of the scalpel pale with age.

He’d shown me the ones circling his ankles, around his arms, down his sternum, over his ribs.

In private secret places and hollows that should have been spared.

The man who had butchered him had a steady hand.

His real name was Elias Hilfiker, but he asked me not to call him that.

He just said that I should know.

I glanced down at his manuscript, flipped to the end to see how many pages were left, then turned back to studying him.

Victor Frankenstein was fashionable to a fault. He favored blues and greens, soft knits, silk scarves, boiled wool. All his clothes were tailored to fit, but he settled into them like a great mountain of bones.

He had his knees pulled up, feet on the seat, with an arm draped over the top for his chin to rest upon. A preposterous arrangement for a gentleman on a public train, much less one of his age and wealth. But it suited him.

Victor wore his hair long, which was also hardly acceptable, dun brown and chopped neatly at the chin.

It made him look girlish and defenseless, which I knew with a certainty that he was not.

Even the thought drew my eyes to wander down to his hands—capable and strong—then to the side of his jacket where I knew he kept his knives.

When I faced him again, he was staring at me. Like he knew what I had been thinking of him. With the words of his confession still hot in my grasp, a thrum of fear caught my heart, but he chose not to stoke it.

Instead, Victor tilted his head and asked:

“Is it good enough, do you think?”

Low and hoarse, like he had been screaming.