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.”


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.

(continue to part 3)

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