Frankenstein Mary Shelley

October 3rd, 1881 – Geneva

The snow had begun to fall early that year, dusting the rooftops like powdered bones. I arrived at the gates of the Devereux estate under a sky so gray it seemed the heavens themselves were in mourning. I had been summoned by a letter—brief, desperate, and unsigned.

*"Come quickly. He is trying again."*

I knew at once what it meant.

Years had passed since I last saw Adrian Devereux, once a brilliant student of natural philosophy, now a recluse. We had studied together in Ingolstadt, where he became obsessed with the forbidden writings of Agrippa, Paracelsus, and that infamous volume penned by Victor Frankenstein nearly a century ago. While others dismissed it as myth, Adrian believed.

I feared he still did.

A servant led me through the silent manor. The air was stale, thick with the odor of chemicals and old smoke. I found him in the west wing laboratory, hunched over a slab beneath a great copper arch laced with wires and iron rods.

He turned. His face had aged ten years in five, gaunt and pale, his eyes sunken but fever-bright.

"Matthew," he whispered, as if speaking my name summoned reality. "You've come."

"What have you done, Adrian?" I asked. I already knew the answer.

He motioned toward the slab. A figure lay beneath the stained linen—broad, tall, and perfectly still.

"I have done what Frankenstein could not," he said. "I have conquered death. This time, I made no errors in the proportions. No grotesque amalgam of parts. A perfect form. A vessel, awaiting the fire of life."

I recoiled. "You’re mad. The man you idolized died in horror. His creation killed everything he loved."

Adrian’s expression hardened. "He failed not because he played God—but because he lacked the discipline of one. I have corrected his mistakes."

That night, lightning split the sky. Adrian stood over his creation, arms raised to heaven. The machine roared to life, sparking wildly. I turned away, unable to watch.

When silence fell, I looked again.

The figure was sitting upright.

---

**October 5th**

The creature, whom Adrian named *Lucien*, was not like Frankenstein’s monster. He was beautiful—unnaturally so. Hair dark and straight, skin unblemished, eyes a shade of ice-blue that seemed to pierce the soul.

But something was wrong.

He did not speak.

He wandered the manor aimlessly, pausing at windows, staring at fire as if puzzled by its dance. He flinched from mirrors. And he never slept.

Adrian was ecstatic, yet impatient. "Language will come. Cognition. I have merely reignited the body—the mind will catch."

But I saw something in Lucien’s gaze. Not ignorance. Emptiness.

As if something essential had not returned.

---

**October 7th**

Lucien began drawing—endless, obsessive sketches. Mountains, forests, the sea. Places he had never seen.

Once, I found a drawing of a woman’s face. It was torn in half.

He sat in the dark by the fire, whispering words that weren’t his own: “*Light... gives shadow\... shadow returns to ash.*”

I begged Adrian to end it.

"You have given him breath, but not a soul. You chase perfection, but all you’ve done is make a hollow man."

Adrian was unmoved. "Souls are not real, Matthew. The mind is but matter, firing in sequence. He is evolving."

I feared otherwise.

---

**October 10th**

Lucien vanished.

We searched the house, the grounds, the woods. No sign. That night, Adrian discovered his journal missing.

It contained everything: formulas, schematics, notes.

At dawn, a letter arrived.

It was written in Adrian’s hand—but neither of us had sent it.

*"Father,

I am born, yet I was not asked. You gave me form, but not purpose. The fire you lit inside me burns without meaning. I go now to find it—or to extinguish it. If I learn what it means to be a man, I will return. If I become something else, I will not."*

*L.*

---

**October 15th**

We found him on the cliffs near Montreux, standing at the edge, staring into the abyss.

Adrian approached, trembling. "Lucien! Come back. You don’t understand what you are."

Lucien turned, calmly.

"I understand all too well."

"You’re not ready for the world."

Lucien tilted his head. "And were you ready to make me?"

Adrian stepped forward. "You are my son."

"No," Lucien said. "A son is born of love. I was built from desperation."

His eyes met mine. There was sorrow in them.

"I see now why the first creature suffered. It was not ugliness that cursed him. It was being unwanted."

He turned again to the void.

"I am not him. I choose my end."

Adrian screamed. "No!"

But it was too late.

Lucien stepped forward, into the air—and was gone.

---

**October 17th – Geneva**

We never found the body. The lake is deep, and the currents cruel.

Adrian never recovered. He spends his days in silence, locked in the study, the fire always lit. I fear he watches it for signs of life, waiting for the dead to return once more.

As for me, I have left the Devereux estate, vowing never to cross its gates again.

What Adrian did was not science. Not art. It was a cry into the void—and something answered.

The question Mary Shelley asked still echoes through the centuries:

*Who is the real monster—the one made, or the one who made him?*