Disclaimer: I do not own, claim to have created, or live next door to the characters created by Mary W. Shelley. She created the classic from which I borrow these characters and embellish with my own.

Rated for Violence and Mature subject mater. The story is told from the POV of the three main characters:

Victor Frankenstein

The Demon, his first creation

Therese, the mate

I sat waiting for the old woman to take a sip of her tea. Her hair is a confusion of grey and honey colored locks turned dull with the body's age. She smiles slightly, as if her life has a great secret.

And it does, for the woman in front of me has actually died and been brought back to life.

I have traversed most of Europe and the Balkans, gathering the myths and legends that have enthralled and terrified the listeners of these stories for most of my life. And she has been my latest discovery. She is a living witness to a story which has seeped its way into folk tale to become the legend named for the man who was its creator. Frankenstein.

Burning. I am burning. The air sears my throat and lungs. I struggle to move, but something holds me down. Sounds assault my ears, I wince, tears leak from the corners of my eyes. They drip onto something and sizzle. I open my mouth to scream.

The Demon

I wait in the shadows. Victor moves around the table. His assistant Curt shuffles along the wall, reading off numbers and shouting above the crackle of the thunder as it resonates between the two huge copper spheres suspended above the table.

Another sharp snap, the actinic glare paints my eyes with blue light even though they are closed. I open them, but am flash blinded. I must wait and listen. Finally, the sound begins to drone into a low hum.

I hear her voice. My wife of the lightning has been born.

Victor

I tell Curt to release the straps. He does so, gingerly for the metal is still hot. We back away and let her lay for a moment. She moves a leg, an arm. He head rolls and I hear her again.

I walk to her head and grasp it between my hands, "You must rest for a while. We will turn down the lights, and I will remove the bandages from your eyes." I tell her in a soft voice.

She must learn that voice. My every instruction must be obeyed. The security of my wife Elisabeth, our children, depends on no one knowing what I have done. I need her trust, for the Demon is waiting to claim her. If she fails to satisfy her design, then he will take Elisabeth from me.

Curt has been my assistant for these last seven years. We have journeyed through the storms and brought forth five beings. There were failures. The second male did not last long. And the first female, Astrid sustained damage to the brain tissue. The second female Bette died after her birthing. That damned Demon couldn't wait, couldn't leave her to recover with us. He took her out into a rainstorm to a barn. She took sick and died.

I look over at him now. Thrice he has stood, his yellow eyes mirroring the fury of the storm. I promised him a mate. Astrid was too frail, too helpless for him. And she cowers from him. Bette lasted only a week in his presence. His third mate, Therese, now lies on the table in the dim light. I pull away the bandages and her eyes struggle to focus. Mine will be the first she sees.

Remember me little one, my thoughts will her, I am your master. Always.

The Demon

He's bending over her. Curt, the little toad is standing watching her chest rise and fall. Yes, Curt. I watch you while you work, your hands always touching them. I watched you kiss Astrid when you though no one was looking. I watched you wrap Bette's body in a shroud after the fever took her. You ran your stubby little fingers over her.

It's almost laughable. Victor calls me the fiend. He throws it in my face that I was born of the flesh of murderers. Yet here under his nose, your perverted little hands desecrate the bodies of the women Victor rebuilds. How fitting that his accomplice in this work prefers the company of the dead to that of the living.

I didn't let you touch this one, Curt. She died to this world at the hands of a man who raped her dying body. She has survived her rebirth. The only hands that will take her are mine.

I leave the shadows, moving slowly into the fringes of her vision. Her eyes are clear. Mine have the yellow haze that death etched onto them. Victor hates my eyes. Curt fears me; he never looks into my eyes. But now, as I look down into hers, I see my reflection in the blue irises.

I can feel my heart beating hard inside my chest. My wife, will you be mine? Will you live to grace me with a smile? Or will you cry and shriek like Astrid did. Beautiful, perfect Astrid, the poor simple cow, she revolts me, despite her perfect face and lush body.

I asked for a mate, a woman to share my life with. She must be intelligent or she will not survive as I have learned to. She must know who to stay away from, and when to hide. She must be a capable woman; she must care for animals, and food that we grow. I wanted nothing more than a companion and helpmate at first. And then my body awoke.

I had seen Victor with Elisabeth. My dreams became filled with women: my small head resting on my mother's breast, my hands running over the flesh of a woman, the feeling as we make love, her gasps and her clawing my back in her climax. After the dreams started, I fought to stay awake. I walked, I ran, I climbed to lonely places along the lake and sat with my head in my hands and wept.

No woman would want me. I am ugly. I am like some sad patchwork doll; a large scar covers my chest from my collarbones down to my naval. My face has a scar across it that tugs my lip up at the corner like a permanent sneer. And the eyes, the yellow cast of the film of death covers whatever color Victor had chosen for me.

He did try, my creator. I have white straight teeth, and luxurious thick long hair as dark as the night of the storm that birthed me. I am a large man, tall and well proportioned. My head was not from the same man. Whoever died to give me this intelligence would be appalled at the state he lives in now.

And the rest of me, you ask? Oh yes, Victor made sure I was male. I look down and wonder if he ever thought about the implications of that. He had meant to fashion me as a god. Did he mean for me to copulate with other creations, or was I to go out into the world and find a human woman.

And what if he did? To his chagrin I stumbled from the laboratory fully formed, very male, and hoping to do what all males did. I don't think he really thought out that part of his experiment as well as he should have. I am strong, I am faster than most people of half my size, I have survived minor injuries to heal quickly, and I am far more intelligent than he had planned for.

You can imagine his distaste after he knew that I watched him with Elisabeth, and revealed that he had indeed created a man in every description of the word. I wanted a woman. He railed at me, told me to have a tumble with some serving girl, but I asked him to look into my eyes-those dead eyes-and tell me what woman would willingly spread her thighs to receive my monstrous seed within her.

And so now, my future companion lies staring sightlessly up at the machine above her, the twin orbs that channeled a god given force of nature to stab the bolt of white heat into her brain and heart to snatch her back from the peaceful arms of death.

Therese

The girls all giggle and pose for Luther. He is a finely made man, but a bit rude for my tastes. He is too full of himself, too arrogant of his appeal to the women in the village. Instead of talking of accomplishments in his work, he insinuates what a fine lover he is. A man his age should have a farm of his own by now, not be working on another's. I think he is a braggart, but the other girls still sigh and look longingly at him.

I was in the stables, bringing my Father's forgotten lunch to him, when Luther pinned me against the stall as I was leaving. His hands reached to grab my buttocks, and I wiggled free. He is not the first or only man to grope me. It is a game among many to see how far they can go.

I have been smarter than that. Although I am older than the available girls, I seem to draw an unasked for amount of attention from him. I tell him to go away. I have worked the farm beside my Father and taken care of my Mother after her stroke. I fear she will not survive long, and my Father is saddened that I have not married, but I have all the time in the world.

I went into our small barn to put water out for our goat. Luther followed me in. His breath reeks of stale beer as he shoved his hand down my bodice. He yanks away the laces, and the material drops, leaving me bare to his hands. I twist away from him, digging an elbow into his ribs. "Get off me you pig", I screamed. He shoves me down roughly, following, he lays upon me, trapping my legs.

Although I thrash and push him away, he yanks my skirt up as he assaults me with his tongue. He moves over me, pinning my arms and grinds his hips into me telling me he knows that 'I want it." I snort, that is the last thing I want. I thrash some more, and he has a hard time tearing open his pants and holding me down.

Finally, he tumbles out, limp. He is angry now, and slaps me across the mouth. The coppery taste of my own blood startles me. He has always been a ruffian, but he is transforming into an animal before my eyes. My unease causes my breath to come in shallow pants. The fear threatens to choke me. What began as a game, a senseless tumble, is now turning into a struggle in earnest.

He pulls back from me and orders me to make him excited again. "Give him a kiss" he says "and my soldier will make you happy." The last thing on earth I want is that shriveled useless flesh in my mouth. My hand lashes out to strike him, but I only smack his arm. I am getting desperate as he back hands me again, an explosion of stars behind my eyes.

"Get off of me," I gritted out, "I'm not touching you."

I see it in his eyes, the humanity is gone. Anger burns through him, for a second his limp flesh stirs. I realize what it takes to make him hard again, and I turn my head to bury my teeth into his wrist.

"Bitch," he screams at me, and I see him rising again. Soon he'll be hard enough to take me. I work my legs and arms, and toss my head. I stop, trying to shove him off, as he rams his fingers into me. I cry out, because the fear has made me dry. The pain is startling. If he forces himself into me, it will be agony.

He folds his arm down across my face, and I bite into him and won't let go. He rips back, his blood flying in drops in the air to land on my face. I watch as he shifts his weight, pulls something from his belt, and then stabs it underneath my rib cage.

My breath stops in my lungs, my heart beats wildly in my chest, and I feel the icy finger of metal stealing my life. My blood gushes in a hot flood across my belly as he withdraws the knife in a viscous yank. Air leaves my lungs through the hole in my body, the pain is paralyzing.

I am dying as he settles between my legs and starts taking me. The agony between my legs is of no consequence to the realization that my Father will find me like this, my skirts up and my blood dripping down my sides.

I float somewhere above, watching him rape my still warm flesh. There is a pained but saddened look on my face. I feel the darkness gathering around me.

Victor

"Leave her; she will be safe here with the bindings on. We'll move her in the evening." I make my voice stern, but truly I know that whatever the Demon wants, he will have. Neither Curt nor I could stop him. "We'll wait for you in the night and you can carry her to her room," I say sounding reasonable.

I can see it in the lines of his body, his tension. His hands want to touch her, but he stops. It was at this point before when Astrid started screaming at him. For all his size and strength he flinched like a scolded child at her rejection. He might have killed us all if I had not slid a mask over her face and started pumping a gas into her to make her sleep.

For a brief moment I had felt pity for him. The confusion that lowered his brow and made him turn away might have saved our lives. He is capable of outbursts of rage which would make the angels tremble. No doubt that is the part of the murderers that made him lurking in his body.

Astrid is beautiful. I created her a man's walking dream of a woman to bed. I did not know that the storm would burn out her intelligence with its fury. She is as simple as a small child. We took her back to the sanitarium and told everyone she was sent there by a rich family after an injury.

After we moved her, I did not see the Demon for several weeks. His dreams broken, he went away to the lake to nurse whatever tattered parts of a soul might still be harbored in that body.