Jay Best

Visions of Victor Frankenstein

stalking and hunting me through

bitter snows and

whipping winds

plague my waking and sleeping hours.

Pried-open eyes watch my creator

burn carefully harvested organs

required to recreate myself –

reducing desperation into

charred,

chastised,

chrysalid flesh

tumbling towards the smoldering scrapheap of Hell.

Desire to defend my worth

bleeds out

against His knife-like words

biting,

ripping,

tearing

their way through cells and sinew –

demonstrating such a body will prove

wretched,

monstrous,

abhorrent

to the world around me.

Warnings from His sharpened tongue

strike my eardrums –

reciting recurring traits of

previous, failed experiments like me:

suffocating,

blacking out,

overdosing

on syringes of toxic substances –

awakening to sickening acts

triggered

by their own hand or mouth.

But shall I be led to believe potential

future transgressions

give others the right to

prematurely banish me, or

bury me, forgotten,

beneath the frigid, unforgiving earth?

Hack axes against my foundation?

Throw stones through shattered bones?

Relentlessly, He ignores my

sleepless,

scrawled,

screaming

reformations to my body’s blueprints

to be seen as something far greater:

a safe, separate model of Man

frantically erasing its

primitive form

until no trace remains.

He shakes his head at the

alienated disturbance before Him –

neither resembling Adam’s seed

nor the egg of Eve:

my biblical inaccuracies enough to justify

power-clad policies,

pitiless preaching’s,

piercing pitchforks

propelled my way –

dangerously unaware

how a lazily angled mirror shall reveal

the true face of a monster,

rushing reckless weaponry

straight for His own rotted heart.

Reference: Shelley, M., 1818. Frankenstein.

Jay Best is a member of the LGBTQIA+ community currently completing a BA in Creative Writing and Interactive Design. They are an avid fiction and poetry writer who enjoys reading, gaming, and photography in their free time, with future plans surrounding publication, cinematography, and video game development.