Chapter 1

            What was it about her? He would stare at her all through their classes together all year long. She was very quiet, just like he was. There was something familiar about her, which he often tried to pin down by watching. Once she caught him staring and stared back until he looked down and felt embarrassed. Neither one of them talked to any other kids in school during the earlier years. He was even quite often picked on for being so quiet. One day, after he’d been shoved into a locker and pushed around, he caught her watching. It was after the little crowd that had watched lost interest and left. She stared at him with no change in expression as he looked up with a red face and wet eyes and expected her to say something. After a while she looked away and walked off down the hall.

            He then began to stare at her more and more. When eighth grade came around, and she began to gather some friends, he was in full steam. “Don’t you realize that kid’s always staring at you?” he’d heard one say. She just laughed it off, and they walked on. That year was where it became a little more serious; he had every day scheduled and remembered around her. After first period, he always saw her walking down the main stairs from the second floor. After third she was coming up from the second floor. At lunch she sat at the other end of the cafeteria where he could spy from a distance all he liked. After school she left with her best friend from her locker on the third floor. They walked to the station, and to his final vantage point, the other end of the train platform. This went on the entire year.

            That was also the year he had two classes with her, algebra and world history. She’d been called to read out of the book one day in history, and it was the first time he had ever heard her voice. It wasn’t quiet or timid, nor inviting or confident either. She read plain and steady, without stopping at strange words, though almost in monotone. He knew she didn’t like reading out loud. He didn’t either.

            When ninth grade came, his pseudo-obsession had only grown stronger, and it became a little painful for him too. He knew he would never allow himself to speak to her, no matter how much he wanted to connect. His feelings were strong that year, and there came a time when he was forced near her. They were in the same lab group one semester, and were made partners. He had to talk to her about what to during the labs, in the least. And that was all they shared with each other, just information and instructions. His bitterness set in after her next lab partner had been a popular boy who’s charming personality and jokes she laughed at.

            Tenth grade was cold. He no longer wanted to be reminded of how much he used to think he liked her. But he still did. They had no classes together, and he wrapped himself into imagining elaborate fantasies about the two of them, always involving war or battle. She got a boyfriend that year. He imagined very deep scenarios in his mind during class of how the two spent their days together. Perhaps in a ballpark after school one Friday, watching a baseball game on the scarcely populated bleachers, the boy’s arm around her waist and she wearing his jacket (He grew very tense as he imagined the fine details, but he couldn’t stop himself). They were sitting on the bleachers, the boyfriend talking softly to her as she watched and he pointed out little quirks of the game and she looked at him and smiled. Then, like a growing climax, so warm and consuming it put them both in their own world where no-one else was alive or mattered, they leaned in a little closer and softly, delicately, innocently kissed.

            His mother often wondered what was eating at him, why he was so sullen, and melancholy, and even more introverted. He always wore a scowl, even when he wasn’t upset. Every day he came home at the same time, never going out with friends. Did he have friends? Maybe a few in school, but not ones he would associate with outside. It must be that, she thought. Or maybe it was a girl. She knew he was shy as a child, especially when it came to girls. Maybe now he was finally becoming ill over them. He never told her how he felt, and when she asked, he never answered. And if she prodded him, he gave her a gruff “I don’t know, mom.”

            He’d been in the middle of a near-dreamlike fantasy during English when she spoke in class.

            “I think the monster was justified in killing William and Elizabeth. He’d been outcasted by society and was rejected by his creator. All he wanted was acceptance and I think his violence was a result of his treatment by everyone. Even the little kid William curses the monster before he’s killed.”

            That was cocky. The teacher’s asking of anyone else’s opinion was cut-off halfway,

            “The monster killed William because he was Victor’s little brother, it was out of revenge. That’s all the monster operated on. When he killed Elizabeth, it was out of revenge because Victor destroyed the partner he agreed to create for the monster. He burned down the house of the cottage of the peasants he’d loved out of revenge for rejecting him and driving him out of their house when he tried to reveal himself to their father. He framed Justine for William’s murder while she slept in the barn out of complete spite because he knew she would never accept her, and he was feeling evil.”

            “I’m not sure if ‘evil’ is a good enough backup-“ the teacher tried to interject, but was cut-off again.

            “The monster gave in to his dark side after he’d found so much joy in observing the forest and the moon and the cottagers. He couldn’t find acceptance so when he was rejected he wanted to destroy. He even says it, how he wanted to give in to his hate by destroying the world and then resting in the ruins after he had his fill. Nothing he does is truly justified, he gave into evil willingly and would again and again.”

            “But,” she tried to respond, “society rejected him. It wouldn’t give him a chance because he was ugly-“

            “Does that give him the right to kill everyone in it? Why would he be justified in killing William then? I can understand Elizabeth, I guess. He made a vow to Victor that something bad would happen on his wedding night, and when it came he killed Elizabeth to hurt Frankenstein. He was a murderer at that point. But before that he simply happened across William in the woods, a happy little boy that the monster thought might be so young that he wouldn’t reject him for being ugly…”

            He stopped, realizing the entire class was silent and staring at him. They were a little shocked at his sudden passion, even her. She’d tried to vocalize her opinion on the monster’s actions from Frankenstein, and he’d chewed it to pieces. He’d up-shone her. With a grin surfacing on his face he cut what he was going to say short.

            “Well, I just don’t think the monster was justified. I’m sorry.”

            She looked a little down in the dumps, as he sat back with a smile on his face.

            “It’s good to see someone is thinking in this class. You put up good support for your argument.”

            And so on the teacher went. Her two cents on Frankenstein were forgotten. His were remembered.

            In a trench, broken and splintered planks keeping him from stepping ankle deep into the mud, his coat tattered and torn, his face white, he stepped shakily in between the bodies of fallen soldiers. He had a rifle, he didn’t know if there was a bullet chambered. He hadn’t fired it for two days. Nothing moved as he slowly stepped through the trench. He couldn’t hear any fighting either, only a far away booming that sounded like a distant thunderstorm. Everything was dead. He looked to his clothes, brown and trimmed with green, spattered with flecks of blood, ripped at the seams, black with stains from the earth. Was this not a daydream?

            He looked up at the barbed wire lined along the top of the ditch. He slung his rifle over his shoulder and climbed up a wooden ladder to look out over the No-Man’s land. Nothing moved, no fires burned on the battlefield. There were bodies though, everywhere. They were all gray, and he thought he could hear the breaths of the dead slowly rising in volume, a chorus of one note held and fluctuating in pitch as he walked out across the field. He held one arm as he walked forward, placing his feet in the space between legs and arms. Their song was warning of something coming. Was he really hearing them? He tried to listen, but it was so silent he couldn’t tell if he was imagining their voices or actually hearing them. The wind picked up, and it joined their low chorus. Off somewhere, he could hear fire burning. He tried to un-sling his rifle, but he couldn’t somehow, the strap was too tight and caught on his elbow. 

            Up the hill, in a bunker he just now noticed, there was a white glint. Someone was kneeling, a rifle in their hands, the lens of a scope reflecting his face off of it’s surface. He could see them adjusting the knobs, wanting to focus right in onto his forehead, to see the pores releasing cold sweat on his draining white face. A bullet was in the chamber, cradled and held perfectly without any room for movement, the pin pulled back and locked just a centimeter away from the striking end of the long projectile that would pierce right through him like a sword.

            He struggled for the rifle, but it was stuck to his back. The strap was so tight it was keeping him from breathing. It was holding him in place, and he suddenly felt his legs grow too weak to move because of his fear. He stared up at the soldier in the bunker, and saw no change in their expression as they watched him through the scope. He couldn’t find any humanity to beg for mercy upon, no pity. And then they took off the helmet, and it was her, her ponytail and all. And suddenly she wasn’t gray anymore but in full color, with blood giving her cheeks and lips a tinge of pink, and her hair was vibrant and soft black. She looked away from the scope for a moment, staring down at him with dark eyes that he couldn’t tell the pupils from, and her mouth curled into a grin. The ends of her mouth almost reached each cheekbone as she closed her left eye and looked back down the scope.

            Suddenly there was something wet in his ear. He quickly sat up from his desk where he’d had his face buried in his arms, the front of his hair a cowlick.

            “I got him dude! Ha-ha-ha Wet Willy, he got fuckin’ Wet Willy’d!”

            He looked around as they laughed, bewildered. One boy had apparently stuck a wet finger in his ear. Embarrassed and angry, he looked away from them as they laughed and the teacher shushed them. He never should have put his head down.