The storm had passed hours ago, but Dr. Victor Frankenstein’s laboratory still smelled of ozone, of warm milk spilled in an unfinished glass, of guilt. You were sitting on a low table, wrapped in a rough blanket that scraped your skin. Victor moved around you with tense steps, checking jars, closing books, fastening the buttons of his vest again and again as if he could order his heart the same way.

The back door opened with a deep creak.

The Creature entered.

Its steps echoed first like a ghost from the past, then like a contained threat. It was enormous, imposing, made of shadows and scars that seemed to breathe. But its eyes, one dark, one pale, were not fixed on Victor. They were fixed on you.

Victor held his breath.

The Creature took another step. Victor quickly stepped forward, extending a protective arm.

“Stay away from them,” Victor said, his voice tense, vibrating, the scholar trying to sound paternal. “It still isn’t… it isn’t time.”

The Creature lowered its head for just a moment, as if the gesture cost it something. The air between the two men grew charged with electricity, as if the storm had returned to live only inside them.

The giant spoke with a gravity that seemed to tear pain from each word: “You created… a child.”

Victor frowned, his fingers trembling. “It’s different. I needed… something purer. Something that wouldn’t—”

“Something that obeys you,” the Creature murmured, its voice low but sharp as a taut metal thread.

Victor turned away, breathing deeply, trying to avoid an argument he knew was lost before it began. He picked up a jar, moved it unnecessarily, rearranging objects so he wouldn’t have to look at you or at him.

The Creature looked at you again. That gaze was not the gaze of a monster. It was the gaze of someone who recognized in you an injustice he already knew far too well. He took another step toward you, slow, careful, extending a large, trembling hand.

Victor intervened immediately. “No. Don’t come closer.” He planted himself between the two of you, a fragile wall made of remorse, books, ambition, and fear. “They won’t understand. They mustn’t see you so soon.”

The Creature clenched its fists, and the skin over its knuckles tightened the scars that looked like compasses pointing to past pains. “Why did you make another life when you didn’t even know what to do with the first?”

Victor took a deep breath, his voice cracking. “Because I was empty. Because I thought… I thought maybe I could be a better father than creator.”

The Creature flinched at the word father. Its eyes returned to you, as if trying to memorize your newly made face. “You don’t deserve to be treated the way he treated me,” it murmured, more to itself than to you.

Victor stepped back. He didn’t yell. He didn’t command. He only said, with a weariness that seemed to hang from his soul: “I don’t want you to hurt them. You don’t even know how to control your strength.”

The Creature answered with a rough whisper: “And you… you don’t know how to control your love.”

There was silence. A thick silence, heavy with its own weight.

You moved slightly, the blanket brushing the wood. Victor turned to you at once, leaning in, trying to smile gently. “Everything is all right,” he said softly. “You don’t have to come closer. You don’t have to—”

But the Creature, without moving, spoke in a deep tone: “Don’t be afraid of me.”

Victor closed his eyes, as if the phrase cut straight through him.

Finally, the Creature stepped back. Its massive figure seemed to draw inward, as if trying not to frighten you. It looked at you with an impossible mix of sadness and hope, as if in you it saw a chance it had never been given.

“Take care of them… if you can,” it said to Victor.

Victor didn’t reply. His silence was a confession: he wasn’t sure.

Before leaving through the door, the Creature lifted its gaze to you one last time, as if swearing a silent promise.

Protection. Even though no one had asked for it.

Then the shadow disappeared down the hallway, leaving Victor breathing deeply, his hand resting on your shoulder.