Time has ceased to exist for me. I traverse the path between life and death everyday, unwelcome by both the living and the dead.

Chafed by my own breath, I choke on the air that you breathe because most of me is still a work-in-progress. Or was. I shall never improve now, I shall never grow. Growing, ageing, is not for me.

My skin is a collage of the deceased – grotesque, half mine, half hide from a dead carcass. My organs borrowed from cadavers, my blood of a pig’s and the hair a whore’s discarded prop.

In my borrowed existence, the only thing that is truly mine is my soul.

For days I have roamed like a cypher, purposeless, ceaseless, stuck between two times. I curse my maker for having made me human-like for whenever I have tried to kill myself, cowardice pulls me away from the brink. My survival instinct sows seeds of hope, plaguing me with rosy visions. I then live in a dream world of my own making where I wait for someone to discover me. Till the screams of some child, some woman, in a dark alley, on a cloudy night, shatters those visions and I am thrown back into the reality of this lurid world.

I am a solitary creature and to solitude I have been condemned for my singular appearance endears me to no one. I am a paradox because I long for both death and companionship. I am a creature born free of the limitations of disease and dying and yet, I am incarcerated within my own skin.

What is the point of my existence? Why drag me out of the peace of eternal slumber only to relegate me to an object that haunts the sleep of others?

Who should I call to answer my questions? Which God do I pray to for salvation? I have never sinned but I was conceived in the sin of pride, thus damning me from inception. Does that even make me capable of salvation?

Whom shall I call a friend?

Will you, dear reader, befriend me? Could you call upon your compassion and bury the fear I stir in you? Could you look beyond the dread in your eyes and the emptiness in mine and lead me to freedom from this form of servitude?

If yes, then I am so pleased to make your acquaintance. I have no way of introducing myself to you, so here I have another favour to ask of you. Could you name me, let me be reborn again from your lips and give my meaningless existence an identity. I loathe what they have always called me – Frankenstein’s Monster.

Inspired by the portrayal of The Creature in the television series Penny Dreadful.

Copyright © 2018 Pradita Kapahi.

Featured Image: DanaTentis at Pixabay.