Frankenstein's Tailor: an MM retelling of a horror classic by Nick Braverley

Author:Nick Braverley [Braverley, Nick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-02-14T00:00:00+00:00

“The Pendeuic is working.” said his manservant – a beautiful boy with very sad eyes.

But such pretty petty obstacles weren’t going to turn the farmer back.

She screeched and warbled, dodging the grabbing hands of the staff, knocking things over and disturbing the peace with the brimstone ire of her convictions until the Baron himself came to investigate. She quelled immediately upon spotting him and he bade her come and vent her anguish calmly in his office.

“It’s against God.” she said, having told him all her tale, and she crossed herself quite hurriedly.

Frankenstein was, of course, well versed in acts against God and his best disguise was to wear the mask of vainglorious zealotry and disapproval. He was known in the fiefdom for his staunchly traditional views – the music coming in from the West: animal; the rights of the poor: laughable; and most of all, perverse homosexuality: criminal.

He sat in a chair which dwarfed him behind a desk that stood too high. All around were contraptions in cases for display. They shone in the shaft of a very tall window. Long ago he’d abandoned science and now only cared for the glittering of its glass and copper. If Elizabeth, his fiance, could be improved – and maybe, he thought, she could – then she’d’ve been wrought from burnished metal, her lips of rubber, her eyes of crystal.

It was agreed that he would sally out the soldiers to disband the unorthodox theatricals and eject them from the farmer’s land. What’s more, he promised that any individual displaying signs of that “perverse carnal disorder” would be arrested with a prejudice and brought back to face ministrations in the sanatarium and a harsh legal indictment.

The pair of them knelt by the long window and prayed together. Frankenstein’s hypocrisy prickled at his forehead as he turned his face to God. He was dizzy. He was hardly a man at all. He was ugly.

“Igor!” he barked once the observances were made. “Take this woman and give her gold, then send for the Captain of our city guard.”

“Yes, Master.” said the beautiful manservant, bowing low.

*

Bite sat with Adam in the costume storage tent.

“You’re nervous about tonight.” they said.

“It’s Frankenstein.” he sighed.

The couple cuddled amid the spangling and forgot the wider world. Adam could feel the rhythm of Bite’s heartbeat, Bite could sense the tremors of his fear.

“I turned fear into anger.” they said eventually. “At least you’ve not done that.”

“Oh I have.” Adam reminisced. “Half these wounds are battle scars.”

“Survivals a bitch, ‘ey?”

Bite tried to smile but Adam kept on frowning.

“I killed some men, back in the woods.” he confessed.

“Did you have a choice?”

“There’s always a choice.”

“I mean, did you fight with good intentions? I can’t imagine that you’d live with hate.”

The monster mulled the question for a moment. It felt good to have the best assumed of him.

“To save a life.” he said.

“There, that’s not anger. That’s love.”

Suddenly there was shouting outside and the banging of a drum.

“What’s that?” said Adam, animating guardedly. “It’s not time to start yet.

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