Free Frankenstein's Monster by Susan Heyboer O'Keefe

single frame, then my eyes made out the curves of more than one skull. I was looking at the remains of several bodies thrown together like rubbish.
    I turned my head, blinking rapidly, caught unawares byboth the sight and the emotion that it produced. And in turning, I realized for the first time that I could see water in the distance. I turned and turned again. Water in all directions.
    Life had scorned me once more.
    I had escaped from Venice only to be carried to its graveyard, the Isle of the Dead.
San Michele
June
5
    The sharp rain, drizzling through that place of fear
,
Pierces the bones gnawed fleshless by despair
.
How dismal, O Death, is the place of thy dwelling!

The grave locks up the treasure it has found;

Higher and higher swells the sullen mound—

        
Never gives back the grave!
    Never gives back the grave?
    Obviously Schiller had never met my father.
    How strange it is: not that I am lying in a burial place, so true to my nature, but that I am writing in the sunlight, undisguised, open to the day! Despite the rare pleasure I take in this, the warmth and brilliance of the sun do not fool me. I cannot pretend I am a fop lazing in a pasture. I am a dead man resting in a graveyard.
    I know where I am only because Lucio told me the history of this place. Because Venice was running out of land, Napoleon made a decree that is followed today: Burials take place on San Michele. After a fixed time, each body, reduced by then to bones, is removed and put in a common grave on another island, which is used solely as an ossuary.
    When relatives still care about the deceased, they come toSan Michele to accompany the bones to the ossuary. When no one cares, which happens more than civilized men are honest enough to admit, the diggers sometimes commingle the bones here to simplify their work, rather than bring each skeleton separately to the other island.
    No one lives on San Michele. The priest who cares for the church is a drunk, but has enough sense, or fear, to return to Venice each night. The gravediggers come on their own gondola. Though the island is small, I am able to hide myself. The mourners do not wander. They proceed from the boat to the church to the grave and return directly.
    Earlier today I met the priest. He believes he has met the Devil.
    Near noon, believing the last funeral had been held, and the last mourners had left, I came out of hiding only to discover the priest still here. He had collapsed in the bushes by the side of the church and knelt there, retching. My guess is that the gondolier had decided the priest was too ill to travel by water and would return for him later, when the danger of vomit in his boat had passed.
    The priest straightened, wiped his mouth, and turned around. He paled when he saw me and pressed his eyes tight.
    “Not another drop, sweet Madonna, I swear it!” he murmured.
    Roughly I pulled him up by his cassock and propped him against the church.
    “How often have you made that promise?” I asked. “How often this week alone?”
    “Too often, I know … But this time,
this
time …” He opened his eyes. Beneath their bleariness was a strange expression of resignation. “It is at last the end, no? You have come for me. It’s too late for promises. The Devil has come for me.”
    I sat back on my heels and laughed. I liked the idea. Whybe some insignificant blot upon nature when I could be Satan himself?
    “So,” I said, playing my part. “You have been a bad man and a worse priest.” He nodded. “Even so, you hope, maybe even secretly believe, that you deserve forgiveness.”
    Clasping his hands at his heart, he asked, “Can the Devil have compassion?”
    He crawled toward me and clutched my leg. His chalky, perspiring skin elicited pity; the mingled smells of wine and vomit, disgust. I pushed him away.
    “What if I told you I wasn’t the Devil?”
    His drunken brain tried to understand my words. “Who are you?” he whispered. He caught hold of