And I would not allow the monster to have her in any form. I did not care if it threatened my life, or even if it killed me. Victor would disagree, but my safety was not worth this steepest of costs.

Justine would rest in the peace she should have had during life.

I formed the vaguest of plans. There was a boat docked on the shore. I would take it. After I had cared for Justine, I would come back for Victor.

I wrapped the sheet around Justine, covering her face. I was not strong enough to carry her, though I longed to cradle her to me like a child. There was a wheelbarrow in the corner of the makeshift laboratory. I cleared it of the chemicals and tools that rested inside, then moved it to the table and maneuvered her body into it.

It was no easy task pushing the wheelbarrow down the steep and rocky path. Several times it nearly overturned, and I feared I would do yet more violence and disrespect to Justine’s body by tumbling it over the rocks. But I managed to transport my precious cargo safely down to the dock, where the lonely boat bobbed in the waves.

I set her body inside, mindful of her head. Mindful that such attention to her feelings no longer mattered, but not caring. I laid my own cloak over her body, covering her completely. I hesitated before untying the boat, though, something tugging my attention back to the island. Justine’s body was safe. But as long as there was a laboratory, the monster could find a way to force Victor to do its will. And Victor would be pushed down this most heinous of paths. I could not forgive him for Justine yet, but I could protect him from further crimes against nature and goodness.

The wind was at my back as though urging me to hurry. It whispered danger in my ears, tugged my veil, tangled through my hair to pull me along. It need not have urged me so. Once decided, I would not have let that laboratory continue to exist for anything in this world.

I did not want to enter it again, but with Justine’s body gone, it looked merely like a chemist’s or a surgeon’s room. If I had not known what hellish purposes the instruments served, what unnatural terrors those chemicals unleashed on the world, I would have been entirely uncurious.

I lifted the nearest glass bottle, intent on spilling it across the metal table so that the fiendish platform might burn in some form. Then I heard footsteps grinding across the rocky trail.

Toward the house.