Dearest friends,

I, Dr. Victor Frankenstein, am writing this letter because I have had an inordinately difficult time these past few years. You may be aware that I have gained somewhat of a reputation, and frankly, it has been impossible to escape that prison built by none other than the hands of my friends, colleagues, and, admittedly, one eight-foot-tall zombified doofus that I brought back to life. 

While studying at the University of Ingolstadt in Germany, I successfully performed several record-breaking experiments. I thought I would list some of them here with the hope that you will recognize that I am indeed a man of virtue, noble efforts, and myriad triumphs, and also to ensure that I will not forever be defined by truly the stupidest thing I have ever decided to do, the experiment I now consider a grievous mistake, not to mention a giant asshole. 

Here are a few other ventures of which I am especially proud: 

First, I reanimated a pigeon that then went on to successfully fly across the entire Atlantic Ocean, deliver a message, and not murder anybody!

Second, I invented a small disclike contraption that — on its own — roams around your house sucking up dust and crumbs and garbage. I call it the Vroomer, and it has not strangled a single, solitary soul! 

Finally, I developed something that I believe could truly change the future. I am calling it “milk chocolate.” It is just like the chocolate you know and love, but I have added milk to make it creamier and more sugar to make it sweeter. It is simply delectable, I am very passionate about it, and I am 99 percent sure it won’t develop a frightening intellect and seek vengeance against its creator by terrorizing the countryside on a massive killing spree.

I have been desperately trying to sell my milk chocolate, but no one has been willing to try the treat from the “scary monster man.” It is just not fair. “Frankenstein?!” they all say. “That is that hellish creature!”

“Actually,” I very calmly and reasonably explain, as any honorable man would and should do in perpetuity, as it will always demonstrate one’s intellectual superiority over the person to whom you speak, “Frankenstein is my name. I am the doctor who made the monster. The monster does not have a name. Can I offer you some milk chocolate?” 

But by that point, they have all run away screaming. So who is really the victim here? The murderous fiend or the man who created the murderous fiend who just wants to put this episode behind him and — hear me out — open an entire factory dedicated to chocolate where I create and sell the world’s most delicious confections? I could have different rooms for different chocolates, employ a race of small jungle people who only speak in song-riddles, sail a boat down a chocolate river, and maybe even give tours of the factory to poor but deserving children. There could be golden tickets… I digress. 

So what do you say? Let us forget that minor blip in my experimentation where I became so obsessed with grief over the death of my mother that I brought a gigantic, cobbled-together corpse back to life and was so horrified by own creation that I promptly abandoned the wretched brute, thereby setting off a chain of unspeakably ghastly events and gruesome, world-altering tragedies including but not limited to the murders of my wife, my best friend, and probably a bunch of strangers too, the forcible reckoning of the human race’s ugly traditions of xenophobia, hubris, and ambition, and the punitive synonymization of a man and the monster that could haunt him for the rest of his days. 

As you can see, it simply was not that big a deal! So let us put it behind us. Plus, I have a new obsession now. It is called milk chocolate. It is melty; it is sweet; it is not a vengeful murdering beast, and it is coming to a store near you…if you let it.

Quite sincerely,

Dr. Victor Frankenstein

Chocolatier

Robin Zlotnick is a writer, editor, and fledgling potter living in New England. She has fiction published in places like X-R-A-Y, Peach Mag, and After the Pause, and she has humor published in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, The Belladonna, Slackjaw, and elsewhere. You can check out her work at robinzlotnick.com.