Frankie's Monster

A Halloween Short Story

Happy October!

It’s been a while since I sent anything out, but I’ve been busy working on my novel manuscript (that contemporary gothic YA novel I won’t shut up about). Right now, it’s with a handful of trusted BETA readers, so naturally I’ve been feeling like I’m walking around completely naked ever since I handed it over.

But it’s Halloween! My favorite time of the year. I wrote this short Frankenstein-inspired story. Believe it or not, I had every intention to make this sort of sweet and romantic, but the character’s just took off and it turned dark real fast.

This story is for anyone who has ever had to face an unrequited love, only to learn that sometimes a dead crush is best left buried.

There’s a girl in the Oakwood cemetery, wearing purple rain boots and a bright yellow poncho, with the strings of the hood fastened into a neat bow at her neck. She is carrying a small, carved out sugar pumpkin, inscribed with two jagged halves of a broken heart.

Frankie Mae is not deterred by the insistent threat of a storm, in fact she appears to revel in it, turning her face up at the darkened sky and allowing the first raindrops to caress her cheeks and bop the tip of her nose like a sweet admirer. Her footsteps are sure and unhurried as she respectfully navigates the graves, whispering gentle pardons and apologies to each stoic stone she passes.

When Frankie comes to the headstone she’s meant for—JACKSON MONSTERO (2009-2025)—she folds her woolen skirt under herself and sits down. The mound of dirt beneath her is soft, recently turned, and crowded with bouquets of golden marigolds, red daisies, and dahlias. She places her pumpkin down at the center, adjusting it to be just right, and then pulls a book of matches and a tube of lipstick from a pouch tied to her wrist and tucked inside her sleeve.

After the candle in the pumpkin is lit, the flame like a pulse, Frankie paints her lips red, the act of adorning herself like a ritual. Then she kisses Jackson’s headstone, like she read about them doing to Oscar Wilde’s tomb in Paris, in devotional desecration.

Frankie knows it’s wrong, knows she has no more claim to this boy in death than she had in life. She knows that even if the rain tonight washes the lipstick away, it will still leave an indelible smudge that will make his grievers clutch their chests and gasp.

But Frankie had always wanted to kiss Jackson Monstero. Maybe Jackson had wanted to kiss her too. Maybe he would have if she had pulled her nose from her notebooks and her fantasies long enough to let him.

Now, she’ll never know.

Frankie sits there for a while, until the rain turns the dirt around her to mud. She leaves behind the jack-o-lantern, a lighthouse for her poor broken heart, in the somber cemetery.

What happens next is just dumb luck—if you believe in such a thing.

⚡️

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The late Walter Summerford is known as the unluckiest man on earth. A British officer in WW1, Summerford was knocked off his horse at the Belgian front and paralyzed from the waist down after his first direct encounter with lightning.

Six years later, then living in Canada with his new family, lightning struck Summerford again while he was sitting beneath a tree with his fishing rod. This strike, ironically, gifted Summerford back the use of his legs.

Another six years later, Summerford, a nature enthusiast not yet humbled enough by electrical storms, was once again struck by lightning, paralyzing him all over. It was this third strike that maddened Summerford into believing his bad luck was really a jinx. He passed away two years later, and yet even his death was not enough to satisfy the curse upon him.

In 1936, six years after his previous strike, lightning came for Summerford one final time, disturbing his place of rest and shattering his headstone.¹

This is a true story. And there are others like it.

But Jackson’s story happens to be quite the opposite. Because Jackson Monstero was never struck by lightning, not his whole life. The sixteen-year-old boy was an athlete—varsity football—and seemingly healthy. Until his body collapsed on the field like a dejected marionette, quite suddenly, tragically, and publicly, during Oakwood High School Homecoming. The Ravens lost more than the game that day.

It is not until this evening before Halloween, a time most known for mischief, that lightning strikes the hallowed ground of the Oakwood cemetery, sending an electrical pulse through Jackson’s fresh grave. Then, just as suddenly as it stopped only six days before, Jackson’s heart, buried six feet below, beats again.

⚡️

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Frankie is dressed in black lace and her mother’s pearls. She’s heckled in the halls all day at school for her insensitive dramatics by all those who claim actual friendships with Jackson, who have any right to mourn him. But Frankie has never been bothered by what others think of her. Her identity can hardly be demonstrated within the hundreds of pages of her journals which she carries everywhere; she could never be contained by the uninspired names or the witless insults of her classmates.

How could any of them know what may have been between Frankie Mae and Jackson Monstero, anyway, had she and him ever really had the chance? As far as Frankie is concerned, there’s no greater tragedy than unrequited love, not even death, and so she’ll allow her ostentatious grief to offend whomever it may.

It’s Halloween, and even as the town is devastated by the premature death of their football sweetheart, the frivolities of the day persist. Children parade the streets with whimsical abandon, armored by their masks and their cloaks, invincible to harm and invisible to ghosts. They believe death cannot find them if they think nothing of it. But Frankie is unable to think of anything else, as she makes her way back to the cemetery, a red dusk settling over Oakwood like a steeping satchel of rooibos tea.

Except this time when Frankie comes to Jackson’s grave, it is to find his headstone crumbled, broken to ashy bits, the letters of his epitaph reduced to two syllables: MONSTER.

This ruin is far worse than any kiss could manage.

Well, Frankie considers, that depends on the kiss.

Frankie sits back down upon the earth, tidying what’s left of the floral offerings as best she can and tossing the pulverized chunks of pumpkin aside like fertilizer. She gets comfortable with her feet crossed beneath her and one of her journals open in her lap.

“I have something to share with you,” Frankie addresses the shattered headstone. Then she continues to read aloud the love letters that she has kept close to her chest, pages of pining, all the things she had imagined she would say once she and Jackson finally found their way to each other. She isn’t very far along, when something punches through the ground in front of her.

Frankie yelps and jumps back, tossing her book into the air. There is a hand jutting up from the dirt, five fingers desperate and clawing for something to grab onto. Frankie’s mind is tossed back in time to all the moments she watched Jackson intertwine his fingers with those of other girls in the hallways of school, walking them to class and landing swift pecks on their rosy pink cheeks before parting ways. There was always some other girl.

But where are those girls now?

Frankie is up on her feet in a flash. She leverages her feet on either side of the struggling hand—now connected to a white-cuffed wrist and forearm—grasps, and pulls with all her might. Her black penny loafers sink into the soft ground, but something is loosening beneath her. It isn’t long before the rest of Jackson emerges from his grave, shaking and gasping for breath, but—alive. Or something like it.

“You’re alive!” Frankie reaches her arms out to steady Jackson, who stumbles on his feet.

“Was I…dead?” Jackson asks, but his voice is dry and as he coughs into the crook of his elbow, thick globs of mud fleck his sleeve.

“Oh yes, quite dead.” Frankie points to the wrecked headstone behind them.

“I think I do remember dying,” he says, pressing his hand to his heart. “But then…how am I now undead? Are you some kind of witch?”

“I’m not a witch!” Frankie takes her hands back and places them on her hips in denial. “I’m a romantic.”

“Whatever.” Jackson swallows, twists his stiffened neck, and shakes the dirt from his hair. He is dressed in a black suit, now crumpled and dirty. He loosens the silk tie from his neck and sits down on a neighboring headstone.

“You’re that Frannie girl,” Jackson says, looking Frankie up and down. Frankie smooths down the lines of her skirt and coyly tucks her hair behind her ears. “The one who’s always writing stories and doodling little blackbirds in class.”

“Frankie Mae.”

“Right, Frankie. So, what do we do now?”

“Oh!” Frankie’s eyes light up at the question. “We could take a walk together. It’s a beautiful night. The moon is—”

“A walk? No,” Jackson shakes his head. “I mean, did you finish your whole spell or whatever? Do I just get to live now?”

“I told you already, I’m not a witch—”

“I should go see my mom. Find my girlfriend—”

“I’d just like to point out that I am a girl, and I am also here. Whereas, your girlfriend,” —Frankie holds up air quotes when she says the word—“is not.”

“Why are you here? If not to resurrect me?”

“To pay my respects, of course.”

“But we didn’t know each other.”

“A missed opportunity. One we can now rectify.”

“Listen, Frances—”

“Frankie.”

“You’re cute.” Frankie smiles at the compliment. “In a weird, goth way that has never really been my thing. Maybe we could have gotten together, I don’t know, after high school, if you got over this like Victorian phase of yours.” Frankie fingers the lace collar of her neckline. “But if I’ve got a second shot at life now, I can’t waste it. My girl needs me. My team needs me. I’ve got to get back home.”

Jealousy is like a cold rot in Frankie’s heart. She feels it dripping from her chest to her gut, spoiling her insides.

His team?

Jackson stands up straight, his strength seemingly renewed with purpose. He gently pushes Frankie Mae aside and starts to make his way out of the cemetery. He only walks a few steps away before he turns back to ask Frankie, “Hey do you have a cell ph—”

But his question is cut off when a jagged handful of granite makes gruesome contact with his temple.

There’s no blood. Just the dull crack of bone and a rupture of pale flesh.

Frankie goes back to pick up her journal and then tucks it inside Jackson’s suit jacket. It’s not a perfect burial, but the grave is already disturbed so much that when Frankie rolls Jackson’s twice dead body over it, he mostly just sinks back inside. Frankie understands now; all along she had Jackson Monstero on a pedestal. But he’s back where he belongs now.

“Happy Halloween, Jackson,” Frankie Mae says in farewell. “I think I’ll take that walk on my own now.”

1. Walter Summerford: The Unluckiest Man in the World by Kate Cherrell