April 4:

What am I doing here?

We have no servants, we never go out, we never have company. The furniture is all decrepit and ugly, the place always smells musty, and although the rest of the village has electrical power, Victor refuses to run it up the hill to the castle. We read by candlelight and we heat with fireplaces.

This is not the future I had envisioned for myself.

Victor can be so annoying. He constantly whistles this tuneless song, and when I complain he apologizes and then starts humming it instead. He never stands up to that ill-mannered little hunchback that he’s always sending out on errands. And he’s a coward. He can never just come to me and say “I need money again.” Oh, no, not Victor. Instead he sends that ugly little toady who’s rude to me and always smells like he hasn’t washed.

And when I ask what the money’s for this time, he tells me to ask Victor, and Victor just mumbles and stammers and never gets around to answering.

Yesterday he sent Igor off to buy a generator. I thought he’d finally realized the need to upgrade the castle. I should have known better. It’s in the basement, where he’s using it for one of his simple-minded experiments that never brings us fame or fortune. He can use the generator’s power to make a dead frog’s leg twitch (as if anyone cares), but he can’t use it to heat this drafty, ugly, boring castle.

I hate my life.

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