Excerpt from ADAM, MINE by K. Ancrum:
LUSCIOUS
There was a month left before graduation.
That besides, Victor needed to start human testing before his anxiety about it got the best of him. He was strong and fast enough now from his nightly hunts that he felt confident carrying a body. But it needed to be a small one or someone very slight. The thought of a child’s body made him feel ill, but he could do a short woman or a very slender man. He also needed someone sick, who would benefit from treatment, he couldn’t just snatch someone random. Victor watched the hospitals closely.
On a windy Thursday, he got lucky.
There was a drunk slumped against the wall of the tavern. Flesh burned away from choosing drink over bread. Victor crouched beside him and put a finger to his pulse. It was rapid and his skin was hot. He likely wouldn’t make it through the night without intervention.
Victor stretched, then lifted the man from the ground. They stumbled together down the street, into the backdoor of his landlady’s house, and down the stairs into his lab. The man was mumbling, insensate and his clothes were wet with urine. If he survived, Victor would find new clothes for him.
Victor guided him gently to the table, lifted his legs until he was lying flat.
“Please don’t remember this,” he murmured, and placed a soft wet cloth over the man’s mouth and nose until the chlorophora did its job. He secured the man’s arms, legs, and neck with leather straps before hooking him up to his many machines.
Victor left his side for a moment to cobble together a vitamin B infusion, but when he returned, the man’s face was turning blue.
Moving quickly, Victor shoved the breathing tube down his throat, restarted his heart and pulled out his blue book.
The man was still flush, ribs moving, as Victor placed his hand over the man’s chest.
This moment. He couldn’t take it back. He could hear the ghost of his father’s disapproval and the words of Mr. Saur screaming at a distance. He paused until his soul felt quiet.
Then, Victor began to read, but nothing happened.
The water didn’t vibrate, the lights didn’t flicker. He skipped to another passage quickly and tried that one instead.
This time, the man jackknifed on the table and started seizing. Victor startled but kept firm, pressing him down, reading to the last despite the dizziness and the weakening of his own knees. He had dealt with seizures before, held a small girl through them till the end. He was strong enough for this.
The man’s eyes shot open. A horrible noise seeped out from between the breathing tube and the sides of his mouth. His back arched to near breaking point. Victor stopped reading and looked between the man’s chest and his face in terror.
Then, at once, blood and viscera exploded from his mouth and nose coating the wall behind them with scarlet and flesh. Victor jerked back, turning the electricity off immediately before the fluid became more dangerous than it already was and watched–horrified–until it was finished.
The man slumped back to the table, unquestionably deceased. His torso concave in missing internal parts.
Unfinished and ugly—a failure, unquestionable.
ROE
He fled from the room. Victor stumbled up the stairs to clean the blood off his clothes. Clumsier and messier than he’d ever been the entirety of these experiments.
He stripped his clothes, scrubbed his skin until it turned pink, pressed his head against the wall and prayed in fervent whispers. He would never use that incantation again. He couldn’t.
He tried to keep from hyperventilating as he scrubbed the blood from two full sets of stairs with ammonia, salt, and alcohol.
He had to bathe the man, horrible in its own right, sluicing blood down the drain, the thick scent of old urine and vomit in the humid air. And that on its own was not nearly as terrible as turning the man over and finding proof of Victor’s wickedness etched into the flesh of his back: An incomplete reproduction illustration next to the incantation. A series of interconnected circles and symbols.
Victor took a moment to press his forehead against the bathroom wall to calm the wild beating of his heart before he was able to face it again. It was like a brand, the way they burned steel into the hides of livestock. Healed as though the man had it for weeks, but that was impossible.
He touched it cautiously, but it just felt like skin.
Victor shuddered. He wrapped him in clean cloths and gave him his rites as a physician can. Then, Victor carried the body to the waterside, weighted it with stones and pushed it in.
He stayed the night awake, pacing the floor, sweat cold on his back. Thinking, thinking, thinking, praying.
FLEE
He thought about the man. Wondered about his family, if he’d had a wife or children before the bottle took him. If he still did. At least with his father’s patients the story was always complete. They would come to him, awake or with a loved one by their side.
“This is our story.” They would say, “A fever come quick in the night. The heel of an untrained horse. Foul meat. A heart that danced too quiet, or off beat. A mother, a sister, a brother, a father, lovers, soldiers, all.”
But this…. And the brand on his back….
But what now? What of Petyr’s smirking face? The animals that he’d killed to hasten his progress should not have died pointlessly. Much less the objectionable circumstances with this man. The ends could not justify the means if he could produce no ends. Victor could not give up, he was too close.
The situation with the breathing machine and his grander destinies could wait. He knew that it worked on animals at least, that was enough. But he needed a solution for the bet immediately. He only had three weeks before graduation, the party, the viewing, and his subsequent humiliation unless he could figure out an idea that would–
“Are you quite alright?”
“What?” Victor looked up from his desk to find Krempe standing above him. The rest of the room was empty.
He’d been so lost in thought he hadn’t noticed class had ended.
Professor Krempe was staring down at him, curious.
“I said, are you quite alright? You haven’t been much yourself these days.” Krempe said, “Though I’m pleased for the lack of… histrionic classroom argument. But I would be remiss for not asking after a student that goes from a chatterbox to near silent almost overnight.”
Victor swallowed. He couldn’t talk about this.
“Am I missing any assignments?”
“Well, no.”
“Have my exam or essay marks slipped in any way?”
“No, Victor you seem even more committed if anything–”
Victor stood up. “Then everything should be fine. Thank you. I don’t need any assistance.”
Victor left the classroom, then left the entire building entirely.
He needed to think. He needed to clear his mind.
Excerpted from ADAM, MINE by K. Ancrum © 2026 by K. Ancrum.
ADAM, MINE by K. Ancrum
From acclaimed author K. Ancrum, on the National Book Award longlist for The Corruption of Hollis Brown, and Lambda Literary Award winner for Icarus, comes a queer romantic horror thriller that is a love letter to Frankenstein about the consequences of our decisions, the legacy of family, and the depths we’ll go to be forgiven.
Victor Frankenstein is a young, wealthy, and brilliant prodigy who wants nothing more than to prove himself and change the world. His plan to right what he feels is wrong with the world? Reanimation of the sick and dying, bringing them back to life. But no one will give him the chance to prove his genius. However, one drunken night a bet is made, one that will cause Victor to do the unspeakable: take a teen boy from a small, neighboring village, and experiment on him under the dark of night. Elias Hilfiker. The boy who would become his monster. His curse. When Elias awakens, his voice is gone, his skin is stitched, scarred, and branded with strange symbols, and he’s abandoned by his loved ones. Meanwhile, Victor embarks on a journey to discover how to reverse the horror he’s unleashed, visiting dark alchemists in lands far and wide, gripped by fear and guilt.
But Victor’s act of resurrection creates a tether to Elias, leaving them feeling each other’s pain, joy, and regret, as the two each seek a way to end the other. As the two bound boys continue to search for answers and forgiveness, vengeance and mercy, the boundaries between what makes a man and what makes a monster will only get more blurred.
Horror | Thriller | LGBTQ Romance [ HarperCollins, On Sale: September 8, 2026, Hardcover / e-Book / audiobook, ISBN: 9780063449022 / eISBN: 9780063449046 ]
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About K. Ancrum
K. Ancrum, is an author of speculative contemporary Young Adult Fiction. She is best known for the LAMBDA award winning ICARUS and the National Book Award nominated THE CORRUPTION OF HOLLIS BROWN. K. is a Chicago native who is passionate about reflective representation in young adult fiction, and exploring the edges of what is possible within her chosen genre. She currently writes most of her work in the lush gardens of the Chicago Art Institute.
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