Tell me
What's the deal
With being
Immortal?
Is it some kind
Of gimmick?
A trend?
An obsession?

Why do you
Yearn
For endless
Loneliness?

Do you think
It's cool—
Killing
For company?
Sucking
Dry
For survival?

What's the deal,
Mon Cher?
Is it
The damned
Physicality?
Sex
With no
Frontiers?

Save
Your lingerie
For the men
Who enjoy
Gawking.
Brains
Virtually
Non-existent
Fed by
Beer
And
Porn.

I'm not
That kind.

Were you
A guy
I'd give it
A thought.

But you're
Simply
A pretty
Picture
Of somebody
Else's
Dirty movie.

Not mine.

Let me
Disappoint you.
It's not
Gonna happen
On a whim.
Stone hard—
Yes,
I don't deny it.
Perpetually
Unsatisfied—
Absolutely.

But fulfilled?
Capable
Of letting go?
Able to
Reach
The bloody climax?

No.

It's within
Reach
Yet
Not with a mortal.
So
Shove it.

Shut up,
Mon Cher.
Strip down.
Let me see
The vein
Dancing
On your neck.

That's my
Eroticism.
That's my
Fucking climax.
Watching it
Pumping
Blood
And knowing
You
Wanted
This
All
Along

In shifting hues of jade, azure, and pearlescent gold, I saw the chamber where Lancelot usually worked. Yet he was no longer standing before the grand oak table. He lay upon it, offered up among the chaos of his own trade, half-buried in heavy velvets, lightest gauze, and net so fine it might have replaced the very air. Crystal beads shone around his silhouette like fallen stars.

He was perfectly still, his eyes closed in a semblance of sleep that made my chest tighten with a familiar, centuries-old dread. His skin looked flawless, ivory-pale against the rich crimson of the cloth beneath him, and a single vein pulsated on his proud, graceful neck, left entirely bare by the unbuttoned collar of his shirt. It throbbed with a terrifying, rhythmic vitality—a heavy, living text that my eyes could not help but read, a reminder of the fragile, fleeting warmth I had no right to touch.

As I watched, breathless and paralyzed by the predator’s quiet focus, his own white garment began to unravel, transforming into a living, golden thread. But it did not sew the fabric. Instead, the thread began to glide across his bare chest and throat on its own, guided by an invisible hand. Meticulous, scrolling ornaments—Byzantine vines, sharp thorns, and intricate lace patterns—began to self-paint across his ivory flesh, raised and dark against his skin like a beautiful, blossoming scar. It was as if the art he spent his days creating was violently reclaiming him, anchoring his mortal frame to the table with a slow, decorative cruelty, threatening to freeze his warm breath into the static eternity that cursed my own veins.

I watched in awe as his muscles subtly tensed under the phantom pressure of the gold, his chest rising and falling in shallow, trapped breaths. My thoughts raced like uncaged birds of prey, frantic and hungry, tearing at the boundary between admiration and desire. Entranced, I watched, praying the dream would never end, even as the gold thread crept higher, tracing the path toward that thumping, vulnerable vein on his neck, ready to stitch him into an immortal stillness.

Then, at the very precipice of the dark embroidery, Lancelot opened his eyes. His lips parted, and my name escaped them—a single, drawn breath that carried an intonation I had never heard in all my centuries. It was a sigh woven of impossible things: a desperate longing, a helpless plea, and a profound, terrifying submission that laid his very soul bare beneath my gaze.

Yet the end came instantly upon that word, as if the sheer weight of it shattered the illusion, and sunlight struck my eyelids. I awoke to a darkness fractured, my heart painfully alive and my body aching—something unknown and vital was forcing its way into my careful ruin, and I dared not admit how much I loved the fracture of it.

I watched him guide the gold into the velvet depth of the fabric stretched taut on the slate frame. His face serene, his hands moving with such grace it couldn't be unnoticed, he reminded me of Lady Shalott—while looking exactly like Tennyson's Lancelot. I desperately wanted to be that fabric beneath his fingers, and each driving motion made me entranced up to the physical sensation.

He must have felt the white-hot weight of it, for he chuckled softly and said, slightly turning his head,

"Do be careful, Mr. Graves. You will burn a hole in the fabric and I will be the one to pay."

I didn’t reply from the ottoman. Instead, I stood, my boots making no sound on the creaking pine floorboards as I stepped into his shadow, closing the distance until the clinical chill of the room vanished entirely. I leaned down over his shoulder, hovering so close that my lips nearly brushed the pale skin of his ear, my breath stirring the loose, dark Pre-Raphaelite curls that had tumbled past his collar.

"I'd burn this wretched place to dust just to stop this moment," I whispered, my voice dropping to a low, dangerous vibration that stripped away every ounce of high-Victorian armor. "And judging by what the lease costs me nowadays, it would be the most magnificent choice I’ve made in decades."

Lancelot’s breath hitched, the sudden catch of his throat sharp and clear as snapping ice beneath the quiet hiss of the gas lamp. He froze completely, his hand paralyzed mid-air, the silver needle suspended just millimeters above the taut velvet depth of the frame.

Then, slowly, deliberately, his head tilted back, resting heavily against my shoulder.

The movement brought his face so close that I could feel the radiant heat of his skin cutting through the winter chill of the upper annex. Those long, dark curls brushed against the fabric of my waistcoat, framing his pale features as he looked up at me from beneath his lashes. His striking, glistening light-blue eyes had gone entirely dark with an intense, unyielding vulnerability that met my ancient fire head-on. In that silent, breathless perimeter, his posture yielded completely to the momentum of my proximity, a quiet surrender that made the entire universe collapse down to the space between our breaths.

I did not move away. Instead, I let my hand rise, my fingers hovering for a fraction of a second over the dark, tumbling coils of his hair before I slowly brushed a stray lock back from his forehead. My unaging hand trembled slightly—a microscopic fracture in my centuries-old armor that I could not conceal. Lancelot’s eyelids fluttered closed at the fleeting, gossamer touch of my skin against his brow, his head sinking just a fraction deeper into the cradle of my shoulder.

I leaned down a fraction closer, my lips hovering mere millimeters from his temple. From this vantage, every minute register of his undoing was laid bare to my eyes. His lips parted just a fraction, the sudden, shallow catch of his breath leaving them dry, the delicate lines of his mouth tightening in a brief moment of sheer, breathless panic. Then, as he settled into the heavy weight of my shadow, the tension evaporated; his mouth softened once more, turning plush and yielding under the cool north light, a silent invitation suspended on the absolute precipice of a touch.

I never knew then what moved me—was it the burning desire of consuming this energy he possessed in abundance, or something I dared not admit myself. I knew however how obsession turns admiration into acid, damaging the pure fragility of human contact, and Irving's predatory example was omnipresent. But here, with his weight resting firmly against my chest, the fear of the monster faded.

The longing that fractured my centuries entirely was a physical weight in my chest, a desperate, hollow ache that had spent seven years of grief trying to bury itself in a frozen heart. I wanted to pull him into my arms until the boundaries of our flesh dissolved, to shield him so completely from his father’s cold world that the theater below would burn to ash before it could touch him again. But the air outside the room was heavy with a gathering storm, and the laws of men were unforgiving. We were trapped in the agonizing beauty of what we could not lavishly claim, our silent closeness vibrating with everything we dared not utter aloud.

I let my hand slide down the back of his chair until my fingertips lightly brushed the bare, warm skin of his wrist—a fleeting, electric current that made the centuries feel beautifully useless. He slowly, reluctantly straightened, guiding his needle back into the work, his heartbeat, as I noted through that brief contact with immense satisfaction, highly irregular.

Forgotten? Down here?

Impossible.

Mortuary lights kept winking.

He sighed. Shrugged.

Sucks being a pathologist, he told the slab. Can't even smoke. Not tonight anyway. Not with that crash they reported. I'll be here all night.

He rummaged through the things on the table. Nothing. Nothing but the damned newspaper. And a pen.

A half dead crossword on the last page smirked at him. He squinted.

Doctor's best friend. Five letters.

Scrubs? Nah, that's six. Nurse? What the hell, he thought.

The letters came on their own.

DEATH.

A siren cried out somewhere. Someone screamed.

Jeff's favorite thing. 6 letters. Who's Jeff?

Familiar face there.

Murder.

Something...no way, too greasy.

Three more words buried under stains. Wait, is that blood?

Mortuary lights kept winking.

Silence outside kept growing. Hate Halloween night shifts he thought. Wait.

It's August. Time just dies in here.

Door slammed somewhere.

A stable patient. 6 letters.

Easy one, he thought. As soon as his pen made the last e, doors flew open.

Greg, another one, the ER guy said blankly. Girl this time. Take care of her, will ya?

He nodded, his eyes still glued to the paper. Last word remained.

What the...

Who's just got the job? 4 letters.

Three letters already there.

G...E...G.

Deep in the bowels of the old port lay a certain gale-blasted alley. Called by some happy misfortune the Swan Lane, it possessed a far more visceral street-name which we, bound by the fragile corsets of mid-Victorian decorum, shall politely decline to utter. Here, from time immemorial, mariners would barter with ladies of negotiable—and occasionally entirely stubborn—virtue, seeking to regain their land-legs after a tempestuous voyage. To realign their cognitive frequencies, if you will.

Once, this lane groaned under a row of wretched cribs housing the priestesses of various archaic deities, but the relentless march of decay had spared only one. A ramshackle, listing hovel, it was the spitting image of its tenant: an ancient crone who obstinately fancied herself a siren. The shack put on pathetic airs of youth, but its jaunty rose-pink curtains fooled no one; as the penal code of the slums dictates, carrion cannot be rouged into compliance.

Our heroine—dubbed Little Megh (a grandly ironic misnomer, wouldn't you say?)—hailed from the nomadic Faagh tribe, a folk cursed with an incurable affliction for grandiloquent, labyrinthine rhetoric. It was precisely this rhetorical excess, one surmises, that left Megh perpetually bankrupt of both shillings and suitors.

Any salt-crusted sailor, catching the first gravelly, tobacco-charred notes of her baritone from afar, would take to his heels with religious fervor, well aware that an interview with Megh boded an unholy end. Still dizzy from the high seas, the poor wretch would flee through the dark courts, yet the hag’s voice would chase him, occasionally outrunning his very boots:

"Whither do you fly, O aromatic cumin of my soft buns? Indulge Little Megh; let her stroke your prime causes, handle your deeper meanings... titillate your ultimate consequences... or perhaps gently fondle your missing premises?"

Woe to the man who failed to reach the sanctuary of the corner gin-palace (for Megh, though certifiably unhinged, was a staunch teetotaler)! He was, in the most literal, clinical sense, talked into the grave. Dr. Browne, a weary gentleman who had seen far too many creative ways to perish in the docks, conducted the post-mortem on one such unfortunate casualty of language. Adjusting his spectacles, he sighed over the slab with a rather lively grimace:

"A tragic case of terminal verbosity, gentlemen. The fellow was absolutely slain by the woman’s unremitting garrulity. Look here—the cardiac tissue simply surrendered under the sheer weight of her rhetorical onslaught. Though, undeniably, her lexicon achieved a secondary, distinctly peculiar physiological arousal... judging by the rigid nature of his... structural context. The spirit was willing, but the eardrums gave out. Quite so."

Megh truly loved her vocation, and there’s an end on’t.

We all have fantasies—I mean, I’m sure we all do. Like, ask any guy and he'll tell you he's had fantasies about those gals you see in calendars and suchlikes. You know—skirts above the knees, tits jumping right at ya like in comic books, stockings that never existed in reality, sweat glistening on perfect skin. You know the drill. My pal Tommy had his room full o’ them. His ma said it was a proper brothel. But I know what she didn’t—he jacked off to those girls every night. He’d do that and brag to me. And I’d nod and laugh, but I knew I couldn’t do that. I never had them fantasies.

Not ‘bout the girls anyways.

Mine were about the men. The kind you see in paintings and rock clubs—flowing hair, slim and sorta chiseled. I imagined them in those silks they draw in paintings. In lush greenery. In ruins of some crumbling houses. In the woods. Coming out of the river behind the fields couple miles away.

In my bed.

I’d imagine them tied with blood-red silk cords, their ends trapped in metal rings on my wall—not that I had any stuff like that, mind you. I’d imagine them as Saint Sebastians, or some Greek gods I read about. Perfect. Breathing in a way you do when you’re anticipating something like sex. Licking their lips. Their eyes half-closed. I never imagined any further. My brain became drunk on that alone.

Tommy would go on blabbering about some cheerleader’s legs, his face getting all red and sweaty, and I’d just sit there, chewing on a pencil, looking at him. God, he was so loud. So predictable. A heavy, clumsy animal driven by the simplest gears you could find in a toy store. He thought he was the king of the world because he could bench-press more than the rest of our class.

He was so pathetic, really. We’ve been in the same grade for years, and even now, at eighteen, he still hasn’t learned that the word homework has an e in the middle, not at the very end like his stupid 'homworke'. He’d scrawl it across his notebook in that messy, childish handwriting of his, completely oblivious. It drove me crazy. A brain that couldn’t even map out eight simple letters, yet he walked around like he owned the place. He didn’t know a damn thing. He didn’t see the world the way I did. To him, a river was just water to dump trash into. To me, it was a frame. A cold, dark mirror waiting for the right shape to break it.

I knew I was stronger. Not the kind of strength you show off in a school gym, no. It was the quiet kind. The kind that lets you sit perfectly still for three hours straight, watching a spider weave its web in the corner of your closet while your mom yells your name from downstairs. Tommy’s mind was like a broken radio, all static and noise. Mine was a laser. When I focused on something, the whole world outside just faded into black and white.

They thought I was just the quiet kid, the one lost in his own head. The freak with the long, deep red hair that the gym coach kept telling me to cut. Let them. It’s a good mask. It keeps them from wondering what I’m actually thinking about when I’m staring into space, or what I’m keeping under my mattress, where the real world lives. They wouldn’t understand the books anyway. They’d look at a painting of a martyr and see a Sunday school lesson. I see the composition, the anatomy, the way a person looks when they are pushed to their absolute limit.

And then Gabriel showed up.

He transferred to our school in the middle of October, right when the days were getting short and sickly gray. The teacher introduced him, but I didn’t hear a word she said. My mind just turned the world off. He didn’t look like anyone here. He was quiet, but it wasn’t the shaking, nervous quiet of a newcomer. It was a still, deliberate quiet of the leader. He had that hair—dark, heavy curls that fell over his forehead, exactly like the marble Roman busts in the art history books I keep under my floorboards. And his jawline was chiseled so sharp it looked like it could cut paper.

Tommy, of course, tried to mark his territory within the first ten minutes. He leaned back in his chair, making some loud, stupid joke about Gabriel’s jacket, waiting for the class to laugh. I watched Gabriel’s reflection in the window pane. He didn’t flinch. He didn’t even look at Tommy. He just slowly turned a page of his notebook, his chest rising and falling in that slow, rhythmic way. That perfect, steady breathing.

A heavy wave of heat hit my chest. My hands started sweating. It was him. The boy from the river. The boy from the red silk cords. He had stepped right out of the gold frame and walked into this pathetic room full of lockers and cheap fluorescent lights.

The next two months were a blur of cold, relentless rain, static on the radio, and a sickening kind of sleeplessness. My mind had latched onto Gabriel like a record needle stuck in a deep, ruined groove. Every single thing he did became a permanent slide under a microscope. The puff of white steam coming out of his mouth in the November chill—it stayed in my eyes long after the yellow school bus had rattled away into the gray dusk.

I couldn’t shake it off. I’d try to look at my books, but his face would bleed right through the paper. I’d look at the paintings of Saint Sebastian, and the martyr was no longer some anonymous ancient Roman soldier; he had Gabriel’s dark, heavy curls, Gabriel’s pale, clean skin, Gabriel’s half-closed eyes.

Then the dreams came. They were heavy, suffocating things, painted in the dull, sickly colors of old Polaroid film left out in the sun. I’d wake up at three in the morning, shivering under my wool blanket, my heart pounding so hard against my ribs I thought it would wake the whole house. In those dreams, the river behind the fields was always frozen solid, gray and dead, and Gabriel was trapped just beneath the ice, looking right up at me. The red silk cords weren’t a clean, beautiful idea anymore; they were damp, heavy, smelling of copper and river mud, wrapping around his throat, dragging him down into the black water while he just stared through the ice with that calm, marble expression.

By December, the noise inside my head finally froze into something solid and sharp. The panic died down, leaving behind a beautiful, terrifying clarity. I didn’t want to dream anymore. I didn’t want to suffer from my own eyes. My mind finally found the only logical way to stop the record from skipping. I had to stop looking at the frame. I had to step into the picture.

But I didn't have to. Gabriel brought the picture to me.

It happened on the second Tuesday of December. The radiator in the back of the study hall was hissing and spitting rusty steam. Tommy had skipped the last period to smoke behind the gym, so the desk next to me was empty. I was sitting there, staring through the scratchy wood grain, lost in that heavy, gray static. Then, a shadow fell over my desk.

"Is anybody sitting here?"

The voice didn’t sound like the local kids. It didn’t have that flat, heavy drag of the people from this miserable Wisconsin town near Milwaukee. It was smoother, darker, like the late-night jazz hosts on the AM radio stations. It had a strange, sharp rhythm to it, a Boston accent that clipped the ends of his words and turned his 'a's soft and liquid.

"No," I choked out. "It’s empty."

Gabriel sat down. For twenty minutes, there was only the sound of the radiator and the scratching of his pen. I stayed perfectly still, but my eyes were burning. Every nerve in my body was screaming. He was right there. Then he turned his head and looked straight at me. His eyes weren’t gray like I’d imagined. They were a deep, shocking blue. The kind of pure, piercing blue you only find in those old paintings of real Irishmen.

"I like your hair," he said suddenly.

The statement broke through the silence like a dropped glass. His Boston accent softened the words, making the sentence slide out easily.

"Thanks," I mumbled, trying to tuck a long strand of that deep copper red behind my ear.

"You're the one who stares at the river behind the mill, right?" he asked next. There was no mockery in his face. Just a calm, terrifying curiosity. "I saw you there last Friday. From the bridge. With that hair, against the gray sky... you looked like something out of a gallery."

My heart dropped like a stone into a well. He had been watching me back.

"I like the light there," I whispered.

Gabriel smiled, just a little. "Me too. It looks like a Dutch landscape. Ruysdael, maybe. Or Rembrandt, before he went dark." He leaned in a fraction closer. "Nobody else in this miserable town looks at the light. They just look at the mud. You're different."

And just like that, the floodgates opened.

The rest of the winter became a blur of endless, intoxicating talk. We’d talk for hours until our boots were soaked through with slush. Soon, we were living in each other's pockets. Our parents looked at us and practically sighed with relief. In a town where every other boy was obsessed with fixing up rusted Chevys and getting into fistfights, we were a miracle.

My mother was ecstatic. She’d spend all afternoon cooking her pot roast just so she could impress Gabriel. At the dinner table, his voice sounded so smooth against my parents' thick Midwestern vowels, like velvet sliding over sandpaper. My mother would just beam, passing him the potato salad, totally oblivious to the fact that while Gabriel was politely thanking her, my eyes were locked on his throat. I watched the way his skin stretched when he swallowed.

Then we’d go to his place, a big, quiet house on the edge of town where his folks always smelled of expensive tobacco and gin. His mother, an elegant woman with permanent dark circles under her eyes, would serve us chicken fricassee on heavy, gold-rimmed china.

"It’s good you boys have each other," she’d say, her voice trailing off as the ice clinked in her glass. "Gabriel was so lonely in the city. It’s nice to see him finally breathing."

We’d spend the nights in his room, surrounded by his stacks of paperbacks and the soft hiss of his record player spinning Chopin. We’d sleep in the same bed side by side. I wouldn’t sleep for hours. I’d lie there perfectly still in the dark, listening to the steady, rhythmic sound of his breathing. He thought we were just best friends. He thought we were two lonely, smart boys rescuing each other. He didn’t know that every night he slept next to me, my mind was taking him apart and putting him back together. He didn’t know that the safety he felt was just the first layer of the trap.

It happened in late January, during a night when the freeze was so sharp you could hear the trees in the yard cracking outside.

Gabriel shifted under the heavy wool quilt. He turned toward me, his face just inches from mine. In that pale, frozen light, he looked more like marble than ever. My heart wasn’t beating fast; it was doing that heavy, low thudding. Then his eyes opened. Those deep, Irish blue eyes looking dark, almost black in the moonlight.

"You never sleep," Gabriel whispered. His Boston accent was thick with cobwebs.

"I'm listening," I said.

"To what?"

"Your breathing."

Gabriel didn’t look away. Instead, he reached a hand out from under the blanket, his long, pale fingers brushing against my jawline. His skin was freezing, but to my high sensitivity, it felt like a brand of hot iron. He leaned in, slowly, as if he were moving through deep water.

When his lips touched mine, the entire universe collapsed into a single point. It tasted like the winter air outside, cold and clean, mixed with the faint, sweet trace of the cherry tobacco his father smoked downstairs. Gabriel pulled away after a moment, resting his forehead against mine.

"Different," he murmured into the dark, his voice dropping into that musical Boston lilt. "You're so different."

"Different how?" I asked, suddenly suspicious.

He half-smiled, his thumb tracing the skin right over the pulse point, his hand getting lost in the heavy strands of my long hair. "You're like Titian. Like Botticelli. You're like a painting, Edward. Ned..."

He moved closer, his lips touching my ear. "Edward," he repeated.

He read me like a book, and right then, I wanted him to go past the cover and the contents page. I wanted him to flip through every single leaf. But as I tasted the heat of his mouth again, my hand slowly slid down under the heavy quilt. I wasn’t thinking about love. I was thinking about the red silk cords. The kiss didn’t change the plan; it just made it real.

The next morning, the freezing illusion shattered against the yellow brick walls of the school hallway.

Tommy was already leaning against my locker, looking like a stuffed sack of potatoes. "Yo, where the hell were you yesterday?" he barked in that flat, nasal Wisconsin drawl. "Me and Jimmy went down by the gravel pit to pop off some rounds. It was wicked cold, mind you. You missed out."

"I was busy," I said shortly.

"Busy doing what? Reading them sissy library books again? And tie that crazy red mop of yours back, you look like a goddamn girl."

Before I could answer, a shadow broke the light. Gabriel walked up. "Good morning," he said, ignoring Tommy. His voice had that smooth, clipped Boston rhythm. "I brought that volume of Rimbaud we talked about last night. I left a marker on the page with 'The Drunken Boat'."

Tommy blinked. "What the hell is a Rim-bo? You guys talk real funny. Hey, city boy, what’s with the fancy coat? You look like you’re going to a damn funeral."

Gabriel turned his head, his chiseled profile sharp. "It’s just an overcoat, Tommy," he said softly. "And the word is pronounced Ram-bo. But I wouldn’t expect you to fret over it. You seem to have enough trouble with basic spelling."

Tommy’s face flushed a dark, angry red. "Whatever, man. You guys are literal freaks," he spat, stomping off.

Gabriel watched him go. "He's quite primitive, isn't he? Like a drawing on a cave wall."

"He's mud," I whispered back.

By February, my room had become a shrine to his face. Every night, I’d pull out my charcoal pads from under the floorboards. I drew him constantly. The sharp bridge of his nose. The clean angle of his jawline. But the drawings weren't enough.

He had left his scarf at my house on the first Friday of February. It was a heavy, dark blue wool scarf from Boston. I took it from the banister, but it never made it back to Gabe. Instead, it went straight under my pillow. I’d lie there in the dark, my face pressed into the wool, breathing him in. Sometimes, while tracing his profile with charcoal, I’d hold the blue scarf against my own neck, pulling it tight, just to see how much pressure it took to stop my own breath. I smiled into the dim room.

The question about the scarf came on a frozen Tuesday in mid-February.

"Ned," he said, that sharp Boston lilt cutting through the jazz record. "Have you seen my blue scarf? The wool one from Newbury Street? My mother's going to fret."

My heart didn’t change its pace. "No," I said, my voice smooth. "Maybe you left it in the back of your father's car. Or at school. Tommy’s crowd was messing around near the lockers—maybe one of those animals kicked it under the benches."

Gabriel’s deep blue eyes narrowed. "Savages," he muttered, dropping the matter entirely. I had lied to him without a single tremor. It felt easy. A predator doesn’t apologize to the deer for hiding in the brush.

By the time late March arrived, the frozen cage of winter finally began to break. The river behind the fields was waking up. You could hear it from a mile away—a deep, booming roar as massive sheets of ice smashed into each other.

"Let's go down to the water," Gabe said one Saturday.

We walked through the tall, dead grass, our boots sinking into the sucking mud. When we reached the bank, huge, jagged blocks of ice were churning in the black water.

"Look at the texture of it, Ned," he shouted over the roar. "It’s like something Turner would paint if he lost his mind."

I stepped up beside him, my hair whipping across my face. I reached out and caught a handful of his denim jacket, pulling him just an inch closer to the edge. "It's a frame," I whispered. Gabe didn’t notice the grip of my fingers. He didn’t know that the river wasn’t just a landscape to me anymore. It was the final set.

By the time April arrived, the wet mud began to dry. We rode our bikes across the fields under a purple dusk. My house was empty. When we stepped into my bedroom, the atmosphere shifted. I hadn’t had time to hide everything. Three raw sketches of his profile were pinned directly to the wall.

Gabriel walked up to them, his fingers lightly brushing the charcoal. He let out a soft laugh. "God, Ned," he murmured. "You really are obsessed with me, aren’t you? You look at me like I’m a gallery piece."

"You are," I said, my voice flat.

He didn’t notice the coldness. He tossed the blue wool scarf onto the mattress and sat down. Gabriel smiled, thinking it was a game. He reached under the mattress, pulling out the hidden scarf, and held the ends out toward me like a challenge.

"So you’re a thief, Ned," he murmured, his fingers idly looping the rough wool around his own wrist. "If you wanted it that badly, you should have just asked. Why don't you tie me down with it? Show me how a master frames his picture."

I leaned down over him. The smell of his skin—expensive soap and cold rain—was loud. My hands shook a little as I took the scarf. He reached his arms back around the dark oak of my bedpost, his pale throat warm and pulsing. I looped the heavy wool around his wrists, securing them gently against the wood.

Seeing him there made a heavy, suffocating wave of emotion hit me. I was so deeply, desperately in love with him it made my lungs feel tight. He was the only thing in my life that wasn't mud.

"Is it too tight?" I whispered, suddenly terrified of breaking the fragile thing we had built.

Gabriel looked up, his blue eyes soft. "It’s perfect, Ned," he murmured. "You're perfect."

I leaned down and kissed him, deep and slow. But as the night wore on and we moved past the kisses, that perfect clarity brought something else to the surface. I noticed the fluid, effortless certainty in his movements. He didn’t stumble. He didn’t hesitate. There was a quiet, practiced confidence in the way his fingers found the small of my back.

A sudden, freezing jolt hit my chest. He hadn’t been born in a vacuum. He had done this before. In the city. With someone else.

A heavy, sickening ache bloomed behind my ribs. To me, Gabe was a miracle. But to him, maybe I was just the next chapter.

"Who was he?" I asked into the dark after we were finished.

Gabriel’s fingers stopped moving on my skin. "What do you mean, Ned?"

"In Boston. Before you moved out here to the mud. Who was he?"

Gabriel sat up slowly. "Where did you hear that name?" he whispered.

"You said it last night. In your sleep. Oliver."

Gabriel stared at the floorboards. "He was the intern," Gabe murmured. "At my father’s law firm. In Boston. Oliver Stanton. Technically... we moved from Boston because of that situation."

The words kept spilling out of him. "He used me, Ned. Oliver didn't care about the art. He just wanted the spot at my father's firm. He needed the connection, the references, the name on his resume. He figured out what I was, and he seduced me just to get his foot in the door. And once he was safely inside, he didn't stop. He took things. Letters. He threatened to go to the senior partners, to the newspapers, to everyone. He tried to extort money from my parents. Massive amounts. He told them he’d ruin my father's career if they didn't pay him off."

Gabe’s breathing was shallow. "They paid Oliver off, tore up the Boston life, and dumped me here so the ghost wouldn’t follow us. Oliver stayed there, perfectly safe, with his pockets full of our money. And I got the mud."

The jealousy I had felt shattered. Oliver Stanton wasn't a romance; he was a parasite. A profound, violent wave of protective fury hit my chest.

"He's gone, Gabe," I whispered into his hair. I wrapped my arms around him, pulling his weight entirely onto my chest. "He’s three thousand miles away. He can’t touch the frame from there."

"I know," Gabe muffled against my skin. "But every time I close my eyes, I still hear him laughing."

By the second week of May, the walls of the school began to feel less like a mask and more like a closing trap. Tommy decided he was the one to pull the trigger. He and two friends intercepted us behind the gym.

"Hey, city boy," Tommy barked. "We think you’re turning Ned into a freak just like you." He slammed a hand into Gabriel’s chest.

What happened next didn’t take two seconds. Gabriel caught Tommy’s wrist with terrifying precision, stepped into the space beneath Tommy’s heavy shoulder, and executed a single, perfect pivot. Tommy didn't just fall; he flew. He hit the hard-packed gravel with a sickening thud.

Gabriel stood over him. "I presume," he said coldly, "you thought a guy who reads too much is... what's the term... a pussy, didn't you, Thomas? You've got the wrong guy then."

That was how I knew. Watching him, I realized he had used to do judo, and even ballet perhaps - once. Tommy lay on his back, looking up with sudden reverence. "What was that... that damn thing you did to me?"

"My teacher called it the flight," Gabriel said softly.

"Teach me."

"First you apologize to Ned."

Tommy shifted his gaze. "Sorry, mate. Not gonna do it again."

We headed straight for the fields, toward the old, crumbling paper mill. By the time June bled into July, it had become our studio. I painted him over and over. And when the drawing pads were filled, the portraits turned into flesh. We had sex right there on the concrete floor, surrounded by his own face.

And then, on a heavy evening in August, when the sky looked like crushed berries, the scarf scene repeated. But Gabriel had brought something else this time—yards of heavy, liquid silk - greens and goldens. Blood-red silk cords.

“Where'd you…” I began but he didn't let me finish.

“Used to hang in our old house” he said merrily “ Look at the colors. Like those of Saint Sebastian, don't you think?”

He undressed. Methodically. Looked at me.

"Let's frame it, Ned," he whispered. "Make the picture perfect. Lock it in."

The red silk cords went around the wrists, looping over the rusted metal rings embedded in the mill wall. The knots were tied with that same fluid certainty. But something in the pattern broke. In the dark, the lines between us didn't just blur—they dissolved entirely. We were too identical now. When the stillness finally came after the struggle, it was impossible to see who had survived the frame, and who had become the masterpiece.

And then I remembered where I saw his name before. That paper my dad brought from Boston once. “The lawyer’s lawless son,” the article said. Damn. I never got round to asking... I was too intoxicated by him.

And then, there was only one.

The summer heat broke, giving way to a cold October. But the mill was never truly empty. One of us stayed behind in the ruins, and the other was left to wander the world outside, completely hollowed out.

He haunts me. He haunts me in the analog hiss of the record player. He tickles my ear in the middle of the night with a breath that smells of cold rain and charcoal, whispering a name into the mattress until the silence screams.

So I look for him. I look for copies of him everywhere. I take the grey Greyhound buses out to Milwaukee, out to Chicago. I sit in the corners of dark rock clubs and dusty art galleries, my eyes turning into that cold, unblinking laser. Every time I see a stranger who looks even remotely like the picture in my head, my heart drops like a stone into a well. I follow them for blocks, my fingers tightening around a phantom piece of blue wool or a blood-red silk cord. I want to pull them into a frame. I want to take them apart and see if the chapters inside match the ones we wrote in the attic.

But the copies are always flawed. They don't speak in the right way. They don't understand that a river isn't just water, but a mirror waiting to be broken.

I don't know the face anymore. I look for it, and it stares back at me from the smudged charcoal. I don't know how many portraits I've left in motels and hotel rooms, inns and B&Bs, bus stops and cafes. One, five, a dozen... a hundred? Every contact leaves a trace, and every portrait leaves a body.

We all have fantasies—I mean, I’m sure we all do.

Traditional publishing is a massive political hurdle. Platforms demand changes that can butcher the thing entirely. No author wants to become a killer for the sake of a link.

I've queried and tried e-publishing. I've explored the methods. But all I got is a British wall of institutional silence and demands of infinite corrections because you know…Russia.

I decided to honor Monty and Lawrence in a different, very Victorian style. I am sharing the complete story with those who want it.

## 📬 How to Claim the Novel:

* Drop a comment right below this post.

* Send a message directly to me.

* I will send the file straight over.

## ✒️ One Small Favor:

* Review the book on your own Substack.

* That is the only thing I am asking.

Yours,

Monty Lawrence

------------------------------

Forever young, you look at me from your portraits. Forever pensive, thoughtful and slightly tired, yet full of hope and promise, you remain frozen in time while the world shifts wearily in its cursed rhythm.

You are 169 today. yet you'll always be thirty one. my beautiful consciousness, my vigilant hyperfocus, my eternal key to the world that will always be mine without belonging to me.

Once bound, always bound.

We've been through much, you and me, and you are here with me - have been since I was a kid. I knew nothing of you then, and knowing you is a privilege - and you know that.

You've given me so much- and I hope one day to repay that kindness, that surpasses the kindness of the living by far.

Happy birthday, my boy - my muse, and the one who always inspires me to try harder and dig deeper.

Persevere. Conquer.

And never lose my integrity.

I love you

Happy birthday.

Not particularly joyful, but I do have gay vampires in poetry, gay murderers and gay Gothic guys with twists

https://open.substack.com/pub/itshellactually/p/sotto-voce?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=257g8a

https://open.substack.com/pub/helltorium/p/solitary-confinement?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=257g8

https://open.substack.com/pub/itshellactually/p/salvatore-a-fragrance-for-the-fallen-e0b?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=257g8a

https://open.substack.com/pub/helltorium/p/me-too?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=257g8a

https://open.substack.com/pub/helltorium/p/oh-but-darling?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=257g8a

https://open.substack.com/pub/helltorium/p/salvatore?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=257g8a

https://open.substack.com/pub/helltorium/p/often?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=257g8ap

https://open.substack.com/pub/helltorium/p/new-orleans-2026?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=257g8a

https://open.substack.com/pub/helltorium/p/hyacinth?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=257g8a

https://open.substack.com/pub/helltorium/p/marble-and-gold?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=257g8a

https://open.substack.com/pub/helltorium/p/silentium?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=257g8a

https://open.substack.com/pub/helltorium/p/she-rests-upon-a-flower?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=257g8a

https://open.substack.com/pub/helltorium/p/the-hearts-cry?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=257g8a

https://open.substack.com/pub/helltorium/p/forget-the-books?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=257g8a

https://open.substack.com/pub/helltorium/p/obsidian?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=257g8a

https://open.substack.com/pub/helltorium/p/if-you-only-knew?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=257g8a

https://open.substack.com/pub/helltorium/p/violins-and-heartstrings?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=257g8a

https://open.substack.com/pub/helltorium/p/let-me-fix-you?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=257g8a

https://open.substack.com/pub/helltorium/p/i-liked-you?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=257g8a

https://open.substack.com/pub/helltorium/p/fantasy-of-happiness?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=257g8a

https://open.substack.com/pub/helltorium/p/vicious?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=257g8a

https://open.substack.com/pub/helltorium/p/wrapnturn?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=257g8a

Gothica:

https://open.substack.com/pub/helltorium/p/the-delorme-way-a39?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=257g8a

https://open.substack.com/pub/helltorium/p/requiem-of-the-plague-doctor?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=257g8a

https://open.substack.com/pub/helltorium/p/the-midnight-liturgy?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=257g8a

https://open.substack.com/pub/itshellactually/p/the-hair-officerthe-hair?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=257g8a

https://open.substack.com/pub/helltorium/p/the-psychopomp?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=257g8a

https://open.substack.com/pub/helltorium/p/radiant-ruin?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=257g8a

https://open.substack.com/pub/helltorium/p/devils-violin?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=257g8a

https://open.substack.com/pub/helltorium/p/diary?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=257g8a

https://open.substack.com/pub/helltorium/p/hyacinth-a24?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=257g8a

https://open.substack.com/pub/helltorium/p/once-upon-a-midnight-dreary?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=257g8a

https://open.substack.com/pub/helltorium/p/ladies-and-gentlemen?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=257g8a

https://open.substack.com/pub/helltorium/p/post-mortem-blues?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=257g8a

https://open.substack.com/pub/helltorium/p/grace-for-sale?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=257g8a

https://open.substack.com/pub/helltorium/p/do-what-thou-will?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=257g8a

https://open.substack.com/pub/helltorium/p/go-on?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=257g8a

https://open.substack.com/pub/helltorium/p/teach-me?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=257g8a

https://open.substack.com/pub/helltorium/p/carpe-noctem?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=257g8a

https://open.substack.com/pub/helltorium/p/will-you?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=257g8a

https://open.substack.com/pub/helltorium/p/augusta?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=257g8a

https://open.substack.com/pub/helltorium/p/godiva

https://open.substack.com/pub/helltorium/p/vision-victorian-lullaby

https://open.substack.com/pub/helltorium/p/tell-me-dominus?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=257g8a

https://open.substack.com/pub/helltorium/p/kill-your-conscience?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=257g8a

https://open.substack.com/pub/helltorium/p/midnight-dont-threaten-me-with-a

https://open.substack.com/pub/helltorium/p/the-stranger-flowering-broom?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=257g8a

https://open.substack.com/pub/helltorium/p/michael?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=257g8a

https://open.substack.com/pub/helltorium/p/equinox-bar?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=257g8a

https://open.substack.com/pub/helltorium/p/overturescorinthian?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=257g8a

https://open.substack.com/pub/helltorium/p/prends-moi

https://open.substack.com/pub/helltorium/p/edgar

I might've missed something but that's the core:)

oh let me rage

against the mighty roar

of thousand clouds

and storms

that break my fragile ships.

oh let me rage

like cello strings

and violin bows

that bleed in notes

against the bone

of reason.

let me rage,

for nothing holds,

and nothing binds

between the rocks

of Scylla and her twin.

oh let me rage

so wrath would reach

the depth of Hades,

cutting through

the noise

of living minds

that have

no understanding

of the depth

and fill themselves

with static of the flesh.

oh let me rage

like storms

that tear the skies

dissecting seas,

and raising cities

to fine dust

in vain attempts

to silence

pomp

and circumstance...

oh let me rage...

I am alone. Lights flicker overhead, pale, the way they do in horror movies, plunging the entire room—or rather, cell of a room—into an eerie greenish glow.

Fingers trembling, I reach for the brownish folder on a table beside my bed. I don't see a name there, just two words neatly typed on the cover:

Solitary Confinement.

What do they mean? Where am I? I can’t remember a thing. Patsy's birthday party. Frank howling bawdy songs. Hank eyeing Patsy's younger sister. Rob showing off his bloody muscles. Haze. Screams. Iron aftertaste in my mouth. Screams. Rob taking Sam in the yard. Screams. Haze. Head hurts. Bitterness in my breath. Head swirls.

Is this a mental hospital? A jail? Where am I?

The wall is cold to the touch. The window is barred. It must be night—I can’t see a thing.

My God, where am I? Who the hell am I?

Solitary Confinement.

God, I'm done for.

The latch clicks. Metal on metal. A heavy, rhythmic sound that slices right through the electrical hum of the lights. The door doesn't just open; it bleeds light into the room. A sterile, blinding white that tastes like salt.

A man steps into the greenish haze. He is tall. He wears a coat so white it looks like a fresh bandage. He doesn't speak at first. He just watches. His eyes are hidden behind glass that catches the flicker of the overhead bulbs.

"Oh, I see you're awake, Mr. Whyte," he says. The voice is smooth. Velvet over a blade. "Are you all right, Dennis?"

The name hits me like a physical blow. Dennis Whyte. Is that me? The name feels like a suit of clothes that doesn't fit.

"I remember... a yard," I whisper. My voice is a dry rattle. "Screams. Rob. Sam. The iron in my mouth."

The man steps closer. He reaches for the folder. His fingers are long and pale. "Those are just fragments. Broken glass in the dark. I'm here to help you sweep them up. I am Dr. Brauberg."

I look at his pocket. A row of silver clips. I feel a strange, sheepish twitch in my lip. "Brauberg? Like the pens?"

"Yes, you're right," he says. He leans into my space. He smiles, and his teeth gleam in the eerie light. "Exactly like a pen."

He doesn't smell like a doctor, that one. No antiseptic. No hospital starch. Instead, the air around him thickens with the heavy, cloying scent of high-end cigars and cheap brandy. And beneath that—the sharp, unmistakable smell of a man who’s just had sex. It’s raw. It’s filthy. It doesn't belong in this greenish glow.

"You ain't like no doctor I seen," I tell him, my conscience slipping away.

He stands up. His lab coat slides off his shoulders like in that Christian Bale movie about a killer. It hits the floor without a sound. He looks at me over his shoulder, and I see his white shirt fall to the floor too, vanishing out of sight into the green shadows.

His back ain't no lab rat back. It’s broad. Hard. It’s like he works out all the damned time. He ain't no doc, my brain shouts.

He turns to me. The greenish light clings to the muscle of his chest, making him look like a statue carved out of cold meat.

"How do you like me, Des?" he asks silkily. "Do you like men?"

"Ain't like that," I say, but my voice trips over itself.

He laughs it off. It’s a dry, dark sound. "From what I've heard, it's quite the opposite."

He smiles. It’s a terrifying, familiar smile. It’s like that dead guy’s—Gary something. The one with the shadows and the thirst.

"What do you mean?" My mouth runs dry. The iron taste is back, thick and heavy.

He smiles again, taking his glasses off. He moves slow, deliberate. I can see now he uses them just for glamming up. For the part. Without them, his eyes are different. Older. Hungrier.

"I mean the yard, Dennis," he says. He takes a step toward the bed. No shoes. His feet make no noise on the cold floor. "I mean the way you watched Rob. The way you didn't look away from Sam. I mean the bitterness in your breath right now."

He leans over me. The smell of cigars and brandy is a wall.

"You think this is a cell?" He mocks me with his gleaming teeth. "You’re the one who locked the door, Dennis. I’m just the one who stayed inside with you."

The lights flicker. Snap. Snap. Like his silver pen.

"Now," he whispers, his hand reaching for the brownish folder. "Shall we talk about why there’s no name on the cover? Or do you want to tell me whose blood made that iron taste in your mouth?"

His hand drop to his belt line. Throat lock up. Total panic, raw and hot, hit me right in the gut. Want to look away, but I'm glued to his hands. Bastard know it, too. Taking his sweet time, drawing it out to mess with my head. Denim hit the floor with a heavy thud.

Christ. He’s huge. A total heavyweight, and he dead-set on this. Skull feel like it's about to split wide open.

"How do you like it, Des?" he purr, hand moving down there, working slow.

"What’s going through that head of yours?"

Need him to quit. God, just make him quit. Psycho know exactly how to work the angles.

"This sick," I rasp out, trying to force some iron into my voice. "You going to burn for this."

He just laugh. A nasty, arrogant bark. "Let Him try. My house, my rules, Dennis. I know your type. I know exactly how to break men like you."

He step closer. No noise. Right up against the mattress. Towering over me. Waist right at eye level. Can't look away. God help me, try to shut my eyes, but can't. Won't move. Staring right at him. Bastard know it. See it. Beneath the sweat, the shaking... something sick inside me waking up. Damned devil, he be. Know my secret. Using it to rot me out.

"Look at it, Des," he whisper. Lean down. Breath stinking of cheap brandy. "This what you wanted in the yard. What you was watching."

Arms go dead. Just give up. Filthy, but body stop fighting. He get on top of me. Brutal. Hard. Violent. Just like the stuff in the folder. Body betray me. Answer him. Chasing the filth while my brain scream. Green light swallow everything.

Then, stop.

Off the bed. Cold air hit skin like ice.

Brauberg stand up. Ain't even panting. He no look at me. Not with anger, nothing. Face blank. Empty. Reach down, grab white shirt, slide arms in. Button it. Slow. Putting the doctor act back on.

Lie there shaking. Sweat turning freezing cold. Feel like vomiting. Disgust hit right in the gut. Thick. Sour.

Put glasses on. Clip silver pen. Grab lab coat, shake it, put it on. Like a guy finishing a shift. Walk to table. Pick up folder.

"Well," Brauberg say. Smooth. Cold as a knife. "I won't see you again."

Try to yell. Nothing. Choking on spit. Want to claw skin off.

Folder tap against his hand. Look down like I'm a bug. "But now, we finally have the name on the file."

Turn. Latch go click. Metal on metal. Door swing wide. Blinding white light. One last time.

Slam shut.

Thud.

Hum come back. Ugly green glow.

Alone.

Fog gone. Disgust burn through the blank parts. Everything come back. Clear. Sharp. Dam break.

Remember the yard now. Dark after Patsy's party. Frozen. Staring at Rob and Sam. Watching them do it. Desperate hunger inside. Couldn't move. Footsteps. Someone catch me. Someone see.

Panic straight to my head. Heavy wrench in hand. Hit them. Over and over. Smash the secret away. Yard door fly open. One of the girls run out. Face twisted. Screaming. Make her shut up. Hands around her neck. Squeeze the life out. Yard go quiet.

Didn't stop there. Horrible rush. Whole house a graveyard. Hidden, rotting bodies. Stench of decay everywhere. Police smashing doors. Flashing blue lights. That one surviving girl. Screaming. Crying in the corner.

Didn't scream. Just sat there. Among the dead. Frozen. Paralyzed. Didn't take me to jail. Brought me here.

Everything in that folder. Brauberg didn't need a confession. Sick little game. Just to make me remember.

Look at empty table. Know what’s happening in hallway. Brauberg walk away. Letters moving on folder. Ink scratching cardboard. Writing my real name. The final seal. Damnation.

Underneath the words Solitary Confinement, the lines fill themselves in.

NAME: Dennis Whyte
CASE TYPE: Multiple Homicide
DISPOSITION: Committed for Life

Lights flicker.

Snap.

Snap.

Solitary Confinement.

Shaking hands.

My face.

Who I am.

The monsters.

The dark.

Forever.

Done for.

Shut out the world,
Desound
Denoise
And let the violins cry.

shut out the world
and leave
no window open:
I'm tired of static
let the silence reign.

shut out the world
in its prophetic glory,
let music cure
the wounds
left by the noise.

shut out the world
let doors be barred,
let rust freeze
all the gates.

let violins cry,
leave darkness be
unbroken
leave ravens guard
the sepulchre
in me.

shut out the world
and leave
the bells all broken
let ruins crumble
under ivy siege.

leave me the books
the thread
the canvas
the stained glass
of night.

leave me the past
I have no care
for future—
shut out the world
and let the violins
cry.

https://open.substack.com/pub/helltorium/p/the-delorme-way?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=257g8a

Chapter Two:

https://open.substack.com/pub/helltorium/p/the-delorme-way-4bc?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=257g8a

Chapter Three:

https://open.substack.com/pub/helltorium/p/the-delorme-way-8d1?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=257g8a

Chapter Four:

https://open.substack.com/pub/helltorium/p/the-delorme-way-989?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=257g8a

Pressure
building up.
noise
pouring into the ears

no filter

deafening.
roaring
a thousand
broken record
insults
into my ears.

murderer.
freak.
loser
what a bloody
pathetic mess
you are.

no filter.

wheezing
biting
dialed to twenty
thirty
forty
hundred.

no filter.

skinless
pressure thumping
against temples.
raw
visceral.
nerve cutting
brain shattering
cold
hatred
poisoning
every word.

what did I
ever do to you?
let me ask
again.
why did you
hate me,
Mother?
your own son.

no filter.

insults.
taunts.
abuse.
harassment.
torture.
day after day
after year
after decade

no damned filter.

the voice.
following me
haunting me
degrading me
offering
no
fucking
mercy.

no filter.

is it really
my fault?
it hurts
to be me.
a motherless
son
with a mother
still living.

no filter.

skinned alive
by each word
tell me,
Clarnell,
was is worth it?

was it?
dead.
long dead.
give me death
by torture
I don't care.

no filter.

vocal chords
cut out
bleeding
didn't help much.
that voice
still echoes
in my brain

Oh Ed.
what a bloody
twisted mess
you are.

I asked for
death by torture

you gave me

life
by
oblivion

Jean's thoughts were racing so loudly they seemed to erase reality. They pivoted him back to the only thing that seemed stable enough—the monks and their singing. But even in those chants the curse crept up like wandering vines. He couldn't remember a thing—except the moment he stepped into the cathedral.

Monks were chanting—as always at this time of day, and in their voices mixing with smoke Jean could find no respite, no solace, no...meaning. He'd come here every day, trying to find God, to pray—but his soul he realized has grown disenchanted, hollow and utterly, inescapably dark.

What if, he thought almost sardonically, there was no holy presence here?

No God, his brain corrected him.

No God.

What if he grew tired of being blamed, cursed and called upon? What if he has left—left them all, the monks, the dying, the doctors and the rotting away? What if he stopped caring a long time ago and sent the pestilence because he honestly didn't know what to do?

But if it was so, did it also mean God was helpless now? And if he was, what would it make them?

We are all doomed.

He didn't realize that last was a moan. A priest hurried towards him, his face a mask of worry.

"Mon fils," he asked, "are you alright?"

Jean looked him square in the eye. The priest was no older than he was, and to his horror, he saw the faintly, sickly roses blooming in the young priest's ribcage.

We are all doomed.

"Yes, mon père," he said, "it's just a headache."

The priest sighed relieved and hurried away. Jean looked at him fighting the desire to tell him—but he knew he'd never be believed. He sank back on the cool floor.

The stone floor was unyielding beneath him, a cold anchor in a world that had ceased to make sense.

"Jean!"

The jagged blade of that voice cut through the drone of the choir. Edouard dropped heavily to his knees beside him, his boots scraping the grit on the stones. He grabbed Jean’s shoulder, his fingers digging into the wool of his cloak with a frantic, trembling force.

"Jean, look at me! Where have you been? Simon has the watchmen looking for you—"

Edouard cut himself off. He reached out, his hand shaking as he gripped Jean’s chin, forcing his face upward into the dim light of the tallow candles. Edouard leaned closer, searching his friend's face for the familiar sharp intelligence, the clinical focus, or even the wild panic of a man catching the fever.

Instead, Edouard recoiled, his hand violently dropping away as if he had touched a corpse. He pushed himself back across the flagstones, his breath hitching in pure, unadulterated horror.

Jean’s eyes were entirely empty.

The gray irises that had spent years scanning medical texts and tracking pulses were wide, flat, and hollow. It wasn't the blank stare of a dead man, nor the glassy film of a plague victim. It was a terrifying absence—as if the soul behind them had vanished entirely, leaving behind two bottomless, dark windows looking out onto nothing at all.

Edouard swallowed hard, forcing his heart back down his throat. He shook his head, a desperate anger rising to master his fear. Exhaustion, he told himself, his hands still trembling as he reached out again. It is just the waking madness of the sleepless. We have all seen it in the wards. The brain simply breaks under the weight of so much rot.

"Come on," Edouard muttered, his voice thick as he lunged forward and hoisted Jean by his armpits. "Up. Get up, Jean. You’re done. I'm taking you home."

Jean offered no resistance. He rose like a straw man, his limbs loose and cooperative in a way that made him feel entirely weightless, as if the hollow space inside his chest had bled out into his bones. His head rolled back against Edouard’s shoulder, his gray, empty eyes fixed on the distant, soaring vaulting of the nave where the smoke gathered.

"The roses," Jean mumbled. His voice was a dry, parched rasp, barely louder than the scrape of their boots on the stone. "The roses... in the ribs. Blooming."

"Quiet now," Edouard grunted, throwing Jean’s heavy arm over his own shoulders to bear the weight. He began dragging him toward the side portal of the cathedral, steering clear of the center aisle where the monks continued their heavy, unbothered chanting.

"Save your breath. The air is foul in here anyway."

"He didn't know what to do," Jean continued to whisper, his breath ghosting against Edouard’s neck, smelling faintly of the vinegar-soaked rag he’d used in the dead-houses. "He sent them because He didn't know... He left us, Edouard. The young one has them. Right in the cage. Three hours... thirty-four minutes..."

"Jean, stop it, for Christ's sake," Edouard hissed, his pace quickening as they hit the heavy oak doors. He pushed through into the damp, decaying autumn air of the alleyway. The twilight was bleeding a bruised purple across the sky, and a wet, biting wind chased dead leaves down the gutter, swirling them into the piles of quicklime.

They never made it to the river. Three alleys away from the cathedral, Jean’s legs simply turned to water. He slipped from Edouard’s shoulder, his knees striking the wet cobbles before collapsing sideways into a pile of rotting autumn leaves.

"Jean!" Edouard dropped beside him, cursing under his breath as he reached out to haul him up again. But the moment his bare palm brushed Jean’s neck, Edouard froze.The skin was like a furnace. The deep, icy emptiness in Jean's eyes had been a mask for a raging, incandescent heat that was now baking through his woolen collar. Edouard pressed two fingers to the hollow beneath Jean's jaw; the pulse was a frantic, erratic drumming, fighting a losing battle against the heat.The fever, Edouard thought, a cold sweat breaking out on his own skin despite the autumn wind. God help us, it’s taken him.With a desperate, adrenaline-fueled strength, Edouard dragged his friend the remaining distance to his lodgings, hauling him up the narrow timber stairs and heaving him onto the narrow cot.For three days, reality ceased to exist inside the small, low-ceilinged room. Edouard did not return to the wards. He ignored Maestro Simon’s orders, ignored the screams from the street below, and stayed. He boiled bitter willow bark, pressed wet cloths to Jean’s burning forehead, and held him down through the violent, shivering fits where Jean thrashed and whispered fragments of old children's songs from Moulins. Edouard watched the groin, the armpits, the neck—bracing himself for the appearance of the black, bulbous swellings. But none came. It was a pure, systemic fire, a mind-breaking delirium that seemed intent on burning Jean out from the inside.

The fire in his blood peaked on the third night. Inside the suffocating dark of his own skull, Jean was no longer in his lodgings. He was pinned to the cold altar of Notre-Dame, the stones beneath him slick with old blood and melted wax.Above him, straddling his chest with a heavy, crushing weight, was the raven-haired woman.Her presence was entirely, terrifyingly palpable. Her skin was a baking, incandescent furnace, radiating a heat that scorched his bare chest. Jean thrashed, his muscles bunching as he tried to throw her off, but she was impossibly heavy, pinning his wrists brutally against the stone. Right in front of his eyes, her bare breasts rose and fell with a slow, heavy rhythm, pressed almost against his face. Jean gasped for air, but her long, sharp nails dug straight into his chest, puncturing the skin, pinning him down into an intimacy forged entirely of despair. She leaned down, her dark hair falling like a shroud around his face, and exhaled a thick, suffocating cloud of rose-scented breath straight into his mouth.

"I've got you, Jeannot..." she whispered, her voice a low, soothing purr.Jean let out a choked, desperate cry, fighting with the primal strength of a dying animal—And the vision violently shattered.The altar dissolved. The raven-haired woman vanished.Jean gasped, his eyes flying open as he hauled a ragged plume of air into his lungs. The heavy weight was still pressing down on his chest, but the dim, gray dawn of his actual room was filtering through the window. The hands pinning his wrists weren't soft or supernatural—they were rough, calloused, and trembling with sheer exhaustion.It was Edouard.Edouard was leaning over the cot, his knees braced against the wooden frame, using his entire body weight to hold Jean down. His face was slick with sweat, his eyes wide and bloodshot with panic.

"...I've got you, Jeannot," Edouard was actually saying, his voice raw, cracking, and stripped of all its usual bravado. "I've got you. Stay still before you break your own damn arms!"

As the words left Edouard's mouth, Jean's mind reeled from the sudden shift. The phrase echoed in his ears, a horrific rhyme to the demon he had just seen. The violent thrashing in his limbs died instantly, leaving him completely limp beneath his friend's grip. He lay there, his chest heaving, his heart hammering a frantic rhythm against his ribs as reality slowly settled back into place.Edouard stayed frozen for a second, watching Jean's face. Seeing the wild, frantic delirium finally fade from his gray eyes, Edouard let out a long, shuddering breath. The tension drained from his shoulders, and he slowly released Jean's wrists, sinking back onto his heels with a weak, relieved laugh.

"By the saints," Edouard whispered, wiping a hand across his soot-stained forehead. "I thought the fever was going to snap your spine. You’ve been screaming about altars and roses for six hours."

He leaned forward again, extending a hand to gently press his palm against Jean’s cheek, checking to see if the flesh-melting heat had finally broken.But as Edouard’s hand neared his face, Jean froze.The nightmare hadn't completely lied. The scent was still there. It wasn't a trick of the fever, and it wasn't the lingering memory of the raven-haired woman. Rising directly from the pores of Edouard’s skin, thick and unmistakable in the damp autumn air of the room, was the cloying sweetness of blooming roses.

just for once.

let my sutures

unwind.

let me be raw,

goddamnit.

let my heartbeat

freeze.

let me bleed

on your stained glass

let my bones

crack.

let me be real.

face it:

I'm not as

easy to read.

let me break

as crystal does

shattering

into dust.

let me be visceral

there's not

much left,

anyway.

let me roam

endlessly

shedding skins

like coats.

let me rip out

my mind

so you could

see it rot.

let me slow down

the breath

and descend

into the void.

let me be ashes

for I am done

with cemetery

grounds.

let me expire

by your hand

a single act of kindness

at a time

Jean pushed blindly through the gray light of the Paris lane, his boots skidding on the lime-washed mud. His chest heaved. He closed his eyes, pressing his palms against his temples until the bone creaked, praying for the textbook reality of his university years to slide back into place.

I am mad, he thought, the words a frantic, jagged rhythm inside his skull. The sleeplessness. The rot of the wards. The brain simply breaks under such weight.

But when he opened his eyes, the world did not mend. It became transparent.

He turned and fled away from the alleyway, his cloak snapping against his heels. He pushed into the Marché-aux-Fleurs, seeking the open air of the Seine to wash the rose-scented nightmare from his throat. The market was a ghost of itself, the flower stalls long abandoned, replaced by raw, unpainted stacks of empty coffins. Near a stone trough, a municipal water-carrier was hoisted under a heavy wooden yoke, sloshing river water onto the stones. Jean lunged past him. As he did, his gaze pierced the man’s wool tunic.

The stomach was already a dark, churning furnace of infection, the blood vessels fracturing, spilling a quiet, internal hemorrhage down toward the bowels. Sunset, the curse whispered in Jean's brain. He will drop the buckets by sunset.

"Stop it!" Jean shrieked aloud, stumbling over a discarded wicker basket. A passerby, his face muffled in a vinegar-soaked rag, veered away from him in terror, pronouncing Jean another casualty of the frenzy.

He was running now, driven by a primal need to outrun his own eyes. He reached the foot of the Pont Notre-Dame, the great wooden bridge spanning the gray, sluggish waters toward the right bank. The bridge was heavily crowded with tenement houses built directly over the water, their timbers groaning in the winter draft. Halfway across the span, the crowd bottlenecked behind a stalled plague-cart. Jean was forced to a halt, his breath freezing in thick, ragged plumes. He pressed his back against the rough wood of a housefront, his hands clawing at the cedar shingles.

Then, his eyes dropped.

A small child, a girl no older than his youngest sister in Moulins, was sitting on a threshold, playing with a piece of frayed rope. Jean tried to look at the sky, at the river, at anything but her. His mind hit that smooth, featureless wall—the remedy was blank, the diagnostic sight absolute.

His eyes locked onto her small frame. The dirty smock she wore dissolved. He saw through the ribs, into the delicate, fragile machinery of her chest. The dark cellular violence had already reached the valves of her heart. It was a beautiful, terrifyingly precise grid of destruction, tracking upward to her throat. The poison was moving with a slow, feline luxury.

Twelve minutes.

The girl looked up, her pale eyes meeting his detached, scalpel-sharp gaze. She gave him a small, innocent blink. Jean let out a parched, bone-hollow sob. He could see the exact second she would stop breathing, he could track the microscopic executioner under her skin, but his fingers, which had mended bone and stitched flesh, were completely useless.

Driven by a blinding wave of horror, he turned back. He could not cross onto the right bank; he could not carry this sight into the wider city. He fought his way back through the bottleneck on the bridge, his mind looping frantically, seeking an absolute darkness that could blind his terrifying eyes.

He ran down the Rue Neuve-Notre-Dame. The street was a narrow throat of timber-framed houses leaning so close overhead they blocked the sky, trapping the heavy stench of quicklime, sulfur, and human waste. Every face he passed was a horror. He saw a baker pulling a handcart; through the man’s leather jerkin, Jean watched the lymph nodes in his groin swelling into black, venomous clusters, the cellular violence accelerating with every stride he took.

An old woman was huddled against the stone foundations of the cathedral wall, her hands feebly outstretched for alms. Jean’s gray eyes locked onto her. His clinical armor was entirely gone, replaced by the unearned, terrifying torrent of sight. The fabric of her woolen shawl withered into a ghostly, shimmering veil. Beneath her skin, he saw her lungs—already pooling with dark, liquefied necrosis that crept upward like ink in water. A microscopic, violent swarm was chewing through her arteries, and a cold, silent clock chimed in Jean’s mind. Three hours. Thirty-four minutes. Her heart will burst before the vespers bell.

"Get away from me," he whispered, though she had not moved. He scrambled backward, his hands slick with the filth of the gutter.

He threw his weight against the massive, familiar shadow of the great cathedral doors, seeking an sanctuary, an altar, anywhere the transparent dead could not follow.

God was silent that day. There was no usual tremor upon entering, no peace under the cool vaults, no solace in the dimmed wax flames. No escape. Jean stood there, trying to pray, but his mind was beating madly against his heart, and even the singing had no power over a growing sense of dread.

Refugium meum tu es, Domine...

Yet, there was no refuge. The world was crumbling around him, and the smell of roses followed his every thought—stifling, suffocating, clouding his mind. He wanted to find a priest, to confess, to repent and ask for forgiveness, to be absolved of the sinful thoughts of returning there. He wanted to find the raven-haired woman and take her again, drag her to the altar of Notre Dame and ride her until the numbness ruled him. And then, when he was finally numb, crucify her—so his life might return to its normal state, stripped of this devilish knowledge of the plague, forged in intimacy and despair.

Refugium meum... tu es, Domine...

He kept repeating it until he stopped believing. Nothing made sense anymore. The plague would rage, he thought, and I shall be her messenger, her John the Baptist—unable to halt her, incapable of providing a cure. She would rage, reaping souls in her danse macabre, laughing mockingly at him, the arrogant fool who dared lie with her rose-scented daughter amidst the desolation and finality.

Oh Jeannot, Jeannot,

Mon paure nigaud,

T’en croyais triquar

La Mort,

Te v’là sa proye...*

He heard the canticle in his mind, like the songs he heard during his childhood years in Moulins. Those songs had been harmless children's play. This one was a cold, calculated taunt.

He fell to his knees, tears streaming down cheeks hollowed by insomnia, exhaustion, and mental self-flagellation. That was where Edouard found him, crouched on the damp stone.

------------------------------

* Oh Jeannot Jeannot

You foolish boy,

You thought you'd

Outsmart Death

But you fell first

Don't look away.

Just tiny step closer

look all you want

have you never seen

the broken?

I'm standing here

right on the brink

my gaze is blank

and soul has left

the building.

you wanted drive

you came

you saw

the unforgiven.

I'm standing here

right on the brink

my gaze is blank

and soul has left

the building.

between the sheets,

between emotions

I have gone numb

to lights and faces.

I'm standing here

right on the brink

my gaze is blank

and soul has left

the building.

the show is off

the makeup's flaking

the voice gone sore

but I'm still singing.

I'm standing here

right on the brink

my gaze is blank

and soul has left

the building.

so witness me

an angel falling,

the mind in chains,

the arrows soaring.

I'm standing here

right on the brink

my gaze is blank

and soul has left

the building.

the blood's gone cold

the sweat is blinding

the stage is dark

but I'm

still

lying.

"It is a curious paradox of our modern age that while a gentleman may successfully govern a sprawling colonial estate or command a regiment of Her Majesty’s finest, he remains entirely powerless against a three-pound kitten with a preference for his favorite velvet armchair."

While common observers dismiss the cat as a mere "brainless dandy" prone to "questionable forms of dissipation," the discerning man knows the feline possesses a subtle intellect far superior to the slavish, cheap loyalty of a dog. To invite a cat into one’s home is not to adopt a pet, but to accept a permanent, silent critic of one's own character and household management. In fact, a householder's true standing is often reflected directly by the sleekness and condition of his cat.

I. ON THE SELECTION OF THE BEAST

* The Utility Trap: While most seek a "mouser" for the barn, the gentleman seeks a "favorite" for the parlor.

* Avoid the Aristocracy: Elegant Persians and Siamese are fashionable, but the common "yard cat" possesses a robust constitution and a more cynical eye.

* The Color Rule: Black cats complement evening dress; orange cats will ruin a tweed waistcoat in under four seconds.

* The Moral Gaze: If the animal looks at you with adoration, it is a dog in disguise; if it looks at you with quiet contempt, you have found your master.

II. DOMESTIC BOUNDARIES (AND THEIR INEVITABLE COLLAPSE)

* The Library Illusion: Declare the library a "Feline-Free Sanctuary" on Monday; by Wednesday, accept your new role as the cat’s unpaid Under-Librarian.

* The Hearth Supremacy: The finest armchair in the smoking room no longer belongs to you; it belongs to the creature currently sleeping in it.

* Inkwell Defense: Keep all inkwells firmly stoppered, unless you fancy your first-edition Dickens decorated with midnight-black paw prints.

* Servant Management: Instruct the staff that the cat’s needs are a priority, for even the poor will stroll with tails confidently raised when properly attended.

III. THE DIET OF THE REFINED COMPANION

* The Milk Myth: A saucer of rich cream is a delightful romantic notion that results in a highly unromantic cleanup for the scullery maid. Full-cream milk is often preferred over skim for nutritional value.

* The Butcher's Tax: One may hire specialized "cat meat men" to deliver choice mutton. However, your feline may still reject expensive liver in favor of stolen fish from your own breakfast plate.

* Hydration Protocol: Provide a crystal bowl of fresh water, changed frequently, to purify the blood.

* Table Etiquette: During formal dinners, pretend you do not see the yellow eyes staring at your mutton from beneath the sideboard.

IV. DEPORTMENT AND SOCIAL RUIN

* The Lap Trap: If the cat settles upon your knee during an important meeting, you are legally and morally paralyzed until the creature grants you a pardon.

* The Guest Warning: Inform visitors that your feline companion does not tolerate small children, loud laughter, or Americans.

* Handling Casualties: When the cat deposits a dead rat upon the rug, view it as a tax assessment of your estate rather than a mess.

* The Affection Cap: Limit your petting to three strokes exactly; a fourth stroke is viewed by the feline as a declaration of war.

------------------------------

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Sir,

I followed your advice and allowed my new feline, "Jim," to occupy my study. He has since listed himself in the local census as a "lodger" with the occupation of "mouse-catcher, worker on his own account." I now find myself in the awkward position of having to charge my own pet rent.

— A Distressed Homeowner in Kensington

Sir,

Is there no penalty for the scientist who suggests electrical stimulation of a deceased feline? I find the notion that a dead cat might be made to "swear and spit" via electricity to be a most terrible fact that should be kept from wicked small-boys at all costs!

— Prof. Wilder’s Concerned Neighbor

NOTICES FOR THE DISCERNING GENTLEMAN

* Spratt’s Feline Biscuits: Relished by the most discriminating parlor cats when soaked in stock.

* Cough Pills for Pets: A wide variety of health remedies are now available for the gentleman whose companion has developed a seasonal chill.

* The Cat Meat Man: Inquire at your local butcher for the daily rounds of the specialized meat seller to ensure your companion’s tails remain "confidently raised".

EDITOR'S NOTE

This week’s column was transcribed under conditions of extreme physical duress by Mr. M. Lawrence. Finding himself entirely evicted from his study by a newly arrived and thoroughly tyrannical kitten, Mr. Lawrence has composed these final lines while holding a most uncomfortable pose as a set of sapient pillows. He remains quite still, lest any sudden movement or display of human dignity should disturb the royal slumber of the usurper currently nested upon his lumbar region.

The rain did not cleanse Paris; it only made the city bleed.

Jean raced through the downpour, his heavy scholar’s robes soaked through, clinging to his shins like lead weights. The autumn wind howled down the narrow, twisting alleys, but it could not disperse the suffocating stench that rolled off the cobblestones—a foul, sweet odor of rotting meat and vinegar. From behind shuttered windows and cracked doorways came a terrifying chorus: the low, rhythmic groaning of men burning with fever, the wet, rattling gasps of those suffocating on their own fluids, and the occasional, piercing shriek of a sudden realization of death. He kept his eyes locked straight ahead, his boots splashing through pools of lime-washed mud and stagnant water, running until his lungs burned.

He didn't stop until he reached a small, sagging timber house squeezed between a tanner's shop and a bakery on the Rue Saint-Denis. The door was unlatched, swinging slightly on its rusted hinges in the wind. This had been the home of Maman Agathe, a widow who had kept a small fruit stall and had taken pity on Jean a decade ago when he was nothing but a starving, penniless student. She had slipped him bruised apples and stale bread, calling him her clever boy.

Jean pushed the door open and stepped into the dim interior. The hearth was cold.

"Agathe?" he called out, his voice shaking.

A weak, raspy breath answered from the corner. Jean hurried to the pallet bed. The moment his eyes adjusted to the shadows, a cold fist squeezed his heart. She was past helping. The skin of her face was already turning a mottled, bruised purple, and her breathing was a shallow, agonizing rattle. The plague had already claimed her lungs. Yet, when Jean knelt beside her, his knees sinking into the damp straw, her cloudy eyes focused on his face.

A frail, trembling hand rose, her fingers blackened at the tips, brushing against his wet cheek.

"You're a miracle, Jeannot," she whispered, her voice barely a thread of wind. "A true miracle... to come for an old woman."

Jean felt a lump rise in his throat, a dangerous surge of emotion that defied all his academic training. He forced his hands to remain steady as he reached into his leather satchel, pulling out clean linen strips. He knew the cloth was useless. He knew there was no medicine in the world that could reverse the rot in her chest. But he couldn't leave her to die like an animal in the dark.

"Not a miracle, Maman Agathe," he whispered softly, gently wrapping the clean white linen around her blistered wrists, wiping the cold sweat from her brow. "A doctor."

He stayed by her side in the freezing dark, holding her hand, whispering quiet words of comfort until the fever finally granted her a merciful, heavy sleep. As soon as her breathing stabilized into the deep, unresponsive slumber that preceded the end, Jean gently laid her hand down, picked up his satchel, and left as soon as she was asleep. His chest ached with a hollow, crushing weight.

He moved blindly down the next alley, seeking another door, another soul to fight for, until he stopped before a house that made him pause.

The air inside the small chamber was a wall of heat. After the freezing, lime-washed mud of the Paris alleyways, the room felt like a different world entirely. It was impeccably tidy—the small table scrubbed clean, the linens pulled taut across the mattress, not a speck of ash on the hearth. But what struck Jean first, making his hyper-sensitive nerves twitch, was the smell. It was an aggressive, suffocating flood of roses. It was too thick, too sweet, masking the faint, sour vinegar on his own leather coat like a heavy shroud.

She stood near the washstand, a solitary silhouette against the single tallow candle that drowned in its own melting grease. She did not look like the others he had treated today. There was no gray exhaustion in her face, no panic in her eyes.

"Monsieur le médecin," she murmured, her voice a low, fluid thing that seemed to quiet the distant, rhythmic tolling of the plague bells outside. "You came."

Jean did not speak. His gray eyes, usually as cold and detached as a scalpel, scanned her with a rigid, professional intensity. His mind was already looping, hyper-focused on the invisible enemy killing the city. He didn't want conversation; he wanted to find the mark.

"Where is it?" he asked, his voice stiff with a physician's armor.

She smiled—a slow, sharp expression that made his pulse hitch—and stepped closer. The cloying scent of roses tightened around his throat. Without a word, she began to unlace her bodice, letting the heavy fabric slip from her shoulders. Piece by piece, her clothes pooled at her feet on the clean floorboards, completely disarming him. Her nakedness wasn't a submission; it was a challenge. She was entirely unblemished, her skin pale and perfect, an impossibility in a city of rotting flesh.

"Here," she whispered, her breath warm against his cheek as she guided his hand toward her collarbone, sliding his fingers down. "A lump. Right in the breast."

Jean’s fingers pressed into her skin. It was warm, but beneath the smooth surface, there was nothing. No swelling, no hard nodule, no heat of infection. He frowned, his professional pride instantly flared by the anomaly. Before he could question her, she stepped back onto the bed, parting her legs wide.

"And another," she breathed, gesturing down. "A tenderness. Like the start of a boil. On my inner thigh."

Jean knelt at the edge of the mattress, his gray eyes locking onto her inner thigh with obsessive, clinical focus. He searched for the telltale dark bruising of the pestilence, his fingers tracing the smooth skin, finding only flawless warmth. He was entirely caught in the riddle, staring intensely at her thigh, his brain desperately trying to force the medical reality to match his textbooks.

Suddenly, her fingers tangled firmly into his hair.

With a sharp, deliberate yank, she pulled his head forward and down, burying his face directly between her legs. The aggressive scent of roses hit his mouth and nose with a dizzying, overwhelming force. An old saying from his university days, muttered by black-cloaked instructors over open cadavers, flared in his hyper-focused mind: Death's own roses smell sweetest.

She looked down at him, her grip unyielding, completely shattering his clinical armor.

"You can't feel it?" she asked, her voice half-mocking, entirely playing with his desperation. "But you're not feeling it. I would have known..." She leaned over him slightly, laughing softly against the back of his neck. "Takes a woman, you know."

The boundary between a medical examination and a primal, suffocating desire dissolved completely in the dark. When he took her, it was not out of tenderness, but a desperate, frantic attempt to conquer the mystery she presented.

Yet she knew precisely how to command his worship. In the shifting shadows, he surrendered to her whims like a helpless puppet, grateful merely for the cold horror of her touch—a zealot offering his bare flesh to the lash, giving up his soul to a faceless god.

Afterward, the heat in the room turned damp. The heavy velvet drapes kept out the midnight air, locking in the smell of sweat, tangled linen, and that relentless, aggressive scent of roses. It felt less like a bedroom now and more like a fever-ward.

Jean lay staring at the low timber beams of the ceiling. His skin was slick, cooled by a sudden draft that filtered through the floorboards, carrying the faint, vinegar-sharp tang of the plague-bleach he had washed his hands in that morning. The physical release had offered no real escape; instead, the silence that followed only allowed the ghosts of the day to crowd back into his mind. He could still feel the phantom pulse of a dying boy’s wrist against his thumb. His chest tightened with that familiar, obsessive knot—the frantic, looping thoughts of a man who could not switch off his own brain.

Beside him, the sheets rustled. She shifted, entirely unbothered by the suffocating gravity of the room. She moved with a slow, feline luxury, her skin pale against the shadowed bedding, completely untouched by the gray exhaustion that ruined his own face.

She leaned up on one elbow, looking down at him.

"I never knew your lot, doctors, were that good with women," she said with a smile that could cut you apart and leave you breathless.

Jean looked at her, rising up from the bed. The failure of the morning’s rounds pressed like lead behind his eyes.

"Evidemment," he said bitterly. "I am not that good."

"Why?" she asked innocently, stretching in front of him. Beckoning.

"Were I that good, I'd know how to help the dying," he said, the words coming out sharp, driven by the cold obsession that never let him sleep. "I'd give anything to know."

"Anything?" Her eyes glinted in the dimness, catching the dying candlelight. "You could sell your soul for... knowledge?"

She sounded incredulous, almost amused. Jean’s brow furrowed. The warmth of the room seemed to drop away. His gray eyes became cold, detached as a scalpel. He didn't see a woman anymore; he saw his own failure.

"It's my job," he said, his voice tightening with a sudden, rigid haughtiness. "I should know. Any doctor would do that to help his patients."

"But the people die, mon cher," she said, her voice dropping to a low, rhythmic purr. "Every day, plague or not. You can't beat death, can you?"

"I can halt it. I could... if I only knew."

The candle flame stopped flickering. The silence in the room became absolute, a dead weight pressing against his ears.

"Would you really trade your soul's freedom for that knowledge?"

Jean let out a long, slow sigh. The pride went out of him, leaving only a hollow frame. When he spoke, his voice was parched, dry, bone-hollow.

"Yes."

The word fell like a guillotine blade.

She smiled.

"I knew you would," she said, and catching his hand, placed it on her breast.

"Treat me again, monsieur," she laughed.

The sound was low and dark, closing over his head like water. And, as before, he couldn't defy her.

Jean opened his eyes to a gray, freezing light.

The heat was gone. The cloying, aggressive scent of roses had vanished entirely, replaced by the sharp, stinging stench of rotting wood, stale urine, and cold damp. He was shivering, his skin goose-pimpled against the coarse, stiff fabric beneath him.

He bolted upright, his heart hammering against his ribs. The bed was not the clean, tautly made mattress from the night before. The sheets beneath him were frayed, yellowed with age, and mapped with ancient, greasy stains. The heavy velvet drapes were gone; in their place hung rotting rags of burlap, letting in a sharp, drafty wind from the derelict alleyway outside.

There was no woman. The washstand was empty, covered in a thick layer of undisturbed, gray dust. A broken chair lay on its side in the corner. The room had clearly been abandoned for years.

Jean scrambled off the mattress, his breath catching in his throat as his boots hit the rotting floorboards. "Mademoiselle?" he called out, but his voice sounded thin, rattling hollowly off the bare stone walls.

He looked down at his hands, expecting to find the gray, dark blemishes of the pestilence. He felt his own pulse—it was steady, impossibly calm, beating with a terrifying, rhythmic permanence. He felt no fatigue. The leaden ache behind his eyes from months of sleepless rounds was completely gone. He felt... hollowed out. Crystallized.

Panic driving him, he grabbed his leather coat from the floor and burst through the decaying door frame, stumbling out into the gray light of the Paris street.

The morning air smelled of quicklime and sulfur. A cart filled with tangled, pale limbs was already groaning down the mud-slick lane. Jean stopped, his breath freezing in his chest as the driver walked past him.

Suddenly, Jean’s mind exploded with a cold, unearned torrent of information.

He didn't just see the driver; he saw through him. Without wanting to, his eyes locked onto the man's chest. The fabric of the wool tunic seemed to dissolve into a transparent, ghostly shimmer. Jean could see the lungs underneath, blackening from the edges inward, the tissue liquefying under a microscopic swarm of dark, cellular violence. He saw the exact path the poison was taking through the bloodstream, tracking the precise hour and minute the man’s heart would give out.

He looked at a woman weeping on a doorstep. Her skin looked normal, but Jean’s vision peeled back her flesh like a phantom scalpel. He saw the swelling nodes deep within her groin, the blood vessels ready to burst under the pressure of the plague. He knew, with absolute, cosmic certainty, the exact biological mechanism of the disease. He understood the fluid dynamics of the contagion, the hidden pathways of its transmission, and the impenetrable defensive wall that had suddenly formed around his own cells, granting him absolute, permanent immunity.

He possessed the ultimate knowledge of the Black Death.

Frantic, driven by a sudden surge of professional pride, Jean rushed toward the weeping woman. "Listen to me," he gasped, reaching down to press his fingers against her throat, his mind rapidly calculating how to halt the progression he saw inside her. "I know what it is. I see where it hides."

But as his fingers touched her skin, the cosmic knowledge in his brain went dead.

He saw the disease with perfect clarity, but when he tried to formulate a cure, his mind hit a smooth, featureless wall. He knew how it killed, but the curse allowed him no way to stop it. He had no remedy, no treatment, no voice to guide them out of the dark. He was a passive observer, granted absolute immortality and immunity, but cursed with zero ability to save a single soul.

He was just a mirror reflecting their inescapable doom.