Chapter Text
The cold wind bites at his skin even past his mask and clothing. It chills him entirely and unsympathetically as Ragar finds a mediocre ledge to stand under in a futile attempt at staying somewhat dry in the downpour. Rain drips from the ends of his hair and long black, Lukedonian coat. He crouches down, sitting on his haunches, and wraps his arms around each other on his knees. Sighing, he lowers his head until his chin rests on his damp sleeves. Huddled against the dingy brick wall, he stares silently into the distance, wondering and wondering.
People pass him without a glance, scurrying hurriedly, their shoes splashing in rainwater that reflects the dark, gray sky. Cars rumble against the road, going this way and that way, uninspiring to Ragar’s search.
He is lost. Penniless in a foreign land with foreign people, and he does not even know if he is any closer to finding Frankenstein — his friend, his myth, memories and promises still so lucid to him, as if to haunt him.
His listless, focus-less gaze is interrupted by a looming shadow completely encompassing his thin, curled up form. When Ragar looks up, curious but no more enthusiastic, a broad, aged gentleman is smiling down at him. In his hand is an umbrella, angled so that it provides Ragar with a momentary escape from the weather. The man’s pristine beige suit becomes spotted with rain. “Are you alright?” he asks.
Ragar watches him for a second, then nods. “I am alright.”
“You look like you’ve been out here for a while. Are you waiting for someone?”
Ragar considers this, and he asks himself the same question. He asks it time and time again. He has spent so long waiting. He stands then, smoothly and elegantly, causing the man to step back, surprise momentarily crossing his face at the reveal of Ragar’s height. “No, I am not waiting,” he says.
The man smiles up at him, friendly. “Then would you care to get out of the rain with me?”
That night, the man ushers Ragar into his glossy black limousine, and they are driven to a house upon a hill with lawns of green grass and even more green notes.
That night, the man ushers Ragar into his bedroom.
That night, the man strips him down, touches him in places Ragar has never revealed to anyone before, and makes him feel strange things in strange places.
That morning, Ragar collects a healthy stack of cash amounting to $1,200 from him.
The following week, they see each other again.
Ragar pulls out a little black notebook from the pocket of his black leather bomber jacket and thumbs through the pages, numerous names, numbers, and addresses flickering in his vision until he finds the right client. Reminding himself of the street of their meeting place, he briskly walks away.
The clients he entertains for hefty hourly rates are old conservative types, comfortable in their wealth but desperate for the fantasy of romance and class.
Ragar’s face and name are passed around in hushed, shadowed conversations.
He arrives at the sunbathed, picket-fenced home of a Mr. Montgomery. The front door is already unlocked when he approaches, and he steps inside.
In the streaming light before his window, laid out like dramatic tableau, is the body of a silver-haired man. His gray eyes are open wide, unblinking and unseeing. Blood trails from his lips, down his face, and onto the heavy wooden dining table. White porcelain lies like still life shattered on the floor, food and coffee spilled over, mixing in with the blood that drips over the edge of the table and the chair.
Slowly, Ragar walks up the man. He has been stabbed through in the back numerous times, but looking around, Ragar spots no possible murder weapon that would cause such wounds. He carefully scrutinizes the corpse, eyes narrowed with intensity.
The blood is made even more graphic and striking by the whiteness of the man’s expensive suit. Still clutched in his stiff fingers are a crumpled napkin.
Ragar stills. Tentatively, he reaches out and brushes the napkin with the tips of his fingers. It is blackened at the edges, and it flakes away and disintegrates at his touch. Ragar knows this is not the result of mere burning. It is rot, and a rot he personally knows.
He slips the napkin from the dead man’s hand, tucks it into his pocket, and walks away.