Spoilers:
Content Rating: 12
Type: Crossover
Characters: Nicholas Stone
Summary: Nicholas Stone is fascinated by death and this is his exploration of it.

Content warning: contains graphic descriptions of violence and themes some readers may find disturbing.
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Stepping around the table with a casual gait that revealed the euphoria encroaching upon him, Nicholas Stone marvelled at his surroundings. Pristine white tiles covered all three dimensions of the room. Medical equipment lay on work surfaces and in trays that were as sterile as anything ever got. The room was, in NicholasÂ’ mind, pure. It was the physical manifestation of his mental conception of the word, pure. And that instilled in him a feeling that he felt compelled to share.

“You have no idea how happy this makes me,” he said softly, glancing at the window in the cold metal door across the room. He’d been caught talking while he worked, and his boss, a stuck up old man who was so far past retiring age he could well be in this room soon, had told him that he should stop it, or maybe see a counsellor. Nicholas didn’t see why talking to the people he worked with was such a bad thing. Sure, maybe he worked a little bit slower if he took the time to chat with them, but, as the same boss had told him many times, “this job is about customer satisfaction, sonny.”

So now he talked to the people who came into his office, but he made sure no-one was around to hear him. He knew what they thought of him. They thought he was strange. That he was a freak of nature, born different. That wasnÂ’t true though. He wasnÂ’t born different, he was made different. Taking off one of his latex gloves, which gave a loud snap as he did so, he reached his hand into his trousers and adjusted his penis so that it was flat against his belly. He often got an erection when he worked and this too had been noticed, much to the disgust of his small-minded colleagues. Now, like his talking, he just made sure they didnÂ’t catch it.

“They’re stuck in society’s little web, that’s right, and they will never understand me. I talk to you, and you’ll never answer me, but who are they to say you don’t understand me?”

Reaching over to a workstation behind him, he adjusted the controls on what was essentially a big barrel of chemicals. Out of the barrel came a pipe which wound its way across the room and into the carotid artery of the body lying on the table in front of Nicholas. A young woman of about 20 years old, she had died of heart failure brought on by a rare heart disease. Her body, now pale and hard, looked to Nicholas like an ivory statue. When he reached over and stroked her breasts though, the skin was stiff like new leather, not smooth as polished ivory would be. Realising that his hand was devoid of a glove, he snapped it back and quickly lined his hand in latex, as it should have been all along.

Leaning down so his head was close to the dead girlÂ’s face, he took a large breath of air, letting it pass over through his mouth, cooling his tongue as it went and making the hairs lining his nasal cavities tingle a little. Most people found the smell of dead flesh abhorrent, especially the smell of dead human flesh. Nicholas, his fascination with death ruling his life, found it deeply invigorating. The smell lit up his senses unlike no other smell he had ever experienced. His olfactory senses were dazzled by it, and as this breath faded away and the next came, his mind was racing through his ideas and conceptualisations of what death was. Staying very close to the cold dead face on the table, he spoke.

“I don’t know whether you can hear me, I don’t know what happens when a person dies. But I want to find out. Ever since… ever since that day, death has had a grip on me, and I want to know why. I want to know what death is and I’m going to find out, whatever I have to do to,” he said, as his eyes glazed over and lightly, ever so lightly, he kissed the dead girl on the cheek.

***

A few days later and he had decided what the next step in his quest for understanding and mastery of death was. Standing in the shade of a large oak tree, Nicholas rubbed his back against the tree, using the rough, sharp edges of the bark to eradicate an itch that had taken over his back, lighting a fire from the small of his back all the way up to his shoulder blades.

Sighing as the scratching relieved the itch, Nicholas reached into the pocket of his chino trousers and pulled out a pair of dark, oversized sunglasses. Despite the fact that most people who knew him for any length of time came to think he was extremely weird, his outside appearance hid his stranger aspects and to the untrained eye, he was a relatively normal looking man of thirty. Average height, at 5’9”, he was skinny, with dark hair that sat neatly on his head despite the fact that he never really attempted to make it do so. His face, unexceptional for the most part, with a steeply angled nose and a small, pursed mouth, was lit up by his eyes, which burned with a fiery intelligence.

Letting his eyes drift over his surroundings, he slipped both hands into his pockets in an effort to look as carefree as possible. The tree he was standing under was in the middle of a patch of green grass planted in the middle of a suburban neighbourhood. All around the green stood identical, mass produced houses that brought a sour taste into NicholasÂ’ mouth when he thought about how uniform they were. I might be weird, he thought, but IÂ’m different, unique.

And unique he definitely was. As an old car rumbled down the street, Nicholas gazed intently at the driver. An old woman, maybe 70 years old, she had large glasses with thick lenses perched on the end of her nose. In the back seat of the car, shopping bags were piled up, more than Nicholas could carry on his own, let alone a little old woman. As the car pulled into the drive and came to a stop with a bump against the garage door, Nicholas stepped onto the pavement and walked towards the house where the old woman was just opening the door. Returning to her car, the woman picked up some of the shopping; too much for her to handle. As she dropped some of it, Nicholas saw his chance and seized it.

“Oops, here, let me help you,” he said softly, kneeling down to pick up one of the bags for her. Smiling, he met her eye.

“Thank you, that’s very kind of you,” she said, smiling back. Standing up with some of the bags, she shut the car door while Nicholas picked up the remaining bags and followed her to the door of the house. “That’s excellent, just put the bags down here inside the door,” she said, standing next to the door. She was old, but she obviously wasn’t stupid.

Nicholas did as she said, stepping just inside the door to do so. As he stood back up to his full height he pushed her back, putting his foot behind her ankle as he did so, forcing her to the ground. Quickly spinning round he slammed the door shut with a bang that rattled his ear drums. He did not want anyone to see what was about to happen. Pulling a length of cloth out of his pocket he walked over to the now terrified old woman and grabbed her by the hair. As he got close to her to tie the cloth round her head in a gag, he could smell, almost taste the musty smell of an old person with deteriorating health. With the gag firmly in place, he went through the house closing curtains. His experiment was too important to be seen. ‘Normal’ people certainly wouldn’t understand what he was trying to do.

Two hours later, in the darkened living room, tormentor and tormented sat opposite each other, silently watching the others movements. A single slither of bright light poured in through a crack in the curtains, illuminating the fear in the old womanÂ’s eyes. Her hands and feet were bound together and then tied to the chair, painfully tight.

The smell of urine permeated the room, the woman’s bladder having given up due to a combination of fear, old age and discounted tea for pensioners in the supermarket café. Sitting opposite her on an identical chair that creaked loudly every time he moved, Nicholas offered the glass of water in his hand to her. Shaking her head violently, repulsed by the very presence of his hand, she signalled her rejection.

“You should drink. Thirst is a terrible ailment,” he said softly in a voice that belied his intentions. Struggling against the gag, his victim tried to speak, only for her efforts to be garbled by the cloth in her mouth. Reaching over, Nicholas removed it.

“What on God’s earth do you care about my ailments, you wicked, wicked man,” she said with a sharpness in her voice that only a former school mistress could muster.

“I don’t wish for you to suffer, that’s not why I’m here,” he replied, pulling his chair closer. So close, she could feel his breath on her face.

“I don’t believe you. I’m suffering already,”

“I didn’t say you wouldn’t suffer, only that I didn’t wish it,” he said, keeping his voice soft and tone flat. His eyes betrayed the elation he felt though, glittering in the darkness. Standing up, he went to the window and peered through the gap in the curtains as a car ambled by too slowly for his comfort.

“Wha-what do you mean? What do you want with me?” asked the old woman, fear cracking her voice like an egg. Nicholas pulled the curtain shut properly, eliminating the last vestige of light in the room. When he sat down, he stroked a hand through the woman’s hair, causing revulsion to ripple through her.

“When I was eight years old, my Father was a priest at a prominent church. One night, I hid in the confession box to surprise him. It was me who got the surprise. Three men burst in and demanded that he give them the church funds.

“When he refused, they bashed in his skull and left empty handed. At eight years old, I sat at the altar cradling my Father’s body while his blood soaked my clothes,” Nicholas said. Tears filled his eyes, some of them falling onto his cheeks and forming tiny rivulets.

“Since then, death has fascinated me. I want to master it, understand it. I thought I could do it by studying dead bodies. It didn’t work,” he continued as the old woman stared at him in shock. “To master death I must control it. I must cause it. I’m going to kill you and by doing so I will gain a greater understanding of what death is,” he finished. The old woman gasped, her bladder letting go of its contents again.

“No, no, you can’t do that,” she exclaimed desperately, realising that he was deadly serious.

Reaching onto the floor, he picked up the gag and reapplied it, taking care to be gentle. Thoughts were racing through his head now as the moment he had been building to approached. What would the death be like? Would he sense her die? Would she be as beautiful in death as the other bodies he had seen? He had a million questions, but he would have the answers soon.

Standing, he dropped a hand to his pocket and pulled out a fine metal wire that had loops tied into it at either end. Pulling it tight between his hands, he stepped behind the old woman. Her face was as white as a sheet, a face of pure desperation.

Wrapping the wire around her neck, Nicholas pulled back, choking her. She instinctively struggled against it, but as she weakened he let go and allowed her to catch her breath. Nicholas could control whether this woman lived or died. He had the power of a god. Taking in a breath, his mind and lungs inflated together, his lungs filled with air, his mind filled with possibilities. As he let the air go, he pulled back on the wire again. This time the gag fell free from the old womanÂ’s mouth and the ability to make noise made her thrash even harder than before. As the life faded from her, Nicholas thought to himself that she looked rather like a fish out of water, thrashing about trying to get air. Standing in the same spot thinking, he held on long after she had died.

When he removed the wire, blood trickled down her neck until he wiped it away with a tissue. Before he left, he carried her upstairs, bathed her and put her to bed. As he stepped out of the door into the darkened street, he cried. Tears of happiness.

Nicholas was euphoric.

~

© Matthew Smith, 2004