Flush
The journey to town didn’t feel long on horseback. The trees on either side were dark and unfamiliar, but he had nothing bandits would want so he rode with confidence.
Victor left his horse in the public stables and headed straight for the tavern, borrowed lantern in hand.
To his surprise, both Magda and Elias weren’t working this night. Instead, there was an older man at the counter. He took the lantern from Victor and pointed him to the edge of town where Elias lived instead.
Victor suppressed a shiver and left quickly.
The home was a bit far from the rest of the town, on a hill thick with trees.
It was a cottage, unlike the kind you would find in the city, and it was clear that Elias’s family was blessed.
The walls were thick lumber; their door had real glass.
There was a swing, handmade and well loved, in the tree by the front door.
He placed the wine and note by the front door and walked into the thick of the trees. He slipped a few stones into his warm wool pocket and climbed until he could barely see through the branches. Then he tossed the stones at the door until it opened.
An older woman who looked so much like Magda that it threatened to push Victor into paralyzing guilt opened the door. She looked around, curious, her eyes roving over his hiding place without recognition before she noticed the wine.
She picked it up with a small frown, pulling up the note. Then disappeared back into the house.
Victor could hear laughter and cheer from the cabin. Elias’s wonderous voice almost too gentle among the sounds of the rest of his family. But Victor could still hear him.
Victor climbed into his hiding place in the trees to wait. After a few frigid and fruitless hours again, he got lucky.
Elias himself walked outside to sit on the swing. He had Victor’s wine in one hand, and the other clutched the blanket he’d wrapped around his shoulders.
He sat down heavily and looked at the letter Victor had written. Victor’s eyes roamed him hungrily. His cheeks were flushed and his eyes looked unsteady. The letter, he noticed, was upside down. Elias couldn’t read!
Elias pressed the small paper to his heart and looked up toward the sky. Victor froze, expecting to be seen. But Elias was staring out at the moon.
He took a swig of the wine and placed the bottle on the ground and started to swing.
He looked happy, but Victor could already tell he was slipping.
His hands grew heavy on the ropes and his kicking, uncoordinated.
Elias’s head lolled on his neck until he drifted to a slow stop and slumped over onto the grass.
The lights in the house had dimmed to darkness long moments before Elias had come out in the first place. The family was probably asleep.
Victor took his chance and slithered down the tree. He sprinted across the distance between the wood and the house. His arm wound itself beneath Elias’s shoulders, and like he’d hoped, the man was slight and easy to lift.
Elias—a patient, like any other—was deadweight. His breath was sweet and lemony on the side of Victor’s face. Victor dragged him to the horse, who whickered in curiosity at her newest rider.
Victor changed into his colorful spare cloak and covered his patient with his black one, seating him like an intoxicated friend in front of him. He wrapped a rope around their waists, tying them together, so he didn’t have to mind his patient’s balance as they rode.
Victor guided the horse slowly from the house and through the wood until they were walking the perimeter of town.
The streets were clear on account of the late hour, but Victor wasn’t so foolish as to walk down the main road with his passenger.
Instead, he followed beside the road, just out of sight, until he made it to the wilderness. Then he broke out in a gallop.
He brought his patient straight to the house and dropped his body on the floor in the foyer to wait while he returned the horse.
The patient was breathing shallowly, face ruddy and skin hot, when Victor returned. He rushed the patient downstairs and to his table.
This man was easier than the drunk, even more slight than him. His wrists were almost too thin for the restraints, but he wasn’t moving even a little, which was so much more convenient.
Victor started him on saline to flush the sugar from him as best he could.
Watched his heart beat quickly to metabolize it.
The patient’s eyes didn’t move beneath his eyelids, but he burned hot.
A fever like this felt so much like the opposite of death.
Lips and cheeks flush with blood, breath coming fast, chest pounding. Ripe.
Victor stayed awake the whole night to tend to him, removed buckets and buckets of waste liquid and restarted his heart just the once before the patient’s sugar sickness faded to something more manageable.
The man could breathe without the machine, but Victor couldn’t chance it. He waited until the patient’s skin sank to a more normal temperature and his palpitations decreased.
This body didn’t respond to any external stimuli, gentle or vicious.
It didn’t sigh when Victor brushed a hand through his hair; it didn’t flinch when Victor pushed in a needle; it didn’t scream when he made his first shallow cut around the joint of his arm or groan in agony when he sewed each side back together.
The flesh didn’t jump beneath his blade in reflex when he sliced across private places: the hollow of the groin, the back of a knee, the inside of an elbow, between toes.
He sliced those delicate hands that had never seen labor and stitched them with fine thread, turning this homespun tapestry into a patchwork quilt of all the same material.
He stole Elias’s beauty with sure gestures, carving around his eyes, nose, and mouth, around his ears and down his neck. Packing his wounds with yarrow to stop the bleeding.
And still the patient lay there, death-like but breathing.
When the sun went down, Victor washed the yarrow from the body, traced his stitches in iodine, refilled the saline tank, then left in the dark to nap away the early evening in the comfort of his own bed.