Roe
He fled from the room. Victor stumbled up the stairs to clean the blood off his clothes. Clumsier and messier than he’d ever been the entirety of these experiments.
He stripped his clothes, scrubbed his skin until it turned pink, pressed his head against the wall, and prayed in fervent whispers. He would never use that incantation again. He couldn’t.
He tried to keep from hyperventilating as he scrubbed the blood from two full sets of stairs with ammonia, salt, and alcohol.
He had to bathe the man, horrible in its own right, sluicing blood down the drain, the thick scent of old urine and vomit in the humid air.
And that on its own was not nearly so terrible as turning the man over and finding proof of Victor’s wickedness etched into the flesh of his back: an incomplete reproduction illustration next to the incantation, a series of interconnected circles and symbols.
Victor took a moment to press his forehead against the bathroom wall to calm the wild beating of his heart before he was able to face it again. It was like a brand, the way they burned steel into the hides of livestock. Healed as though the man had it for weeks, but that was impossible.
He touched it cautiously, but it just felt like skin.
Victor shuddered. He wrapped him in clean cloths and gave him his rites as a physician can. Then Victor carried the body to the waterside, weighted it with stones, and pushed it in.
He stayed the night awake, pacing the floor, sweat cold on his back. Thinking, thinking, thinking, praying.