Chapter 1
The tall European man walks down the all too familiar corridor, the smell of antiseptic stinging his nose. As he passes the nurses station he nods to the two women sitting behind the glass partition. He doesn't need to read their minds to know what they think of him. He is a gaijin, a filthy westerner whose mere presence represented the destruction of the one great purity that had been Japan. To them he is the reason for Mac Donald's and MTV, the influence that has made the youth wear mini skirts and dye their beautiful brown or black hair blond, he is corruption.
The older woman wears her hair in a tight authoritarian bun, she is as permanent a fixture in the hospital as the station in which she sits all day long, and she fancies herself an expert on the man who comes to the hospital practically every day. She thinks he is a business man, someone of great wealth who had found himself a young Japanese boy as a play thing. She blames him for the comatose man in room 438, that somehow his Western influence had placed the man into his endless sleep, like the Black Queen who gives the apple to Snow White. As he passes her she believes that she can almost see the slime trail that he leaves wherever his feet touch the floor.
As much as it goes against his character the man never let the woman's opinion bother him, after all she is not too far off the mark. He is corruption, he is death, and he is a blight on humanity. Yet it is not this that keeps him from tearing into her fragile mind, but rather the knowledge that she does her job well and no matter what she thinks of him or the young man who is her patient, she is always a gentle and thoughtful caregiver. That is all that matters to him, but should she or any of the other workers in the hospital ever mistreat his pet, then they would find out the true meaning of 'devil' and after he had reduced them to miserable drooling idiots, he might, if he felt generous enough, kill them rather than leave them to the freakish misery that would signify the rest of their lives.
He stops outside of the familiar room and collects himself. His volatile temper is one of his weaker personality traits and he has to force the vicious thoughts that are raging through him to once again fall dormant. He has spent almost a full year masking his temper while in the hospital and it would not due for him to bring such anger into the private room where the young man who he came to visit lay. Such bitter thoughts would be counter productive to both of them.
When he feels that he is under control he enters the room and stops just inside the door. It is a private room furnished with thick wooden furniture with heavy curtains covering the windows to block out the harsh afternoon light. The center of the room is dominated by a large wooden bed that had been modified to function in a hospital, the linens on the bed of the finest cotton. There is a night stand and a comfortable over stuffed chair next to the bed. The man has chosen every item in the room himself, partially to please the unaware man, in the hopes that he might someday awaken and partially to please himself since he spent so much time in the room.
He looks at the silent form in the bed and feels his heart lighten. A smile touches his lips, the irony of the situation not lost on him. Once upon a time he had caused a girl to lay in much the same state as the young man in the bed. At that time the man had thought it was foolish and weak for the same young man to go and see that girl everyday. And now here he was, doing exactly what he had mocked, coming every day in hopes that eventually he would be able to draw the young man back to the world of the living.
The man takes a moment to drink in the sight of the still form, his angel. Pale skin, only a few shades darker than the white sheets on which he lies, skin that seems to almost glow in the filtered light from the covered window. An aristocratic face with high cheekbones and a full soft mouth, a perfect porcelain brow, the lines of hardship that had been etched into the skin erased as the young man has spent more and more time in his unanimated state. Thick black eyelashes frame long delicate eyes, that the man knows are a brilliant vibrant purple beneath the paper thin lids that never opened. The man lets the beauty of the comatose man wash away the bitterness that fills his heart and silence the endless noise that are constantly in his mind as only the dormant form could.
When the man feels he is relaxed he began his daily ritual. First he removes the wilting flowers from the antique vase that sat on the nightstand and tosses them into the waste basket before heading into the small bathroom to change the water. Then he carefully unwraps the flowers that he has brought with him so that he does not damage the fragile petals and places them in the vase. He has brought lilies with him, they are a rather obnoxious shade of pink but since the young man never opens his eyes the aesthetics of the flowers are of no consequence, he has always brought flowers that are of a strong smell, and the pink lilies were the sweetest smelling flowers the store had to offer.
"What shall we listen to today?" He asks as he turns on the small stereo that is next to the bed. "I thought that we might try something new myself." He removes two cd's from his jacket pocket. He puts one cd down next to the stereo and uses a long thumb nail to cut the plastic shrink wrap off of the other. The cd that he chooses is a collection of baroque music performed by a famous Austrian quartette.
"I am quite sick of Mozart, aren't you?," He says as he removes the cd that is in the stereo and places it back into its case, "Spring will be here soon and I thought that this would be more appropriate. I hope you agree, but of course if you do not you are always free to just sit up and tell me." He slips the new cd into the stereo and hits play, the sound of violins fills the room.
He then pulls the heavy chair up to the bed and sits down. He leans over and pushes red hair off of the smooth forehead of the ever slumbering man before leaning in and gently placing a kiss above a perfectly sculpted eyebrow.
//Baroazoku* // The thought filled with disgust assaults him and he looks to the doorway where a young nurse stands. She is tall for a Japanese woman and she is thin, she possesses a rather generic attractiveness that will not follow her into her thirties. Clutched in her hands is a plastic pouch filled with a yellowish brown liquid.
"Ah the Blode fotze** is here," The man whispers bitterly into the perfect shell of an ear below him, before he fixes a cold smirk on his face and sits back in his chair. Of all the nurses he loathes this one the most. She is arrogant and self centered, with a well constructed distain for both him and the still body in the hospital bed. Her repulsion is formed around her prejudice towards the European's sexual orientation rather than the more common contempt of his national origin that is so popular amongst the other nurses. But it is her consistent thought that the comatose man, who she has sworn to care for, would be better off dead rather than live as 'dirty beast' a 'faggot'. For that thought the man feels no absolution.
"Good afternoon, Anders-san" the woman says with a smile that never reaches her eyes, "I am sorry to interrupt."
The man ignores her. He brushes his fingers down a pale cheek, reveling in the softness of the skin, his Kitten never needs to be shaved. Without acknowledging it he revels in the wave of repulsion he feels from the nurse as she witnessed such a blatant sign of affection. It serves her right for interrupting. The man pays an exorbitant fee to keep the comatose patient at the hospital. He had left instructions since the day he had brought the near lifeless body into the facility that when he is visiting he is not to be disturbed. The doctors, even the neurologist, who occasionally makes a drive by visit, adhere to his request. Only the judgmental nurse ignores his wishes.
"I am running late today," the nurse walks into the room, immediately reaching for the bag hanging from the thin metal pole on the other side of the bed, "I will be out of your way in a moment."
The man takes the pale, long fingered hand that does not have the IV tubes in it into his own. He rubs the pads of the palm right below the fingers that had been hardened with callous the first time he had taken it but now is as soft as a baby's from a years worth of dormancy. He cannot stand to watch the see though bag, the color of weak tea, the source of nutrients, that keep his Kitten alive, be changed. So to distract himself from what the nurse is doing the man runs his finger over the lines in the palm of the cool hand he holds within his own.
"Schlampe,***" He hisses after the nurse as finished her chore and left the room. He fights the urge to slip into her mind and implant an over whelming impulse to strangle the next patient that she attends to. After all he has no guarantee that the nurse that would replace her after she was carted off to jail would be any better, she might even be worse.
To calm himself he inhales deeply, savoring the sweet smell of the lilies. He lets the eerily beautiful music evaporate his anger and the homicidal thoughts that threaten to consume him if not checked. When he feels that he is calm enough he raises the limp hand that he still holds in his own to his mouth and tenderly kisses it. His real visit about to begin...