Chapter Text
The daily newspaper was unsurprisingly dull. Mind-numbing rambling about the Soviet expansion, satellite launches, and nuclear threats dominated most of the pages. It was boring. Repetitive. Passionless.
Alastor skimmed through the content, searching for something — anything that was mildly interesting. Every word was as empty as a song without music. His eyes dragged over the paper, impatience creeping in as the lines blurred together, lifeless and uninspired. He exhaled through his nose, jaw tightening, already forgetting what he just read. It lacked glamour. It lacked blood
Then an intriguing title caught his eye.
“Rising television show host found dead, leaving New York City in disarray.”
Melodramatic, certainly. Entertaining, nonetheless. Alastor waded through the article, his fingers tapping a steady rhythm against the desk as the story unfolded. It was fascinating in a way he hadn’t expected.
William George, a well-known television host, was discovered in his studio — his body mutilated beyond recognition. The cause of death was left unanswered, acting as a catalyst for rumors to spur. Some blamed a tragic malfunction of the stage lights, others whispered of something far darker at work.
Alastor was engrossed in the incident like a moth drawn to a flame. The death was beautiful in a grisly sense. He could picture it vividly. The man’s limbs bent at unnatural angles, like branches snapped in a gale. Features obliterated. Dark, thick blood pooling around the body.
He had to see it himself.
After reading the story one last time, Alastor lowered the newspaper with deliberate care, as though it were a fragile jewel rather than cheap print. Around him, his coworkers buzzed with idle chatter, the station unusually alive in the wake of the news.
An officer stopped at his desk. Alastor straightened his collar and met him with an easy grin. In response, the man dropped a thick stack of paperwork — tasks no one else had wanted, now quietly assigned to him. Alastor understood the message well enough. He was expected to see it finished. His grin vanished just as quickly as it came. This was what his efforts here were reduced to — a mere secretary rather than the police officer he was.
Alastor grudgingly started on the first paper. His eyes scanned every detail, taking in the information. It documented a death from a month ago — a weatherman who was found in a dumpster with his throat slit open. The record detailed the incident as a trifling bar fight gone wrong, dismissing the whole situation without further evidence. It felt wrong. It felt exciting.
His attention shifted back to the newspaper lying innocently on his desk. Alastor set the document next to it, comparing the content. It was too big a jump to say the two incidents were intertwined, or even remotely related. He would need more than a newspaper and a poorly recorded document to confirm his suspicions.
Alastor ached to go examine the crime scene himself. Instead, he was expected to handle the drudgery that no one else wanted to attend to. The directive was clear. Stay out of their way. Don’t attract attention. Perform from the sidelines.
As much as being overlooked grated on him, it was the price he paid to keep his job. To outshine his co-workers was to invite attention. And attention meant being discharged, swiftly and quietly. So Alastor complied. He took on the work no one else wanted and learned how to make himself look small. He existed in corners — an unspoken blight that moved through the station like a ghost. He was the invisible hand that kept everything together.
However, that didn't make him deaf — only unseen. Conversations drifted past him, unguarded and carelessly shared. He listened.
An officer who spoke too loudly, too uncouth droned on to another man. “I was assigned to investigate the scene as well. I heard his brains were spilled across the ground.”
People were being appointed to oversee the recent crime scene. That made him falter.
Overhearing that others were being selected to investigate shouldn’t have stung him. Alastor was used to receiving jobs from the bottom of the barrel, often being forgotten when more crucial matters manifested. But it did affect him. A lot.
Conversation curled around him like smoke — suffocating, thick, and impossible to ignore. Each voice dripped with self-satisfied pride, Arrogant words spilling freely, as if they were deserving of the position. It felt like a slap in the face, a cruel taunt by the universe itself. Alastor’s fingers dug into the desk so hard that he felt his bones creak in protest.
He should’ve stuck to the documents. Stayed hidden in the shadows. Continued to let others outshine him. But how could he stay silent when the one thing he craved was dangling right before his eyes? Alastor needed to see the crime scene. And if he had to speak up to do so? Then so be it.
Alastor stood up from his desk, chair screeching against the floor. Heads snapped toward him, condemning eyes landing on him, picking apart his very being. Alastor only tipped his chin up and strided past them. Let them judge, let them scoff at making his presence known.
An officer shot him a glare. Another shifted away when Alastor walked past him, as if his existence was enough to burn skin. Alastor kept moving forward through the station.
The door to the chief of police’s office came into view, looming before him like a gathering storm. Alastor smoothed out invisible wrinkles in his uniform before he raised his fist and knocked. Once. Twice. Silence.
Then a gruff, thick voice called out, “Come in.”
Alastor twisted the doorknob and stepped inside. His eyes landed on the figure of the chief at his desk, shoulders hunched, eyes fixed on a paper like he couldn’t spare a single glance. He was a man carved from stone. Cold. Unbending. Rigid.
Alastor shifted on his feet as the silence stretched on. “You designated people to manage the recent death at the studio,” he bluntly said. Might as well get to the point.
The chief hardly acknowledged his words. He doubted the man was even listening. With deliberate aim to prolong the silence, the chief grabbed a mug sitting on his desk and brought it to his lips.
The next few seconds were unbearable.
He guzzled the drink. Not quietly. No, far from it. Obnoxiously, he slurped the liquid — wet sounds filling the room. Was this an act of superiority or a petty jab? Both kindled the annoyance flaring inside of him.
Alastor stood patiently as he waited for him to finish his display. When he set the mug back down with a clink, Alastor continued. “Two gruesome, spontaneous deaths in the past month, and not one clean answer between them. You’re working blind. Seems to me you’d be wise to take whatever help you can get. So why not let me in on it?”
The chief finally looked up from his desk, his eyes scanning him up and down. Alastor didn’t miss the flash of disdain in his eyes. “You work behind the scenes. Some roles aren’t meant to be shown publicly. Not for someone like you,” he sneered.
Alastor’s fingers flexed at his sides. Unbeknownst to him or not, this man was testing his restraint. It demanded every fiber of his being to fight back the urge to slit his throat. But he would control himself. A dead chief meant no access to the crime scene.
“The city is looking for answers, chief,” Alastor replied, keeping his voice level. “And none of them will come from this needless back-and-forth”
Alastor chose his next words carefully. Not grading enough to lose his regard, whilst still landing resolute. “If you’d rather let your intolerance slow us down than get an answer, say that plainly.”
The chief gave him a once-over, assessing his worth as if he were a smudge on a pristine window. For a fateful moment, Alastor thought the man wouldn’t defer. He’d be trapped in the background, withdrawn from the action forever. Ignored. Relegated. Shunned.
Then he relented. And Alastor knew that he wouldn’t have to kill the man tonight out of spite.
“Fine. If you want to be of help, then you can redirect traffic from the crime scene.”
Alastor’s eye twitched. That wasn’t what he wanted. Alastor desired to see the body, scrutinize the wounds, and smell the irony scent of blood in the air. Managing traffic was a meager task. It almost felt like an insult to his capabilities.
“I’ll get to that, sir,” Alastor reluctantly replied.
He turned on his heels, his hand twisting the doorknob. Then, the chief’s voice split the air. Alastor froze in the doorway.
“You should be grateful you’re even allowed in here.”
His fingers twitched at his sides, as if trying to grasp at a weapon that wasn’t there. Alastor schooled his expression back into an unruffled smile. “I know that.”
Without haste, Alastor slipped out of the office. Working at the station was like pushing a boulder uphill. It was draining, got him nowhere, and only crushed him. But at least now, he wasn’t tied down to the mundane, soul-crushing tasks at his desk. His shackles were loosened — he was finally viable for something with importance.
Alastor arrived at the designated area. The scene was already alive with motion — investigators and officers swarming the perimeter of the building, their movements seamless and deliberate. They flowed around one another with practiced ease, a quiet choreography honed by years of experience. There were no mistakes, no wasted movements. Everyone knew their place.
Everyone, it seemed, except him.
Alastor remained on the outskirts beyond the rhythm of the operation. This was detachment in a different form — not absence, but exclusion. He could see everything unfold with clarity, yet he was restrained from touching it. The mangled, bloody corpse was just out of his reach like an art piece he was forbidden from seeing. Tantalizing. Inaccessible. But so very tempting to view.
He obeyed his chief’s orders without protest. Near the crime scene, he pulled on the reflective vest, the garish fabric catching the light in a way that felt humiliating. Alastor lifted his arms and beckoned cars aside with deliberate, mechanical gestures, redirecting traffic away from the heart of the investigation. Cars followed his lead, drivers stared, and the city flowed obediently around him while the real work continued beyond reach.
Each hand signal was a painful reminder of his position — close enough to witness, far enough to be denied a position to help.
Alastor directed cars to other routes, steering them clear of the crime scene. Every movement was followed by a brisk, subtle glance back to the studio where the death took place. He couldn’t resist. His eyes drifted back as he mused on. The officers and investigators were absorbed in analyzing the scene. Surely, if he snuck off and took a glimpse it wouldn’t be deplorable. Negligent, yes. But he was confident that no one would notice his absence on the road. The traffic would have to sort itself out.
He slipped off his vest and crept toward the studio. The people there were so engrossed by the morbid incident that his presence went unnoticed. Alastor wormed himself closer, teetering on the edge of being caught. His heart hammered against his chest. The noise around him faded — drowned out by the sound of blood roaring in his ears.
He was so close.
The body came into view. As soon as his eyes swept over it, the hassle it took to get to this point became irrelevant. Alastor drank in the sight before him. The body of the show host was swollen, bruised with limbs askew. His skin was unnaturally pale, patches discolored to a mottled purple. Features like the eyes and nose were completely distorted, reflecting the trauma he faced even in death.
He snuck closer toward the body — an invisible force pulling him in.
Details that he glossed over became grotesquely magnified. His sleek, ginger hair was stained red with blood. His skin was beginning to slough off, releasing a foul, metallic scent.
Alastor needed to know that this wasn’t a trivial coincidence—that something as uneventful as a stage light crushing him to death wasn’t what transpired here. There had to be a malicious, precise hand that orchestrated this.
He would scour the city until he found them.
Alastor advanced, shamelessly devouring the sight with his eyes. An officer questioned him. He simply gestured to his badge without averting his gaze. The beauty of the scene was overwhelming. It was like he finally found oxygen after being strangled his whole life.
The craftsmanship of the death was exquisite, but the mystery behind it was even more thrilling.
Alastor looked back at his striking ginger hair, now matted with gore. Before he was a body to be analyzed, he was a rising TV host — young, ambitious, well-liked. Alastor recalled seeing how he was recently praised in a newspaper column for being “a fresh face for modern broadcasting.”
William George — a man who was climbing the ladder in the television industry, was now reduced to a corpse.
It felt eerily similar to another person, too similar to be by chance.
The weatherman.
He had been thriving, climbing the ladder with ease, beloved by viewers and producers alike — only to end up discarded in a dumpster behind the studio, his throat carved open. His success was abruptly silenced. Now this man lay before him, his voice suppressed by death too. Both men had been flourishing in their fields. Both were undeniably gifted, praised, and visible. And now both were reduced to corpses.
The similarities gnawed at Alastor’s mind, each one connecting neatly like pieces of a puzzle begging to be solved.
He stepped closer, careful not to disturb the scene, his eyes sweeping over the body with a sharpened, eager curiosity. The man’s watch remained clasped around his wrist, its glass smeared but unbroken. No valuables were missing. No frantic scuffle had torn at his clothes. This wasn’t a robbery.
The man’s hands lay stiff at his sides, fingers curled, slick with his own drying blood. Defensive wounds were absent. No torn nails, no bruised knuckles. He hadn’t fought. Whatever had happened, he didn’t see it coming.
Alastor’s gaze shifted to the fallen stage light beside the body. Too convenient. Too deliberately placed, as if someone wanted the explanation to be obvious, unquestioned. An accident. Tragic, but simple. The kind of lie people were grateful to believe.
A slow grin tugged at Alastor’s lips.
This wasn’t the work of chance. It was intentional. Calculated. Someone with taste.
For the first time since the weatherman’s death, excitement stirred in his chest — not dread, not horror, but anticipation. The thrilling feeling of a challenge. A mind that matched his own, hiding in plain sight, daring him to notice.
Finally, the city had given him something worth chasing.
A new game.
A new opponent.