He had taught maths once, before he died the first time. At the age of twenty one he had become a professor based on a paper on binomials that he had written two hours before he presented it. The other professors begged him to teach immediately after his presentation; when he said yes, each one wrung his hand enthusiastically. He tried not to wince as their sweaty palms wiped along his hand; he imagined stabbing everyone in the room, but then their blood would be on his palms too, which sounded almost as filthy.
though blood was more pure and more private really all hidden away in cavities and veins not common and ordinary like skin and sweat and shit but something intimate not meant to be seen a virginal thing and he wondered sometimes if plunging a knife into a heart was a bit like a deflowering because for the French both end in a death
He didn't really like teaching, but then he didn't really like most things.
He wrote a paper on the dynamics of asteroids, which were lovely and distant, and he could touch them with telescopes and maths and know them as intimately as he knew himself, and they still wouldn't know a thing about him.
they couldn't grow on him, or seep into and crawl under his skin like insects or acid or human beings that insisted on burrowing ever closer with their tears and grease and despair that made him wash his hands until they bled
When he presented his asteroids to the same committee that he had presented his binomials to years before, he saw confusion draw thin lines on the professors' faces. Afterwards, they lauded him again with praise, and this time, a raise and an award, but he knew they were only impressed because they did not understand.
he and his asteroids were phenomena and all the ordinary can do in a phenomenal presence is have faith perhaps that's why they never bothered to figure him out at all
His students were as dreadfully mundane as his peers, if not more so, except for one angular young man with wide eyes and a body that seemed to vibrate with pent up energy; his name was Sherlock Holmes.
They were the same, except he was in the stars, and Sherlock was on earth. Sherlock reveled in dirt and decay, while he himself spent hours trying to wash it away from his bones.
sometimes he tried to scrub his entire body away
Sherlock looked at him like he wanted to eat him.
and if sherlock had taken a knife and cut him open and buried his face in his organs he wouldn't have minded all that much wouldn't have minded at all so long as in the end he was eaten in entirety
When Sherlock left his class, everything turned to mundane dust again.
He decided to kill himself.
He stole a teaspoon of potassium cyanide from the chemistry laboratory and brought it home. He stirred it in a clear glass full of water, and watched it dissolve. Then he filled up his bathtub, got in, and slit his wrists for good measure.
he watched the blood form flowers in the water and marvelled at how beautiful it was and he wondered why he hadn't done this a long time ago
He drank all of the poison in one go.
and he heard an irregular beat in his chest and he had never felt so alive-
The last things he saw were the stars.
or at least, that's how it was supposed to be
