Useless. Annoying. Stupid. Loser.
These were the words people used to describe Nick Cutler. Ever since his school days, when he had been the weird kid with a stutter who would rather sit inside and watch people than play with the other boys, people had despised him. The way he walked, the way he spoke, with a stutter and a hint of an accent that screamed all too loudly that he was poor, the state of his clothes that said the rest; all of it was fair game for mockery. So, he avoided the other children, found clever ways to sneak home and clever ways to get away from them. He made teachers like him, and told them nasty things about the boys who would pick on him so that they would get in trouble. Still everyone else hated him, and he hated them right back.
Rachel, a pretty girl he met in a bar one night, saw something of worth in him. It made him glow with pride when she smiled at him, and the day he proposed and she accepted, he thought he could have died and not regretted anything at all. She was an practically an angle in his eyes. The voice of schoolyard boys whispered to him, though; he knew in a dark place inside of him that he did not really deserve her, that he must have tricked her somehow for her to want him like she did. Not that he was complaining, but it hurt sometimes when he looked at her beautiful, smiling face, and all he could think was, 'She'll be gone as soon as she figures out how worthless I am."
Still, he was clever. That was how he got her to fall in love, he figured. He was clever and witty, and she mistook his awkward hunch and inability to look her in the eye for charming quirks.
One day, he knew, he was going to lose her, and that day was going to break him. He could ignore the barbs that his colleagues threw at him so casually, the way they overlooked him. It had hurt for a while, when he first became a solicitor, how no one ever seemed to notice how clever he was, how different and smart his ideas could be, if he would just be allowed to play them out. They only noticed his failed cases, only laughed and thought him a fool. They reminded him constantly that boys never really stopped being petty, hateful creatures, that just because he got nicer clothes and a pretty girl didn't mean he was allowed to be one of them. But their words had dulled with time, become an easily ignorable routine.
If Rachel left, though, she would take with her everything that made him something.
When he was thirty, Nick Cutler met the man who would change his life. Hal Yorke, an unassuming name attached to a somewhat forgettable face. At least, that's what Nick thought, until that face was burned forever into his memory as the eyes turned dead black and fangs appeared, sinking into his skin and burning away Nick Cutler, worthless overlooked solicitor for petty criminals, and replacing him with just Cutler, a not-man who had finally been noticed. Hal Yorke remade him, and once his screams subsided and his new reality sank in, Cutler knew that he would give anything to make sure that Hal never regretted his decision.
Hal promised Cutler that he would be great, that his name would be remembered forever, and Cutler knew that his time had finally come. He would finally be able to show someone how clever he was, and Hal would be proud as he ruled with Cutler by his side. Hal saw something in him worth nurturing, worth having, worth wanting. An ancient, remarkable being saw something worthwhile in him, and for the first time, Cutler found something worthwhile in himself.
Maybe he did deserve Rachel, after all.
