Chapter 5

A Cold Sweat-

"Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall"

William Shakespeare

Sylar awoke in a cold sweat. There was a dead body next to him. Well, at least it wasn't a live one. His vision blurred he hummed a childhood song, the sounds of his voice echoing throughout the Iyer family home. He closed his eyes and focused his hearing. The sound of his high pitched humming of "Frerrer Jacques" bounced off of the walls and came back to him.

Echolocation. He had all sorts of new tricks. Sylar kept his eyes closed, getting out of the bed and walking around, "seeing" everything. He let his feet dip into the water that had once been an ice floor, the temperature of his body going down on command. He let out a deep breath. Last night had not been fun.

He knew Bennet was probably huddled against the side of his bed, crying in fear...and that provided a little comfort. But Mother...he took his thoughts off of that. No use dwelling on things past. When Mother had died, she left him her library card, and he would spend evenings just reading everything he could get his hands on, trying to find solace. His hands would scratch against the pages of old books of poems and sayings, providing little solace. However, he had acquired a few new mantras.

"A man can not sew his fields looking backwards, for his rows will not be straight..." said the Sage. Sylar took it to heart. Mother would hurt him during the cold nights, but he would focus on revenge. Anything to take his mind off of it. Off of..what he had done. Sylar simply sat down in the puddle of water that had formed. He sat there for a quite a while, saying nothing, thinking less, feeling...feeling everything.

He smelled the pungent odor of sweat that dripped down his skin. It wasn't the sweat itself, but reaction with bacteria on the surface of the skin, he knew- that produced body odor. As with most things,knowing how it worked did not change much. He still needed to shower. Sylar regretted not waiting until Mrs.Iyer was done with her routine to kill her, as the bathroom mirror was splattered still, the words slightly smudged by the running blood, those words.

"Welcome to my nightmare."

He stepped over the body and stood in front of the shower, taking in a long breath and slowly letting it out. He felt calmer, if only slightly. He slacked his shoulders and the black trench coat that he wore, loose fitting as it was, almost fell of on it's own, a slight shrug knocking it to the floor. He pulled his shirt over his head and dropped it on the corpse. Sylar hoped they had a washing machine. He stepped into the shower, the faucet broken off in his murderous rampage. Sylar quickly reconnected it, and pushed up on the lever that controlled water flow, then pushed in the small pin that switched water flow from faucet to shower head. The water came down in a stream on him.

Sylar simply stood there for the longest time...though he did not know how long that was. He'd taken his watch off to sleep. The water dripped down his neck, and the shower head was placed so that a lot of it came into his mouth, drowning him by degrees. Sylar would every few seconds turn his head and spit out the water that filled his mouth. He turned the faucet, and the water became shockingly cold. He felt the Goosebumps spread up his skin. The rage...the sorrow...the grief. He wished it would all just go down the drain with the water.

Sylar eventually noticed he was still wearing slacks, and discarded them. There was a bar of soap in the shower, but he cared little about that. He could not wash it away, no matter how hard he scrubbed- and he did, the skin flaking and breaking, the soap itself eventually reduced to a small square fitting between his forefinger and middle finger. He noticed a bit of blood dropping down from his scrubbing. He would never be clean.

Sylar finally shut off the water and walked out of the shower.

It had not helped.

Mother...

"For the majority of us, the past is a regret, the future an experiment"

Mark Twain