Chapter Text
“Rev W. Vennett,” she begins. “Sex: Male, Age: 17, Type of Death,” she flicks her eyes over to the boy in the chair across from her.
“Suicide.”
Rev scoffs at the showmanship.
It’s nightime, the large window behind Kincaid is cracked open with the curtains swept aside. He can see out into the melancholy forest that surrounds Kade. The full moon stares down at him with a sorrowful glint in her eye. He doesn’t appreciate the pity, yet he can’t help but see himself in her.
Especially now. Kincaid’s office always had a way of making him glum and uncomfortable.
Kincaid searches the paper in her hand again, scanning with dull purple-grey eyes for something particular. When she finds it, she reads:
“Scene Description,” she stares at the page. “‘When found, the body was still convulsing. The oven was ripped completely from the wall, the battery inside pried out. A crowbar was found a foot or so away from the body. Upon the body’s chest were electrode pads connected via wire to the oven battery. The body’s uniform was singed around the breast and then some. A fire had started, however, as help had arrived by then, was quickly put out. The body was hard to move for a while. Loaded with static electricity.”
Kincaid stares at the words with a blank expression, then moves onto the next section.
“Marks and Wounds: Visibly purple veins under skin, burst blood vessels all over body, 3rd degree burn and lacerations on chest.” She waits for something, still staring at the page.
Rev doesn’t emote with his face, but he gulps, as his throat suddenly feels dry. It’s probably because of the open window.
It’s dry in here. Yeah.
She glances at him again at the sound, and places the paper down with an eagerness. Kincaid folds her hands over one another, leaning in, looking for something at the bottom of the page.
She points a long, grey finger at a small box at the very end of the report. Rev watches her face for a moment, then follows her finger. Upside down—it’s not hard to read—the box is titled “Cause of Death.” Someone scribbled in an answer.
Kincaid reads aloud, her velvety voice carrying like wind across the room. “Cause of Death: Electrocution.”
She leans back in her chair.
Rev glares at her from under his lashes. He lets out a slow, annoyed breath though his nose and throws his head back up. He attempts nonchalance. Rev leans back in his own chair.
The back is too low, the shitty cube of leather, so not only does he go back too fast and hit his lower back on it, he shocks himself too.
“AH!” He hisses as a shaky hand consoles his back, the movement pulling his uniform and exposing the hole where his shirt set ablaze.
With a straight back and crossed arms, he avoids the back and armrests completely, settling as comfortably as he can back on the chair. A stray string sticks itself to his blazer.
Kincaid looks him up and down.
The moonlight reflects off his ivory face and grey eyes, the white in his hair almost harmoniously luminous if his curls didn’t stand on their own from static electricity. His blazer is burnt, blackened though hardly noticeable from it already being black, but it’s crunchy now and missing a significant chunk of itself. A trembling hand lays his stray curls down, poker face laced with annoyance. In this motion, Kincaid sees his sleeves are burnt and he’s missing his tie.
He looks unnatural in her setting. He is small compared to the bookshelves and tall candles; the room-wide void of a carpet with blood red finishes; the very chair he sits in. They all dwarf him, both in height and width. She wonders, briefly, if maybe he’s always been small to everything.
She looks him in the eyes.
“You’ve been getting better at keeping yourself dead for longer. We had time to perform an autopsy this time,” she reaches for the report.
Rev stays silent, stuck in his unpleasant position.
“Dr. Stein certainly was startled when he walked in and found a student colvulsing on the floor with a fire blooming from his chest,” she’s reading over the report again, as if it were a magazine, made to entertain. Rev clenches his jaw at that thought.
“Mr. Vennett, we’ve been here so many times.” She’s staring at the box at the bottom of the page. “Each time, you come here with something new, something worse.” She chuckles. “I atleast must commend you for your creativity and perserverance.” Kincaid straightens, reaching to her side to grab a pen from one of the drawers.
Rev rolls his eyes.
Kincaid clicks her pen. “You aren’t special for wanting to leave, Mr. Vennett.” She checks over the document with the tip of it. “Almost all of my students have expressed their interest in leaving once they’re enrolled here.”
She hovers her pen over his name, age, sex, his written identity. Rev watches this, unnerved. It feels like she’s hovering over him, his body, now.
“I tell you this time and time again, yet you never give up. Does it even mean anything to you?” She asks, but her words are so soft, they catch in the air.
Unsure if they were meant to stay there, he answers.
“N-”
“That was rehtorical, Mr. Vennett.”
Rev shuts his mouth.
Her pen hovers over his ‘Scene Description’ and ‘Marks and Wounds’ now. The wind from outside grazes his bare chest.
“There’s a lecture somewhere in this monologue. A lecture you’ve heard since the first time you did this. It’s pointless to resay it all, so I’ll cut to the main point: You need to cease wasting our time.” Her eyes stay glued to the report, but it’s as if she always had multiple pairs. Rev lets out a breath he doesn’t remember holding and squeezes his arms closer to himself.
The pen skips past the picture attached of his body, purple-veined, lightly bruised, burned and burst open as it is, and heads for the ‘Cause of Death’ box. Next to the box is a signature line.
“This report is a reflection of your efforts. You stayed dead for at least an hour between your final scream, Dr. Stein extinguishing the fire and moving you to the morgue, and our examination of your body as it healed.” She finally looks up at him.
“You wasted an hour. You broke an oven. You stole a crowbar, wires, and electrode pads.” Her eyes look through his own, and it’s as if they turn him to stone.
A beat passes.
Another.
A clock somewhere in the room counts down the seconds.
“I should give you a suitable punishment, but watch the moon.” Kincaid gestures upwards. As if released from his spell, Rev blinks and complies.
The moon has shifted. Even she turns her back to him, no doubt because she’s grown tired of waiting. His barely beating heart aches for a moment.
“It’s late, and you should be in your dorm as all of the other students are. I’m letting you off with a warning.”
Kincaid clicks her pen again and scribbles her signature on the line. She slides the paper over to Rev.
“We’re done here. Go back to your dorm.”
Rev pushes off the chair, shocking himself. He makes a pained noise under his breath before taking the paper and turning to leave the grandiose space.
Before he closes the door, Kincaid speaks to the air between them.
“Your vampire will no doubt be worried for you.”
Confused, he turns to look at her, but the door shuts in his face.
Rev takes his time going up the stairs. Out of spite for the principal mostly, but also for the quiet. He likes being able to get lost in his thoughts.
‘That principal talks like she knows everything. It’s aggravating.’
‘Next time, I’ll have to try something different. I don’t think the monster will leave his classroom unlocked anymore. Electrocution will be harder to pull off again. I could try getting myself sick, but, no, that’d take too long. Where would I even get the materials for that? Yaga has lunch duty. Ah, fuck, and I ripped out the oven. The kitchen would be locked anyway. Impaling didn’t work last time, but maybe there’s a way I could keep myself dead like the fire did.’
He reaches the top, turning the corner down his dorm hallway. It’s dark, amplified by the shadow brick walls. At night it makes the red runners seem like a Wizard of Oz yellow brick road.
‘“You need to cease wasting our time.” “You wasted an hour.”’
‘That’s all I am to that damn principal: a waste. She’s just annoyed I keep coming back.’
He scrunches his brow. Tch.
‘I’m never going to stop trying. There has to be something that’ll work. I’m slowly increasing my time. It’ll work.’
Rev unknits his eyebrows, allows himself a moment of respite.
‘Eventually..’
A sigh.
‘Almost there. Mark is probably still up. Annoyingly. I don’t know why he stays up so late. He doesn’t even do anything but ramble on and on about nothing. It’s like he stays up specifically to bother me. That stupid vampire.’
Dorm 066. Rev remembers Kincaid’s words just before stepping inside.
‘“Your vampire will no doubt be worried for you.”’
‘…Why would she mention Mark?’