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Great Heir Irratino’s hands fumbled along the fabric noose, his throat dry. He never expected to feel so parched beyond anything on the doorstep of the realms beyond. He expected to feel fear, but it wasn’t what settled in him now. Death was an old friend. It was the only constant he carried with him as he moved on; home to home, hands into hands of whichever uncle took him next. It mattered only now the last, his Uncle Zaffre, a portly man who was no blood relative of his mothers but merely a friend. He knew scarcely of his time with them, much the same with any of his so-called caregivers. No one wanted to speak of them, as if the very name of the Irratinos carried the stench of death, cold to the boy who bore the name.
It would be over soon, though, for Irratino as he had been known was to die tonight.
His eyes shifted to the grandfather clock, a grand and expensive amenity he did like. It carried a sort of eeriness he enjoyed, and the pendulum played a good metronome as he practiced falling into his meditative states. It was much easier to do so, with Zaffre. Irratino was almost an adult and though plenty of his caregivers had been the types to encroach on him when he was younger, to insist he stay with them, to equate the merits of their wealth to their competency as stand-in guardians, he suffered no such ways now. He was a delinquent. It did not matter Irratino had moved on from those years; that what he had done had been born of being impassioned, not as cruelty against the people who so-generously took in an orphan. It stained his name, and it was no such title he wanted to carry into the world.
Tomorrow, he was eighteen. Tomorrow he came into his fortune. The last remnants of what his mothers had left to him, in lieu of scary bedtime stories, or gentle kisses on his forehead, or tea parties in the rose-hedged garden. He could remember them with vibrancy, still, what it was like to be enveloped in love he had been deprived of for so long until he plunged into the spiritual. His mothers had tried to cultivate him- had taught him how to navigate the world of dreams by knowing that nothing could harm him there so long as he believed. There was nothing more powerful than belief, for it kept a soul not only alive but lively. He had to believe he had done this well. And so it would be.
He checked the clock once more. He realized his palms were sweaty as he ground his teeth; Zaffre’s maidservant would come fetch him for dinner in a matter of five minutes and he would sit, as he always did, prodding at a portion of meat from his uncle’s latest hunting expedition with few cares on how he could feel its fear, how it tasted rancid in his mouth, how he shivered and cried in the aftermath until he made himself sick over the visions of hurting something so helpless. He did not know if it was punishment from him or complete carelessness. Irratino had never resolved himself to being defeated, or abandoning his beliefs, but it never seemed to matter. He was a matter of money.
Four minutes.
Irratino had fixed everything the best he could to give the appearance he’d be dead. He had written his note a dozen times over, so much so as to have the only person he trusted enough to tell of his plans to read it over. They had crafted it with desperation, with certainty, with no space to deny the truth- a fictional one- of what would occur. They had run the numbers and determined they most positively assured that it would work, at least long enough to convince the observer that Irratino had done as he proclaimed for a few hours as Irratino fled once and for all, aging into his wealth. He admired them- Night- a person of calculation, but not of mockery. They were as much a prodigy as they were a kindred soul, taken for their decidedly good qualities but never their own beliefs in the esoteric and arcane that matched so many of Irratino’s own. They had been there, and Irratino had no doubt they would continue to be on the other side. It crooked his set lips, barren of their typical gloss, into a small smile. Something more than freedom to look forward to- a companion.
Three minutes.
Irratino had rigged a long cloth rope around his waist before he’d dressed himself in loose wear. It hid beneath his sweater and came up to pull out at the nape of his neck. Then he had fashioned of the same material the end of a noose to give the illusion. It was rather grim, he knew, but he held his belief that it would work. And all one needed was to believe in something for it to be true. He as he were would die, and the Irratino who would be, the one beloved by his mothers in their final point of connection, would truly begin to live once again. Someone’s son. Perhaps they would even come to him, afterwards.
Two minutes.
Irratino wasn’t afraid of death. That much, he knew. It wasn’t that he was planning to rush head-first into it, though it was not a foreign thought. Sometimes as he navigated the planes of his dreams he thought of what it would be like, leagues below the ground, the pressure of dirt above and below and on all sides of him bearing down like a blanket of the abyss. That didn’t feel like fear, but it didn’t feel like comfort, either. It felt like floating on air, like senses were heightened in complete deprivation. Perhaps that was what it was like in the moment of death. It was unreasonable to expect everything to work so quickly, of course. In his traversing with gods he’d come to know himself- though they were rather lesser ones, of more obscurist folklore and mythos- he had learnt of temperament as well as passion. He had learnt of life, most of all, and too that the figures of the beyond were favorable to him and his gifts. He had learnt from a former aunt of his, Stil de Grain, to carry with him what his intuition called for. When she had passed most untimely, two pennies had been clenched in her palm, a fact Night had offered not their condolences for but the assurance that two was a most auspicious number. It was too late for it now, but he kind of wished he had done the same. Just in case things went awry, which they wouldn’t, as Irratino believed full-heartedly. He did. He did. Death was no end, and he did not fear it, and he did not grieve as he knew there was an other side. He had seen it. It had told him things, had extended its love to him when the physical plane had not. He believed in it. Belief was everything.
One minute.
He felt sick. He didn’t want to die. The gravity of what he was doing washed cold down his back. Was this not selfish? Was this truly an act of self-preservation after a life lived in hungry sights, of only remembering the love of his mothers, of fear of the sea, of longing to hear of their names, of how he looked like them, of that they were proud of him? Or was it anger; was it pure and raw need to be loved as he loved? To beg in the only and final way he knew how for them to see him, in this world or the next?
He had this pipedream. It was nothing much, but a small tug in his sights. A play on his childhood ‘delinquency’, of the nights he wouldn’t come home, of the times he had been pardoned from the consequences of his actions purely on wealth and aristocracy. He hadn’t felt bad about what it bought him, and so the bud grew. Inspector. He had always liked the alliteration of the title. Perhaps not the most expected of professions, but one he believed in, and belief was everything. Inspector Irratino. A new man of his own beliefs, a regal man of his own rights, a fabulous man who did not pull himself from the world of the esoteric and enchanting. A philanthropic man, an adored and charming man, a spiritual man, a confusing man who took no shame in what he had done. A man to believe in, and belief was everything.
Time.