Page 81 of Girl, Unmasked
Ezra mopped floors and scrubbed toilets, same as always.Emptied trash and wiped down desks while suits who made more in a week than he did in a year worked late, oblivious to the walking corpse in their midst.And that night – the same day he’d got the diagnosis – he’d saved Sophie Draper’s office for last.She always worked late, hunched over manuscripts like they held the secrets of the universe.Ezra sometimes watched her through a crack in the door, wondering what it was like to care that much about anything.
But Sophie was gone when he finally shuffled in, mop in hand.Just a desk piled high with papers and the lingering scent of coffee gone cold.
That's when he saw it.A manuscript, different from the rest.Thinner.Dog-eared.Like it had been read and re-read until the pages threatened to fall out.
Halo of Bloodby Drago LaChance.
Ezra didn't read much.Books were for people with time to spare, people whose stories were worth telling.But something about that battered stack of paper called to him.
He'd told himself he was just killing time.Flipped open to a random page, fully intending to skim a paragraph or two before getting back to work.
An hour later, he was still reading.
It was like some kind of revelation.The main character, Cain -– he was just like Ezra.Beaten down.Chewed up and spat out by life.Dying of some unspecified malady.But instead of rolling over and taking it like a bitch, Cain fought back.Turned his pain into transcendence and showed the world what real suffering looked like.
Ezra slipped into Sophie’s office whenever he had the chance and devoured the manuscript in full. He could tell from the way it sat untouched for weeks, gathering dust at the bottom of her to-read pile, that Sophie was in no rush to get to it.The coffee stains on the cover multiplied, other manuscripts got shuffled on top of it.
But Ezra read the whole thing, and when Ezra got to that last page, it was like a bolt of lightning to the brain, because Cain was terminal too.
Ezra knew.This wasn't just a book.It was a message, sent across time and space and whatever cosmic forces governed such things, meant for him and him alone.
Of course, the rational part of his brain tried to talk sense.It was just a story, but Ezra told that part to pipe down and let his avenging angel off the chain for once.Because if Cain could carve a crimson swath before his ticket got punched, then by god, so could Ezra Borgman.
Then one night, he'd turned up to find something new stamped across the title page in big red letters.
REJECTED.
Something in Ezra snapped.A damn breaking after years of pressure, flooding his system with rage he didn't know he was capable of feeling.
How dare this Sophie woman, with her designer clothes and corner office, reject the one thing that had given Ezra's miserable life meaning?She’d had held rapture in her hands and thrown it in the garbage like it was Tuesday's tuna salad.
He didn't remember deciding to do it.One moment he was staring at that hateful stamp; the next, pages were clenched in his fist.Author's name.Contact details.The juiciest bits of Cain's murderous spree.
Ezra fled the office that night with more than dirty mop water sloshing in his bucket.
He knew that he had to find this author and let him know he wasn't alone.
Finding Drago LaChance in the flesh hadn’t been hard.The manuscript's title page had everything Ezra needed – the author's real name, his address, even a phone number scrawled in the margin.Ezra had torn that page out along with the murder scenes, stuffed them in his pocket.
Drago lived in a derelict house in the kind of neighborhood where people minded their own business if they knew what was good for them.Ezra hadn't known what to expect.A kindred spirit, maybe.Someone who'd look at him and see more than just another disposable cog in the machine.
What he got was a wreck of a human being.More scarecrow than man.Someone so disconnected from the world he could barely string two sentences together without pharmaceutical aid.
The disappointment hit Ezra hard.This was the genius behind Halo of Blood?This twitching, muttering shell who couldn't even remember writing half of it?Part of him wanted to shake Drago until he snapped back into the brilliant mind that had created Cain.Another part wanted to walk away and pretend he'd never found him.But the biggest part, and the part he embraced, saw opportunity.If the creator couldn't champion his own masterpiece, then Ezra would have to do it for him.
Drago babbled about people who'd wronged him — teachers and lecturers and girls who'd turned him down.Didn't even know who Sophie Draper was.And that's when Ezra understood the cosmic joke of it all.Drago had poured his pain onto the page and then forgotten it, like a prophet who'd delivered his message in a fugue state.The man himself didn't matter anymore.He was just the vessel through which Halo of Blood had entered the world.
Ezra could have targeted his own tormentors, like the nurses who'd dismissed his pain or the doctor who'd delivered his death sentence or the suits who'd denied his disability claims.But what would that accomplish?Nobody gave a damn about Ezra Borgman's grievances.But Drago LaChance, the author of Halo of Blood?That was a story worth telling, and that irony wasn’t lost on Ezra.
He'd taken to checking in on Drago after that, under the guise of being his caregiver.Drago didn’t even question it.
It was pathetic.It was perfect.
Ezra saw his opportunity and he took it.If Drago couldn't appreciate the gift he'd been given, then Ezra would do it for him.He'd bringHalo of Bloodto life, give it the audience it deserved.
It wasn't hard to time things right – Drago's cocktail of pills already knocked him out for hours at a time.All Ezra had to do was make sure to visit on the nights he had work to do, slip an extra Xanax or two into Drago's evening handful, and watch him fade into oblivion.By the time Drago came to, Ezra would already have the crime scene photos loaded onto his phone.
Drago would take the fall, yes, but his name would be legendary.Halo of Blood would be dissected by researchers and reporters for decades to come.Sometimes you had to sacrifice the prophet to spread the gospel.
