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Matthias Czernin.
For Florian, he is the careful glances shrouded in delicate solitude. His eyes, the warm color of burnt honey, hiding shyly under the tender curve of perfect lashes are just like a cacophony of something lost, something that you search for and never find. Like the remembrance of a distant memory. The knowledge that you’ll never see it, but somehow, it’s always there.
His back is straight, his stride well-composed. Quiet, but present. Shy but demanding attention. A statement in each step of his polished dress shoes. The thinness of his physique hidden under drapes of carefully ironed slacks and jackets, tailored in soft fabrics, claims all gazes with its magnetic opulence.
The beautiful hands he wields are carved in precious marble, elegant and pale. Long fingers that are just like death branches. But the gloves he wears are not to protect others from his opaline calamity, but to keep him from infecting his own soft skin from the foul, dirty wretches of the vicious world that lies under his feet.
Does he care, does he know? That under his steps, when he looks down he’ll only see the darkness of the sewer in which they all are drowning.
Far away, high above in oblivion. Detached from any dirty hand that tries to reach him in his secluded tower, unattainable in the highest strata of society. Overlooking from the open balcony deep at night how they claw each other's throat— mild amusement surely showing underneath that meek facade.
Fake fragility, Florian knows. He must do it on purpose, that scornfully chaste delicateness he publicly shows. What else, if not? No human being could genuinely be like that. So fitted to be prey. Calling the vultures, luring the mice.
Matthias Czernin, the only heir of the Czernin family.
The biggest problem of this crumbling society.
Florian grimaces.
How can a man like that pretend to be a staple, when he is clearly no more than a tied puppet? Bound from hands and legs, trapped into the power play of corruption and interests that feeds the dark underbelly of this brooding city— Blooming from his naivete, rising in his silent compliance. No more than a face for a fake cause, a tool to be used and discarded.
So much power lost in such a weak, heinous, meek man… What a joke.
He’s been covered in riches, covered in affection. Since birth, since young— There, when Florian had nothing more than the cold embrace of grief, the blooming Czernin heir had a happy family to rely on. One to read him bedtime stories, to sing him to sleep. To hug him when he was scared and lonely, to feed him with only the tastiest of dinners. A family to love and to care for.
Ah, how he had felt back then. He remembers all the times he looked at that cursed painting in the middle of the wastefully ostentatious staircase— What would he be doing right now? While he was there, trembling from the cold in his thinned clothes. Shaking in reluctant hatred, thinking of the next poor play he had to enact— to look sad enough, to lie as best he could in search of favour from the same wealthy people that didn’t even really care .
This luxurious house was donated by his family to be repurposed as an orphanage. It was an important thing, the day it happened. A selfless act, a warm thought spared for a bunch of poor, lonely kids that didn’t have any hope of reaching a decent future if not for this kind of charity.
It was a pressing thought then, to be grateful for the gift. To thank those that showed enough pity to at least move a finger, in hopes of fooling the press away from other scandalous acts.
In a sense, Matthias Czernin really was his God. Someone he should be thankful to, someone that was above him in every aspect of this hierarchy. Always there with his brown, sad eyes looking down on him. A fake idol, a tainted deity. Unreachable but eternal, in the painting Florian wanted nothing else but to tear down and burn to ashes in his blazing resentment.
He remembers his first night in that cursed house, the first time he saw the grand portrait. The ghost of the soft solitude from that kid’s eyes following him in each turn and step along the hallways. He couldn't stop thinking— This was the place where he was born. Where he was raised. Did he play in the same rooms? Did he run along these halls?
The day he found a clumsily made puppet doll carved in cheap wood and attached with loosened string, hiding in a crevice on the wall, those brown eyes were all he could remember.
He didn’t hesitate when he tore it down to pieces.
What was life like, after all, behind the stained glass of rose-colored wealth? Was even a life this miserable, pretty, in such a distorted view? Matthias Czernin never needed anything, he always had it all.
He used to imagine him laughing, smiling. Sharing tales and playing with toys that he could only dream about having.
He had it all, he had it all. All that Florian needed, all that Florian wanted, all that Florian had lost.
So when his parents died too, Florian could only think that he was mocking him.
Copycat. Stealing the only thing he still had— Capitalizing on the tragedy, being one with the loss. Becoming an act of charity, falling as low as to beg for money to survive another day.
Matthias Czernin is greedy, Florian learns that day. Watching the live broadcast of the tragedy in the living room with all the other kids and nuns, the picture blurred by the static-filled channel, as the camera follows the humid gaze of the boy dressed in black. He sees it clearly, though, when he looks back at the camera.
When he looks back at him through the screen.
In the compassionate silence of the living room, Florian sneered.
He steals from him even the pity.
He remembers vividly standing in the choir afterwards. Singing his lungs out in the funeral ceremony, practicing non-stop with the other sick, sleep-deprived orphans just for this one event. Dressed like angels, all of them. Under the guise of being cared for by this city that only worried about appearance. To appease the privileged, to not make them wretch with the pitiful sight of the same people they trampled on daily.
Dressed in white, notes close to the sound of lyres. His blond hair looked like a halo in the contrasting sovereignty of the dark church, a mosaic created against the natural spotlight shining through the stained glass vitrail.
But no proper angel would look with that deep, infested hatred in its gaze.
The elegant figure stood in the middle of the altar, composed and proper to the parade of empty condolences repeated again and again at him. The stage was all for him to dance and twirl on, the natural spotlight from the stained glass a perfect circle framing his graceful mourning.
Even now, the light doesn’t shine on him.
He must’ve been around fourteen, then. Stomach lurching and eye bleeding in hatred, attentive to the back of his silhouette. To the openly hesitant face, that from one moment to another had come to find his own, eyes trailing back to him in a sophisticated confusion that held him frozen on the stage, even when supposed to listen to the same people repeating their prayers and condolences.
Detached, still. Unaffected, even with two coffins at his side. Even when seeing so plainly the whole show of his weakened forces and empty stomach taking a step back just to sing for him.
What was he really seeing, when he looked back at his bleeding gaze with his half-lidded eyes? How did poverty and hunger look in the eyes of someone that didn't even know it?
It had ended as fleetingly as it had started, after that short exchange of glances. Florian sometimes wonders if he cowered in fear afterwards. If he felt bad, or if he felt good when seeing him so deep down in the mud under his polished boots. If he made him feel something, if he made a difference.
It doesn’t really matter now. Not when he keeps on repeating the same mistakes he always has done, having no decision nor power, even when holding everything in his grasp to make all the differences he could ever want.
Manipulated and foul, still. Greedy asshole that doesn’t care for anyone other than himself, as he runs away from answering once again to the questions from the news broadcasts, his face still wearing that meek mask of weak nervousness.
Seeing his face is repulsive even now. How his skin is lustrous, spotless. Not a mark in the pale expanse of his perfect flesh. Florian can’t see him before feeling scarred. Blinded from the perfect everything that's so unlike him— unlike the burned, charred part of his soul that is vicious and ugly. The one that bleeds out and mangles even the skin above in pinkish, half-healed lumps of monstrous hideousness.
He thinks about switching channels, but ultimately decides against it. Hearing his stuttering voice gives him a reason, after all. Reminds him of his purpose, of why he is doing this.
In that bubble he lives in, that secluded tower of prestige and false security, he is not as immortal as he thinks he is. Not as powerful. Not as capable of stomping on his previous helpless, weak self, as he was so many years ago.
And once the final piece of this wretched puzzle falls into place, Florian will make sure to be the one that regains all that was stolen from him by his stealthy, filthy hands.
Him, and…
Ah… The puppeteer.
The only one who gets it. Who gets him . Who knows about the tumulted, convoluted lies that build and feed on themself in this filthy rotting system. About the disparity and the injustice, of which Matthias Czernin is the only shining face remaining in the middle of the broken picture.
Florian had known it since he first saw his mark, how they were the same.
That night when coming back from his job at the fire department, he saw someone. A figure clad in a long jacket, hidden in shadows as if just a taunt of the eye. Cleverly elusive, his little black cat.
He had rendered him speechless. How the long elegance of his leather-clad fingers could write so gracefully with the same blood of the unconscious man on the ground —The same filth that bleeds from the entrails of this city— his warm first message.
He had disappeared before Florian could think. Before he could speak or chase after his dark silhouette, reach his bloodied fingertips and mark his soul in his sins, claiming that they are just the same.
On the foggy, cold street there was no other soul other than his own, staring at the empty place besides an unconscious man where the deathly incarnation of vengeance had just been a moment ago.
It was obvious that he wasn’t supposed to see that, but in the end he had, and he wasn’t able to forget it ever since. In the light of morning, he had learned that the man wasn’t dead, but just knocked out and arrested. He was a police chief, a fake liar that deliberated on fake justice bought by the right price.
At the left side of his unconscious body, a message written with his own blood was found:
Their sins will bleed them dry — X
The puppeteer.
That’s what the media had called him, since the X of his bloodied signature trailed down into thin streaks, reminiscent of the strings he pulls and twists to unravel the threads of this convoluted, messy city.
Florian had swooned when he learned his name. His vengeful alias, his hidden identity. Learned with each new attack about how he was brave, fed up with all the injustice. With enough teeth to bite and tear into the bloodiest artery of the whole system.
The public had gone crazy, the news running rampant in the desperation of knowing who this new vigilante that terrorized the sinners really was. To make him pay for bringing light into the dirtiest of secrets, and disappearing into the shadows that bled from the carcass of the unconscious bodies.
Months have gone by now, and his cleverly elusive self has not yet been found— no conclusion drawn, as the cases multiply all over the city with each passing day.
And now, too, the fires.
Florian just hopes that he notices. How he makes him burn. How he makes him believe in justice, in revenge. How he inspired him to act and claim the power of revenge on his own hands.
He’s been careful until now; exploiting his knowledge, laying low and extinguishing his own nightly deeds in the daytime, disguised in the security of his job. Losing some clues, making up others. Lying and pretending and waiting, waiting, waiting.
But he still has no response.
Why, he wonders. So many restless nights in the thin springs of his cheap mattress, turning and sighing and hoping that tomorrow is the day when he receives his reply.
He's left clues in every scene, next to each dilapidated building and each charred corpse. They are carefully written messages of admiration and hope, blazing with the desire to be found. Waiting patiently in the warm, cozy cafe he visits each Friday at 6pm.
Looking at the door from the unassuming first stool of the bar counter, hoping for the day when the bell rings and the graceful silhouette of his deepest admiration sits courteous and quiet next to him, with only a smile of recognition as a clue on his soft lips.
He knows that he is clever, well-read and literate; It won’t be a problem for him to decipher his meanings. Even if each letter is turned on its head in convoluted references and codes from books, poems and songs, disparate characters mixed with letters and symbols— He will get it in the end.
No matter that they get analyzed by police in the hopes to crack the hidden code, or shown to the public under his own threatening desires due to thinned-out patience— He will reach out someday. He will understand.
He must be searching by now, it’s still early to call it a defeat. It calms his nerves to imagine the faceless mystery of his identity, examining each clue and searching in each corner until they find each other.
And when they do, it will only be a matter of time until their shared efforts bring all of the nasty liars to condemnation. To pay for their sins. To fall on their knees and beg for forgiveness.
And when every piece is out of the chess board, the useless king will be the last one to fall. Trapped in his own tower, knowing far too late that its confinement wasn’t a security, but a pesky trap with nowhere to escape to.
Matthias Czernin.
He can imagine his limpid tears and wet lashes, pupils trembling in wide eyes, looking up from the ground and meeting Florian’s own gaze. Like once before in that church, like all the other times from the grandness of the staircase.
But this time he won’t be looking down on him. This time he will be the one crying for pity, begging in fear in his shaking bones, screaming for help up to the unattached half-lidded gaze of the one above him— Florian laughs, as he once again retraces in his head the steps for today’s nightly escapade.
The old, abandoned Oletus Orphanage will burn like a blaring flare on that lonely hill. And when they find his card tomorrow, the Puppeteer won’t have more choice than to finally trail after the mastermind behind such a bold statement:
Matthias Czernin will be burned to the ground.
He’ll be the only one still visiting the corpse buried underground, half-eaten by the rats that his rich self never had to worry if they were eating his skin while he slept at night in a dingy, worm-eaten mattress— That day, when he finally gets to sing Ave Maria, just the same way as that day, to the rotting, forgotten name plate of his cursed identity, he will be finally happy.
An eye for an eye.
He smiles as he thinks of it, the lightbulb above the kitchen counter flicking in a trembling sigh as if feeling his dark desires. Florian thrills in the power of retribution, chuckling in a twisted half-smile as he finishes with a flourish the lovely signature engraved in bright red ink against the pink paper of the Valentine’s card.
— Sincerely, your secret admirer ♡