Mina Ostrohaya

Mina under lens

Let me show you Mina Ostrohaya, that strange creature who walks through Linz without understanding that he stopped being entirely human three years, four months, and seventeen days ago.

From above, I can see everything. The curl of smoke from morning fires. The way shadows pool in alleyways like spilled ink. The patterns people make as they move through streets, rivers of humanity flowing along predetermined channels, occasionally eddying around obstacles, mostly following the path of least resistance. And there, emerging from a building with walls the color of old bruises, is Mina.

The dawn cracks open above him, spilling golden light across the rooftops of Johan Strabe's neighborhood. It's a beautiful morning, objectively speaking—the kind of morning that poets write about, where everything seems touched by grace and possibility. But beauty doesn't discriminate. It falls equally on the just and unjust, on the living and the undead, on those who deserve it and those who don't.

Mina steps out into that golden light, and from my position above, I can see what he cannot: the way the light doesn't quite interact with his skin the way it should. It reflects off him, yes, but there's a slight delay, a fractional moment where the photons seem confused about whether they're touching something solid or something else entirely. No one at ground level would notice. No one has noticed. But from up here, with my perspective that spans dimensions, it's obvious.

He is pale—not the healthy paleness of someone who simply doesn't see much sun, but the pale of old paper, of bone, of things that have been leached of vitality. His skin is white enough that I can see the blue tracework of veins beneath it, except those aren't veins anymore, not really. They're channels where something else flows, something that mimics blood well enough to fool casual observation but isn't quite right. Isn't quite alive.

His eyes are extraordinary, I'll give him that. Blue-whitish, the color of ice on deep water, but shaped in a way that speaks to distant ancestors—Japanese-like, almond-shaped, tilted slightly upward at the corners. It's an unusual combination for this part of the world, and it makes him memorable. That's dangerous in his line of work, being memorable. But Mina either doesn't realize this or doesn't care.

His hair is very dark—not brown, but true black, the color of starless nights. He keeps it cut short, practical and severe. He tells himself this is to avoid the parasites that infest Johan Strabe's neighborhood, the lice and fleas that jump from body to body in the cramped tenements and crowded taverns. And that's partially true. But the real reason, the one he doesn't consciously acknowledge, is that he can't bear to let it grow long. When it grows past a certain length, he starts to feel things crawling on his scalp, whispering things, and he has to cut it, has to make it stop, has to regain control.

He doesn't know why he feels this way. He doesn't remember what was done to him three years, four months, and seventeen days ago.

But I remember. I watched it happen.

Now, watch him move through the morning streets. His steps are quick—faster than a normal person would walk, though he doesn't realize this either. He moves with a kind of nervous energy, as if standing still too long might allow something to catch up with him. And he's not entirely wrong about that, though what's chasing him isn't something that can be outrun.

From my aerial vantage point, I can see the route he takes every morning. It never varies. Mina is a creature of habit, locked into patterns as rigid as the streets themselves. Out of his building, turn left onto Broken Wheel Street—named for the cart wheel that's been embedded in the cobblestones there for fifteen years, a memorial to some accident no one quite remembers. Then right onto Scholar's Way, which is a cruel joke since no scholars have lived there for generations. The buildings lean toward each other here, almost touching at the roofline, turning the street into a tunnel of shadow even at midday.

He passes a baker's shop. Old Gretel is already at work, her hands deep in dough, kneading and shaping. The smell of fresh bread wafts out into the street, warm and yeasty and almost enough to mask the underlying odor of human waste and industrial runoff that characterizes Johan Strabe. Almost, but not quite. Mina doesn't buy bread from Old Gretel. He used to, before. Before he changed. But now the thought of eating makes him vaguely nauseous, though he forces food down anyway because that's what humans do, isn't it? They eat. They sleep. They maintain the fiction of being alive.