A little sneak peek on what I'm working on ☆ so sorry im such a slow writer
I love cowboys
You know you shouldn't trust man like him. But you thought maybe, just maybe, that he was the right one to help you, your ticket to freedom. And he was, for a moment... You truly are too naive for your own good.
The bar smells like old beer, sweat, and gun powder. The floor sticks when you shift your boots under the table. You keep your head down, shoulders rounded, eating slowly, counting each bite the way you count your breaths. You chose this place because it's isolated enough to disappear in and dim enough that no one looks too closely unless they mean trouble, far from ideal, but cheap enough. It was considerably empty for that time of day. Just you really eating.
At the table beside you, a group of men play cards.
Six of them, spread around a scarred wooden table. Coins and bills lie in messy stacks between them, their laughter comes sharp and uneven. You don't know what they do for a living, but you know what kind of men they are, the way their boots stay planted like they own the floor, men who take up space and don't give it back. You learn to stay away from the kind early on, the same way you learn not to touch a hot stove twice.
Some of them whistled to you when you got in. You shifted slightly on your bench, angling your body away from their table.
One of them sits a little apart from the rest.
He doesn't laugh when they do, he didn't talk much either. His hat is pulled low, shadow cutting across his eyes. His hands are rough, steady, unhurried as he sorts his cards. Doesn't curse when he loses a hand, he plays like he's got all the time in the world, long fingers moving slow, eyes half-lidded beneath the brim of his hat, they slid past you without stopping, and you felt a strange, unwarranted relief at that. Dark coat, dust on his boots. You're quick to look away when your eyes fall on his holstered gun.
You keep eating.
Your spoon shakes once before you still it.
You shouldn't be here, you know that. Every creak of the door makes your spine tighten, every unfamiliar voice sounds like it might belong to the men who chased you until your lungs burned and your legs nearly gave out. But you tell yourself you're safe for now, that if you keep saying it enough times might make it true. As if the men who are looking for you would politely stop at the door because there's a bar and witnesses around.
Your father used to say luck always turned back around eventually. He said it with a smile, cards fanned in his hand, breath thick with whiskey. You don't believe in that kind of luck anymore. Not after the way he didn't look at you when he offered you like something he could lose and live without.
You had been running for days. Weeks, maybe—it was hard to keep track once the roads began to blur together.
You swallow another spoonful of stew and force yourself to keep eating, your coins are scarce enough to let your food go to waste.
"Hell of a hand," One of the men laughs too loudly.
Another swears. The cards are still on the table, but the game is already over, even you can tell that much. "Funny thing, luck."
The quiet man has his winnings stacked neatly in front of him, coins aligned, bills folded once. He doesn't look up right away, he counts the coins once, twice. Calm, almost bored.
"Luck's got nothin' to do with it," He says. His voice was low, roughened by years of dust and smoke. No heat in it.
The man across from the quiet one stands up too abruptly, chair legs shrieking against the floor. His breath carries the sour bite of whiskey even from where you sit. The sound snaps your spine straight. Every instinct in you screams move, but you're frozen, spoon halfway to your mouth.
"Cheatin' bastard," The man says, words thick, eyes glassy. His hand closes around the table edge, knuckles whitening. "Ain't no way you pulled that clean."
The quiet man finally moves. He lifts his eyes, flat, unimpressed. "Sit down," he says.
The man doesn't.
The angry man's hand drops to his hip. Steel flashes as he draws, sloppy but fast. The others follow suit, chairs scraping back, weapons coming up in a loose, dangerous semicircle. Revolvers, a knife, one man fumbling with his grip like he's afraid of what he's holding. Five of them, all standing.
The quiet man stays seated. He doesn't reach for a weapon. Doesn't flinch. He just sighs, low and tired. You don't understand that choice at first. Your body tenses, ready to bolt, heart hammering so hard it hurts.
"You boys drunk,” he says. “Put those away."
You're already halfway out of your chair when the first shot goes wide, punching a hole into the wall instead of flesh.
He moves then.
In one smooth motion, he kicked the table sideways, hard, sending cards, coins, and liquor glasses flying. The sudden movement threw the closest man off balance just long enough. The man stood as his chair hit the floor behind him, already drawing, efficient, like this is something his hands remember even if he doesn't think about it anymore. Before the drunk man could fire again he was down, blood darkening his vest.
The sound of the gunshots was deafening in the enclosed space.
You hide under your table, food lay forgotten as you covered your ears. You couldn't look away.
One man went down screaming, clutching his leg, blood soaking into his trousers. The man didn't look at him again as the screaming stopped with a shot in the head.
Another man lunged, too close for a clean shot. He sidesteps, grabs the man's collar, and drives him face-first into the edge of the table. Bone cracks. The sound turns your stomach. The old man dropped like a sack of grain.
Two to go.
A fourth fired wildly. The bullet buried itself in the wall, some of them almost hitting you. The man stepped inside the crazy man's reach, grabbed his wrist, and twisted. You heard the pop before you the gun fall. The man fired point-blank into the others chest. He collapsed without a sound. The last one swung a knife, desperate and stupid.
He hesitated. You saw it. Just a flicker of doubt. But it was too late. The man caught his wrist mid-swing and drove him backward into the bar. Bottles shattered. Glass rained down. He leaned in close, voice low enough you couldn't hear the words, and then slammed the man's head against the wood once, twice-until he slid to the floor, unconscious or worse.
It was over.
Silence crashes down just as hard as the fight erupted.
He stood in the middle of it, chest rising slow, gun still in his hand. He looked around once, assessing, like a man checking the weather. Then he calmly reloaded.
Your heart was beating so hard it hurt. Satisfied, he holsters the revolver, adjusts his coat, and calmly collects his winnings from the floor, kneeling as if nothing out of the ordinary just happened.
And for a moment, you're certain of one thing, cold and clear as the gun smoke hanging in the air: whoever is hunting you, they're nothing like this. The man steps around the bodies without looking at them again. He crosses to the counter and sets a portion of the money down, separating it from the rest with deliberate care. The bartender hasn't moved since the shooting stopped. His hands shake where they grip the bar, eyes fixed on the blood soaking into the floorboards.
"For the mess," He says. His voice is level, almost bored. Then he nudges a few coins farther across the counter. "And the lil' lady dinner.” The bartender blinks, confused, then glances toward you. You freeze, still under your table. The old man nods quickly, too quickly, afraid to do anything else.
He doesn't look at you when he says it. He just turns, pulls his hat lower, and heads for the door, stepping on a man's back as he does.
You sat there a second longer, heart pounding, the echo of gunfire still ringing in your ears. Your bowl was cold. The chair across from you lay splintered on the floor. You could smell iron in the air.
You shouldn't.
You knew that. Every sensible part of you screamed it. Men like that were storms-you survived them by staying out of their path, not by chasing them.
You know what he is.
Someone dangerous. Someone you should stay far away from. The kind of man your father would have circled like a vulture if he were still around-if he hadn't sold you for one more night of breathing.
Your stomach twists.
You need this.
You had survived by running for so long. From town to town, bed to road, never sleeping deep enough to dream. You were tired. So tired. And the men who were looking for you wouldn't be drunk, wouldn't be sloppy.
You need him—what he can do. What you saw him do. Five men, drunk but armed, dropped like they were nothing. You think of the faces that will be looking for you. Think of the road outside, long and empty and full of places to disappear forever. He had paid for your meal.
Your hands curled into your skirts before you realized you'd stood up.
He pushes the door open. Cold air rushes in, carrying dust and the smell of horses. For one terrible moment, you hesitate. Your feet feel glued to the floor, your heart pounding so loud you're sure someone else must hear it. Then the door swings shut behind him.
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Tw: age gap, taboo, inappropriate thoughts, unhealthy dynamic.
Nothing really happens in this, just something I wanted to write real quick, might do something with it later ...
It started with the heat.
Not the heat itself, no-heat was just the frame, the cracked glass in the picture. The summer came early that year. It hung over the cul-de-sac like a sickness. Lawns yellowed into brittle straw, and the air shimmered thick and metallic, like it had a weight of its own. Somewhere, a dog barked endlessly into the heat. Somewhere, sprinklers hissed against pavement, evaporating before they touched anything green.
The first week passed easily. He spent his mornings watering his wife's plants—she liked them dewed and misted even when the grass outside scorched to straw—and spent his afternoons half-dreaming on the couch with the TV on and the volume down. You were in the house, too.
His stepdaughter.
You had a longer name, one that almost no one ever used, maybe your mother when angry or the doctor. And he, just once, when you first met, but he learned his lesson and paid for it with a week of your silence. Childish, he decided then. Still, there was something endearing about it... About you.
You were an young adult. Not a child, not exactly. But young enough that he still thought of you in glimpses—ballet recitals from photos on the fridge, glittery lip balm tubes left in the laundry, the curve of your signature on birthday cards, all loops and curls.
His wife, your mother, was away for this summer, some research grant in Vancouver. You had stayed behind to finish summer school, though you never seemed to study, and your bedroom smelled like nail polish and vanilla and damp towels. He avoids going into your room; he used to, he used to pick clothes off the floor when he was the one in charge of the laundry, that is, until you saw him washing one of your bras. You said you would do your own laundry, and didn't speak to him for the rest of the day. He thought it was funny then. Now he doesn't know if he even could.
After the five years together, he realized that this was the first time they were truly... alone. Your mother was always kind of there, in the middle, holding things together. It was awkward, to say the least.
Mark had tried, at first, to treat you like a daughter. He really had. He cooked you eggs. He asked how your classes were going. But you answered in shrugs, or one-word sighs, or long silences that stretched out until he wanted to claw through them. After the third year, he stopped trying.
Mark sat in the kitchen, a glass of sweating iced tea untouched in front of him. He wanted a cold beer, but his wife made him quit, she didn't like it, "alcohol is the root of all evil" she says, so for her he stopped, for their family. But recently he's found himself thinking more often about an ice-cold bottle of beer. Because of the heat, he knows for sure.
No other reason.
The ceiling fan wheezed above, doing nothing but stir the hot air like a pot about to boil. He ran a thumb over the rim of his glass, listening to the distant sound of cicadas grinding out their insect dirge.
You were out there again.
He told himself he wasn't watching you. That he wasn't looking, not in the deliberate sense. Just noticing. Just keeping an eye on things, the way men do when there's nothing else to do. You watch the weather. You watch the neighbors' dog shit in your yard. You watch your stepdaughter. You tell yourself that it's harmless. That you're bored. That you're old enough to know better. That this isn't the thing it feels like it might be. And it's not, It was just the boredom. The stillness. The absence of his wife that left them here. Together. For the next seven weeks.
You were reading something on the porch, sprawled over the peeling wicker couch like you owned the summer, a popsicle dripping orange trails down your wrist. One foot rested on the armrest, a smudge of dirt on your heel. You moved with the languid, dreamy grace of someone who didn't know yet what it meant to be watched. Or maybe you did.
You hadn't said ten words to him all day. Not cold, exactly. Just absent. Like he was a ghost haunting your home.
He looked away.
It had started slowly, this awareness. Or maybe it had always been there, latent and vile like mold behind wallpaper. He hadn't known you when you were little. You were already fifteen when he married your mother, all braces and bratty muttering, still sulking over the divorce of your parents. Some years later, you had grown suddenly, all at once, it seemed, or maybe he just noticed it too late. Somewhere in the years between your mother's wedding to him and now, you'd turned into a woman with high cheekbones and sun-warmed collarbones, always visible under those loose tank tops you wore, he didn't know when he started seeing you as a woman less than the kid he's used to—it was something that filled the edges of a room in a way that made his pulse tick in his neck.
You turned. You must've seen him in the window, but your expression didn't change. You simply tilted your head, owl-like, and kept walking-across the yard, up the deck, the screen door hissing as you stepped inside.
"You're home early," you said.
He watched a bead of sweat fall from your collarbone, slide between your breasts, and vanish into the band of your shirt. It was a detail that burned itself into the soft tissue of his brain. He avoided looking. He tried to, really did. But your skin seemed to glow against the dim, thick air, and he hated himself for noticing. He was suddenly aware of the hum of the fridge, and the stick of his thighs on the vinyl chair, the glass no longer cold on his fingers.
"It's Saturday," he said.
"Oh," you replied. “Right, I forgot."
You were starting to try, he could tell. You tried to talk to him like family-asked about his work, showed him memes on your phone, called him dude like he was some distant uncle. He nodded, played along. He grilled chicken on the porch and fixed your bike tire when you left it flat again. He offered to take you to the bookstore, or the shopping, or to one of your friends house that he didn't really like. Sometimes, you'd laugh at something dumb he said and toss your hair back, and that laugh—it was a knife, sliding in quietly, so slowly that he almost didn't feel it hurt.
He began to count how many times a day you'd say his name, he didn't know when he started it, he felt crazy when he realized, but he did anyway. Not dad, of course. You never had. Just Mark. It sounded different from his wife's voice, lighter, with something breezy wrapped inside it.
Another bead of sweat down your shirt.
You caught him looking. Didn't say anything. Just held his gaze a little too long.
"You get weird when you're bored," you said finally, a faint smile tugging your mouth.
And just like that, you walked past him, The scent of sunscreen and orange lingered as you disappeared upstairs.
He didn't breathe for a full minute.
One night, the power went out. The heat had fried a transformer down the road, and the cul-de-sac buzzed with confused motion-flashlights, murmured conversations, he didn't go out. In their house, the air grew heavy and unmoving, walls trapping warmth like a mouth clamped shut. Mark sat in the dark living room, another ice tea between his knees—if he tried really hard, he could pretend it was something else—he sat shirtless and sweating, a single lit candle on the coffee table, the only one he could find.
He heard your footsteps before he saw you, he looked at you before he could stop himself. You came down barefoot wearing one of your mother's t-shirts. One he remembered all too well, because he used to pull it off her when they were still fucking regularly, when things between them still sparked instead of sitting cold in the dark. It seemed like ages ago now.
"You okay?" you asked softly. He didn't trust his voice.
You sat on the arm of the couch, not quite next to him. Your thigh brushed his upper arm, he tried his best to suppress the shivers. The air was thick with the scent of your lotion, scented candle, sweat, and heat. For a moment, they were both utterly still. He focused on the cold sensation of the ice between his thighs, and not on the unwanted warmth building up.
"It's weird," you said quietly. "Being here with just you." He felt something cold slide down his spine despite the heat.
"Weird how?" He praised himself for sounding normal.
"I dunno. Just...like it's supposed to be mom and you. Not just..." you trailed off and smiled nervously. "Whatever. I'm being dumb."
He wanted to tell you that you weren't dumb. He wanted to say something benign and adult, something fatherly, something that would make this moment dissolve like sugar in tea, dissolve so that he would stop thinking about the shirt you were wearing and whether it would feel the same taking it off you as it did taking it off his wife. If you would raise your arms to make it easier to take off like she did.
"It's weird for me too."
A silence stretched between them, pulsing and humid. Outside, a cicada screamed.
"I try," you said after a moment, staring into the candle. "To see us as family. I do." your voice had turned small, careful. “But sometimes it's like...l don't know how."
He swallowed hard. "I know." You looked at him then, eyes shining with something he couldn't name, the kind of look that made him want to bury his face in his hands and scream. The candle flame flickered again, casting long shadows over your face, the line of your throat, the curve of your breasts.
He looked away. He couldn't breathe.
"I hope I can one day." Your voice was too soft.
Mark faced forward.
You slid off the couch arm, the hem of the shirt riding up to show the pale, obscene softness of your upper thigh.
"Good night, Mark." and you disappeared up stairs with bare feet against hardwood.
Six times today.
He stayed glued to the sofa long after you closed your door, staring at the candle until the wax drowned the wick, until the ice melted from his not beer. Refusing to acknowledge the pit on his stomach, or the tent in his pants.
That night, he dreamed of his wife, of their wedding day—her veil, her laugh, the way she'd looked at him like he was the answer to something. He woke up with guilt lodged behind his ribs like a splinter.
Your life doesn’t leave room for spectacle. It’s too busy being small and exhausting and painfully real.
The Running Man is just background noise to you. A loud, ugly thing that belongs to other people’s lives. You don't watch it, so it has nothing to do with you.
That’s what you think, anyway.
Until it comes crashing down your door.
Part 1
The city never sleeps.
Because it can’t afford to, at least your part of the city. It runs on flickering neon, on the hum of generators and the low growl of traffic that never really stops, just slows enough to breathe before grinding forward again. Towers loom overhead, all glass and propaganda screens looping the same bright promises over and over. Eat better. Watch more. Work harder. Watch more. Buy more. Watch more. Survive longer.
You live wedged between two of those towers, in a building that smells like old grease and damp concrete, where the elevator hasn’t worked in years and the stairwell lights buzz like they’re about to give up any second and it does, sometimes. Your apartment is small enough that you can touch the sink from the bed if you lean the right way. One window, cracked at the corner—a kid threw a rock at it, and you couldn't afford to repair it. It lets in more noise than light, sirens, shouting, laughter that always sounds a little unhinged this late at night.
You don’t mind it. Or maybe you’ve just learned how not to care.
You wake up every morning before the sun crawls up between the buildings, pull on the same uniform pants still smelling faintly of fryer oil, and head to work with the rest of the underpayed ghosts. People like you, half-awake, clutching cheap coffee, eyes already dulled by the day ahead. No one talks. No one looks at each other for too long. In this city, eye contact feels like a commitment you can’t afford.
The restaurant sits on the corner of a street most people only pass through when they have no other choice. A narrow place with stained booths, a counter that’s been wiped down so many times the surface is worn thin, and a flickering sign that promises HOT FOOD like it’s doing you a favor. It smells like burnt coffee and grease soaked into the walls. You work doubles when they ask, because they always ask, because someone always quits or disappears or just stops showing up one day.
You pour coffee. You take orders. You smile when it’s expected of you and keep your mouth shut when it’s not. You learn quickly which customers want conversation and which ones just want to be left alone with their plates and their thoughts. Most of them watch the screens mounted above the counter while they eat. Most days, the volume is turned up just loud enough that you can’t ignore it.
The Running Man is on, again.
It’s always on. If it’s not live, it’s reruns, highlights, interviews, slow-motion replays of people getting caught, dragged down, screaming. The logo flashes bright and clean against the grime of the place, all sharp angles and bold colors, the presenter's voice awfully lively as he tells how the last runner managed to escape again. A show about survival, they say. About choice. About hope.
You don’t buy it.
Everyone knows how it works by now. Contestants—Runners—sign contracts they barely understand, or understand too well and sign anyway. Thirty days on the run through sanctioned zones of the city and beyond, hunted by professionals, broadcast live for millions to watch. Make it to the end and you win more money than you’ll ever see otherwise. Enough to pay debts, buy freedom, get out. Maybe.
Most don’t make it that far.
The show dresses it up with narration and theme music, dramatic cuts and talking heads explaining why this is necessary, why this is fair. They call it entertainment. They call it justice. They call it a chance. You’ve heard all the slogans so many times they blur together into noise.
You don’t watch. Not really. You glance up sometimes because it’s hard not to when someone at the counter cheers or groans, when a Runner stumbles on-screen and the room reacts like it’s a sports game instead of a man being hunted through alleyways that look a lot like the ones you walk home through every night.
You’ve seen enough of the aftermath in real life to know better. The blood washed into gutters. The boarded-up buildings after a chase tears through a block that never recovers. The way people talk about it the next day, voices low, half-thrilled, half-afraid. As if fear is a currency, too, something to trade for a few hours of distraction.
You’re not a fan. You don’t hate it with the kind of fire some people do, the ones who still believe outrage changes anything. You just… don’t care. Or you tell yourself you don’t. It’s easier that way. Caring feels like leaning too far over an edge you don’t want to look down.
Your life is small, but it’s yours. You count tips at the end of the night. You stretch your paycheck to cover rent, food, transit. You fall asleep exhausted and wake up to do it again. Day by day, shift by shift. The system grinds on, and you move with it because stopping would mean being crushed underneath.
The show doesn’t change that. Whether someone lives or dies on-screen doesn’t make your coffee taste better or your feet hurt less after a double. It doesn’t pay your bills. It doesn’t know your name.
So when the announcer’s voice booms through the restaurant, excited, theatrical, introducing the new day tapes of the Runners, you keep refilling mugs and clearing plates. You miss most of the faces, just another blur of desperation and bravado. People who think they can outrun the system if they’re fast enough, clever enough, angry enough.
You just work.
You don’t realize how loud the city is until you’re back in your apartment with the door shut and the locks slid into place. You kick off your shoes, drop your bag by the door, and lean your forehead briefly against the peeling paint like you’re bracing yourself.
It was worse at work tonight.
Every screen, every angle, his face replayed over and over, sharper now that he’d survived long enough for the cameras to start caring. Week two, the announcer had said, voice slick with excitement, a survivor, the Final Dude as they call him. They liked him because he didn’t die fast, because he fought back.
You didn’t linger on the image, but it stuck anyway, it was hard not to when his face was everywhere. Dark hair plastered to his forehead with sweat, jaw clenched, eyes too alert, too alive. Blood on his knuckles. A grin that looked more like a warning than confidence. You saw, against your will, recordings of him killing some officers once, you tried not to look.
You flick on the light, toss your jacket over the back of the chair, and move through the narrow space on autopilot. Sink, window, lock. You don’t turn on the TV, you never do. Instead, you peel out of your uniform and scrub your hands at the sink, like the day might come off if you try hard enough.
That’s when you hear it.
A sound that doesn’t belong. Soft, but wrong. The scrape of metal against wood. A breath that isn’t yours.
Your head snaps up.
The door shudders once, hard enough to rattle the frame. For a split second, your mind refuses to catch up. Then panic slams into you, sudden and absolute. You back away from the sink, heart kicking violently against your ribs, eyes locked on the door as it jerks inward with a sharp crack.
The lock gives.
The door bursts open, wood splintering around the frame, and a man stumbles inside like he’s falling through the threshold rather than crossing it. He’s taller than you expected, broader too, moving fast despite the way he favors one side. He freezes when he sees you.
You freeze too.
For a heartbeat, you just stare at each other.
He looks worse up close. Blood darkens the fabric of his jacket, soaked deep along his ribs. There’s a cut above his eyebrow, still bleeding slow, his face tight with pain and something sharper underneath. His eyes flick over you, taking inventory, assessing. They land on your hands, empty but raised halfway in reflex.
Shit.
He reacts first.
He lunges.
You scream, the sound tearing out of you as he barrels forward, knocking into the table hard enough to send it skidding. He grabs for anything within reach, finds a broken chair leg on the floor—wood snapped jagged, splintered like teeth—and swings it up without hesitation.
“Don’t—” you gasp, backing up, slipping on the tile as your heel catches wrong. You slam into the counter, pain blooming sharp along your spine.
He doesn’t slow down.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he snaps, voice rough, breath coming fast. “Get back—get the fuck back. How did you find me—”
The piece of wood slams into the counter inches from your hand, cracking the surface. You flinch violently, heart hammering so loud it drowns out everything else.
“I live here!” you shout, the words shaking apart as they leave your mouth. “I live here—please—”
That stops him.
Not completely. He still holds the weapon tight, he's towering over you, God, too close, knuckles white, shoulders tense like a coiled spring. But his eyes flick back to your face, sharper now, confused.
You see it then—the flicker of calculation breaking, the adrenaline crashing into uncertainty. He looks past you, taking in the room properly for the first time. The unmade bed. The shoes by the door. The cheap jacket hanging on the chair.
Occupied.
“Fuck,” he mutters.
His stance falters, just a fraction, and that’s enough for your legs to finally remember how to move. You scramble sideways, grabbing the nearest thing you can—a mug from the counter—and hurl it without thinking. It shatters against the wall near his head, porcelain exploding in a sharp crack.
He swears, ducks instinctively, and staggers back a step.
“I thought—” He cuts himself off with a harsh breath, hand flying to his side as pain spikes. His face twists, and for the first time, he looks less like a threat and more like someone barely holding himself together. “I thought this place was empty.”
“Get out,” you say, voice breaking, another mug finds your hands. “Get the fuck out of my house.”
He laughs, short and ugly, more breath than sound. “Yeah. I will, sorry.”
He takes another step, then falters hard, slamming his shoulder into the wall to stay upright. Blood smears across the paint, dark and wet. His breathing turns shallow, ragged, each inhale clearly costing him something.
You don’t lower your guard. You can’t. You’ve seen the show enough in passing to know how fast things turn. How quickly someone cornered becomes dangerous, how fast he can kill.
But he’s not advancing anymore.
His eyes meet yours again, unfocused now, pupils blown wide. “I’m not here to hurt you,” he says, quieter. “You can lower your weapon, lady.”
That should comfort you. It doesn’t.
Your pulse roars in your ears as the reality catches up, cold and heavy. This isn’t just some desperate guy. This is a Runner. A man being hunted on live television. The kind of person the city has been trained to fear and cheer for his death in equal measure.
And he’s bleeding all over your kitchen.
“I didn’t watch,” you blurt out, the words tumbling out wrong. “I don’t—I don’t watch the show.”
Something shifts in his expression at that. Surprise, genuine this time. Almost disbelief.
“Yeah?” he murmurs, eyes flicking back to the door like he’s measuring how long until it bursts open again. “Lucky you.”
He slides down the wall despite himself, leaving a long, ugly smear behind, and ends up sitting on the floor, chest heaving. The piece of wood drops from his hand with a dull clatter. He said he would get out, but you don't think he can.
You stand there longer than you should.
Every sensible thought is screaming at you to run, to grab your phone, to scream for help, call the Hunters and maybe get cash prize for his head, to put distance between yourself and the bleeding man—the Runner, slumped against your wall. This is how people die, this is how you end up as a headline, a cautionary segment replayed between commercials on why you shouldn't let a Runner in your house.
And still—you don’t move.
He’s breathing hard now, uneven, his head tipped back against the paint like he’s fighting to stay upright. Up close, the violence drains out of him in small, undeniable ways. The tremor in his hands. The way his jaw tightens every time he inhales too deeply. The blood loss you don’t need medical training to recognize.
He’s hurt. Bad.
You swallow, throat dry. “If I call anyone,” you say slowly, carefully, “they’ll find you.”
His eyes flick to you immediately. Sharp again, even through the haze. “Yeah,” he says. “They will.”
The room hangs on that.
You don’t know what you expected—begging, maybe. Threats. Something dramatic like on TV. Instead, he just exhales and nods once, like he’s already accepted the outcome. Like he’s used to decisions being made without him.
That’s what does it.
Not the blood. Not the fear. That look—resigned, stripped down, too familiar. You’ve seen it on people at the restaurant when the bill comes higher than they expected, when security shows up, when something slips just out of reach for good, when looking on the mirror. The look of someone who knows the system already picked its teeth clean with them.
You step closer before you can stop yourself. “Stay still,” you mutter, mostly to yourself. But surprisingly he does.
You grab the old first-aid kit from under the sink. It’s half-empty, a joke of gauze and antiseptic you bought years ago and never thought you’d need. Your hands shake as you crouch a few feet away from him, close enough to help, far enough to bolt if you need to.
He watches you the entire time.
Not the way men at the restaurant do, not dismissive or hungry, this is different. Focused. Intent. Like he’s memorizing the way you move, the way you hesitate before touching him, and he lets you. His breathing slows just a little as you lift his shirt, your fingers brushing his skin by accident.
“Why?” he asks quietly.
You don't glance up. “Why what?”
“Why help.” No accusation. Just curiosity, raw and unguarded. “You know who I am. Well, you don’t, which might be worse. Either way, I’m trouble.”
You snort softly despite yourself. “Don’t flatter yourself. I’m not doing this for you.” You press the gauze harder than necessary, and he hisses. “I just… couldn’t leave you like that."
That almost gets a laugh out of him. Almost. He coughs instead, sharp and wet, shoulders curling inward as pain tears through him. When it passes, he looks at you again, something different flickering there now.
“Yeah,” he murmurs. “That tracks.”
You give him water he drinks too fast, choking a little before forcing himself to slow down. He thanks you under his breath, like the word isn’t something he uses often.
“Blake,” he says suddenly.
You look up. “What?”
“My name.” He swallows hard. “It’s Blake.”
You know that, of course you know that, that's hardly a person in this city that doesn't know his name, watching the show or not. “Okay,” you say.
"Not gonna tell me your name?" You pause, fingers hovering over the bandages. Names feel intimate, dangerous. You're aware of his eyes on you the entire time, you feel exposed in a way you can’t explain, you don't really want him to know your name. You swallow, and tell him anyways.
You notice things as the minutes pass.
He apologizes when he bleeds on your floor. Actually apologizes. He flinches when there’s a loud noise outside, shoulders tightening automatically. He keeps glancing at the door, then the window, mapping exits, threats, angles. Survivor instincts carved deep.
“I didn’t mean to scare you,” he says eventually, voice low. “Thought the place was abandoned. Most of them are.”
“I screamed,” you reply flatly. “You tried to hit me.”
“Yeah.” He doesn’t argue. Doesn’t excuse it. A corner of his mouth twitches. Not quite a smile “That’s on me.”
That honesty unsettles you more than anger would have.
You cut away the fabric around his wound as gently as you can. He flinches despite himself, a low sound slipping out before he can stop it. His hand shoots out, gripping the edge of the counter hard enough that his knuckles go white. You catch the tremor running through him.
“Sorry,” you murmur automatically.
He exhales, slow and shaky. “Don’t be. Pain’s… I'm used to it.” His eyes flick back to you. “It's grounding."
You clean the wound. It’s bad, but not fatal, you think. A deep gash, poorly treated, reopened too many times. You work in silence for a bit, focused, trying not to think about how close he is, how easily he could overpower you if he wanted to. He watches every movement, fascinated in a quiet, unsettling way.
“You’re not scared,” he says after a while.
You snort, short and humorless. “That’s not true.”
He’s dangerous. You know that. You’ve seen what people like him are capable of, even if you don’t watch the show. But sitting here, patched up and breathing, he doesn’t look like a monster. He looks like a man pushed past the edge and told to keep running. He looked about your age too, maybe a little older, but still too young to be putting his life on the line like this. You wanted to ask, but you didn't want to know.
“But you’re still here.” There’s something almost reverent in his tone now. "Could've killed me by now."
Your hands still. Slowly, you meet his gaze. “I'm not going that."
Something shifts behind his eyes at that. Not relief. Not gratitude. Something deeper, heavier, like a door unlatching.
“Funny,” he murmurs. “You’re the first person who’s said that since this started.”
You tape the bandage in place, your fingers brushing his skin. He goes very still at the contact, breath catching just slightly, like the sensation hits harder than the injury did.
When you finally straighten up, stepping back, he looks at you like you’ve done something profound.
No one’s ever treated him gently in this context. You can see that dawning realization settle into his expression, slow and heavy. On the show, people cheer when he bleeds. Off it, they either run or reach for weapons.
You brought him water.
“You live alone?” he asks, casually. Too casually.
You stiffen. “Why.”
He shrugs, wincing as it pulls at his side. “Just thinking. You didn’t scream for help. Didn’t try to trade me in.” A pause. “Didn’t ask for anything.”
You don’t like the way his gaze lingers now. There’s something sharpening behind it, curiosity tipping into interest.
“I won’t tell anyone,” you say, firm. “But you can’t stay.”
“I know.” He nods. Then, softer, almost to himself: “Still.”
Still, you helped. Still, you saw him. Still, you didn’t look at him like he was already dead.
To him, you’re not a fan. Not a viewer. Not a hunter.
You’re real.
And as he pushes himself to his feet, steadying himself against the wall, his eyes meet yours one last time before he moves toward the door, and there’s something there now that wasn’t before.
"I will thank you later." His lips curve, faint and sharp. "Hope you're watching tonight."
The words hang between you, unsettling in their certainty. He keeps looking at you like he’s memorizing the shape of your face, the sound of your voice, like this moment is being etched into him whether either of you want it or not.
He won’t forget this.
Just watched The Running Man, felt inspired! Really great film B)
The beep clicks, followed by a breath that sounds shaky but eager, like he’s rehearsed this call a hundred times before dialing. You can hear the faint rasp in his throat, as if he hasn’t slept in days.
“Hey… uh, it’s me. Look, don’t freak out, alright? Just—just listen. I promise I won’t be weird this time. I just wanted to call and… I don’t know, say I’m good, actually, better. I’ve been… moving on, you know? Figured out som' stuff about myself, working out again, eating better. Even went out with some friends. You’d be proud of me."
He chuckles a little too loud, hollow, like he’s convincing himself. Then there’s a pause, and the silence hums with the low static of the receiver. The phone picks up the faint rhythm of footsteps, he’s pacing.
"Yeah… yeah, I don’t need you anymore. Not like before. That whole… uh, texting and calling at 3 a.m. is over. I mean, I'm technically leaving a message at 2 a.m., but this is different, this the last time, I swear."
A thin chuckle follows, more awkward than the other, too long. The laugh dies into silence and his breathing changes, lower at first, then heavier, dragging like he’s thinking too hard.
“But, uh… you know, it’s crazy, because even when I’m busy, I keep—fuck, okay, who am I kidding, I thought I could do this, I really thought I could call you and tell you how well I am without you... But shit, I can't. I can’t even get through a single hour without your face just… burning into my head. Like some goddamn watermark on everything. I’ll be laughing with people and suddenly—bam—it’s you. Always fucking you. And it’s stupid, right? It’s fucking stupid. I thought I was past it.”
His voice drops lower, more confessional now, almost whispering closer to the mic, like he’s confessing something shameful. The pacing stopped.
"I miss you, I really do. I know this is getting old by now but fuck, I miss you so much... even when you hated me, you still looked perfect. You still—God, you’re perfect. You know that, right? So perfect that it hurts... too perfect to be with someone like me, isn't?"
A sharp inhale through his teeth. He exhales with a shaky laugh, voice tilting upward into something more brittle. You can hear him shifting, his breath catching in his throat.
"I hate this, I hate it. I hate that you left me and I’m still stuck here, chained up like some fucking dog."
His breath hits the mic, sharp and uneven. He exhales hard through his nose, like he's trying to stay calm. Somewhere in the background, there’s the creak of a floorboard, then the snap of fingers, restless, inpatient, you remember him snapping his fingers when he was angry, memories you wanted to forget come rushing back. His voice rises suddenly, sharper, cracking at the edges.
"You fucking broke me, you threw me out like trash, and somehow you’re still the only thing that makes me feel alive. Do you understand what kind of sick joke that is? You’re the only person who can make me want to scream and cry and laugh and… die. All in the same fucking second. And I hate that—I hate you."
The line goes silent except for the sound of his breathing. Low, heavy, uneven, like he’s right in your ear. The phone scrapes against something as he adjusts it, muttering under his breath before his voice spikes again, hot, unfiltered.
"I saw you with him today, you know. Do you have any idea how that made me feel? Any fucking idea? Seeing that you're moving on, while I'm still here? I hate you for smiling without me, for laughing with him. With him. Do you know what that feels like? it makes my skin crawl. I picture his hands on you and it makes me want to tear my own fucking eyes out. Or his. His, preferably. You think he loves you like I do? He doesn’t. He can’t. He’s nothing. This shit makes me want to break something, break him. Break you.”
There's a dull thud—a kick, or maybe a punch, against the wall, hard, the sound makes you flinch even though you're not there. His breathing becomes more ragged, harsh, each word dragging through his lungs.
“I hate you so much, but I hate myself more—I hate myself 'cause I still fucking love you. Shit, I want to cut it out of me, this thing you put in me, this sickness. I can’t escape you. You left, but you’re still here, rotting inside my head. I hate you for that, I hate you so much I can barely breathe.”
The phone picks up the sound of pacing again, faster this time, frantic, like a caged animal. His words start spilling quicker, voice climbing and cracking, breath hitching between syllables.
"And you—you don’t even answer me anymore. Texts, calls, nothing. I try a new number but you always fucking block me. I sit there watching the screen, watching that little bubble never appear. Do you know what that does to me? Do you want me to lose it? Do you fucking get off on that?"
A sudden slam—something kicked across the room—and his breathing comes ragged, harsh against the receiver, like he’s burning through his chest. Then, just as suddenly, he drops his tone, almost whispering now, unsteady, words trembling as if his throat is closing.
"Huh? Do you know what it does to me? I fucking hate you. I hate you so much sometimes I wanna scream until my throat bleeds, I wanna wrap my hands around your neck until you feel what it's like to be breathless. But then I think about not having you at all, and it’s worse. It’s so much worse. Because I can’t—fuck—I can’t live without you.”
You hear a broken sob on the other end of the line, he was crying. But it wasn't soft, it wasn't sad, no, it’s raw, guttural, strangled through clenched teeth. Every sob rides the edge of a laugh, like grief and fury have blended into one.
"I can’t sleep. I can’t eat. I can’t breathe without choking on the thought of you with someone else. You think I don’t see? I know you. I know you, better than anyone. That new guy—you think I don’t notice the way you laugh different around him? That cheap fucking smile you give him, like he’s earned it? No. No, no, no. That smile was mine. It was always mine."
His tone drops, low and venomous, his breath scrapes against the receiver like static, uneven and fast, as if he’s grinning through his teeth. Every word pressed too close to the mic, distorted by spit and fury.
"I swear to God, if I ever see him—if I ever see that asshole with you again—I don’t care what happens. I’ll ruin his face. I’ll fucking kill him. I’ll make sure you never forget who you belong to."
Then a sudden, violent exhale, followed by a hoarse chuckle. Each word bursts like it’s been clawed out of him.
"You hear me? You’re mine. You can’t erase me. You can block my number, delete my photos, throw my shit in the street—I’ll still be there. Right there, because life without you doesn’t mean shit. I’d rather stop breathing than watch you walk away again. And if you do… maybe I’ll make sure you don’t walk anywhere at all."
Then a sudden laugh, sharp and ugly, tearing out of him like it hurts to let it go. He chuckles into the phone, the sound slipping into something maniacal, more unhinged. He exhales dramatically, as if he's just realized something life-changing. You can practically hear the smile on his lips.
"Yeah. Yeah, maybe that’s how this ends. You and me. Together. Nobody else. You’re the only thing that makes sense. The only reason I get out of bed. And if you think you can just leave me, just replace me—”
A long pause. The silence is jagged, filled only by his erratic breathing. When he speaks again, his voice is lower, colder, stripped of the earlier softness.
“—then you’re out of your fucking mind. Because I won’t let that happen. Do you hear me? I won’t. You’re mine. You always were. You always will be. And if I have to remind you of that, if I have to show you, then I will. I’ll come find you. I’ll come find you both. And when I do—”
There’s a pause, the sound of him breathing ragged, like he’s chewing back something ugly. Then his voice drops, almost pleading, almost gentle.
“Baby… don’t make me do this. Just call me back. Please, please. Just—say you love me. Say it once. That’s all I need. That’s all I—”
The line cuts off mid-sentence as you ended the voicemail.
The flat beep lingers in your ears long after the line cuts, you’re holding the phone tighter than you realize, your fingers stiff, trembling against the screen. His voice still rings in your ears, like it’s soaked into the air around you, sticky and heavy, impossible to shake off. You set the phone down on the table like it burned you, looking at it like it was your ex itself, the silence of your apartment swells around it, every creak of the building suddenly too loud. You know better—you know better—than to let him crawl under your skin again, but your chest still feels like it’s filling with ice water.
Your chest felt too small for your lungs, breaths coming shallow and shaky. You wanted to laugh, maybe, because of course he would leave a two a.m. voicemail like that. It was so him.
This wasn't the first one he'd left you, God, you lost count of how many of them filled your phone as the week went on. It had only gotten worse after the breakup. The endless texts, pages and pages of them. One minute he’d be begging you to come back, saying he couldn’t live without you, the next he’d call you a whore, a slut for playing with his feelings. You’d blocked him everywhere, but he always found a way back in. New numbers, fake accounts, and endless voicemails, mostly drunk ones.
You'd hear a few seconds of them at most, never letting more than one sentence come out of his mouth before you deleted it without a second thought. But why was this time different? Why this time did you actually listen to what he had to say? This time he actually sounded... normal. Was it because he said he was over it? No, it couldn't be, you knew better than to believe any word that came out of this fucker's mouth. So why?
Your chest is tight. Every breath feels shallow, like if you inhale too deep, he’ll hear it somehow. You don’t move, you don’t even want to blink, because in the silence that follows, it feels like he’s still there—like he’s right outside the door, grinning, waiting for you to come check. Fuck, not this again, you moved out because of that, he has no way of knowing where you live now, he can't.
You catch your own reflection in the black phone screen and it startles you, eyes wide and damp, and you hate that you look scared, that he made you feel this way again.
You think about deleting the voicemail, but your thumb hovers over the option, frozen. What if you need proof? What if someone doesn’t believe you? Then again, If you think you're going to have to use this voicemail as proof for something, it means you think he's going to do something. The thought makes your blood run cold. He wouldn't do that, would he? You want to believe it, you really do, but you can't.
Your stomach twisted when you replayed his words in your head. That new guy. Your hand flew to your mouth. He knew. He’d seen you. Somehow, somewhere, he’d been there. How does he know about your new boyfriend? Was he staking you? How does he know about that? How does he know where you were? Does he know where you live? How would he know? How? How? How?
Your pulse roared in your ears. Suddenly every corner of the apartment felt hostile. The windows—were the blinds closed? Had you locked the door? You moved, quick and clumsy, pulling each latch, tugging each curtain. You half-expected to see him standing there in the street, grinning up at your window like he’d been there all along.
"Fuck."
You grab the phone before you can talk yourself out of it and dial Alex number. Your thumb trembles against the glass as it rings, rings, and you hold your breath, each second dragging long enough to convince you that maybe—maybe your ex already did something. Maybe that was the last voicemail before everything went south. Was it a warning?
“Hello?” Alex’s voice is warm, groggy, a little confused. It cuts through the quiet like light under a locked door, and you feel like you can breathe again.
You don’t answer right away. Your lips part, but no sound comes out. He says your name, softer this time. “You okay?”
And just like that, the tears you didn’t know you were holding back sting the corners of your eyes. You force yourself to swallow, clear your throat, smooth the cracks from your voice before they can betray you.
“Yeah. Sorry. I—I didn’t mean to wake you.”
But it’s a lie. You did. You needed to. His voice is proof that nothing’s happened, that your ex’s threats are just noise, just another performance, like all the others. He used to do that, scare you on purpose. Whisper things he’d never follow through on, just to watch you flinch. Just to remind you how much power he had. He always thought he was charming when he was angry, like his rage meant passion instead of danger.
You remember the first time he did it. The two of you were still in his car, some summer night where the air stuck to your skin. He laughed while telling you what he’d do if you ever left him—ridiculous, horrible things—but then he kissed your hand right after, like it was all a joke. And you laughed, too. shit, you laughed, because you thought it was endearing when he said it, because that showed how much he loved you.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Alex asks again, and you realize you’ve been quiet too long.
“Yeah,” you say, maybe too quickly. You hear yourself trying to sound casual, normal, the way you always tried to sound when your ex cornered you with one of his monologues. Just keep the tone even. Don’t let him hear it. “Just… couldn’t sleep. Wanted to hear your voice.”
There’s a pause, and then Alex chuckles softly, not unkindly. “That’s all? You scared me for a second. Thought something happened.”
You can't tell him anything, should you? You can't think straight. He knew about your crazy ex, of course. You didn't want to hide anything from him, Alex was different. It was a messy breakup, that's all you said, because you didn't want to remember, you didn't want him to know this side of you, you didn't want him to know what you did. “Nothing’s wrong,” you lie again, quieter this time. “I just… missed you.”
You press the phone tighter to your ear, listening to Alex breathe on the other side, steady and safe, alive. "Well, i'm glad you miss me, but can't you do it tomorrow morning?" You hear him yawn on the other end of the line, and guilt creeps up on you.
"Right, right, sorry, I'll let you sleep now." You didn't really want to hang up, you wanted to keep hearing his voice, hearing his breathing... You were getting paranoid, and that was exactly what he wanted, for you to feel scared. You couldn't let him control your mind, not anymore. "Good night, Alex."
"Good night, beautiful." You could feel the smile behind his voice, and it made you smile too. "Love you." Alex says without hesitation, always, like he really means it, and it lands in your chest with a quiet warmth, steadying, grounding.
"Love you too." you murmur, barely above a whisper, as if the words themselves are a shield. He sighs, murmurs something about going back to bed, and the call ends with a small click, leaving you alone with the hum of silence.
Of course he didn’t do anything. That’s ridiculous. He’s always been all talk—big, dramatic threats meant to send you spinning, meant to keep you tethered to him through fear. He wouldn’t actually follow through. He wasn’t that crazy.
…Right?
You sink into the couch, clutching the phone like it might start ringing again. It’s easy to picture him pacing through his apartment, snapping his fingers, muttering to himself, winding himself up on a stage only he can see. You’ve seen it before.
The memory comes back sharp, unwanted. That night he showed up at your door after three days of silence, after a stupid fight you don't even remember anymore. His eyes were bloodshot, jaw tight, words tumbling too fast to make sense. He laughed, then shouted, then laughed again, like the switch was broken inside him. But then he cupped your cheek, whispered that he couldn’t live without you, that you were the only thing keeping him from falling apart. His thumb stroked your skin so tenderly you almost believed it.
He could be sweet when he wanted. Sweet enough to trick you into thinking the rest of it was just a phase, just a lapse of reason, just the storm before the calm, nothing more. Sweet enough to make you forget, for a little while, the bruises of his words.
You close your eyes and shake it off, you don't want to remember any more of this, you wanted to forget about the past, about him. That was then. He’s bluffing. He’s always bluffing.
This was just another one of his fucked up threats.
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Tw: selfharm, suicide, religious imagery, prayers in Latin.
“I loved her more than Heaven. I feared her more than Hell.
If God made her to test me, then He failed.
Or I did.
But the worst sin was not desire,
it was believing I could feel it and remain holy.”
The snow came early that year, blanketing the chapel’s roof in silence so thick even the crows forgot their songs. Father Alaric stood before the altar as he did every morning, lips murmuring Latin prayers that had long since lost their music. His voice quivered, not from the cold, but from the burden beneath his cassock—the slow unraveling of a soul once certain, now trembling.
You came again.
It was the fourth morning this week.
Your veil was damp with snow, the thin wool of your cloak darkened where it clung to your shoulders. You made no sound as you slipped into the back pew, always the same one, never closer. Your eyes lowered, hands folded with such practiced reverence it twisted something in him.
He dared not look too long. But he always did.
Your name, he had learned only once—accidentally—when an old woman called you from the village well. The name hung in his thoughts like incense, clinging to everything, sweet and choking.
And yet here he stood, fingers curled tight around the edge of the altar, as though bracing himself against some storm only he could feel.
That storm wore a veil.
It was during Vespers, when the candlelight turned stone into gold and shadow, that it first became unbearable.
He had watched you—God forgive him—watched your lips form the prayers, your lashes flutter shut, your neck tilt ever so slightly in the humility of devotion. The flickering light carved your from the gloom like a figure of Caravaggio’s brush, all tenderness and sorrow.
Something cracked.
He fumbled a word, tripping over in saecula saeculorum, and his voice fractured mid-chant. No one noticed. No one, except you.
Their eyes met. Just for a moment.
Your gaze held no seduction. No invitation. Only something deeper, far more cruel: compassion.
The shame that followed was worse than fire.
That night he scoured his back with a birch switch until welts rose like ridges on a holy relic. He wept without sound, biting the cloth he kept for cleaning chalices to keep the walls from hearing. Mea culpa, Deus. Ego sum pulvis. Ego sum nihil. He whispered it like a charm, again and again.
He had not spoken aloud of you. Not to his fellow priests when they came from Rouen. Not to the boy who rang the bell. Not to the old woman who brought him bread and wine. But in the silence of the sanctuary—when only the flame above the altar moved—he thought of you. He felt you. Every breath he took tasted of your presence.
You had become more than a believer. You were a haunting. At times, he cusses your name in the dead of the night. He called you a witch, a being far from god, a demon sent to test his faith. But soon after, he begged for forgiveness, begged you to forgive him for even daring to whisper your name.
He was possessed.
The days blurred. Guilt became a ritual as practiced as the Mass itself.
Then the dreams began.
At first, they were vague shadows—glimpses of you form beneath candlelight, the whisper of your breath echoing through vaulted stone halls. But with each passing night, they grew bolder, more vivid, more desperate, as if something inside him had been loosed and now fed hungrily on his restraint.
In the dreams, you stood barefoot at the altar, your veil discarded, your hair unbound. You called to him not with words, but with silence, with eyes heavy-lidded and glistening. And he, Father Alaric—ordained servant of Christ, keeper of sacraments and silence—he went to you. He always did.
Your mouth pressed to the hollow of his throat, where the crucifix once lay. Your fingers tangled in his hair, tugging, urging. You would place his hands upon your skin as if you knew that they had once been consecrated. And when he tried to pull away, when his voice, hoarse and breaking, cried “no”, you would whisper, “But you already have.”
He woke each time with the taste of your name on his tongue and the sheets tangled in his legs like bindings, the proof of his sin staining his clothes.
Sometimes, in the dream, the Virgin herself would appear in the distance, behind the altar. Her eyes wept blood. Her hands outstretched, not in blessing, but accusation.
Other times, it was Christ—emaciated and nailed—his head turning, impossibly, to meet Alaric’s gaze. And Christ would speak only once, voice hollow with sorrow:
“Et tu me tradidisti."
He punished himself each morning.
But guilt is a poor disinfectant when the wound is desire.
He fasted until his stomach shriveled in protest. He refused the warmth of his bed, choosing the chapel floor, curling like a dog beneath the altar, whispering penitential Psalms as if repetition could drown memory. When his mind still wandered—when the shape of your hips pressed behind his eyelids like relics burned into cloth—he took the birch rod. Ten lashes. Twenty. Thirty. Until his back wept with him.
He bathed his hands in boiling water. The same hands that once held the host, that raised the chalice, that touched the sick and the dying, the ones that so desperately wanted to feel you—he now blistered them deliberately, sobbing as skin peeled, praying that the pain would purge him.
And yet the next night, the dreams returned.
Sometimes, they turned darker.
You would kneel before him in the confessional, your face hidden, your voice a whisper.
"Bless me, Father, for I have sinned..."
"What sin?" he would ask, breath catching.
"I have dreamed of your hands upon me."
And in the dream, he would lean forward, fingers trembling against the wood.
"Is that a sin?" You would ask.
"Yes," he would say, his voice breaking. "The greatest sin of all."
Then the screen would vanish. The walls would melt. And you would be there again—naked in shadow, light breaking over you like stained glass, beautiful, so beautiful—and he would be inside you before he could speak your name. Ravaging you with a passion he wouldn't even show to God himself. Devouring you in ways he didn't know he could. He couldn't.
Each time, he awoke gasping, clutching the crucifix above his bed like a lifeline, though even its face seemed turned away.
It was not just lust. That would have been simpler.
No—what tormented Alaric most was how sacred it felt in the dream. How right. How their bodies fit like psalms and silence, how your moans filled the chapel like liturgy, how you tighten around him right before he wakes. In sleep, their union was a prayer.
And that, he knew, was the deepest heresy of all.
To mistake sin for sacrament.
You arrived late today.
Not by much, only after the first psalm, but late enough that he felt it, sharp and irrational, like a missed heartbeat. Snow dusted your lashes. Your veil was pulled lower than usual, hiding more of your face. And you did not go to your pew, the one he appointed yours.
You sat beside him.
Not close. Never close. But close enough.
The boy from the mill.
Young, broad-shouldered, smelling of smoke and wet wool. He shifted to make room for you, his elbow brushing your sleeve. You murmured something—thanks, perhaps—and he smiled, quick and unthinking. The kind of smile Alaric had not worn in years.
The chant continued. Dominus vobiscum.
Alaric’s voice did not falter. He was proud of that, for a moment. His hands were steady as he lifted them, palms outward in blessing. But his eyes betrayed him. They returned again and again to the line of your shoulder, the space between you and the boy narrowing each time he leaned to whisper something in your ear.
He told himself it meant nothing. The thought should have ended there.
It did not.
When the boy laughed, soft, careless, something dark and sudden rose in Alaric’s chest. Not desire. Something colder. Possessive. Ugly.
You smiled.
Not the restrained curve of lips you wore in prayer. This was different, one he never saw before, it felt private, forbidden.
Alaric missed a line. He swallowed and continued, heat blooming behind his collar despite the cold.
Jealousy, Alaric realized with horror, felt like certainty.
Certainty that you were being taken from him.
The absurdity of it nearly made him laugh aloud. Taken. As if you had ever been his. As if he had not given himself away, body and name and future, to God alone. As if he were not already hollowed by vows.
Yet when the boy bowed his head during prayer and your gaze lingered on him, just a second too long, Alaric felt something fracture again.
He imagined the boy’s hands where his were forbidden. On your waist. Your back. Your throat. He imagined you responding, soft and unashamed, without guilt, without bloodied backs or boiling water.
Then he imagined his own hands around the boy's neck, squeezing until that smile disappeared from his face, or from yours. Or maybe an accident. God was merciful to accidents.
Alaric turned away as if struck, revulsion.
The thought sickened him, he tasted bile, shame flooding him so violently it burned. His knees nearly buckled. To think such a thing, to want such a thing—Deus meus.
That night, he could not sleep.
When dawn broke, he would press his face to the cold stone floor and sob like a child. His prayers no longer had the clarity of belief. They had become bargaining, begging. Deals made in desperation.
"Lord, take this cup from me."
"Let her stop coming."
"Let me forget her face."
"Take my eyes, if you must. But leave me pure again."
But God was silent.
In the candlelight, Christ’s face seemed to weep. Not in mercy. In sorrow.
And still, the dreams came once again.
Was this temptation? Or punishment?
Alaric began to fear that God had not sent you as a test, but as a mirror. You were not the serpent in the garden—he was. He saw in you what he had buried—desire, yes, but also gentleness, a longing to be seen not as a priest, not as a vessel of doctrine, but as a man. A man, capable of pleasure and desires. And that was the greater sin.
He would sit in the confessional after you left, wishing for another voice on the other side of the screen. He imagined your—soft, honest, filled with ordinary confessions of doubt and loneliness. Sometimes, when madness gripped him, he imagined you whispering, I want you, Father.
And in the darkest recesses of his mind, he whispered back.
He clawed at these thoughts like a beast, desperate to bury them, but they flowered in secret soil, watered by silence.
It was Lent when the crisis came.
You approached the altar during Communion. You knelt like all the others, lips parted, eyes closed. Alaric stood frozen, the wafer hovering in his trembling hand. He stared at your mouth—the delicate line of it, the pink of your tongue waiting.
He couldn’t do it.
He dropped the host. A gasp rose among the parishioners. Time slowed. Your eyes opened.
For one breathless instant, neither moved.
Then you reached down—too quickly—and lifted the wafer, pressing it to your lips yourself, swallowing with reverence before lowering your gaze.
That night, he collapsed in front of the crucifix, arms spread in mockery of the Savior’s pose, blood from fresh wounds staining the altar cloth. His voice cracked in the empty chapel.
Take it from me, Lord, Strip her from my soul.
But once again God was silent.
Each morning you came was an ordeal, he was glad, in a way, that you never sat with the boy again, did you know?
Father Alaric would always feel your presence before he saw you, but he never turned to look at you outright. That would have made it real. Instead, he remained before the altar, eyes lowered in pretended devotion, reciting the Mass in a voice scraped raw by sleeplessness and shame.
He despised himself in those moments.
He clung to the cloth of the altar as if it could anchor him, white-knuckled, whispering the Latin words like a ward against temptation. Introibo ad altare Dei. Ad Deum qui lætificat juventutem meam.
But there was no joy. Only dread. Only the sick, festering knowing that his eyes would betray him—that he would look.
And he always did.
A flicker. Just enough. Just a glance.
Your face was calm, reverent, beautiful in its restraint, he wished you would smile more. You wore modest clothing. Your veil always intact, the veil you never wore in his dreams. You offered no signs. No flirtation. And somehow that made it worse.
You were not Eve.
You had not offered the fruit.
He had picked it himself, over and over, in thought, in dream, in craving.
Each glimpse was a dagger. Your hands folded in prayer. Your lashes low over downcast eyes. Your lips, slightly parted in silent chant, he saw them in flashes, as if God Himself tried to block his view, but Alaric always found a way to see you.
And then the guilt would crash down like a tide.
The Mass became penance. Each Kyrie eleison a desperate cry. He would tremble as he lifted the host, whispering Hoc est enim Corpus meum with a heart soaked in filth, wondering how the body of Christ did not turn to ash in his hands.
When he gave Communion, he avoided you. He assigned it to the altar boy, or timed the rite when you had already left. He could not—would not—let you kneel before him again, lest his hands tremble and betray him, lest your lips brush the wafer and he remember the dream of your mouth on his skin.
After Mass, he would retreat to the sacristy and vomit.
Or else collapse in the corner, head buried in his arms, rocking like a madman.
Some mornings, he would scourge himself immediately. Others, he simply wept, staring at the flickering votive candles and begging them to burn him too.
Yet the worst mornings—the truly damnable ones—were when he caught himself hoping you would come.
Waking early. Dressing with strange care. Sweeping the chapel as if preparing for your presence, then punishing himself in advance for the wanting.
And so he stayed.
And so he watched.
And so he burned.
The next morning, you did not come.
Nor the next.
Father Alaric thought—at first—that it was mercy.
He told himself so as he stood before the altar that morning, robes heavy on his shoulders, the golden chalice trembling in his grip. He continued the Mass in silence that felt too clean. The words of the liturgy echoed off the stones without weight. Without you, the chapel felt hollow—not purified, but stripped. As if some vital organ had been removed, leaving only the shell of a body still pretending to breathe.
He told himself: This is God’s answer.
This is my deliverance.
You were a test. The test is over.
He lasted until the final blessing. Then he collapsed behind the altar, fingers knotted in his hair, mouth open in a scream that never quite came.
The next morning, you was gone again.
And the morning after that.
And the morning after that.
And the morning after that.
And the morning after that.
And the morning after that.
And the morning after that.
What began as relief curdled into something uglier, panic.
He could not ask. He dared not. To speak your name aloud would be to confess everything.
And so he waited.
And the waiting became obsession.
He began keeping track of the hours. Listening for your footfall, realizing he knew it by heart. Cleaning the chapel twice daily, in case today—today—might be the day you returned.
But you did not.
He began dreaming again—but now the dreams were different. Now you were outside the chapel, trying to enter, but the doors would not open. You were crying. Your hands bled from scratching at the wood. And behind you stood shadowy figures—hooded, murmuring judgment—dragging you away as he screamed and pounded from within: “Forgive me! Come back!”
He would wake gasping, clawing at the bedclothes, drenched in sweat and guilt, shame, longing.
Soon, he began to see you.
Not truly. But enough.
A flicker of familiar hair outside the chapel window. A figure in the fog near the woods. Every woman in a veil became your silhouette. Every face blurred until it could become yours.
When he realized he had begun to hope for your ghost, he sank to the chapel floor and wept like a child.
Then came the worst change of all.
Resentment.
He resented you for leaving. For escaping the fire while he burned alone. For damning him in absence more deeply than you did in presence. Did you find a man? Did you drown yourself in sin while letting him die from thirst?
He cursed you under his breath. Called you Eve, witch, temptress, harlot, siren, Lilith. He told himself you had never prayed, never loved God, that you had come only to poison his soul.
But still, he scrubbed the pew where you once sat. Still, he lit candles in your name. Still, he whispered apologies into the confessional you had once entered—speaking to the silence as if you crouched on the other side, waiting, listening.
One night, weeks after your final visit, he found your handkerchief wedged in the corner of the pew. Faded, forgotten.
He brought it to his lips like a relic, to his nose, to his body, as if it was your hand itself.
He clutched it through the next Mass. Held it as he knelt before the crucifix and begged:
Let her come back. Let me see her once more. Just once, just once, just once, just once, just once let me truly see her.
But heaven stayed silent.
The candle at the altar flickered. Then died.
That summer, Alaric hanged himself from the yew tree behind the chapel.
Beneath him, the floor was scuffed with signs of struggle—not with the act, but with the soul. Scratched Latin phrases, half-muttered prayers etched with fingernails into the dirt as if the penance might reach God faster in blood than in breath.
There was a letter in his hand. His final words, they were scrawled in charcoal, wild and uneven, and folded inside, your handkerchief.
“I loved her more than Heaven. I feared her more than Hell.
If God made her to test me, then He failed.
Or I did.
But the worst sin was not desire,
It was believing I could feel it and remain holy.”
And below, in blood
"Forgive me, not God, but you."
My first time posting anything :>
English is not my first language so sorry for any mistakes...
