Lily

Let it not be said that social anxiety cannot kill.

The familiar auburn haired mimic stands in your doorway. Your door—ancient, borrowed, and mocking—creaks quietly as it wobbles in place from the force that it was opened with. A testament to his—its—excitement. Usually, it is so careful. Gentle. Soft fingertips on stolen chess pieces.

Your window is closed. Boarded. A choice you made only a week before. A silly attempt to escape the inescapable. You thought you could choose when to cut contact. He’s—fuck, its—proving you wrong.

Its smile is wide tonight. It’s always wide, but there’s something particularly menacing about it tonight, and it’s not just the blood dribbling down his chin.

People are screaming. The house echoes with it. The bones of the ancient mansion shake with the terror of its occupants, but there’s a sense of sadism too. As if even the house is on the side of the damned.

You have questions. Curiosity sets fire to the fear and burns it down to ember and ash. The alcohol roars. Liquid courage rushes through your veins, lighting you up from the inside out.

What is he?

Where are they?

What is this place?

“Who?”

His head tilts. It’s subtle. You shouldn’t notice.

You do.

“Nobody you cared about,” he answers. His teeth are surprisingly clean, despite the blood on his face. He hadn’t eaten any of whoever it was, then.

Did he need to eat?

“I care about everyone here,” you say.

He hums. A soft, contemplative sound in the back of his throat. Almost thoughtful. “Trudy.”

Trudy. Trudy, Trudy, Trudy.

You repeat the name in your head, trying desperately to put a face to it. You’re certain you’ve heard it before. Perhaps the dark haired girl who’d arrived with her family? Or the curly haired one in love with the painter—the one whose anniversary had been the reason for the party tonight?

You can picture their faces, but their names don’t come.

God, no wonder you spent most of the night in your room—you didn’t know these people.

He quirks an eyebrow.

You scowl. “Shut up. I did care about her.”

Did you, though, if you cannot even picture her face? If the sound of her name spoken from the lips of death brings you no pain at all, save for the distant twang of guilt?

He moves now, finally. A slow, measured step deeper into the room. The screams from downstairs die down when he shuts the door behind him. Blocks out your kin and his alike.

The world shrinks until it’s just the two of you.

You should move.

You don’t.

His eyes—as blue as the sea and twice as cold—lock you in place. He’s like a riptide. Your mind can scream, cry, and beg, but the harder you will yourself to run, the less you want to. You are tired—no, scratch that, you are exhausted, and where has running ever really gotten you, except for right here, back in his reach?

The hair at the back of your neck stands up when his fingers meet the curve of your jaw. He is wrong. Too warm. Too still. His chest does not move and his breath is not warm. Your heart doesn’t speed. Your palms do not sweat. Your brain is disconnected from your body, one screaming while the other simply waits.

He is wrong. This place is wrong. You are wrong.

Fingers dance along the line of your jaw, pinching your chin and tilting your head up. He likes to look at you. He likes when you look back.

“You’ve been hiding from me,” he clicks his tongue, amused, “Why? You know I always find you.”

Your eyes flame. Nostrils flare. His fingers turn sharp, claws brushing lightly beneath your eyes in warning. You hate the power he has over you. Despise the way your lip trembles at his words, but your tongue dares not speak what you want it to say.

It, you remind yourself. It is an it. Not a he.

The reminder is futile.

You know yourself too well to deny your own hopelessness. For now, though, you cling to your pettiness.

“Don’t,” you warn, a plea in disguise.

You don’t want to think of the before. When survival relied on how well you could hide, how quiet you could be, how low you could stoop before you lost the ability to live with yourself.

The talismans had been a lifeboat in a raging sea, but by the time Boyd had found them, you’d been drowning so long you’d gotten used to the burn.

“Don’t?” He asks, thumb pressing gently at the top of the bridge of your nose, trailing downward, before gently tapping the tip.

Your nose wrinkles. An instinctual, familiar reaction to the very same gesture he’d just performed. His thumb follows instantly, tracing the wrinkles with the barest of touches.

It tickles.

His smile melts when you sneeze, lips pressing together in a softer, more human expression. It’d be convincing if not for the blood.

You reach forward mindlessly, using the sleeve of your shirt to wipe at his mouth. He tilts his head into it, allowing you better access. His tongue flicks out to swipe along his bottom lip as if trying to assist you in the cleanup—or perhaps for one more taste of the life he'd stolen.

“Have you been hearing them lately?” He asks, catching your arm at last. He turns it in his hands, rolling your sleeve up to run his index finger over the spiderweb of blue veins in your wrist. His nails aren’t quite human, but aren’t quite not either. They’re in between. He wants you to feel the sharp edge of them, the unspoken threat of what he could do.

The question doesn’t make any sense to you. The answer is about as far away from you as the image of whoever Trudy may have been.

“Hearing what?” You ask, wincing when his nail nicks the crook of your elbow. An accident, because he lets you pull your arm away afterward, turning his attention to your hair instead. He catches a strand near your face, curling it around one of his fingers.

“You haven’t, then,” he decides, gently—playfully—giving the strand he’s wrapped around his finger a tug, “I’ve been wondering when they’ll start. Shouldn’t be long now. Quicker if you’d come home.”

Home.

Images of rock come unbidden. The smell of wet stone and moth bitten fabric. Something sweet beneath it. Decay and lake water. Rich and mineral.

Fingers curl into fists. Skin burns as nails carve crescents into palms. That had not been your home.

His hand catches yours once more, and he pries your fingers open, frowning. His frown is scarier than his smile. Something strange happens to his face, something shifting beneath the skin, and you will the monster forth. It’s easier to focus when you can see what he is.

He must sense your thoughts, because his head tilts, eyes gazing intensely into yours for a moment before his skin changes. Smooth gives way to rough and shriveled, skin like ancient paper. Those eyes, ocean cold, sink into his skull until they’re almost completely covered, only the smallest prick of black pupil visible. His jaw is open, sharp teeth jutting out in all directions, like some kind of deep sea creature.

You stare at the teeth. They’re so sharp, capable of ripping out a throat with only the tiniest bit of pressure, and you wonder how many found their end beneath them in only the few minutes it took him to find your door. Just Trudy, whoever she may have been, or were there more?

He guides your hand to his mouth, and you watch helplessly—hopelessly, maybe—as he runs his tongue across the small, barely bleeding nail marks you made on your own palm. He’s careful not to nick you with his teeth.

“What do you mean?” You ask, watching as he carefully carves his own mark into your palm. His is deeper. Bleeds more. “What voices?”

He doesn’t answer at first. He’s too busy teasing the wound he’d created, the tip of his tongue poking at torn skin, dragging slowly up the slit of the cut. Even his tongue is inhuman like this. Too long, too narrow, too pointed.

You lose your patience after a moment and start to fight against his grip, annoyed. “What voices?” You ask again, trying to jerk your arm away. You can’t, of course, but trying annoys him anyway. So much so that he digs claws into your wrist, hot blood sliding over his fingers and down your arm.

The smile is back. You’ve angered him. It usually takes so much more. He’s on edge, maybe, but why?

“You’ll find out in time,” he tells you, “but for now…,” he pulls his claws from your skin to catch your hand in his once more, locking his fingers with yours.

His hand is warm. Always so warm, and calloused, too, despite the lack of blemish on the rest of him. The skin is soft, even so, and his thumb brushes against your knuckles in a reassuring swipe as he begins to drag you toward the door.

You weren't scared, but the sudden pull toward the door reminded you of what was going on outside this room, and you thought that maybe you should be. You were scared before, when he was outside, and you were scared years ago, when you first arrived. Maybe it was better that you weren’t. You always heard that it was better to die brave than to die a coward. You didn’t feel brave either, though.

Not that you wanted to be. You didn’t. You just wanted… well, your bed, and sleep, and..

“Howdy, darlin’.”

No.

Not him.

The rush of relief you feel at the sound of his voice is met by the rush of disgust the relief brings you and tears prick at your eyes, beginning to spill down your cheeks.

The cowboy tugs you forward by the arm, wrapping an arm around you. “Hush, now, baby, you know I don’t like it when you cry.”

The words would be sweet if not for the gleeful hitch behind them.

Smiley’s fingers are still locked with yours, but he lets go when he hears the sound of footsteps. You look up too, and start to shove weakly at the cowboy’s chest when you see one of your people. You don’t know his name, but you’ve seen him around. He’s… kind.

Smiley’s grin is downright devilish, and he puts one foot in front of the other, sauntering toward the terrified human, hands swinging at his hips.

The human runs. You hear glass breaking. Was he going out the window? He didn’t even call for you—maybe he doesn’t know your name either.

“Coward,” the cowboy chuckles, “didn’t even try to save you. What do you see in them?”

“Let me go,” you demand, or, at least, you try to. It doesn’t really pack the same punch considering your voice breaks halfway through and your nose bubbles wetly with snot.

The cowboy shushes you, resting his chin on the top of your head, running clean fingers through your hair. There’s no trace of blood on him, no sign that he’s hurt anyone at all, and you know that he probably hasn’t. It isn't out of kindness. He’d kill just as soon as the rest of his kin. But he likes to be clean for you, sometimes.

“Say please,” he drawls.

“Please?” You mumble, though no part of you believes he’ll actually let you go.