MORBID CURIOSITY [ ... ] accepting.

he's lived them, so many of them, inviting narrative into his body until all that death, decay, and unknown madness transformed the marrow of his bones. daniel's taste for fiction has always been one kept at a trembling arms length; the genre soured too quickly, often bled into his already disrupted sleep, shaped the pre-existing night mares. the irony isn't lost on him then, that he's been trapped in a gothic yarn since the early seventies.

she  slides  the  key  into  the  door,  the  fabric  of  her  sleeve  barely  covering  the  fresh  scratches  on  her  wrist.  not  tonight.  not  yet.  THE  MONKSHOOD  WAS  STILL  HOLDING.

brigitte's  thoughts  are  suddenly  interrupted  by  a  prickle  down  her  spine,  something  wrong  was  edging  too  close.  she'd  never  had  this  ability  before,  back  when  she  was  human,  an  assault  on  the  senses.  the  vital  fluids  coursing  through  their  bodies,  flesh,  violent  urges  and  a  sort  of  sixth  sense  to  know  when  someone  is  lurking  just  out  of  sight,  as  if  their  presence  was  a  part  of  the  air  itself.  the  beast  blood  in  her  veins  gave  her  a  thousand  tiny,  invasive  instincts  she  could  never  ignore.

she  shifts  her  position  to  watch  her  surroundings  not  with  a  human's  hesitation,  but  with  the  sharp,  focused  awareness  of  someone  who  knows  they're  being  hunted.  NOT  HUMAN,  the  instinct  comes  to  her  faster  than  any  conscious  thought,  but  that  can't  be  right.  this  presence  doesn't  feel  ...  wolfish.

the arrangement of words stirs recognition within daniel instantly, a singular familiarity, he’s read the girl’s diaries for christ’s sake – front to back.

she’s a woman, daniel reminds himself, older than he was when he first got into this mess. and yet, maybe it was the lapses in his own responsibility of fatherhood, there's something precious about her that stirs him — maybe he's simply gotten soft in his old age, maybe it just isn't right. she'd been so much younger than the you realize from the stories. “ hello, ” he sets his laptop aside to get a better look at her. claudia.