It was a Monday and you were excited. How long had it been exactly since you could remember waking up excited for a Monday morning? Surely not in the length of time between this very moment and when you’d first picked up the grueling nine to five axe grind. Not through college, or high school, nor middle or elementary. Maybe in those first very early, toddling formative years, when even the concept of the days of the week were foreign to you.

That had to speak volumes of the severity of the situation. You can hardly believe he’d agreed. You’d spent all of Sunday laboring over it, running and rerunning and rerunning it again, trying to come up with just the way to broach the subject.

“Tomorrow's Monday.” You’d said, rolling an errant pea absently with your fork through the mashed potato scum blanketing your plate. You tried not to look at him as you said it— swore to yourself beforehand that you wouldn’t look at him as you said it, but ultimately couldn’t help yourself from peeking up at him sitting across the table from beneath your lashes.

He was chewing and he chewed in silence for so long you had thought the whole idea was forfeit before you’d even had a chance to bring it up. But then he stopped, and swallowed, and smiled.

“Do you need lunch money?” You’re openly staring at him now, eyes sitting dead in your sockets and blank, mouth hung slightly open as your brain works to piece together the connection between what was supposed to be your brilliant, long-labored-over opener to his spontaneous, out of complete left field, inquisitive response.

“D-do I need—? No.” Your synapses finally fire and you smile back at him, genuine, relieved. “No, I got it.”

“Good” is his response. Like that’s just the end of it— so many questions remained. Like this was something previously discussed— it was not. Like this was the plan all along— since when? Like you hadn’t spent hours and hours silently agonizing over how to approach this very subject after Friday’s catastrophic turn of events.

Just like that then? He was going to cut you loose? You know you shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth but fuck, this is nothing short of astonishing to you. You can almost hardly believe it. He’s letting you go back to work? With like… other people? Normal people? People who you could spill your heart and guts out to? You know it’s there somewhere, somewhere in there, buried in his sudden good grace is a catch. You don’t even know how to begin to hunt it out. Should you dare?

You decide not to risk it. You’ve spent the last three days in a strange sort of twilight zone. Somewhere between when you’d lain down to sleep and midnight on the previous Thursday evening you’d somehow stepped through a portal, betwixt one realm and the next, a thinny if you will, into a new world where you’d suddenly gained a husband, a lover, a whole and complete life partner with whom you now effortlessly share your life and every single waking— and un-waking for that matter, moment with in the most absurd, unrehearsed kind of domestic bliss.

And now… well now you intend to pop said bubble. He must know you mean to pop said bubble. There’s just no way he doesn’t know you’re going to try it again. You have to. You must. There is no other option, this is not a discussion. You need your life back. Yours. Not this strange alternate version you’ve woken up in.

You’ve had a long and honest talk with your inner self and what it’s all boiled down to is you need help. After some discussion it has come to your attention that you are in fact, a coward. You can not, of your own free will and for your own honest to goodness sake, call the police. You can’t do it. You’ve tried and picked up the phone and then you’ll chicken out or lose the words that you desperately need to say or Danny will call to you from the other room, or you’ll hear him coming down the hallway like he just knows what you’re already up to and you’ll panic and throw the phone down like it’s burned you.

You can’t do it anymore. You can’t. It’s going to take a second pair of hands. Ones not attached to your body. Erin or Marcy. You’ve already decided you won’t give them details. You can’t possibly be expected to air your dirty laundry to anyone you’ll have to show your face to on the day to day. You’ll simply tell them you need help and leave it at that. You will stress the point across very carefully that the police need to be involved. You will make it emphatically clear without giving them specifics. You will make it known that it is paramount that they simply listen, ask no questions and do as you’ve asked. They will get it. They will inherently understand. They must.

You will make no mention of Roseville’s Ghost. There is no need to stir people up into a frenzy. This will work. It is fool proof. It must be. Your weary brain doesn’t have the capacity to consider anything else.

“There are a few ground rules…” He adds, cutting your thoughts off like he already knows what you’re planning. You do your best to keep your expression neutral as you look up from your plate to meet his eyes again.

“Mmhmm..” You hum out, noncommittally.

“I will drive you to work tomorrow morning and I will pick you up from work tomorrow evening.” You nod, accepting those conditions while silently hoping that’s all. But of course it’s not.

“And, I don’t want you talking to Marcy or Erin or John.” You roll your eyes, you can’t help it.

“You can’t possibly expect me to— wait… John? You mean to tell me I can’t speak to my literal boss while I’m at work?” He nods, having expected pushback.

“He has a thing for you.” You sit across from him, lips parted as you process what he’s saying, before you dismiss the idea entirely with a shake of your head and a look of mild disgust.

“What? No. That’s ridiculous, Danny. My boss does not have a thing for me. No.” But he’s nodding his head and giving you that look like you’re a student having trouble working through a troublesome math problem that should have been easy to understand.

Your eyes meet his as he crosses his arms in front of him on the tabletop.

“He's the one that hired you, then he was also the one who got you that promotion only five months into working there and, he's the one who moved your cubicle to the one right across from his, even though it was already occupied by Charlene…” You had never thought about that one before. Was that why Charlene had always seemed so cold to you?

“And he’s the one who’s been stealing your hair ties from your desk drawer.” You recoil at that last one, eyes wide and head cocked to the side as he just casually drops that little nugget of information. How the fuck does he know all this?

“Don’t make me jealous, doll. I can get real paleolithic when I get jealous.” You skate right over that statement and counter it with a question.

“And how exactly do you expect me to do my job without speaking to my coworkers or my.. boss?” The last word comes out a half second late and wrapped in a thin veneer of repulsion as you spit it out. Danny’s smile widens and you’re unsure if it’s due to that fact or something else but if it is, he doesn’t mention it.

“I expect you to give your boss the note I’ve constructed from your general physician’s office that explains while you are free and clear to return to work, it is advised that you keep your personal space contact with others to a careful minimum and, I expect you to do any and all of the required communication between you and any of your coworkers using your work email system, which I will be monitoring throughout the day.” He says, matter-of-factly— almost as rehearsed, it seems, as your carefully constructed argument on returning to work was going to be before he’d surprised you with his easy acquiescence.

“Do you understand the rules of our agreement, sweetheart? Speak now or forever hold your peace.” You scowl at him, but there is really no way around this. You need this to happen. You have to get the ball rolling, and this is the initial push. Reticently, you nod.

“Good. Let’s get dressed. It just wouldn’t do to be late on your first day back at work, would it?”

It was a foggy Florida morning, dew shimmered on the sharp tipped grass, turning your lawn into an early morning jewel showcase set to rival anything Swarovski could hope to arrange.

All through the night it'd been raining cats and dogs, the perfect sleeping weather, but like it knew and bent to the will of the waking world, it'd stopped just after dawn and dropped a foggy veil over the sky to cover its unending onslaught of tears.

The sun tried its damndest to shine its brilliance through the misty cloud cover and somewhat managed, throwing tiny rainbows of light through the air in periodic kaleidoscope flashes that would have stolen your breath away on any other ordinary day. But today you didn’t have the luxury of wonder.

Danny was dressed in similar style to what he wore on his way out the door on Friday. Same scheme, different theme. Today’s was blue. A deep navy and a contrasting baby hue that crisscrossed over and under and back over each other again and again, complimented with watch and belt and shoe in a deep mahogany brown. Your nostrils flared as he passed by on your right to gain ground between you and the car so he could go ahead and pull open your door for you before you could do something as barbaric as having to complete the task yourself.

The smell of his cologne is something you were shamelessly becoming addicted to. It was different from the one he wore on your first encounter with him. That had been sharper, definitely cheaper but no less alluring. Whether by the endorphins from the electric experience itself or just actually formulated differently you were unsure but there was a primal note to it that made your blood surge. This that he wore to work was subtler, gentler on the nose but distinct. You found yourself almost huffing it as the two of you drove to work in simple silence.

The last thing you wanted to appear was nervous, didn’t want him to think anything was amiss so you leaned into the familiar scent of him and how it grounded you and tried pointedly not to think too much about that fact in and of itself. At least until the car came to a prolonged stop and the engine died down and then cut off completely and you opened your eyes upon the familiar sight of the entrance to your building's parking garage.

He had driven you to work today, but not in your car, no, he had driven you to work today in his. A random happenstance of good fortune you will smile back on in the future.

It was a plain, bland, silver Honda Accord. Practical, affordable, nondescript, see a hundred and one of them in an hour on any given day kind of vehicle and you assumed that was by design.

Taking his car also meant taking a quick walk to work, only through the parking garage entrance, past the little automated parking-pass kiosk and bumper arm and then a brisk seven hundred foot walk to the elevators located at the back of the parking deck. It wasn’t far. You could handle it.

You lifted your purse into your lap, stainless steel water bottle secured in one hand and reached for the door handle with the other only to feel Danny’s own warm, steady palm slip overtop of yours, purse straps still clutched tightly in your grip. It takes a second for you to calm your heart before you turn to look back at him only to find him already staring at you. You try to keep the venom from your voice as you ask him softly. “What?”

He smiles at you, that brilliant, radiant one that shows off his teeth and does things to you that you will not even speak aloud in the confines of your own thoughts.

“I just wanted to say I hope you have a good day. I’ll be around to pick you up around five after." You nod. It’s the smartest of your responses. Then you’re up and out of the car and he’s pulling away from the curb. Just like that. As you enter the parking deck your breathing picks up, your heart feels like it skips beats. You exhale shakily through your parted lips and curse at yourself softly beneath your breath. Get it together. But you can’t, you’re so nervous.

Your thoughts race a million miles a minute through your head, none of them discernible. The only constant is the plan. Get on the elevator. Push the button for your floor. Endure the elevator’s one minute and fifteen second ride. Get off the elevator. One left, one right, two cubicles down to Marcy’s workspace or another left and two more cubicles down to Erin’s, whichever was occupied and spill. And to hell with Danny's rules, he's not omnipotent, he can't possible know every single little thing that would happen while you're at work.

It’s only until you stop before the elevator, finger out and poised to call the car back down to the garage level that your face drops, steadfast determination drooping into dismay laced surprise as you only now realize where you are.

The southpaw entrance, not so lovingly named by you and your coworkers on account of the fact that it was beat to hell and back. The elevator shuddered as it took what felt like hours to reach down to the parking garage level— making it a suicide mission to even consider taking it up in the mornings, which would almost certainly cause you to be late. And none of the cameras in that quadrant of the garage even worked— making vacating the building through that exit upon leaving work for the evening a genuine health hazard, unless you just liked being robbed at knife point for fun.

Sure, complaints were made, a few police reports filed, there were even talks of a strike but it never amounted to much more than an overflowing stack of papers haphazardly collected in a heap on the back end of an empty desk in the HR department, their final destination.

For the building itself was owned by a prickish property investor out of Santa Monica who’d placed a bid on the building back when it was under construction on a whim as part of a rather whimsy-filled ‘business trip’ to Miami and who’d been rather perturbed six months later to find he’d won the auction and the building was now his.

A whiskey fueled impulse that was now his neglected, cross-country, problem child. A shoddily constructed, corner-cut, money pit that he couldn’t seem to get rid of by any means less than a shit ton of kerosene and one of his fancy cigar matches, but he knew he was being observed rather closely by a watchdog subsidiary specializing in fraud. So in turn, the building sat baking under the blazing heat of the Florida sun, decaying in a whole manner of fascinating new ways for those employed to the building to discover all on their own.

You cursed, and loudly at that, there would certainly be no one around to hear it. The other perfectly working elevator was on the complete other side of the parking garage. If you hustled, you could still catch up with Marcy, or maybe even Erin in time to clue them in on the real truth behind your absence.

You spun around and choked on a gasp, your feet shuffling backwards and away from the man whose strong, tall form cast a shadow long and wide enough to shade your whole body against the artificial fluorescent sun buzzing overhead, engulfing your whole body in its wake.

“Josh what— what the fuck are you doing here?” Your pulse quickened, beating triple time and at this rate you were unsure it could go any faster than this. The anxiety you’d felt pressing down on you all morning increased tenfold. You were beginning to sweat, even despite the morning’s misty chill. You backed up but the cold, unyielding doors of the elevator shaft sat unmoved at your back.

The cold steel of it against the hot backs of your calves makes your breath catch in your teeth and you hiss, genuinely hiss in a sharp inhale as your mind races to catch up with the situation you’re now knee deep in.

“Typical of you I guess. To look so fucking surprised to see me, like you’ve forgotten me already. Is that it then? Am I old news already, hmm?” And there’s inflection in there when he says it, like there’s a pun in there you should catch.

“Josh I— I don’t have time for.. for this.” And you just can’t bring yourself to pull away from the elevator doors, like they’re magnetic or covered in glue. Safety is just past the absolute raging lunatic that is your ex standing before you and about two hundred feet off to the left but you know you’ll never get that far, not if Josh has anything to do with it.

“That’s typical of you too. You never make time for anyone else either. It’s only you. You, you, you. Well and that new little boy toy of yours I guess.”

“Josh—“

“Shut the fuck up!” He shouts making you jump anew, and the harsh echoes of it bounce off the solid concrete walls caging you in and bounds off in all directions in muted imitations of itself; like birds of some lost tropical paradise who haven’t heard new speech in a long time and stole the phrase to parrot it back to themselves in long distorted mimic caws, each a little different and a little further from the truth than the last. When he speaks again it’s calmer, quieter without somehow losing any edge.

“Shut. The fuck. Up. I am soo.. so fucking sick and tired of you talking to me like that. Like… like I’m a fucking child or something. You used to never talk to me like that. Do you remember? Do you remember that? Or is your head stuffed so far up your own cunt you just fucking can’t.”

Your mind knows it’s beyond stupid, borderline asinine to lift your hands up before him in a placating gesture meant to try and calm him down as you call his name again, softer this time. Did he not just tell you to both a) stop talking to him like a child and b) to in fact, shut the fuck up? But you can’t help yourself, you do it anyway.

“Josh—“ And that's as far as you get. You didn’t think of anything else to say beyond his name because you weren’t even sure if he’d let you get that far, but he did. Despite his previous statement it seems he means to hear you out as he waits in growingly impatient silence for what else it is that you have to say to him. His defined brow ridge deepening in crease second by seeming second.

“You don’t work here anymore.” There it is ladies and gentlemen, the response of the century. A brain dead statement of the utterly most fucking obvious. But it’s all you can say. It’s the god honest truth. It’s also the absolute stupidest thing you could say to him currently, as his following response is quick to point out.

“Yeah. And whose fault is that?” Yours. The answer to his question is that it’s yours even though it’s not. He was the one who got caught snooping through your work laptop after hours, even after he was put on probation from his IT job for previously violating company privacy policies, violating your privacy by looking through your work emails, following your initial split. The blame lies with him, though you’re sure he doesn’t see it like that.

It seems the answer is rhetorical though as he continues on despite your lack of an answer.

“All you do is take and take and take. Do you ever stop to think of other people? Anyone at all besides yourself? Just fucking once.” Ohh yes, take and take and take but you got him this job, you got him the loan which got him the down payment on his car and you got him about 40 bucks give or take from your savings account every other month for the entire four months the two of you had been together because he ‘really, really needed it’. But you know you take, and take, and take besides all that giving. All that giving doesn’t count for jack shit.

But all of these facts fly by in your mind unheeded because right now the important thing is that Josh is between you and the working elevators, Josh is standing between you and your literal freedom and more than that Josh is getting closer.

He keeps going, rambling madness, halfcrazed statements and accusations that both blow you away and confuse you more and more with each one he spits out at you with a vehemence that is growing increasingly alarming.

“Don’t even try and lie to me this time. I’ve seen it all with my own eyes. You and him. You and that fucking little news boy. That sniveling, pathetic, simp piece of shit you replaced me with.” It vaguely registers he’s talking about Danny. What doesn’t register is how he could possibly know anything at all about you and Danny, besides the fact that he just dropped you off at work maybe, seeing as how you’ve been shut in with him this whole weekend in your home and there’s no way he could possibly have known that unless… well unless you had two stalkers but well, that’d just be absurd.

He keeps stepping closer and closer and then he’s in your face and his large paws are pressing in on either side of your shoulders and he’s encroaching further and further into your personal space and before you have a chance to say anything about that his right hand closes around your throat.

You think for just a moment that that’s all he’ll do but then he squeezes and your eyes widen in recognition. There’s a crazed look in his eyes, one you’ve never seen before and suddenly you don’t even quite recognize the man in front of you. He’s turned into a complete stranger, like one of those crazy picture books where you tilt the page and the image before you magically shifts into an entirely different image. You try to call out his name, get him to come back to himself but you cannot speak, cannot utter even a single syllable and he doesn’t seem to be letting up anytime soon.

Your field of vision narrows, your lungs feel as if they’re constricting in your chest. Your hands come up to curl around his, clawing at the flesh of his wrists to try and relieve some of the pressure he’s applying and that’s when he pulls you forward and slams you back against the elevator doors.

Your head hits the steel and it smarts but what really stings is the way your teeth come crashing down together from the force, catching your tongue between them and drawing fresh blood that you instantaneously feel begin to pool in the cavern of your mouth, filling the gaps like grout between the tiles of your teeth.

There are moments in our existence— intrinsic, defining moments, where the very fabric of our lives splits. Landmarks upon which we mark the otherwise flat and monotonous landscape of our collective time upon this earth and dividing them into two categories; before and after. 

One moment Josh stood before you, slowly draining the life from your body with nothing more than a good, firm grip and then the next; the after, when his neck took on a sudden, viscous twist and then you could actually see his honest to god spinal cord jutting out grotesquely from the column of his throat.

It pushed rebelliously against the prison of his skin, distended at an unholy angle as it tore free from the structure of his spine. In the next moments your air came back to you in one big whoosh and both you and Josh were falling; you to your knees, and he like an overstuffed potato sack tossed from a tree.

You screamed, or you thought you screamed, in your mind it was a scream. In reality it was more of a coughing fit and a series of choked guttural sobs. The ache of your knees, despite the force of your full weight falling down upon them after their collision course with the concrete, was nothing but dull background noise in comparison to the raw, constricted, throb of your throat that you could already feel beginning to puff up in patterns you didn’t even need a mirror to identify as the indentations where each of his individual fingers had gripped.

It was like he was still choking you, even as you could see him laid out and utterly and completely motionless on the floor before you; and even that took a backseat to the hot, stinging throb of your tongue which had now swelled to the point where you were unsure how your mouth was possibly still able to contain it.

But if you thought you were really feeling it, nothing held a candle to how ole Josh had it. There was a pool of blood beginning to puddle from the constant, slow trickle at the corner of his mouth. His eyes were blank and glassy and as docile as you’d ever seen them. If you had thought before that his neck was hard to look at, the fall had only magnified the effect. His spine pushed so hard against the cage of his neck that the skin had taken on an elastic quality that threatened to have you yarfing at the sight of it. He was dead. There was no beating around the bush. The elephant in the room was dead, and bloating, and already starting to attract flies.

You only finally notice the only other human being in the parking deck when he stoops down to your level, making you stiffen. It’s then that you register the deep, rich mahogany dress loafers that had been just in frame of your peripherie since the fall. The subtle but pleasant sting of cologne wafting up over the rich, coppery notes of blood just beginning to fill your nostrils.

You hiccup then, and a little blood spills from between your lips and down your chin as you try to speak. Just his name but you can’t even get that far and all you’re doing is staring. Staring at Josh through terror wide eyes. And then you try to say his name, like you’re Jesus Christ himself and all it would take is to speak his name aloud and he would rise and wake and walk the earth again, but you can’t even do that either. It’s only more hiccups and more blood trickling past your lips and down your face and that’s when Danny’s face finally floats into view and he’s talking.

He’s talking but you can’t understand what he’s saying, it’s just lost in the drone of this terrible ringing in your head that’s smothering everything else and then he’s pulling you up by your elbows and he’s handing you your purse, and when did you even drop that anyway? Sometime in the struggle it must’ve been. You look back down at Josh and he’s still just as dead as ever and you finally register this is the first time you’ve ever seen a dead person before. He’s dead. And the thought keeps bumping against the fore wall of your skull, like it's made of rubber, like you can’t absorb it into your brain, you just simply can’t compute it. There it is but you can’t comprehend it. He is dead.

“Doll.” The roar subsided and your eyes lift away from Josh, finally you look away from Josh and there’s Danny. Darkly patient Danny. And he’s smiling. Why is he smiling? How can he be smiling? Does he not see it? Oh god, it’s been approximately forty seconds and you’re already referring to Josh as an it. He’s not even a person to you anymore. What is wrong with you?

And you look back down at him then, to try and remember him as he was, back when things were still good and he’d bring you bagels from that coffee shop you loved but had moved locations all the way across town, back when he’d hang around in the office when you had to work late and there wasn’t a single soul left but the two of you leaving out of the building, how he’d walk you home sometimes before either of you had a car even though he lived in the opposite direction and you’d both hold hands, gently swinging in time with your gait as you both marveled over the beauty of the evening’s stars.

It didn’t last and it wasn’t great but it was yours. A shared thing. And while you wouldn’t say it was love to you well, maybe it was to him. It had been ten months since then without a word and you had thought he had at least moved on, but maybe he never did. Maybe he didn’t matter to you, but to him, maybe you were meant to have been Josh’s forever. 

You tried to remember him for what he was and not what he is now. Just a dead body bleeding out on a cold concrete floor. With no more life and no more breath and nobody to give a shit about him either. You try to reconcile the image of your ex with the man who confronted you today in an empty parking garage but you can’t, it just doesn’t connect. But Danny reached out then and slipped a hand beneath your chin to slide up and cradle your face, pulling Josh conveniently out of view. Out of the present and into the rearview.

“No, no. Don’t look at him. Look at me, doll. Can you do that for me? Look at me sweetheart.” And you do, it's suddenly like you’ve regressed to the age of five somehow and you feel so small and lost and there’s Danny and he’s looking at you and he’s smiling and it’s nice and he makes it seem like it’ll be ok, you can’t possibly understand how but Danny makes it seem like everything will be ok so you believe him, just for now you listen and believe him.

“Come on, babygirl. It’s time to go. Let’s go, yeah?”

The biggest step is around Josh. It takes Danny leading you away from the scene, his steady hands grasping your elbows as he pulls you gently away from the dead man slumped in the parking garage of your previously shared workplace. You want to look back at him but every time you try Danny is there, patiently capturing your attention again with a gentle squeeze to your elbows or the soft call of your name.

Cooing to you softly in reassuring tones as he leads you away from the scene of the crime, gently folding you into the back of the Honda before climbing in the driver's side seat. He calmly starts the car and drives away, if you were coherent you’d see the way his eyes shift off the road and into the rearview periodically, checking up on you.

The drive home is one you don’t remember. It’s like a portal had opened up between the parking garage at work that led directly to your driveway, and that’s really saying something because you loathe the drive each day to work, especially in the mornings when everyone is scrambling to get there. It’s as if the world itself has swallowed you whole. In fact, you really wish it had.

Then the next thing you know Danny is pulling you out of the car. One hand on the small of your back, the other holding one of your own as he leads you out of the car and back towards your door. At some point during the ride it had once again begun to rain.

You passed the soft blooms of the gardenias lining the walkway, their heads craned up to mark you, their large heads bobbing with the force of each drop of rain, making them resemble a crowd of rowdy cajolers, heckling a death row inmate as they pass from prison to prison bus. You can almost hear their cries of outrage in the driving rain, their petals studded with diamond dew drops like freshly shed tears on their brilliant white faces.

You tracked rainwater past the threshold and all through the entryway, in fading foot trails off the linoleum of the kitchen floor before they stopped abruptly as you crossed into the plush wildlands of your carpeted living room. Steering you by the shoulders, he took you into your bathroom and pulled your purse from your shoulder and after a moment's struggle, pulled the water bottle from your tightly clenched fist to set it down on the vanity before the mirror.

You heard the tap turn on, squeaky metal over squeaky metal and you waited for the harsh brightness of the fluorescents overhead to bathe you in their accusatory glare. You there! Murderer! Complicit! Harbinger! But it never came. He dutifully stripped you, never lingering too long in one spot or the other, simply laid you bare and then after placing one soft, warm hand on your shoulder and the other against the far shower wall, he guided you into the shower stall and under the hot stream, where your resolve crumbled beneath the cleansing tides and you started to sob into your hands, shoulders shaking with the might of your anguish.

You expected him to leave you then. Alone and sobbing in the dark but then the curtain pulled back once more and you felt his presence behind you before strong arms pulled you in.

If you’d had the mental capacity in that moment to wonder, you’d deduce he’d figured out that when you were feeling particularly stressed out or depressed you tended to shower with the lights off. You had always felt detached in the warm dark. Less a person, more like a shadow. And the things that happened in the shadow world bore little consequence in the land of the light. And so in that you turned to him and sobbed against his chest as he cradled you close in his arms and barely audible over the roar of the cleansing waters raining down he spoke to you in soft, cooing tones until it was all expelled and you went silent and placid in his arms.

After which he washed you thoroughly in soft passes and reverence. When he finally pulled you out of the shower and wrapped you in a fluffy towel you felt empty. No anxiety or panic or guilt. Just clean and hollow, an empty vessel waiting to be filled.

You didn’t even jump when the tap came on behind you, nor when your toothbrush clanked softly against the glass rim of the jar that held it as Danny plucked it from its place. The startlement came when the bright white strip of Colgate slid into your field of view, even in the dim, dank, atmosphere of your dark bathroom it seemed to glow effervescently, much too bright for your mood.

But the hand operating the brush was insistent and you hadn’t the gumption to fight anyway as he pushed it past your lips and stooped down, carefully, ever so carefully drawing it to and fro across your teeth, gentle as so not to hurt you. Fronts and backs and sides. Where he even came upon the opportunity to practice this delicate, finesse-required skill you had no idea but a silent part of you was grateful.

Danny had the foresight to brush the foam from your lips every so often with the index finger of the hand not operating the brush and run it under the tap, so that almost all the pink twinged foam was washed away before you had a chance to see it, not that you lifted your eyes to your reflection in the mirror as you rinsed anyway when he was finally finished.

Then you sat there, staring blankly into the center of his chest as he took a comb and meticulously styled your hair into something that vaguely resembled how you normally kept it. When he was done he left the room and for some reason that’s what made you come to a bit. Staring off after him at the cream colored walls where he'd last been as you heard him enter your bedroom before rummaging through your drawers for something new for you to wear.

After a moment, he returned and carefully helped you into some dry clothes before changing into some himself. It was as he dressed that you found the courage to take a peek at your reflection in the mirror. It was awful. The marks where Josh's fingers had been had discolored and marred your skin. You attempted to touch them and winced at even the light contact.

You reached out towards your makeup bag for concealer but stopped halfway and just stared at your reflection in the mirror. It felt too much like covering up a crime, not one committed against you but one you had committed.

Danny pulled you away from the mirror and into the kitchen where he promptly sat you down and set out some painkillers and poured you a glass of juice he insisted you had to drink, but only really got you to take sips from. Anything else just hurt too much.

You pulled out your phone from your purse to compulsively check the local news, convinced the incident would be strewn all over the headlines. It wasn't of course. But that didn't stop you from refreshing the page every fifteen seconds to check.

“Where’d you get your phone?”

“This one?” You ask, holding it out a little for emphasis. He nods in affirmation.

“My ex helped me pick it out, actually.”

“Oh really? Can I see it?”

You shrug. “Sure.” You hand it to him and the second your hand leaves the device he puts it between both his hands and cracks it clean in half, making you nearly jump up off the stool.

“Danny! What the fuck!! That’s my fucking phone.”

“No. That was your fucking tracking device. Did you ever stop to wonder how he knew exactly where to find you? Well that’s how." You stared down at the two cracked halves in awe and bafflement, swallowing hard and feeling the pain running up your larynx in waves as Danny shook his head and rubbed at his lips compulsively.

“I saw him and I knew, I just knew what was happening. And I couldn’t let that happen I mean just the history between you two and I knew he had no business being anywhere near your building after he was fired, it’s only been what, four months since that whole fiasco; I knew he was up to no good and I had to do something, I had to help you, I had to make sure nothing bad was going to happen and oh my god what is happening to me? You… you’re bad. You’re so good but ohhh you’re so, so very bad for me.” 

You focused in on the beginning of his spiel, not even willing to acknowledge the rabbit hole towards which that last part was clearly headed. “Wait, wait, wait… You’re telling me you knew of him like… like this whole time and- and somehow missed this?”

“Well you could say I’ve been a little distracted, sweetheart. One can only wonder why, hmm?” He asked in the most wooden voice with his eyebrows raised at you in emphasis before continuing.

“I mean, I’ve been aware of him almost right from the start. Sloppy, sloppy work that one did. Clearly you were his first. But no. No, I had no idea he was planning, well.. this.” Of all the things revealed to you in this little chit chat certainly none of them were ever going to make you feel better but that one, well… that one really, really didn’t. You let out an overdue exasperated exhale that did nothing to relieve even an iota of tension that was quickly building back up in your shoulders.

“I had planned to take care of him eventually, this just wasn’t quite the way I would have liked…” 

Your eyebrows pinch together and your face lifts to his in mild confusion. “What do you mean by ‘the way you would have liked’?

“Well all of this actually puts a damper on my plans. I was gonna capture him, bring him here, tie him up, and have you in front of him before executing him personally. It was a whole thing, trust me you would have loved it, doll.” You stand, staring at him, mouth agape but he continues on, unperturbed.

“Of course all of that is ruined now but.. that’s just how it goes I guess.” He finally, finally looks up and seems to register the shock all of this is to you, at least a little.

“I’m sure you had something in mind much more congenial, cause that’s worked out just great so far huh, doll?” You don’t even deem that question worthy of response and turn away from him, hands fisted at your temples to try to get the room to stop spinning for just one damn minute so you can get some kind of grip.

But for a man as observant and perceptive as he, he still has the gall to ask you. “Sweetheart, what’s wrong?”

You can’t even stop yourself from whirling around on him, incredulous. “What’s wrong?! I think the better question would be what isn’t?! Jesus fucking Christ! Two stalkers?! You’re telling me I’ve been oblivious, seemingly ob-fucking-tuse to the fact that two different, completely unrelated men have been watching me in my own home for months?!”

The next words out of his mouth, somehow, despite all you’ve been through on this single, solitary day alone still manage to baffle you.

“You were always safe.” You can’t help yourself, you have to laugh, if you don’t laugh you’ll probably implode because he says it like he truly means it, like he didn’t tell you on that nightmare of an evening only roughly four days ago that he had originally been planning to kill you himself.

But you don’t even want to open that can of worms again, not now. So you just laugh and say “Oh yeah? Well it doesn’t fucking feel like it.”

You turn away from him then, just to breathe and try for the umpteenth time now to get a grip on the shit show that’s become your life. “Jesus Christ.” You mutter under your breath. He doesn’t push the issue, opting instead to change the subject.

“Grab your keys. We’re going out for a few hours.”

You whip back around at him for the sole purpose to glare. “Are you kidding me right now?” His only response is the shake of his head. “Yeah, well, I don’t fucking feel like it.”

“Sorry, doll. I have things to do and I can’t leave you alone so you’re tagging along for today. Non-negotiable I’m afraid.”

“You’re worried I’ll try and call the police.” No sugarcoating or subtlety left in you today, it seems.

“I’m worried about you. Period. Come on.” Textbook case of accusation deflection. Volley. Pivot. Spike. Game, set, match.

You really don’t have it in you to argue, so you snatch your keys off the kitchen table along with your purse and follow him out the door.

The freeway is deserted, probably due to the shitty weather; the rain which just this morning seemed to be letting up had graduated from a solid thunderstorm to full on a deluge.

"I don't know how you're driving in this. We should pull off somewhere." You say, sitting forward a little in the seat to try and get a look up at the sky through the windshield, but all you can see is gunmetal streaks of greyblasted sky between swipes of the windshield wipers doing their best to bat the water from the windshield at regular intervals.

"No, I've driven in a lot worse." He states, nonchalantly which does nothing to relax you.

“Here, put something on.” He said, taking a second to pull one hand off the wheel long enough to toss his phone into your lap. You immediately stiffen. There it sits staring up at you in all its infinite usefulness as you stare down at it with eyes wide and frozen like a seventeenth century puritan seeing the devil in the eyes of the family goat.

“You— you trust me with that?” He takes his eyes off the road for just a split second, just long enough to confirm it’s his phone he’s thrown into your lap and not his knife or something equally sinister with the way you’re reacting— an absolute statute abider when it comes to driving is Mr. Jed Olson.

Satisfied he hadn’t made some kind of egregious blunder he answers with a question of his own.

“What, with the phone itself, or the task of picking out some music?” Without waiting for you to choose, he answers both questions for you.

“I’ve perused through your catalogue of tunes. I know you’re more than capable of selecting something that won't make my ears bleed.” A smile threatens to touch the corners of your lips and you find yourself relaxing just a smidge at his words, enough to make you unstiffen in your seat and reach down to at least pick up his phone.

“And as for the main function of the phone itself, well… we both know what happens when you refuse to play by the rules, doll.” Statute driver or no, he looks over at you for emphasis as he says. “And I will not hesitate to pull this car over on the side of the road and show you and anyone else who happens to drive by for that matter just what happens when you do, even in the pouring rain.”

Without comment you look away from him and go to unlock his phone when you’re prematurely stopped short by a password prompt.

“Pin?” You ask him as your thumbs hover patiently over the keypad.

“0,3,6,5,5,0” He promptly answers as your thumbs move to input the numbers accordingly, silently relieved that it’s not something cringey as fuck like your date of birth or something. But your curiosity simply refuses to stop haranguing you.

“03, 65, 50? 36….55…? 3,655… 365, 5… what’s the significance there?” You see a smile tug at the corner of his lips as you navigate through his apps to find his music.

“3,6,5,5. The zeros are just placeholders. It’s mnemonic. I’m terrible with remembering passwords for menial things actually so.. it helps.”

You finally find the app you’re looking for and pull it up as you ask. “Ok, I'll bite. What about the numbers 3,6,5 and 5 is memorable to you?”

“It’s not the numbers themselves, it’s what they spell. 3,6,5,5. D,O,L,L.” Your fingers freeze and you look over towards him, but his eyes remain fixed to the road. You re-lock his phone, unable to help yourself and pay close attention as your thumbs glide over each digit. 

0,3,6,5,5,0. 0,D,O,L,L,0. 

And the phone unlocks, right back to his collection of music. That sits with you the rest of the trip, as steady and as constant as your seatbelt sat snuggly against your chest.

You don’t comment on it any further, and are in fact thrown completely off the topic as your eyes catch on the title of a readymade playlist, speaking it aloud as your eyes scan over the text for a second time.

“Songs to Bleed out to?” You read off, an inquisitive inflection twisting the words as they leave your lips.

“Contingencies, contingencies, babygirl. A plan for every possibility.” 

“Including destruction?” You ask as you stop scrolling through the list momentarily to look and see if he's serious.

“Especially destruction.” He smiles at you, the second time he’s taken his eyes off the road the entire time and it’s to smile at you and god help you, you smile back. 

And it’s strange to you how you find yourself smiling when only a few hours ago it seemed like you’d never smile again. Guilt suddenly locks your heart into a vice and squeezes, shame oozing from the cracks the action conceives. A man died today. A man died because of you. How dare you feel such a light hearted thing as joy? How dare you smile in the face of death. It should have been you. Should have been you. Should have been you. Should have been y—

“Hey.” You come to. The rain drives on, the road rolls on ahead in the windshield and out behind you in the rear view, the phone sits sound and indifferent in the palm of your left hand, your right hovering seemingly indecisively over the lit screen. Your surroundings and circumstances and turmoils sit stoic and unchanged, and you are left moored in the present right along with them just as the rest of us are, day in and day out.

“Where did you go?” You shake your head at him and pick a song at random and as the first notes come wisping out of the speakers you lock his phone to stop yourself from fidgeting with it and answer in a soft, neutral tone.

"Nowhere."

As the song progresses the depressive, guilty thoughts fade and for a little while at least, they stay away; although that could be attributed to the way you start to pay more attention as your surroundings begin to shift. Danny takes the next exit into the rougher, more industrialized section of town. When you realize it’s not just some kind of detour and find he’s only driving deeper and deeper into the heart of it, you can’t contain it in you anymore, you have to ask.

“Danny, where are we going?” His eyes never leave the road as he answers.

“My place.” The car is thrown into shadow as it passes beneath the overpass and then he turns into what seems to be a side alley that the car very nearly doesn’t fit down. In fact, you’re fairly certain you couldn’t throw open the car door and climb out even if your life depended on it, and it was starting to make you feel claustrophobic. You tell yourself it’s only to shake off the feeling as a shiver rips down your spine.

“Danny..”

“Just a little further, doll. Have some faith.” The car pulls into a strange kind of little alcove, the building above suddenly jutting out two floors up, leaving the car in the dank shadow of a squared off, brick overhang. It gives the surrounding area a strange cavernous-like sensation, protecting you from the driving rain but it still doesn’t manage to make you feel any safer.

He parks the car and climbs out and before he can get around your side to do it for you, you push open the car door and climb out yourself, your shoes sinking down into a half inch of water, wherever you were, somewhere they had a serious drainage problem.

Off to the far side of the overhang was a black car, pulled neatly into its space. It was another Honda you noted, a Honda Civic to be exact. Newer, sleeker, meaner in appearance.

"You have neighbors?" You ask him, trying to imagine the kind of person who would move in to a place like this even as you ask a man who has done exactly that.

"No, no. That's my second car." That gives you pause.

"Your second car?" Jesus fuck. You can hardly afford the one.

"Well, techincially speaking what we drove around in today was Jed's car. That baby right there is my car." He corrects as he tips you a wink. Ohhh you can only imagine all the things he's been up to in that one. You noted the trunk looked huge in comparison and the thought alone gave you a little chill. You clear your throat and end the conversation there as he leads you past a door, up a singular flight of stairs and into his apartment.

It’s actually kind of cool, despite everything. It’s something that fifteen year old you would have loved and sworn to live in when you grew up. Well… almost. The apartment was large and spacious, or at least it would have been if it were clean. The walls were the same brick as they’d been on the outside and as such gave the room no insulation of any kind, making it surely colder than fuck in the winter and hotter than hell in the summer, but since it was a rainy spring midafternoon in central Florida the room was a balmy, even seventy degrees.

Saying the space was cluttered was a bit of an understatement. There was some trash strewn about. Candy wrappers and take out and pizza boxes, along with an assortment of empty energy drink and soda cans spilling out from the trashbin at the foot end of one of the kitchen counters. But that’s usually typical of any single man’s living space around Danny’s age.

There were also papers quite literally everywhere. Magazines, article clippings, newspapers and photos, god the photos must’ve outnumbered all the rest three to one. Hung up on the walls and spilled out over any and all of the flat surfaces occupying the room.

The desk in the far corner, both the coffee and bedside tables, the small round kitchenette in the other far corner, even the bed had its own slew, despite being the least cluttered of the bunch and still unmade at that, the duvet and sheets clumped together in a heap at the foot of its king-sized, simple, metal frame.

“It certainly isn’t much, that even I know, but it’s home.” He drops the keys down on the catchall table by the door. And though the thought did cross your mind to snatch them up to try and make a sort of hasty getaway, your mind wandered back to the alleyway he’d entered through and you'd wager that your odds of successfully circumventing it were exactly slim to none.

So instead you followed him further into the room and waited patiently as he cleared off a space on the couch for you to sit and then sat back as comfortably as you could manage while he flitted about the room, gathering this page or that into a collective pile, seemingly destined for a manila folder he’d set out beforehand.

It wasn’t quite like you to take up the role as conversation starter in any social setting, never mind one as obscure as this but with the oppressive silence and the driving rain against the brick outside as your only alternatives, you found yourself priming up to speak.

“How long have you lived here, then?” Stupid, meaningless question. What difference did it make and why would he tell you anything about himself anyway? He’s a serial killer living a double life for fucks sake, odds are he’s not going to be much of the sharing type.

“Roughly three years, it’s not my first place and it certainly isn't where I plan to settle.” Wow, he’s actually answered you, and even elaborated a little further still.

“It’s not?” He smiles, brief but bright.

“Shit no. I’ve always liked the idea of an honest to goodness brick and mortar house. Maybe some land. I like to sprawl and I don’t really care for neighbors.”

Well at least that figures. But if you’d thought the conversation was getting along pleasantly enough, the next question that floats off your lips stupidly but nevertheless easily enough stops it in its well meaning tracks.

“So.. is the whole Jed deal like a split personality thing orrr..” He stops mid stride to look at you, probably the only time you’ve ever managed to catch him by surprise with something and it’s clear.

“Wh-ugh! Doll. Are you telling me you believe the guy that slips into the Mickey Mouse costume everyday at Disney World goes home after a long grueling day at work to his anthropomorphic mouse wife and goes ‘Ho Ho! Minnie, what’s for supper, dear?’” You just stare at him after that for a moment because while it wasn’t what you’d call a perfect metaphor, you couldn’t for the life of you in that moment construct an argument against it. He didn’t give you time to either way.

“No, of course you don’t. It’s a costume. A carefully constructed facade. A necessity that facilitates us to be able to live our preferred lifestyles. It keeps those with delicate sensibilities at ease and happy as we walk amongst them.” 

You are left speechless as your brain struggles to follow him over this bizarre mental bridge he had so readily painted for you. Did he really just compare himself, a seasoned, murder-hungry, sociopath, to an iconically beloved children’s mascot?

But apparently even that wasn’t enough of an offense to him because as soon as those words leave his lips he leans over the back of the couch and kisses the top of your head, like a parent often will after imparting one of life’s great many seldom spoken secrets upon a young mind, and it leaves you unsure which out of the two of you leans more to the left side of sane. He pauses briefly and then continues.

“To answer your previous question, no. I may be a little crazy but I know I am not that particular flavor of it.”

With everything seemingly in order, he slips the Manila folder into his messenger bag and breathes out a sigh he’d had pent up in his lungs. After a moment's consideration he settles down in the arm chair across from the couch you’re on and takes a good, long, examining sweep over you. His eyes raked down your face, over your tensed shoulders and onto your hands, tightly clasped and settled stiffly into the seat of your lap.

“How are you holding up?” He asks. He keeps his voice steady and casual but you can hear an undernote of concern there. You tell him you’re fine. Because you are. Absolutely fine that is. And it occurs to you to ask yourself of what concern is it to him anyway? So you tell him again, firmer this time; and he gets this funny look on his face, his brows scrunch in and his lips draw in between his teeth in a thin line. He’s looking at you like you’re a problem that needs solving and you’ve seen how he solves problems so you smile at him for good measure but your smile is hard and feels skewed on your face and you know if it feels skewed to you it must look utterly insane to him.

He sighs and stands up and your heart leaps in your chest and your hands clench down tighter over themselves in your lap but you stay still, stark still like a deer in the headlights because if you flinch now it will show weakness and predators feed on weakness and if there’s one thing you know him to be it’s predatory. You’ve seen the evidence, now with your very own eyes.

Eyes. Josh’s eyes, first angry and crazed, then stagnant and forever moored in their sockets. They’ll never light up with laughter or darken with lust or even fill with tears ever again. A hand is suddenly on your shoulder and you half expect it to be Josh, his last effort to cling to life. To cheat death you must take his place, the reaper needs his pound of flesh and it should have been you. Should have been you. Should have been you.

“Come here.” And it’s not Josh, of course it isn’t. Josh is dead. Danny killed him and Danny is here, here to comfort you and bring you in. He pulls you up off the couch and into a hug and his arms wrap around you so perfectly that you forget all about the fear of him you’d been all but shaking with just a moment before. Yes, he had killed Josh, but Josh had been hurting you. More than that to call a spade a spade. He had been trying to kill you and Danny had killed him. Danny had saved you. These arms, these same arms that had shown such violence now offer you solace, tenderness. So you melt into them.

And so what if you allowed yourself to lean on him? Just for this moment, just this once? Was it really so bad to need a moment's reprieve? To not have to carry it around all by yourself all the time? Was there not more strength in admitting when you needed support? To yield to the caution signs before you crashed and burned. To not let yourself be crushed and broken by things you know will crush and break you. Does it really matter that he's a sociopathic murderer? Well… the jury is still out on that one. And it seems it’ll stay that way as he leans down and captures your lips with his and then the two of you are stumbling back towards his bed.

Killer or savior? Or is it less black and white than that? More like a mottled grey. Such as life. Your back makes contact with the bed and the springs in the box frame beneath bounce and reverb with your weight. You breathe out all in a huff as it so very gently steals the air from your lungs and it comes out in a startled giggle you hadn’t meant to make.

He climbs over top of you then and your hands come up to push against his chest instinctively. You go to push him off of you but then he starts kissing softly above your collarbone, right around your neckline and your stomach does a little flip in your abdomen; sending waves of sensation down your body and a rush of blood to your head.

That head high sets your nerves alight in a way that has you drawing in air sharply and everything around you suddenly feels vibrant and full of color. His dark maroon bedding is redder, the sky outside that you can see peaking through the slats in the blinds from your upside down perspective has stopped spitting rain and is brighter, the top of his head, trailing kisses as he moves lower is browner. You bet if you were to run your fingers through those disheveled locks they'd be softer.

"This is all my fault." He whispers against your skin as your brows furrow in misunderstanding. Reading the tension in your body he clarifies.

"These." He says, kissing softly at your neck, a frown pulling at his lips as you flinch and cringe away as they brush over the bruises . "These are all my fault."

"It may as well have been my own hands around your neck. I was distracted and it made me careless, I assumed he was harmless." He pulls back from your neck to meet your eyes. "I was wrong." You stare up at him from below, speechless. This was a side of Danny you have yet to see. Those brown eyes of his bore down on you from above, fiercely intense as he continues.

"All of this is very new to me still, I'm still learning what is and is not appropriate." His eyes search your face before he leans down to kiss you softly. "What is and is not acceptable." He adds before leaning down to kiss you again, lingering a second longer this time. "I will never let someone get that close to you again." His arms slip down your sides on either side, following the course of your dips and curves.

“Wait. Wait, wait. What are you doing?”

“Distracting you.” He says between kisses planted between each and every one of your ribs as he passes them on his descent.

“Come on, Danny. No. This is.. it's not a good time.” Of all the valid excuses you could have made this is quite possibly the lamest.

“I'm so damn sorry, doll. Let me make it up to you." He murmurs against the flesh of your tummy, hands planted now on either side of your hips as he pushes the fabric of your top up and away to press hot, relishing, open-mouthed kisses to the soft, succulent skin of your navel. It was very obvious where this was quickly leading.

“No, really. You don’t have to.” He chuckles against you, the tip of his nose dipping down to graze your bellybutton as he laughs at some joke you aren’t yet privy to. "So naive." He adds, tsking softly against you and smiling at the shiver the action produces.

“As much as I love the idea of being this chivalrous knight in that pretty little head of yours. This is really only half as much for you as it is for me. Now be a good girl and lie there and let me eat.” He says as he tugs at the waistband of your jeans, already having undone the button and zipper during your protests.

“Or don’t, I’ve always got a knife somewhere within easy reach.” Your eyes flare with a mix of emotions, half of which you refuse to acknowledge and you draw in a sharp inhale at the threat, your eyes now sweeping to and fro to try and spot a knife handle or the edge of a sheath poking out from every nook and cranny. 

“And besides I’m really starting to think that that particular threat is not as effective a deterrent on you as you’d have me believe.” He adds, and the eerie way he seems to just be able to put words to your innermost thoughts continues to unnerve you but he seems not to notice as he finally shucks you of your jeans. He slides his palms up your calves, into the crooks of your knees and up the inside of your thighs, spreading them.

“Danny—“

“That’s it, babygirl. That’s the only thing for the next half hour or so I want to hear you say.” And with that he dives in, licking a bold stripe up the length of your slit without ceremony, making your thighs jump as you attempt to tense them around his head. One hand instinctively slides down to find purchase in the soft, swept back locks at the top of his head and he hums approvingly into the space between your thighs, making you shiver anew. You were right, his hair is soft and still slightly damp from your shared shower, something you hadn't expected.

Then he really starts in, his tongue swirls over your clit in light, consistent circles and your head falls back against the pillow, surrounding you in his scent. It smells like the cologne he was wearing the first night he came to you; that sharp, cheap, aftershave-like heady smell that’s got you breathing in deep and moaning low in the back of your throat. 

Danny pries your thighs further apart, hands stationed at the insides of your knees so he can gather the most leverage to hold you open with.

He dips lower, the tip of his tongue running down your slit until it dips into your entrance, just a tease, making him chuckle against you at the way it makes your thighs jump, pulling a genuine whimper from you.

You tug at his hair, trying to move him just where you want him and, seemingly content with your level of neediness he dives in, lapping and sucking up every drop of sweetness he's gleaned from you thus far.

You're a constant flow of gasps and moans now, hips never still as your hands shift between gripping the top of his head and fisting the sheets.

It feels as though you're in constant motion but you also feel the bed shifting in ways that don’t sync up with your squirming and it's then that you realize he’s grinding down against the bedding as he eats you out like a man starved.

You grind up into his face and that only makes him redouble his efforts, full on thrusting against the bed as he takes you apart lick by lick.

His blunt nails drag down the insides of your thighs, pulling a high pitched whine from you at the mix of sensations and you can tell he’s enjoying this just as much as you are.

One hand slips back up to hold you still and open for him but the other draws lower down your body and then you feel just the tip of one finger notched at your entrance, not quite pushing in but slowly circling it. Teasing you as he licks and sucks at your clit like it’ll fly away if he doesn’t keep it between his teeth.

You’re bucking up in Danny’s hold but he’s got you held fast, even with just the one arm you’re not going anywhere as he relentlessly drives you towards your release, groaning and growling into your pussy as he does.

You feel his finger finally breach you and then your back is arching up off the bed as far as his arm will allow as you dive head first into your orgasm, body quaking in his hold as you come hard around just the tip of his first finger. You can hardly believe it, you've never been able to come that fast, not even on your own.

But as he drives you through it you feel his finger push deeper before pulling out and when he pushes in again he adds another and then one more, making your eyes spring open and your head lift up off the pillow to look down at him, his head still thoroughly planted betwixt your thighs as he refuses to slow down or give you reprieve. You call out to him but it’s like he can’t hear you— like your thighs have created a vacuum around his ears, letting nothing in. 

And then you’re coming again, it’s hard and fast and overwhelming coming right off the back of your first and your legs shake so hard against him it scares you a little. You scream his name caught in the throes of it and you feel him— just as ardently as you can hear him, actually growl into the space between your thighs, right up against your clit and your head drops back onto his pillow again, and you come down off of your second orgasm breathing in heady puffs of his cologne, branding your pleasure with the scent of him even as he still licks and sucks and nibbles at the heart of you.

You whine and writhe in his grip.

"Danny please." And then you see him shudder, a full body convulsion as he groans out in answer to your plea. Finally, he stops and you can breathe and you can't help but notice that you're both breathing hard, panting together like you'd had a bout of particularly vigorous sex, which make sense for you but…

"Danny… did you just?" And he looks up at you from between your spread thighs with just the most fucked out eyes, his face glistening slightly in the midafternoon gloom filtering in through the blinds, hair mussed and out of sorts from all the ways your fingers have run through and held it in a death grip.

But as disheveled and absolutely wrecked as he looks, he's smiling. Just as wide and toothy as ever he's grinning up at you from between your spread thighs and it sends shivers through you that you have to shudder to repress and hope to god he reads as aftershocks from all the times you've came.

You're unsure if you should be thanking him of its he who should be thanking you. And then he quips in defense to your previous question.

“It’s only premature ejaculation if it was unintentional and doll I can tell you right now everything that just happened, happened exactly as I meant it to.” Well you suppose you can't argue with that one.

And they say chivalry is dead.

“Fuck me, doll. You taste so good I am seriously considering tying you down to this bed and never letting you up again.”

“That’s not funny, Danny.”

“It wasn’t a joke, sweetheart.” Not willing to trust in his control over his compulsions, you pushed up from the bed and slipped out of his grasp, standing up from the bed to pull your panties and jeans up before your eyes took interest in a particular dark offshoot off from the bathroom hallway.

“What’s down there?” You ask, gesturing with a tilt of your head in its direction as you look back at him over your shoulder.

He smiles up at you from his place, still propped up on his elbows on the bed. “Why don’t you go down there and see?” He asks and then he's up off the bed too, deftly changing clothes and cleaning himself up as you peer curiously into the darkened hall.

Ahh, l'appel du vide. What is it about the dark that draws us in? Be wary, so wary, sweet yellow canary there are beasts and devils in those yonder woods.

To satisfy your curiosity or leave things well enough alone? You take your eyes off of him and move towards the dark passageway. Fifteen paces and you’re there, right at the bathroom door before the space takes a sharp turn and drops off into a darkened stairwell. You stop in place and turn to look back at him now changed and fresh, one hand resting on a cool, metal post of the frame.

“You got a flashlight or something?”

“The switch is to your left.” And so it was, you gave it a flick and a bank of lights buzzed into life somewhere below, throwing the darkness into a deep, red haze.

“Ohh no, no way.” You started to turn away from the top riser to retreat only to run right into Danny who was suddenly there, blocking your exit.

“Can’t live in fear all your life, doll.”

You give a little laugh, void of humor and shake your head at him. “No, I’ve seen things like this before on the internet. I know what the dark web is, ok? I’ll pass on the red room shit.”

“I hate to spoil all the fun, but red rooms aren’t real, sweetheart.” You scoff at him.

“Trust me for once.”

Trust him? Right, right. Cause that’s worked out so well. But you look back over your shoulder and that same curious feeling comes back in a soft wave. After all you’d seen today, after how hard it had fucked you up, did you really believe he’d subject you to that shit again just for funsies? You look back at him one more time and his hand gestures to the stairs below, inviting you to proceed.

You give him one last exasperated huff and glare at him with eyes that tell him exactly what you’ll do if he’s lying to you. Not that there would be much you could do in all actuality.

You begin your descent and it’s only after you’ve made it halfway down that the view opens up on something you immediately recognize, even if you’d never physically been in one before. Not a red room— but a dark room. 

Once dismounted from the stairs, the room was mostly bare until you’d reached the far wall, where the room essentially split into two halves. On one side, a series of bins set up in an orderly, sequential line, evenly spaced across the worktop. Interspaced between these a series of breakers and bottles and tongs. The air had the sharp tinge of vinegar burning at the hair of your nostrils.

The opposite side, dry and lined with a few machines, rolls upon rolls of film reel, an easel, and a cute little yellow, plastic egg timer, complete with an adorable, painted-on, chibi egg face— wide toothy grin, rosy red cheeks and all. At the end of the line, a stack that seemed a mile high of some sort of high quality paper, and one of those industrial paper cutters with mounted pull down blade for precision cutting.

Strung between these two seemingly opposing work stations was what looked like a clothesline, but instead of shirts and panties and sheets, these held up row after row after row of photos. Captured, developed and dried.

“Oh wow.” It surely wasn’t what you were expecting, and your apprehension was immediately replaced by wonder. You simply couldn’t possibly have imagined this of all things to be what was lurking in his basement. It made sense all things considered.

He strode past you as you inched further into the space, slowed by wonder as you drank it all in with your eyes.

“It’s amateur, but it serves me.” He replied casually as he reached up and began to unclip the pages one by one. Glancing at them briefly as he collected them from the line. You toured past the first station, careful to keep your hands to yourself as you surveyed the bins and bottles in closer inspection, each carefully labeled. The labels read off like a pop quiz with no questions, only multiple choices. A) Dev B) Stop C) Fix. And you hadn’t even studied. Damn.

The second station seemed easier to understand, with the exception of the machines you made sure not to touch either. They looked sorta like microscopes but different. Maybe like a microscope and one of those old overhead projectors your teachers used to use in school had a baby, and somehow one of those antique accordion-style cameras was involved, or watched, or filmed the whole thing. It was foreign to you, to say the least.

You quickly skirt past them and onto the more familiar end of the line, the end with the paper cutter you could immediately understand the purpose and function of as well as the stack of paper that turned out to be thicker and glossier than you had at first imagined.

Next to these was a wire rack, it coiled around in a kind of square spiral around and around and around, making even, narrowly spaced slots that extended almost to the edge of the table. Each of these held a singular photo and unable to help yourself, but still looking back to Danny for permission first, you grabbed one at random with his nod of ascent carefully by the corner and pulled it up a little from out of the top of the rack to see it.

You recognized the scenery immediately, it’s the town fair. Specifically Saturday night of the town fair as you can see the banner for Forest’s End, the band they’d hired to play as the main attraction for the evening, strung across the poles over the main gate of the grounds. You could spy the ferris wheel in the background with its many multicolored bulbs, the bright lights of the band stand just before it and the rows and rows of fair caravans bunted up to each side of it. Ring Toss Boss and Water Gun Warrior: Alien Invasion and Muscle Mallet Might. Same games, new names.

This year city council decided to give all the games defining names to try and attract more kids, it was only in the recent few years the annual town fair became less craft based and more of a traditionally  hypercommercialized county fair type deal. You supposed it had to do with the recent uptick in Ghostface activity that had discouraged most from going out past dark that had the city desperate to recuperate some of that lost revenue. Leave it to local politicians to look out more for their wallets than the ideal safety of their citizens. But at least they had beefed up security around the grounds as well.

And they were quick to toot their own horns on the subject, eager to point out how this along with the commission of the brand new signs for each booth were generating job opportunities specifically for the community. A way to give back they’d dubbed it, like it wasn’t a one time gig for the sign makers and a three week paycheck for the security guys they’d managed to sign on.

But even so the masses jumped on the bandwagon and the fair had been a huge hit. You’d even been dragged along by Erin and Marcy as it was. And proof in pudding as they say there it was, or there you were more specifically. Just past the gates you caught sight of Erin’s bold blonde to red ombré locks and you there beside her, a bit obscured, and certainly not the focus of the shot but still in frame nonetheless.

As you worked your way through the shots you found more and more of yourself. It was widely interspersed at first, then grew more and more in frequency. Here was you at the Dunk the Duck tank. Then a few scattered wide view shots, then one of you on the Ferris wheel with Marcy, you’d been the unlucky cart to get stuck at the bottom when the ride stopped for a few minutes to give the riders what was supposed to be an advantageous view of the whole fair. Stuck at the bottom you and Marcy had nothing to see except the same crowds of people you’d been used to seeing the whole time but that didn’t matter to you, no matter where you were or what you’re doing, as long as you’re with Marcy, it was always a riot.

And here was the proof, you and Marcy pictured mid crack up, both of you with your eyes closed, bent over the bar holding you in place for the ride, the many hued bulbs casting contrasting glows against your skin, an eternal laughing fit caught in time. Wide lens shots of the band that’d played that night in the middle of their set, then you again at the lemonade stand, a huge 64oz cup full of goodness in hand; and an embarrassingly wide smile on your face to boot. You remembered turning to Marcy right after that and exclaiming over how big the drink was. You wonder if he’d caught that too.

The hesitant smile on your face widens with anticipation as you thumb back another page to see if he had, but when you pull the shot out into view it fades, it drops so fast from your face it’s as if it had walked sheer off a cliff. The dark, warm atmosphere of the basement fell numb against the wicked, spine stiffening chill that raced all the way up from your tailbone to your brain stem.

Danny, who had not been paying much attention before to the shots you’d been perusing and had opted instead to observe the fascinating sight of awe and reverence alight on your face at the sight of his work, felt a similar kind of horror as he watched the sudden shift in your demeanor drain away all the beautiful wonder from your face in an instant. He couldn’t have begun to imagine what would make your face fall in such an abrupt way. The real nightmare fuel was all locked up, or at least, so he had thought. 

James Marsh had died in the early morning hours of May 8th. He’d been working on his ‘65 Ford F100 when Danny had crept into his garage with his camera, his knife and his ill intentions. Danny had watched him for a month before he’d decided it was time to make his design reality. It normally took longer than that for him to narrow down the nuances and expectancies of a person's routine but Mr. Marsh proved to be a pretty straight shooter in every sense of the phrase.

It was easy. He was on his back on his mechanics creeper. An old blues station was on playing on a shitty AM/FM radio, helping to mask Danny’s entrance and old James was none the wiser, singing along as he drained dirty, dark motor oil into a shallow pan. Out of all his victims, James got it the quietest, no matter what the papers said. And Danny should know, he’d both committed the crimes and written the papers that reported on them.

Danny had rolled the creeper back with one foot and James had barely gotten an idea of which way was up again when Danny had dragged the edge of his buck across from ear to ear. James had bled out less than a minute later, but before he had done so, he’d struggled a bit, resulting in that shallow pan of oil to upturn its contents onto the concrete below, seeping out slowly from beneath the fender of the F100.

Then something sort of fascinating had occurred. James’ pooling blood met and began to intermingle with the pool of oil in a captivating display of miscibility. James lie still on the concrete, his soul already gone to the great beyond, but behind him— and mostly to his right, was a pool of blood and oil edging up to and spilling into one another in a brilliant display. Blood and oil. Ichor and Ochre. Like crimson marble. And Danny couldn’t resist. Fearing he’d never have an opportunity like this again, he started taking snapshots by the hundreds.

After five days the photos were developed and after two days more he’d picked out what he’d considered the perfect two. After a long period of debate he’d slipped the one he considered just slightly superior— due mostly to the slight difference in positioning of the early morning sun reflected in the mesmerizing pools, into his portfolio and then promptly forgot about the runner up, which was now held stiffly by the barest of corners, like one might hold the handles of a particularly nasty trash bag, between your index and thumb.

How had this happened? Everything was going so well. And now…

“Doll.. I can explain.” He started, but it was too late.

“Take me home.” You released the photo from your grip and the glossy print slid back into its slot near the back of the rack with a perfunct THWACK.

The ride home was pregnant with the queasy silence between you.

I have made a terrible mistake. A horribly, grotesque, terminal mistake.

It was beginning to get dark and the sun, setting in the west, was an ugly, deep ball of orange hate radiating from a frozen uncaring space millions of miles away. You wanted to stare into it. Wanted to be struck blind by it. The image of James Marsh lying lifeless in a pool of blood and oil was ingrained into your mind's eye and not even the stinking power of the setting sun would burn it away.

Who am I and what have I done?

You didn’t know anymore. You thought you had things under control. You had a life and a job and a family. You had friends and hobbies and even the occasional boyfriend. But that all felt so distant now.

How have I become this? This.. mystery woman whom I don’t know?

You didn’t know that either. But you knew one thing. You were going to get it all back. One way or another you were going to get it all back.

Danny tried to fill the silence but you just wouldn’t respond to him. He tried pleasant small talk. He tried to sweep the incident under the rug. He even tried to broach the subject head on. But you gave him nothing, nothing to work with, nothing to build upon. Before this he’d seen a glimmer of it, a glimmer of acceptance in your eyes, even if you couldn’t see it, even if you didn’t know it was there he did. You were warming up to him. You were beginning to soften and then… well.. then this. Of all the planning he’d done to sway you, of all the countless hours he’d spent going over every last minute detail of how things could pan out he hadn’t accounted for this, and really he had no one to blame but him. 

The car pulled up in front of your house and you were up and out of the passenger seat before Danny could even put it in park. He raced out after you, worried you were going to do something drastic but you’d only pushed your way inside the house and then left the door standing open to let the bugs fly in as you stormed inside and ran to the sink. A retching sound echoed off their stainless steel walls as you emptied the contents of your stomach into the garbage disposal and then hit the switch.

He came in the door as you flipped the tap on, running cool water over the nasty sludge as it circled the drain. You braced yourself with your arms on either side of the sink, gripping it for dear life as he shut and locked the door behind you.

He could understand some initial shock perhaps, but this was taking things a bit far in his opinion, after all it was only a little blood. And that’s when his frustration shined through, just a little.

“I will not hide what I do from you.” Did he detect a reaction just then? Just the slightest stiffening of your posture in your stance over the sink? It encouraged him and he pressed on.

“If this…” He began and then faltered, staring down at the travel-worn linoleum beneath your feet. And then after a pause he began again.

“If this is going to work… then there’s some things about me that you just need to accept.” Ohhh did you have some things to say about that. You spun on him to begin in earnest when the doorbell rang. You and Danny looked at one another from across the length of the kitchen in a shocked stalemate, both of you scarcely breathing when you jolted out of your shocked daze and bolted towards the door.

He was in the way but regardless you made a scramble for it, a mad dash as it was. It was compulsive, instinctive, reactionary; only to have Danny in two quick movements, pull his knife from the back of his messenger bag and then pull the knife free of its well worn sheath just as you were preparing to slip past between him and the bar counter.

“Don’t.” It’s his only warning and it makes you still, even as you’re mid stride. His eyes lock to yours, commanding obedience.

“Bedroom. Now.”  He whispers the words. And it’s then you know he has to be as frightened as you are in this moment. It’s been the only one since you’ve met that hasn’t been entirely in his control. You consider screaming.

“It’s been a very taxing day for you, and I can understand that. A lot has happened. But nothing that we can not work through. Do you understand me?” Your eyes had trailed to his blade, gleaming and deadly, but now they trained back on his. Those deep brown eyes. Held within them was utter and unwavering belief in those words as he spoke them.

That’s what settled it for you. He was so delusional he really and truly believed that you two were in a committed, unfettered relationship. And if he was so delusional as to truly believe that then he was lost beyond saving and there was no telling what lengths he may go to to make that delusion a reality. You had indirectly killled a man today, you weren't about to make any more potential casualties a reality in your name.

You walked past him and into the back hall and you could feel him following you with his eyes until you were cemented into the room by the shutting of your bedroom door. Then and only then did you hear him move through the house. Shoed feet moving from linoleum to carpet back to linoleum again as he stood in the entryway and opened the door. Voices. Two, possibly three sets of male that much you were certain of.

You didn’t have a view of the front door from your bedroom but you could look out front, and from your vantage point you could see, plain as day, an honest to goodness police cruiser pulled up front and center in the entry to your driveway.