Julian
I BELIEVE ATLAS WAS waiting for me last night. When I arrived home, I was drunk—which potentially makes my perception unreliable—but I swear he looked relieved when our eyes connected.
Even weirder still is how he felt. Just as it always does when he arrives, the air around us was moist and hot, and his skin was flushed so sweetly. Yet, it felt as if there was something there with us. Like something was clinging to his back and following his every move.
It very well could have been my guilty conscience waiting for Atticus to show up and shout at me, but when his fingers touched my skin and it hurt, I had the innate feeling that it wasn’t that simple.
Something is wrong with Atlas; he called it a curse. Is it possible to be cursed outside of a fairytale? And if it is, does it have something to do with that weird presence I felt?
If I wasn’t so drunk that I imagined it, then there must be a reason I’ve only ever felt that invasion of privacy in the dark.
And now it is nightfall again, and as I lie underneath my duvet, I peer around the darkness of my room. I feel nothing. No watchful eyes, no creepy presence.
So, there is every possibility that I made it up.
Being drunk and spouting words I shouldn’t, getting so embarrassed that I pretend I don’t remember doing it the next day, is so unlike me. Something about Atlas mixes me up, makes me hot and desperate. It scares me.
He kind of scares me. Because last night, underneath that soft, delicate exterior, I felt something sinister.
Is this why Oscar told me to avoid the west tower at night? Does he… change? Is that even possible?
The emergency bell that is connected to Atticus’s room goes off loudly, scaring me senseless for a few brief moments. Confused, I just stare at it.
That is, until I remember that Atticus and Abigail switched rooms, though I was never informed as to why. And now I’m slipping on my house shoes and running from Hall E2 to Hall W4 as if my ass is on fire.
I burst into her bedroom without knocking. This is only the second time she’s rung her bell in the three months I’ve worked here, and I’m panicked.
“Missus Abigail?” I whisper-shout.
She’s sitting up in her bed, crying softly.
“Something is wrong, Julie,” she sobs.
“What do you—” A loud bang successfully cuts off my words.
It’s coming from above us, the west tower.
“Atty is in trouble; I just know it.” She watches me with wide eyes, her bottom lip trembling.
Nodding, I turn back toward the door. “I’ll fix it.”
“You can’t!” she yells. “You can’t go up there.”
“I won’t,” I lie. “I’ll get Atticus.”
Abigail nods, her blonde hair shifting over her bright green eyes. “Okay. Thank you.”
I slip out of the room, and as I approach the door to the west tower, the air around me rises in temperature so fast that sweat begins to bead across my forehead.
Staring at the dark wooden door, I debate my options. If I do get Atticus, he’ll guard this door with a solemn expression and Atlas will suffer alone. I have no idea what the rest of the Chastains would do, or what Oscar would say if I fetched him.
My father would surely tell me to mind my business.
As my palm begins to wrap around the doorknob, the metal of it burns me. Ripping my hand back, I pant heavily, staring at it with eyes as wide as Abigail’s were a moment ago.
What the fuck?
“Hngh.”
I hear his groan, muffled and distant, and a moment later, something loud bangs, as if wood has been slammed into a wall.
The door right behind me, the one that now belongs to Atticus, begins to make a clicking noise. He’s coming out.
In a split second, I make my decision. Grasping the burning doorknob, I open the door and slip inside, shutting it gently.
My palm is red and stinging, and the air inside the narrow, unlit hallway is even hotter. A few feet in front of me is a steep staircase that seems to go up forever, but can truly only rise about two stories.
As I take hesitant steps upward, the temperature rises further and further. A part of me is terrified. I have no idea what I’ll find up here. An intruder? A very angry Atlas? Something I can’t even begin to understand?
Yet I cannot leave him to suffer alone. Not again.
“Ahh,” Atlas sounds, louder now, the banging continuing.
My feet begin to move quicker, and some terrible part of me sings at the sound of his voice. It almost sounds as if he’s… moaning.
Suddenly, I’m in front of another door. I’m sweating through my t-shirt, my skin is damp all over, and my breath is leaving me in heavy exhales.
I grasp the doorknob. It hurts.
Slowly, I turn it and push the door open just a crack before ripping my aching hand away.
Something is preventing me from barging in. Some variation of fear and mild interest, as the closer I get, the less this sounds like violence and the more it sounds like rough sex.
Surely not, right? Atlas wouldn’t be… not in his family’s house.
A rage I’m unfamiliar with fills me as the door opens, and the sound of his panting can be heard.
The queen-sized bed is to the left of the door, so it’s quite easy for me to peek in.
I really, really wish it weren’t. As my eyes fall upon the space, my mouth goes dry, and my heart speeds up.
I can see him, with his chest pushed into the mattress and his ass up in the air. A man much bigger than him, much bigger than me, is on his knees behind him, thrusting into him roughly.
Each snap of his hips slams the headboard into the wall, causing Atlas to groan or whine against the force of it.
From here, I can see his face, his eyes clenched shut, and his arms limp at his sides. I can see his leaking cock where it bobs underneath him, obscenely dripping onto the duvet.
“Mmph,” Atlas sounds against the force of a particularly hard thrust, and the man behind him makes a low sound in the back of his throat.
The man’s skin is pale, his muscles taut and defined. Black hair falls loosely to his shoulders, swaying with each movement. I cannot see his face.
Despite the envy, the jealousy, the guilt for seeing something so private, my cock thickens in my pajama pants. Watching Atlas spread out like this, taking it so sweetly, leaking all over himself… It’s a sensory overload.
It’s such an overwhelming image that I almost don’t notice that the feeling from last night is back. The sinister atmosphere.
It’s almost enough to distract me.
The man extends a hand, and I notice that his fingers are abnormally long, his nails sharp. While he’s gripping Atlas’s hip, I cannot see the details of his other hand.
He wraps those long fingers around the front of Atlas’s throat, pulling him up and flush against his chest. Atlas’s back seals to him with their sweat.
The man moves his hand from his throat to pull at Atlas’s nipples, the hand on his hip moving to fist Atlas’s cock with incredible speed as he pounds into his ass relentlessly.
Atlas makes a high-pitched, whimpering noise at the triple sensation in feeling, his head lulling forward to hang against his collarbones.
The man is kissing and biting at the nape of his neck, and I realize I can’t hear him at all. Not the way I can hear Atlas panting.
Then, with one particularly powerful thrust, Atlas jerks, and he’s coming with an overwhelming force. I can hear him crying, his limp limbs twitching and spasming.
His release lands on the bed before him, and the man behind him sounds a loud, possessive growl before he shoves Atlas back down into his own arousal, fucking into him without remorse.
It looks almost painful. I’m not one to shy away from rough sex, if my hard dick that I’m currently trying to hide is any indication, but this looks brutal.
Without realizing it, I’m leaning forward, my curious eyes trying to see every little movement Atlas makes, to hear every little sound. I’m a pervert.
But as I lean, my forearm brushes the hot doorknob, and I hiss, retracting it quickly.
Only, it was loud enough to be heard.
Atlas doesn’t seem to notice; he remains shoved into the mattress as he pants quickly. But the man notices.
He stiffens, his thrusts abruptly stopping, causing Atlas to groan loudly. Fuck, will he be pissed that I interrupted his hookup? That I saw? Am I going to be fired?
The man turns toward me.
All of my worries leave my brain at once. As if sucked away and disposed of, I am nothing but a husk of a man as I stare back at the thing kneeling behind Atlas.
And I say thing, because although his body is normal enough, his face… It’s terrifying.
A mouth too large to fit its features properly, full of razor-sharp teeth, hangs open. Gaping at me, as if in shock. Two pitch-black eyes full of something akin to how I imagine death looks peer in my direction. It does not have a nose or nipples, I notice, as my eyes slide over its toned chest.
I am no longer hard.
And just as I’m about to run away or push the door open and shove that thing off of Atlas—I haven’t decided yet—its jaw unhinges even further, and a loud, ear-splitting shriek sounds throughout the room.
“Fuck!” I yell, covering my ears with my hands.
My entire body aches suddenly, as if I’m being stretched in every direction at once. My blood feels hot; my eyes sting.
The thing stands from the bed, towering at an unnatural height, its long, thick cock standing hard, ridged, and covered in a fluid I do not recognize. It begins to walk toward me.
Its movements are effortless in the hot air that surrounds us, as if the room around it isn’t yet aware of its presence and has not yet been disturbed.
Each step it takes is another heart palpitation in my chest, and if I could back up without falling down the steep stairs, I would.
I can’t run; I can’t move. The sharp, shrill voice is keeping me frozen in this spot, whether in fear or through some unknown power.
This thing is not human. It looks like a demon.
Atlas makes another whimper from the bed, and, somehow, I pick it up over the sound of the screaming.
I can’t leave him here at the hands of this thing. If I manage to unstick my feet and run, it will most likely go back to brutally pounding into him.
Full to the brim with fear and determination, with pain coursing through me, I extend a hand and shove open the door fully. The creature is now a few feet in front of me.
“Leave,” I demand, though I can barely make out my own shaking voice over the unhinging of its jaw, its scream filling the space around me.
The creature becomes louder; Atlas twitches from where he lies.
“Leave,” I repeat, more forcefully this time, taking a step forward.
Everything in me is screaming that I run, that I hide, that this thing could very well kill me. But I can’t; I can’t leave him here.
The aching inside of me begins to dull, my blood cooling slightly.
The creature cocks its head, the screaming gradually dying out as its jaw stays unhinged eerily. I take another step.
Something is tickling the back of my mind, urging me on now that I’ve decided to stay. As if I can do this, as if I can fight this inhuman being and force him out.
Just as I’m considering how I can do that, it makes one last sound of warning, one that makes my skin crawl and my stomach turn, before it walks backward until it’s shrouded in the darkness of one corner of the room, and then it’s gone.
The air around me cools by a few degrees, and that sinister feeling disappears. The ache fades away, my blood no longer simmering.
On the bed, Atlas makes a pathetic whining noise.
I race to his side, flipping him over with my sudden burst of desperate energy. He’s covered in his own come, bright red scratches covering his chest and his swollen nipples. His hair is matted to his forehead with sweat, and his limbs twitch softly.
Scooping him up into my arms, I take him to his bathroom. Atlas is burning up, hotter than the temperature of the room, even.
I run a cold bath, keeping him cradled to my chest. Once it’s full, I slowly set him into it, watching as his features relax from a grimace to an expression of relief.
I need to cool him down; I need to wash him.
Suddenly, there is a very intense, deep-rooted certainty that I need to protect him. From this pain, from his own shame, from that thing.
I wash him gently, taking my time and thoroughly rinsing any mark I see on his body. He has quite a few. I keep my eyes on his face as I wash his more intimate areas, giving him some semblance of privacy, and Atlas’s face twists into that of pleasure as I run the rag over his entrance.
He is incredibly beautiful, even like this. If the situation were even slightly different, I fear I’d get hard again.
Once Atlas is cleaned, I wrap him in a large, soft towel and carry him to his bed, ripping his duvet off the mattress and tucking him under the sheet.
He looks peaceful now, with no grimace of pain or furrowed brow. The smooth planes of his face are relaxed and content as I sit next to him and watch him sleep silently.
It suddenly occurs to me that Atlas may not have been awake that entire time.
What was the thing? Am I dreaming?
As I watch his curls spread out over his silk pillowcase, my fingers brush the fevered skin of his arm. It feels as if he’s beginning to cool down.
Atlas said he was cursed and that he’s waiting for a cure.
No one is allowed in the west tower after dark.
Is this the curse? That some creature is to come and fuck him senseless every night?
It is highly likely that I’m still downstairs, dreaming a vivid nightmare, my own subconscious trying to fill the void inside of me where his secrets belong.
And as I slip silently from his room at the top of the west tower, leaving him to rest in peace, I think that for Atlas’s sake, I really, really hope I’m suffering through a nightmare.