Chapter 20
TWENTY
AIDEN
Levi haunts me.
As I shower, scrubbing myself with soap, and rinsing off with ice cold water, he’s all I can think about.
Not in a sweet ‘my heart soared when I met him’ kind of way but in a more dread-inducing musing. Now, alone in the safety of my home, I can say that he terrified me. I’ve never met someone that was so blunt, so unapologetic, so entirely unnatural. I should be more freaked out that he followed me out of the coffee shop all the way to my car, where he pounded on the windows like he thought he might be able to crack the glass, but that’s not the case. What’s really been clawing at my skin, so much that I’ve rubbed my arms red and raw, is the way he made me react.
All the darkness. All the intrusive thoughts. Everything came out around him.
I want to chalk it up to nothing more than a reaction of grief. My girlfriend was murdered for fuck’s sake. It’s understandable to become overwhelmed when faced with a situation I didn’t understand. I’m even sure that Levi wasn’t as strange as I’ve made him out to be. Again, a symptom of grief. I must have just projected my more unpleasant emotions onto him. Made him a sort of catalyst for the feelings about Jennifer that hadn’t surfaced in the days since her death.
Yes, that’s it. It was nothing more than that. A part of me now feels bad that I ran away from him when I did. Even though he was a bit odd, he was just trying to be nice. I’m the asshole that couldn’t control myself and made him feel bad.
I sigh, tipping my head back, and letting the freezing water soothe me. Maybe what I really need is to take some time off and just go. Go somewhere sunny and warm, away from this winter. Seasonal Affective Disorder is a thing, and the cold, dreary days in Juniper Ridge must be getting to me.
I decide to look into plane tickets tonight… after I have some cookies. And hot chocolate. Some cake too. What can I say? I eat my feelings.
I turn the water off and reach for the towel on the other side of the shower curtain. When my fingers meet nothing but air, I frown. I could have sworn I’d hung it here earlier. With a shrug, I get out, hating the way water coats the tile floor. Naked and actually too cold now, I start rifling through the linen closet for another towel. All the while, my happy tune whistling in the air?—
I’m not the one whistling.
I freeze, my fingers just grazing one of my towels. I can’t explain the way my heart skips a beat and my lungs freeze up. I think that maybe I must have just imagined it, because when my ears try to hone in on the noise, all I’m greeted with is silence.
Still, I’m rattled as I take one of the towels and wrap it around my waist. I don’t want to leave the bathroom. I want to stand very still and wait until the irrational fear passes. I tell myself once again that it was just a trick of the silence, that sometimes when it’s quiet, you can hear phantom sounds. Like when you’re trying to sleep and the house groans, making you think you heard footsteps. That’s all it was.
I exit the bathroom, stopping by my nightstand to check my phone, noting that I was in the shower far too long. It’s close to when I normally go to bed, but I know that tonight is probably going to be one of those where I’d rather suffer through the tiredness of the next day than go to sleep.
I set my phone down and go to the kitchen where my oven is baking. Just out of caution, I do dart my eyes around the corners before I go anywhere, and I chuckle to myself when I see I’m alone. The oven’s almost done with the cookies, so I open it and take the tray out because I like my treats a little more squishy than the average person. Giving them time to cool off, I head back to my room to get dressed when I remember I was supposed to text one of the other teachers and remind them to bring candy to tomorrow’s treasure hunt.
I do a double-take when I don’t see my phone on the nightstand. Didn’t I just leave it there? I look at the bed, moving the comforter around to see if maybe it got lost in all the blankets, but nothing. Thinking that I might have left it in the bathroom, I go back in there?—
There’s the whistling.
This time, there’s no denying that it’s real. It’s a clear melody, somehow morphed and manipulated from something happy to something deep and dreary. The high notes linger in the air like a thick fog, and I can feel the low notes in the pit of my stomach. My breaths stutter as I tighten my grip on my towel for no other reason than to simply have something to hold onto. Slowly, I move out of the bathroom and into my bedroom, expecting to see some big bad monster waiting for me, but there’s nothing.
Nothing but the whistling.
A laugh bubbles up from my throat. It’s me, isn’t it? I’m actually going crazy. I’ve finally snapped and let the nightmares drip into the day. The whistling is a phantom sound projected by my own mind, just a symptom of grief, and I smile through it, my mind eerily flaccid as I go to my closet.
The lights go out.
I actually let out a little yelp, jumping a bit as my unprepared eyes try to focus. Fuck. Must be the circuit breaker in this old house again. A nervous giggle leaves me as I walk out of my room, walking faster than I should, and go to the closet by the front door. When I open the breaker, every single switch is flipped. I try to mess with it a bit, but it’s still pitch black in the house, the moonless night doing nothing to help the cause. If I could find my phone, maybe I could figure out what was wrong, but it’s too dark for me to see anything clearly.
Whistling.
This time louder. So very clear. Piercing through my ears and shooting down to the tips of my toes. An electric sort of current ripples down the back of my neck, and all I can hear is my labored breathing.
The monster of my creative power. Long-limbed, craggy and gaunt, crawling on its fleshy belly with razor-tipped claws. The sense of being hunted, stalked down, and cornered. Suddenly, it all becomes very real. All of those platitudes we tell ourselves are full of shit.
The creaking of the floorboards are footsteps.
The whistling in the house isn't from the pipes.
The shadows that take the form of unimaginable demons aren’t a trick of the light.
Nightmares are real.
Before I can blink, a glove-covered hand comes over my mouth and yanks me away from the wall. I go flailing, hitting the ground with a groan when my breath leaves me. I don’t have any time to react before I’m being flipped over, rough leather hands slamming my face against the cold hardwood floor, forcing my teeth to clamp down on my tongue.
There’s a low growling in the air behind me. I try to move but my body is so very still.
Very still .
I don’t react as the towel is yanked off me, exposing my ass to the cool air. I don’t twitch as hands start to pry my cheeks apart. I don’t move when I feel something thick and fleshy pressing against my hole.
It goes on like this for a moment. My fear paralyzes me as the monster grinds down against me, murmuring nothing, groaning against my ear. But when I feel the familiar smooth surface brush against my cheek, I can’t help but look.
Nightmares are real.
It’s the black mask again with those small slits in the eyes, mouthless and noseless, staring down at me with an intensity I can feel deep in my bones.
“Aiden,” the monster croaks, dragging his fingers up and down my crease. “ Mine .”
I’m still looking at the mask, watching the pleasureless face cock to the side. It’s more animal than man. A true demon. The hard cock rubbing against my lower back positions itself at my entrance. The monster grunts an almost frustrated sound when he can’t breach me. He screams, snarls, snaps his invisible jaws in annoyance.
I can’t help it.
I laugh.
DO IT.
LET US OUT!
MAKE IT HURT!
“Can you not get it in?” I giggle, an almost manic sound to my ears as my stomach starts to burn.
The monster grunts again, his hand snapping out to slap across my cheek which only makes me laugh even more.
HARDER.
Leather fingers are in my mouth, the taste bitter on my tongue as he collects my saliva, bringing those fingers to my ass. He teases my hole, but doesn’t do anything, only rubs his fingers and the head of his cock against me. I don’t feel the snipping breaths beside my ear but I can hear them. A low thrumming of anticipation coursing through the monster’s body. He slips a finger in and I jolt.
“Fuck!” I scream, some of my faculties coming back to me as tears pool in my eyes. The sharp intrusion is foreign, unnatural, and my body reacts by trying to get away, squirming until he pops out, but his bruising grip on my hips keeps me still.
An almost cooing clicking sound comes from the monster as I feel his trembling chest on my back.
“Aiden,” he moans, swiveling his hips, forcing his cock to rub up against my bare back, his finger still inside me. “Little lamb…”
A tender hand comes to grasp my cheek and the masked forehead rolls against my own. I can feel the tension in the monster’s body, almost like a rubber band being pulled, pulled, pulled until?—
FUCK ME LIKE YOU MEAN IT.
HURT ME.
TAKE ME.
KILL ME.
It isn’t the monster and his cruel treatment of my body that snaps me out of my daze but my own thoughts. I start to panic as they ring through my head, rattling my brain, the same darkness I’ve tried to fight for so long coming out.
“No!” I yell, bucking the man off me. This must catch him off-guard because he actually slips off and lands on his ass. With wobbly legs, I get up, and run. I don’t know where I think I’m going as I head deeper into my house, but I don’t go far when I’m pushed onto my back and onto the bed.
The monster seems pleased, head tipping from side-to-side as his overeager hands haul my hips to the edge of the bed. He’s still wearing his pants, all black, and my eyes widen at the red scabbed skin around his neck. His cock is thick and just as angry as he is… but excited too? It’s like I can feel every emotion he’s letting out, so open and animalistic, driven by a need to fuck and fight and conquer.
He flips me onto my stomach. He keeps humping me, rutting against me, his thick and fleshy length pounding in between my cheeks. My fists fly, and a chuckle escapes from under the mask, low and growly, almost inhuman. My hands are forced over my head as the masked face drops against my own. It… It rubs itself against my cheek, knocking my glasses away. Now that I can’t see, all I do is feel.
I feel the way invisible lips pepper my chin and my jaw.
I feel the way he grows against me, every grind of his cock against my crack sloppier and needier.
I feel the way he’s desperate, his body begging and vulnerable, truly given over to the madness. He slips two fingers in this time and lets go of my hand to spread me open, almost hooking them to gape open my hole for him.
“Aiden, Aiden, Aiden,” it chants, the cool forehead dropping against the back of my neck. “Do you get it now?”
I think I know what I’m supposed to be understanding. I’m been taken— claimed —and when I feel something warm trickling into my ass and onto the bed, the smell lets me know it’s not cum.
As his piss flows into me, he lets out a loud roar, the wet squishing sounds of the brutality of his fingers doing nothing to mask his depravity.
“I’m a part of you,” it breathes, but it becomes more monster than human in these final moments where layers start to crack his voice. “Mine. Mine. Mine.”
I’m still trying to fight his hold but he’s too strong. No. Not a monster. A man . These are a man’s hands that wrap around the back of my throat, squeezing until stars explode behind my fluttering eyelids. The warmth seeping out of me, his hands keeping me caged, the way his rutting is growing faster and more ragged and less controlled.
MORE.
FUCK ME.
MAKE ME BLEED.
I fade out into nothing but blackness, losing my own control over my body as sick pleasure twists through me. More of my name being shouted into the void. More promises of making me his. More and more and more until the pressure in my stomach becomes too much. It’s all too overwhelming as everything in me tightens, tightens, tightens until it pops.
My cum covers the bed underneath me and the man… whines. Like a wounded little puppy as his cum mixes with his piss. He slumps over me, curling around my body as he starts to move side-to-side. He rubs his hand down my crack, taking everything on my skin and rubbing it across my body.
“I…” I should beg for my life. I should plead for a respite. I should ask what he’s doing.
But when he turns my face and his mask rises only inches from mine and I catch a glint of silver in the shadows, I say nothing.
Nothing as something hard comes down on the side of my head.
Nightmares are real.