Chapter 31
Sullen
“Good morning, sunshine!” Cosmo turns from the stove, a spatula in one hand and the frying pan’s handle in the other. Grease and coffee co-mingle in the air as my eyes seek out Karia as if they are two organs possessed.
She is here. At the black marbled breakfast bar. Her hands cup a clear coffee mug tipped with ice, topped with whipped cream. There’s a soft white dollop of it on her nose as if she ducked her head to drink from it and did not get away unscathed.
She is not looking at me. She’s staring at her coffee—if one could call it that.
Sunshine. That’s what Cosmo said to me. As he occupied space in this place, with her. Less than a day after he stripped me and locked me inside my bedroom. At gunpoint. Then he wrapped his hand around her throat and taunted me with fucking her while I was naked and humiliated.
And she is here.
With him.
Avoiding my gaze.
Her hair pulled up in a messy bun, tendrils looping around her slender, bruised neck, a white T-shirt oversized on her frame, hitting at her thighs which are spread a little from the way she’s perched on the black barstool.
We fell asleep together.
Then I woke up alone.
“Eggs? Bacon? Both? Neither?” Cosmo calls out, a sizzling filling the room alongside the scent of burnt bacon.
My stomach growls but I don’t look away from Karia.
She does not lift her head, her fingers pressed around her mug.
I wonder if she’s remembering the glass on her skin from last night. The way I cracked the cup. The jagged shards left among the bowl of the glass.
How I extended my hand to her afterward. What she asked of me in the bathroom.
What I could never give her.
“Sullen Rule.” Cosmo says my name slyly, like it’s the beginning of a joke.
Karia’s jaw flexes, but she doesn’t look at me.
Slowly, my pulse pounding in my temples, I turn to Cosmo.
“Come here,” he says with a smile that reveals too many teeth, reminding me he has all of his. He nods toward the pan, bacon sizzling in red-pink strips inside it. “Grab a plate.” He glances at the black countertops, the plates of scrambled eggs and shredded hash browns and sugared fruit.
My eyes widen. For a moment, I am struck with hunger. Eating in this kitchen, wandering along this tile floor, it was such a rare thing for me, particularly in the more recent months after Stein stepped down from Writhe and he was able to patrol my every move, all of my caloric intake.
I have never cooked freely here, despite the fact I knew the fridge was always stocked. Despite the fact Stein had a cook; several, to be precise.
And it wasn’t that I was catered to.
No, I was given only enough to survive on and never for the taste alone.
I’m quite certain on several occasions throughout my life, in addition to the specimens I kept as pets, Stein fed me canned dog food.
It is why I never pass up the opportunity to consume something edible when it presents itself.
Cosmo’s eyes meet mine, blurring me from my past. He has a performer’s smile and I watch it pull on his invisible strings as he curves his lips.
I take a step toward him.
Karia is watching me now.
The double stainless steel fridge hums softly to my left, the breakfast island to the right, and at the stove, there is space for many employees to work without stepping on one another’s toes.
That means there is a lot of room for me to break Cosmo’s neck.
I run my tongue through the gap in my top teeth, keeping my mouth closed.
Cosmo’s fingers tighten on the rubber handle of the frying pan. He releases his grip on the spatula, setting it next to the eggs as he watches me.
The smile is still there.
Then something changes in his expression. A split second, that’s all the forewarning I have. But in my mind, I see Klein the moment he takes his mask off and his face simply… shifts. From human, to something less than.
And when Cosmo jerks the pan, intending to splash hot grease on me, I react first.
I catch his elbow with my hand, shoving upward, and because he can’t stop following through with his own movement as I react too quickly for his brain to comprehend, the grease and bacon pop from the pan, but instead of hitting his intended target—me—it all falls back on him.
Grease bubbles down his white T-shirt, along his throat, coating his skin in oil.
A few flickers of bacon fat must hit his face because he hisses through his teeth as he clenches his eyes shut, red marks appearing on his temple, his cheekbone.
His jaw is rigid, teeth clacking, and I watch as slimy bacon oozes down the side of the pan, while the more burnt pieces already struck his chest and cracked upon the floor.
Karia is looking at me now.
I can feel her gaze, narrowed in on us.
But I’m not done.
I wrench the pan from Cosmo’s grip, throwing it to the floor. The loud clatter makes me flinch, despite the fact I did it and knew it was coming. My pulse is pounding through my body so hard, it feels as if I am shaking all over. This is what it means to fight back. This is how revenge can be.
I grab Cosmo’s forearms, both, and I push him back toward the open flame of the burner.
A snarled sound leaves his lips as his green eyes lock onto mine, but I’m barely seeing him at all.
In my head, his hand is around Karia’s throat.
In my mind, he’s touching her, fucking her, I see it on camera, I feel it in my heart.
A betrayal, even though the word is unfair.
I drive him back.
His spine hits the silver edging of the stove.
He has twisted his hands and they are locked on my wrists now, clutching above my red hoodie, but I am stronger than he is. Performance artist, actor, great pretender; nothing has been faked in my life, and certainly not my horrors.
I smell the smoke rising like black lace ringlets in the air as his shirt draws closer. One more shove, I could cause him to catch in flames. If I spin him around, push his heart toward the fire, the grease and oil and fat would lick and feed along his chest, his face.
I think I’m going to do it.
I squeeze his bones so hard he cries out, and I am vibrating, and the smoke is growing stronger and soon the alarm will cry and—
“Stop.”
Karia’s voice, at my back.
She doesn’t touch me, but she’s here.
And not for me.
“Oh,” I say quietly as Cosmo digs his fingers into my wrist. His grip is strong and he is doing his best to be unyielding even as he grunts out frustration.
But as I watch a bead of sweat roll along his cheekbone, falling down the edge of his jawline, I know he can’t fight me off.
I could stay here all day. I just fucking might.
“Now you want to talk to me?” The words are for Karia.
Her fingertips come to my spine. Gentle, fluttering, hesitant.
Is she finally scared?
“I always want to talk to you, Sullen,” she says softly, and there is no trembling in her voice.
I inhale through my nose.
An acrid burn works its way down my lungs.
Cosmo is panting now.
He is trying to push me back.
He can’t.
He’ll fail.
I can burn him alive.
“You weren’t there, when I woke up,” I say, closing my eyes tight, ignoring Cosmo swearing under his breath, the shakiness in his forearms, bare beneath my gloves.
Karia taps along my spine in a soothing pattern, like a surface-level massage. It feels so good, just this from her, I want to groan.
I want to give in.
But she wasn’t there.
I woke up alone.
“You weren’t there,” I say again, then I snap my eyes open, and I see Cosmo’s dilated pupils. But he isn’t fighting anymore. There’s something hungry in his gaze, like he wants to eat me alive. Or maybe, like he wants me to hurt him.
Perhaps Karia and I are not the only ones infected with this particular sickness inside Haunt Muren.
“And instead,” I continue, holding Cosmo’s gaze as he grips my wrists. “You were with him.”
Amusement sparks in his black-green eyes, dimples forming in his face. Sweat still beads along his brow, but I think he likes the way he’s so close to burning.
“Nothing happened between us,” Karia says quietly, and it isn’t until this moment when she says it that I realize it’s exactly what I needed to hear. To know.
Relief. It’s what unknots in my chest, loosening my throat.
She’s still mine.
“Nothing happened, and we need to talk.” Her fingers move but a moment later, her arms come around my body, hugging me to her from behind. She feels slight against me, but strong, too, and the softness of her breasts against my back is soothing. “Let him go. You’ll have forever with me.”
My eyes close at the lie.
I know that’s what it is.
But I give into it, sinking into her hold as I release him all at once and stumble backward.
She holds me still, moving too. Cosmo catches his breath, gasping before I hear him turn the knob to settle the burner.
The smell of smoke is still bitter in the air but the heat is gone and I am in this space of Karia’s arms and I wish that this was the forever she spoke of.
The man claiming to be my grandfather sits across the table from me in one of the two dining rooms of Haunt Muren.
I don’t recall the last time I sat here at all, if I ever did.
Next door there is a sitting room; the very same where I read Karia’s letters scrawled atop stationery with the anatomical headers, a fire usually roaring in the grate because Stein always wanted the heat.
In some ways, I want to take her there.
Show her the exact place I imagined her, envisioned her words, thought about the gorgeous blue shade of her eyes. The room where I decided to stay alive, just a little longer, just in case.
But as forks scrape against white plates and glasses clink along the wooden table—Karia’s glass, specifically; orange juice and champagne that she is drinking far too greedily for Thursday morning at nine—I stay silent.
My plate is already empty. Cosmo is good for nothing except, perhaps, scrambled eggs and shredded hashbrowns.