3. Brody
brODY
The darkness follows me everywhere I go. It inhabits my breath like a venomous viper, curling around this heart of mine.
I know I’m not normal. It became obvious when I was a young boy and couldn’t feel the things that other kids felt. It became obvious when all my peers were talking about their crushes, and there wasn’t any girl in the whole town who could catch my eye.
Nothing. A void.
I envy my sister, Sophie. She inherited my mother’s side of the DNA. Normal. Happy. Loved. I am my father’s son. Inside and out. I see very small hints of my mother in my DNA.
A knock interrupts my brooding thoughts. “Honey, can I come in?”
My mother’s voice, soft and hesitant. My own mother. Scared of me. How fucking great. After what happened in our last town, I do not blame her. I would be scared of me if I were her. If I were anybody else.
The sound of their skull cracking still echoes in my mind.
I’m a fucking psycho.
“Yeah?” I sit up and run a hand through my hair, which is already tousled.
The door opens, followed by quiet footsteps. Like a mouse. Her face comes into view, a smile plastered on her face. I can see how she is straining to hold the smile when all she wants to do is cower.
She must be ashamed to be my mother.
“Sorry. I just wanted to see how you’re adjusting.” She looks around my new room, still barren. “I see you haven’t unpacked yet.”
I exhale a sigh. “Give me a break, Mom. It’s been two days. I’ll unpack when I’m ready.”
She nods and takes a step back. Fucking coward. “Okay. We’re trying to take all the empty boxes to the dumpster on the same day. So, try to get it done by the end of the week.”
She does not bother to stick around and chat about anything else. The door shuts, and I’m left alone again.
“Annoying bitch,” I mutter angrily. I know I can be cruel some days, and heartless. My mother does not deserve that. My sister does not deserve it, neither does my dad. I know that.
But, some days, I feel so fucking cold.
No matter what I do, it never drifts. It sticks to me; it festers, and augments.
I fear one day, I will become a black hole, and I will swallow everything around me.
My meds help to regulate my anger and impulsiveness.
Somewhat. But something is missing. I am waiting for the day when I find something that makes me feel alive and warm.
Something that quiets the noise in my head and brings light into the dark.
A hopeless dream. I’m sinking. Screaming. Nobody hears me. Nobody reaches for me. The stars don’t twinkle, and most days I feel more dead than alive.
I stalk over to where I set up my gym equipment: a few dumbbells and a multi-functional weight bench for arms and legs.
I work out regularly. Almost daily. It’s a good way for me to release my anger.
I sit on the bench and I’m about to start working my arms when movement outside of the window catches my eye.
Scooting towards the edge, so that I’m not too obvious, I stare at the figure in the house across from me. My bedroom faces a bedroom in the house next to us. A girl catches my attention.
I typically never give women more than a second glance, but this girl, my eyes stay glued to her. She’s exotic. A beautiful creature. Hypnotic. I watch her movement, analyzing her features, and wondering what it would be like to touch her, to smell her, to hear her.
What the fuck is happening to me? I’ve never thought this way before.
She looks like she’s cleaning. Thank fuck. Sloppiness is not attractive to me. I need a clean, spotless space.
My eyes drag over her face and her hair that falls over her shoulders like soft silk. It’s a dark color, like a mixture of brown and black. I imagine it wrapped around my hands with my fist around her throat.
Fuck.
The image causes my dick to shift and twitch in my shorts. She’s perfect. I’ve seen plenty of pretty girls, but this girl? I need to be closer to her. I need to feel her. Just watching her perfectly round ass in those tiny shorts makes me envision things that are completely new to me.
I don’t like being touched; it feels foreign and wrong. But suddenly, I want to know what it is like. To be touched by a girl, to feel her hands wrapped around my cock. Stroking. Squeezing. I groan and rub myself over the fabric. Not enough. I need more.
She appears to be around my age, a teenager, maybe fifteen like me. Or my sister’s age, who is a year and a half younger than me. Maybe they will become friends. Maybe she will come over here for girly sleepovers. Maybe I can watch her undress or get close enough to feel her skin.
Fuck. I hope so. The urge to be near her is strong. It pulls me, like an inevitable gravity.
She has not noticed me yet, lost in her own world.
What is keeping you so distracted, my sweet Bambi?
Bambi. That’s what I shall call my mystery girl. It suits her. Her eyes. They are gorgeous. Wide and doe-like, yet slanted upwards. Like a doe. Or a siren.
She flits from dresser to window to floor, oblivious to my steady gaze.
Her fingers graze glass and wood as if she’s coaxing dust motes into ballet, her movements all nervous intention and unconscious grace.
Light etches itself along the bones of her arms. Her mouth twists in concentration as she folds a shirt, pink tongue caught between her teeth.
My pulse stutters.
There’s this sick, primal hunger in me. It gnashes at the inside of my ribcage, demanding to get closer, to burrow under her skin. I want to unspool her, cell by cell. I want to watch those wide eyes shatter. To see what happens when she finally sees me and realizes she can’t look away.
She kneels to smooth the bedspread, her hips arching perfectly, her hair spilling wild down her spine.
With every second, the void in my chest contracts, singular and greedy.
She’s a lifeline. A pulse in the deadness.
My world distills to her silhouette framed by a neon-tinged dusk, and for the first time in my memory, I ache.
I hunger for something outside of myself.
I’m rock hard now, dizzy with it. I palm myself again. Clumsy, frustrated, feral. My heart punches at the inside of my ribs, and it feels like both a curse and a gift, this visceral ache. Is this what everyone else feels? Is this what I’ve been missing?
She turns suddenly, and for half a second, our eyes meet. I go dead still. Predatory, poised. She freezes too, a flicker of surprise, maybe curiosity, etched across those uncanny eyes. There’s a charge threading between us. Unstable, electric.
Sweat needles down my spine. If she pulls away or turns off the light, I’ll lose her. If she keeps looking, I might explode—implode, collapse inward, black out the sun with all this filthy wanting.
Her mouth opens, closes, and I see the fine tremor in her hands.
My lips curl. She’s scared, but almost smiling. There’s something broken and hungry in her, too. I know it. I can smell it through the glass. She’s not like the other girls who laugh at my cold stare at school, the girls who think I am beneath noticing.
Bambi is different.
I decide at that moment that she will be mine.
She finishes wiping her window and vanishes for a moment. A flash of movement, then nothing. My body twists with disappointment. How quickly I’m addicted. Is this what normal boys feel? This gnawing, this sick obsession? Or is this already warped, something uglier than love?
I let my hand drop from between my legs, just enough composure to steady myself, and then I inch forward into the blue-lit shadows until I can see her room again. Hungry, desperate, already plotting ways to make her come back.
She doesn’t.
I hate how empty it feels; the taste of her vanishing lingers, teeth sinking into the tender place beneath my ribs. My mouth is dry. I want to kick the fucking wall, howl through the screen, tear something apart until my head is blank and there’s nothing but her face floating in the darkness.
It takes a week and a half of watching her through the window until I find the courage to talk to her. Sophie—like I suspected—became her friend. She’s more desperate than I am to have peers in this new town.
My heart begins to race while I stand at the top of the stairs, watching as she walks inside with my sister. Her legs are long and tan, and I wonder how it would feel to have them wrapped around my waist.
Her doe-eyes flicker back and forth, observing her surroundings. She takes in everything, as if she feels like she needs to.
What are you afraid of?
Before I can ponder that, my sister sees me. Shit.
She waves at me. “Brody! Come down and meet our new neighbor. She’s really nice.”
I don’t doubt it. She looks nice. And sweet.
I stalk down the stairs, body thrumming. I have to steady my grip on the banister, so I don’t shatter the cheap wood under my palm. Control. Always control.
Bambi. Closer now. Flesh and breath and nerves, not a fantasy projection spliced with city light.
Sophie’s eyes meet mine, soft and desperate for approval. She’s always looking for a sign I won’t explode. Little mediator, little shield. She doesn’t know how easy she makes it to be human. I nod at her, barely, which makes her brighten in the hall-light.
The girl looks even prettier up close. Skin spiced gold, scattered with faint stripes of sun, tinged wild and alive. Lips plush, cuter than any girl I’ve seen. Not that I’ve cared to look before.
And her eyes. Fuck. They’re a captivating shade of blue.
I’m inhaling her.
“Hey,” I say, letting my voice carry. I keep my eyes trained on hers, catching the flicker of uncertainty, curiosity, maybe a shadow of the fear she tried to hide last time she looked through the glass at me. Her scent’s already floating in.
Her lips part. She stares for one heartbeat too long, pupils blown wide. “Hi.” Breathless. Almost a gasp.
Sophie, sweet idiot, beams between us. She wants so badly for this to be normal. “Brody, this is Lola. Lola, Brody.”
“Nice to meet you, Lola.” My voice comes out low. Intimate.
She tugs the hem of her shirt, fingers restless, unreadable. “Nice to meet you too.
Her gaze lingers on my jaw, then drops, then flickers up again. A moth learning what it means to find a flame. I want to pin her to the nearest wall and press my mouth to her pulse. I want to see how she trembles up close, how she sounds when she breaks between threat and pleasure.
I’m not sure what else I should say. I haven’t talked to many girls, at least, not for too long. But I want to talk to her, I want to dive in deep and bury myself in there.
“It’s nice to have some new neighbors who are my age. The last owners were old.” Lola turns to Sophie as she speaks, but she side-eyes me.
I tilt my head, giving her a look, careful not to soften even a millimeter.
“Old people are annoying,” I say. “They leave behind weird smells and plastic on the couches.”
That gets Sophie’s face to fall, but Lola snorts, her lips twitching.
She tucks her hair behind her ear, jaw set, and a fire burning bright in her eyes. “Sophie tells me you’re kind of a neat freak. Like, bordering on psycho.”
Sophie shushes her. Too late. Lola grins wider.
“Yeah. I am a psycho. Girls like you learn to stay far away from guys like me.”
I don’t know why I say that. I want her to come closer, but I can’t control my tongue sometimes. I watch her eyebrow rise. My lips pull into the faintest smile. She takes a step closer. Still far enough to put distance. But her smell? It’s consuming. Tantalizing.
“What makes you think you know what kind of girl I am?” Lola speaks in a way that sends heat straight to my dick.
I hold in a breath and clench my fists. “I don’t plan to care about what kind of girl you are. Just stay away, got it?”
I put some distance between us. Who the fuck does this girl think she is? Coming in here, challenging me. I fucking like it though. It feels good. But I’m not used to this feeling. It scares me. It makes me want to run.
Sophie is about to say something, but Lola stops her and rolls her eyes. “Whatever you say. Nice meeting you, Mr. Grouchy.”
Lola walks away with Sophie, flipping me off and swaying her hips. I watch. Fucking obsessed with the way she moves. I watch her until she vanishes, and I realize that my heart is beating too fast.
What the fuck is happening to me? I can’t get her out of my head.
There’s a low, gnawing ache in my chest, harder and brighter than before. It hurts, this thing I never had a name for, not in all the years they tried to label me with syndromes and dull me with bitter pills.
I’m not a good guy. I’m not a soft guy. I’m a guy who has already killed somebody. There’s blood on my hands and ghosts in my head.
The worst part? I do not feel guilty. The kid had it coming. He was pissing me off. He was the kind of guy who pushed other kids around for no reason. That day? He was pushing me around. Calling me names like “robot boy” and “empty eyes.”
I only meant to make him afraid when I shoved him down. I didn’t intend for his head to crack open like an egg.
I’m not a good guy, but I do not want Lola to know that.
My Bambi is so sweet. I do not want to scare her away by showing her how fucking dangerous I am.
How I can snap at any moment. Lust, desire, obsession.
None of those capture the fractal edge to it, the split-second violence of needing her closer, even if it means tearing her open or burning down everything between us.
My Bambi. My Lola. My light in the dark.