12. What Are We? #2
"So, what do you do for a living?" His left arm is around my waist, the right is holding my hand close to his chest. He can dance, he's leading me across the floor, a few simple turns and dips.
"I'm a Communications Director." I smirk. "Internal and external, I develop messaging." Kenneth turns me so my back is to his chest, our hips sway, and I'm loving the attention. "What about you?"
Kenneth turns me back around, whispering near my ear. "Physical therapist." He tightens his grip on my hand, placing it flat on his chest. "I know how to move people around." He smiles at his own joke. "You stiff anywhere?"
My vagina. Bad thing is, I would never be able to take this man home for a night, and then it occurs to me. That's my damn house! I can do what I want and Athanasius can wait in the fucking living room while I get my cheeks thoroughly clapped.
"Sitting in a chair, you know, neck and shoulders." As the song ends, he leads me back to the bar, helping me into a chair.
"I can definitely help," He lifts his finger and another drink is placed in front of him. "What would you like?"
"She'd like for you to stop your pathetic attempt to rub your slimy hands on her body." Athanasius sighs. "What are you going to give my rabbit? Hopefully twenty seconds of pleasure? You're lucky I don't remove your hands and shove them into your ass."
The black shadows from before are creeping across the floor, and Athanasius isn't even looking at me. He's staring at Kenneth with a jaw clenched so tight he might break his teeth.
Kenneth isn't deterred, and the shadows are clenching around my thighs, does no one see this?! They're trying to force me from the bar.
"Odd, Ione says you're a coworker," Kenneth glances at me. "Does he think you guys are more than what you are?"
"Atha—"
"Silence woman." He sneers. "I don't care what she said. We are leaving," Finally he looks down at me, and boy are those red eyes hot. "Now, rabbit, we are finished here."
I don't want to leave. "I'd like to get Kenneth's phone number." Crossing my arms over my chest, I plant my ass firmly in my seat, returning my attention to Kenneth. "I'm here with friends, but I'd like to see you some other time."
"So would I." He ignores Athanasius. "I'll put my number in your phone."
Darkness slams into the lounge like a wave, thick and complete, devouring the warm light and muffling every sound. Even my own breath felt stifled. I can't see more than a dull glow bleeding in from under the doors—just enough to outline Kenneth’s trembling silhouette.
I try to inhale, but the air clings to my lungs like tar. It felt like drowning without water. I reach out blindly, but there was only velvet blackness and the sound of Kenneth's quick, shallow breaths—panicked, raw.
“Athanasius?” I rasp, though I can't hear my own voice. Something has shifted.
And then he changed.
I don't need to see him fully to know it. The pressure in the room tells me everything.
He expands—unfolds—into something too vast for this space.
A shape that makes the walls feel too close, the ceiling too low.
Four eyes glow dimly, stacked in unnatural symmetry, watching everything and nothing.
His four arms flex outward, joints bending in ways that defy bone and reason.
Kenneth’s breath hitches into a sharp whimper.
“Where... where am I?” Kenneth chokes, his voice trembling like a sparrow’s heartbeat. He stumbles back, hitting the shadowy wall.
Athanasius looms over him, eyes burning in the murk like embers in deep ash.
“Ione is not for you,” he says, his voice echoing too many times for one mouth. “She is my avatar. I am death. I am darkness. I existed before light. Before breath. Before you.”
Kenneth whimpers again, clutching his stomach like he might vomit. His face is slick with sweat. The scent of his fear is metallic and salty.
“If you pursue her…” Athanasius leans in, each eye narrowing in perfect sync. “...you forfeit your life.”
The silence stretches, alive and writhing. Kenneth’s breath hitches into a sob.
“Is she worth it?” Athanasius hisses, voice suddenly quiet and intimate. “Is Ione worth your life?”
Kenneth doesn't answer. Can't. He shakes his head once, rapid and desperate. “N-no. No,” he croaks.
“Good,” Athanasius says, his voice cracking like thunder under a blue sky. “Now run. Before I remind you why your kind feared the dark.”
Light begins to bleed back into the room—slow, like sunrise over a grave. The shadows recede, and Athanasius folds himself back down into his human form, skin and bone reassembling into familiarity.
Kenneth doesn't wait. He bolts, nearly tripping over a chair leg on his way out, the door flinging wide in his wake.
I stare after him, numb, my lungs finally dragging in air like I’d surfaced from a long dive.
The music begins to pour back into the room, people move and mill about none the wiser. Athanasius turns to me. “We’re leaving.”
I blink at him. My heart thuds unevenly, part fear, part fury. “You didn’t let me speak to him.”
“You will not speak to any man but me,” he says flatly.
I clench my fists. “You don’t get to decide that! You don’t know him.” I do not give a shit that people are beginning to stare at us. "I do not belong to you, Athanasius, I can decide what I want to do."
He waves dismissively. “He didn’t want to know you. He wanted your body.” Athanasius’s voice is cold, devoid of warmth, he's not even trying to let me down easily. “And you’re stupid for not noticing.”
That hurts. He didn't have to say it like that. I swing. It's instinct. Rage. Hurt.
He catches my wrist before the slap lands, fingers like iron. “Don’t hit,” he says, low, pulling me close to him. Not threatening. Just... final.
Before I can yank away, he pulls me sharply toward him, toward the far corner where the shadows still lingered thick and alive. I can feel them wrapping around my legs, my thighs, climbing to hold me around my waist.
And then—nothing.
No transition. No movement.
Just shadow swallowing us whole.
When I open my eyes again, we are in my house. Same curtains. Same quiet hum of the ceiling fan. But the memory of him—towering, inhuman, eternal—pressed against my skin like a bruise.
We're standing in the living room, and Athanasius in his true form, he releases my wrist gently now, but I fall onto the couch.
He's still scary. But not for me. Not fully. And maybe that makes it worse. "You're ridiculous." I snap at him.
"Call me what you like, it doesn't matter." He growls. "You debase yourself allowing that fool to speak to you, it is a reflection of me."
"Everything has to do with you now?"
"Yes."
"Everything I do has to be approved by you?"
"Why not?"
"I hate you."
His face morphs for a moment, hurt, irritation, and then anger. "No, you don't." Athanasius invades my space. "You hate that I'm good for you, that I am and will be the best thing that has ever entered your pathetic mortal existence."
I have to slap the ever loving shit out of him. I have to and now, I'll get the upper hand. Reaching my hand out, Athanasius catches it again, his lower arms grab my waist, the upper grab each of my arms stretching me. "We can get rough, are you giving me permission to treat you like my fuck doll?"
There's no time for shock, his face leans close and Athanasius kisses me.