CHAPTER SEVEN #2
I’m plagued with a voice I no longer want to hear. But at least it’s always honest.
With me. It’s honest with me.
It’s relatively eerie when the only shoes thunking off the pavement are my own. There’s opaque fog that slithers around corners and weaves through closed tents and shutdown rides, making the kenopsia that much more unsettling.
Honestly, I think the worst part is how silent the shadows are. The poppy tune that plays through the speakers kicks on at seven on the dot, and it’s always a jarring jump scare. It triggers a rush of fear, sinks me into my head, and I go right back to the living room where the lies began.
I huff, catching my passing reflection in the closed windows of the strip of shops. Carl is a businessman. He’s always looking for any opportunity to stuff his pockets. Yet the conjoined stone needs power washed, and all the window clings are cracked.
Sweeping over the neglect, a sudden feeling of not being alone cools my veins, spiking ice up into my face and alerting my ears to hear past the crunches beneath my own feet.
I keep watch on my reflection, curling my cold arms tighter across my chest, and the casual, slow thuds of heavy boots behind me strips the moisture right from my mouth.
Spinning on my heel, I drop my arms and start walking backward, panning my pulsing vision over the fog stretching to either side of the paved pathway.
An invasive sting swarms my eyes, my heart ticking faster and faster the longer I don’t see another soul.
But I hear him.
Carl’s boots clomp. They alert you of who’s coming and demand attention. And the sound that rings my head with trauma is only a few feet away.
Except, no one’s here. He’s not here.
Swaths of light collect in my only company, turning the fog milky in spots and clouding me from seeing too far ahead.
I vibrate, rattling in my shell like the scared bunny I will never grow out of being, and keep walking backward.
I’m not escaping the other presence.
It’s following me.
My sneaker catches on a chunk missing from the pavement, causing a jolt up my body that has me stumbling and swimming through the air to retain my balance.
I recover and keep going, heaving for thickening oxygen with my head on a swivel, until my back crashes into something hard.
My body lurches forward, my shoes scuffling against the grittiness, and I snap around with a scream getting lodged in my chest.
Palming the overfilled balloon in my heart, my watering eyes stick to the unfamiliar man standing still as stone, his sickly skin catching the light and appearing damp and gray.
He’s dressed in a wrinkled, black and white shirt that resembles the swirl design on the exterior of the tents, as if he works here… or performs here.
He says nothing. He doesn’t blink. His milky, hazy eyes are stuck to me and he’s sinisterly stiff.
“Uh…” I look around, panting and wiping at the percolation on my forehead. “Can I help you?”
Checking over my shoulder, I notice the sound of heavy boots no longer follows me, and as I swing my head back around to keep my eye on this guy that seems blind—he’s gone.
My bottom lip trembles, sucking in unsteady oxygen and setting a target on my tent just up ahead. I don’t think. I start running.
Adrenaline overrides my lack of sleep, pounding into the pavement with everything I can give, until I’m leaping through velvet.
Closing the curtains behind me, I rush through the darkness and around the chairs, and bullet into my dressing room.
Not that fabric is much security, but I continue to pull them tight together, making sure their weight keeps them closed, then hit the switch for my vanity.
The warm light spreads, illuminating the merlot space with a softness that for once gives me comfort.
Staying in the dark would make more sense if someone’s wandering around fresh from the psych ward.
I give myself chills, rotating around to make sure he’s not already in here somehow.
He’s not. It’s just me. Like always.
My taut chest drops with a heavy exhale, plopping down to my stool and vacantly staring at the floor. “You thought not sleeping would help your mind… Now you’re hearing things and… seeing things.”
Becoming annoyed with myself, I shake my head and swivel around, sticking my feet beneath the vanity and taking in the crazed state of my hair.
Now that my heart is calming, I feel fizzy, like my face is made of cotton candy and my eyes aren’t real. But something is yanking me, keeping me alert and not allowing me to lay my head and surrender to the tingles encouraging me to rest.
I don’t know who that was. Nothing about him clicked reconciliation within me. It was just a punch of terror. But there’s something tangled, as if I’ve seen him in passing or have spoken to him.
Which… is likely, considering how big Vore really is. I tend to stay in the first quarter, though. I don’t stroll around and take advantage of the free rides, games, and food, nor do I know the names of everyone employed.
I don’t know.
Pulling an all-nighter is catching up to me and my head is gravitating to the vanity. My weight slumps, relying on the glossy wood to support it, and my eyes close.
“I expected better from you.”
Carl’s voice seeps into my spine, shooting me straight up and knocking on my heart with a nauseating surge of fear.
I can’t shelter the whine rattling my thick throat, twisting around and bolting off the stool to get my back to the wall. My hands claw at the loose velvet, curling into folds while my accelerated breaths shift my eyes to every corner—looking for him.
Again, not here. But his voice was right behind me. Clear as day.
Or it just resounded from my trauma and I’m tricking myself into thinking I actually heard it.
Regardless, I’m scared.
I can control my breathing and tame my thoughts, but I wouldn’t have felt the impact of running into the evaporating man if he was a figment of my tired imagination.
Would I? Am I asleep?
Not a single thought skips or hops in my mind. My right hand raises and before I can register it, my flat palm is cracking against my cheek, and my head is whipping.
Pain blisters all the way to my temple, searching through my messy hair for any inclination as to why I would just do that to myself, my stiff hand paused in the abusive act.
What is wrong with you?
A lot.
A whine scratches at my eyes, my throat clogging and my rippling focus slicing the room to pieces. I don’t want to be in here. I don’t want to be here. But now I’m really fricking scared of leaving.
With a jolt of courage, I kick off the floor and bust through the curtains, veering left and sprinting past the empty chairs.
What if someone’s watching?
“Oh, my God,” I whine, tears slipping down my cheeks and film settling like a cellophane in my throat.
I’d rather not know, so I don’t look. I punch out of the tent, running through the spears of sunlight eating the fog, then beeline into the tunneled trees, only stopping long enough to lift the latch on the gate.
My legs kick harder, stomping and crushing twigs, until I’m flying over the grass and reaching out to the rusty screen door of the trailer.
I’m usually quiet this early in the morning. But the horror pulsing through my veins has me thrashing the main door open and thundering through the heinous screech.
Cash and Aries bolt upright, palming at the pullout bed and sweeping their bodies into lunging positions.
I throw a hammer punch back to close the door, sniffling and choking, self-pacifying the sob trying to rack my chest.
“Bun? What happened?” Cash asks, wrestling a leg out of the sheets, over the side of the mattress
Kicking my shoes off, my legs shoot me over the gross carpet, and I crawl up the middle of their bed, planting my face in the gap of their pillows.
Aries’ light touch rakes down my back, the bed squeaking with both of them shifting around.
I know they’re waiting for me to say something. The suspense is needling through the air. I try to swallow down the knot in my throat so I can explain, but the rumbling in the floor and a door screaming open kicks in the dread of being a problem, a disturbance.
Which is exactly what I’m being in this moment.
Reaching on either side of my head, I clutch their pillows and drag them up and over, smashing my face to the sheet and hiding my face from the presence swelling in the living room.
“What happened?” Razor rushes hoarsely, the air of his frantic movement racing up the back of my exposed legs.
“She hasn’t said,” Aries rasps.
Cash sinks the mattress on my right side, his big palm resting gently against the center of my back. “Don’t be a literal bunny and burrow yourself. Come outta there.”
The pillows get lifted from my head, and even though I don’t want to tell them what happened because it sounds clinically insane, or for them to see where I smacked myself, I turn my head and crack my eyes open to Aries laying down on her side with her concern directed at me.
Razor must be at my feet. I can’t see him. But the mattress is dipping beneath my legs, and his undeniable, calloused touch is running up the back of my thigh.
My swallow is loud. It pops in my ears as I relent and try finding the words for what I experienced. “I… I was being followed and, uh, ran into a man.”
Aries’ brows hitch and Razor’s hand squeezes around my thigh. As fast as I’m registering his shift in grip, the springs are squeaking and I’m getting yanked back.
I yelp in response, my arms coming out and stretching over my head, my face dragging down the sheet, then his hands are swiftly violating my hips to flip me over onto my back.
Whimpering, I shrink, shooting my knees to either side of my chest and pressing my head into the mattress.
The contours of his cheekbones are extra hollow, his jaw tense and his eyes sharp. He crowds over me and grabs my face, halfway covering my mouth to tilt my head to the side with ire darkening underneath his eyes.
“What? What is it?” Aries panics, shooting up near my head.
Her braids dangle in my face and Razor turns my head even more, his weight dropping into my legs to inspect what’s surely the remains of what I did to myself.
That ill—twisted—deprived part of me shuts off what happened.
I stop thinking about it.
There’s a throb radiating up through my thighs, encouraging… No. Encouraging is bleak compared to the possession my body is undergoing to open my legs, to let his weight sink to the ache.
I shouldn’t. But his eyes are locking on mine and he’s slowly taking the invitation, his hips rocking back against my inner thighs.
“Who did this, Bunny?” he asks quietly, roughly, a guttural need dripping from his larynx.
“Me,” I murmur, my movement restricted from his deadly hand.
Aries leaps off the bed. “Yeah, okay, Bunny. You hit yourself. That makes sense.” Walking toward the bathroom, she snaps around, her long, dark braids swishing to the curve of her toned frame. “You won’t always be able to run, Bun.”
If it were anyone else, I’d take it as a threat.
I guess I don’t really have much opportunity to take it in any way. Razor’s stroking down my throat, even with Cash still sitting right behind my head, and it’s crackling every contending thought into embers that warm my blood and heighten the pressure.
“What really happened?” Razor angles his head, softening his expression and exploring the nook of my collarbone with a featherlike touch.
His barbed wire chain is hanging over my mouth. It’s at the perfect distance to stretch my neck up and get my teeth around it.
I wouldn’t.
I won’t.
I want to, though. The hum he’s pressing…
A gasp slips down my throat, my ensnared eyes widening and my hands latching into the comforter. That’s… Um, that’s his dick lengthening against me. The hard vigor is breaking through his sweatpants and confirming what I’ve been curious about.
He gasps silently, altering his expression into theatrical shock. “It’s that’s spooky?”
His drama doesn’t linger. It falls into a lazy smirk that has him loosely caging my throat, his thumb stretched to trace my jawline.
Somehow, blood is rupturing through my face and draining out my back. Chills are threatening my chest, but my veins are liable to combust.
His dick wouldn’t be stiff if he didn’t like having me in this position, at his mercy. So, yes. That is spooky.
“She’s traumatized,” Cash interrupts.
His voice startles me, my legs tensing and lurching around Razor’s hips. “N-no, I’m okay. I was just, uh…” I wet my lips, losing my train of thought to track the line Razor’s thumb is dusting down my throat. “Seeing things.”
Razor’s lips roll, his teeth dragging along the bottom to give it a sheen that stretches around the wicked smile he’s lowering to my face. “Boo,” he whispers dramatically, his twitching brows flaring his eyes wider.
“You guys are all up on my bed with that mess,” Cash huffs, dissipating from my peripheral as he plops back to the pillows.
Mess.
Oh, my God, no.
I squirm, clearing my throat and wiggling out from beneath Razor. I can’t speak. He straightens up and stalks me slipping past him. And all I can manage is a mousy whimper and an awkward wave.