I straighten again, my teeth grinding. I’m not worried about her shooting me. Death doesn’t scare me, clearly. And if she really wanted me dead, she would have tried it by now. I’ll let her have her moment of control before I snap it right away from her.
I drop my sweats to my legs, stepping into them, but my eyes never leave hers. Once I’ve pulled them on, she flicks the gun toward the bed.
“Sit down,” she commands breathlessly.
I almost roll my eyes, already bored. I turn and push the curtain aside, taking a seat on the edge. I watch Aurelia as she exits the wardrobe, the gun trained on me the entire time.
I stare from a short distance as she lifts one of my drawings, showing it to me as if I didn’t draw it myself and my gaze lingers on the woman, bound, distorted and mangled.
“This isn’t me, is it?” she asks, her voice filled with sharp suspicion.
My head tilts slightly, my eyes cold and unblinking before she continues.
“Then why the fuck does she kind of look like me? You have a type? Is that all I am? Just another sick fucking fantasy you’re trying to chase? Another body to tick off your necro list?”
Her words are a slap to the face, much harder than I expected. I feel my teeth grate before I bite down on my tongue, trying to suppress the anger that rises up inside of me.
She thinks she’s nothing superior. Just another carcase. Another victim. Another fucking death. She couldn’t be more wrong.
She doesn’t understand. I’ve never looked at anyone the way I look at her. She’s been different from the moment I first saw her. I want her to live.
Yeah, she looks eerily similar to the blurred woman in my nightmares, the one that’s haunted me almost every damn night for as long as I can remember. The one that often drives me into psychosis. Making me hear her whispers. Words I can’t seem to decipher, even when I write them down.
But that’s not the reason I want Aurelia. It’s not the reason I can’t stop staring and stalking. There’s something else. Something darker and deeper.
But I can’t tell her that. My voice isn’t ready to be heard. It’s stuck in my throat, pathetic and trapped, but begging to be let out, yet my mind won’t let it. It’s never been easy to use my voice, especially not to someone who might never understand my words.
I’ve been drawing the same woman for years, and it’s not even sexual. It’s not about some twisted obsession with a body. It’s an impulse. A compulsion to work out why she keeps appearing in my thoughts. Why she lingers there like a shadow. I’ve tried—fuck, I’ve tried everything to get her out of my head.
I’ve done things when the darkness gets too much to bear. Horrific things. Trying to recreate her. The ropes that bound her. The position I see her in, over and over again in my mind. Like I need to see it to be able to unsee it. Like I need to relive it to fucking understand it, to make it stop.
But it never does. It never leaves. It’s become a miserable focus point in my fucked life. Mix that with my sickness, the impulse to kill when I fuck, and this is what I am. I guess I deserve it. Monsters like me deserve to have something taunting and haunting them, it’s only fucking fair.
Suddenly, Aurelia snatches a pen from my desk and hurls it at me, her eyes blazing with an emotion I haven’t seen in her before… hurt.
It’s sharp and makes something inside me stir that I’ve never encountered before.
“Tell me,” she barks, her voice cutting through the room.
I just watch her for a moment, blinking blankly. How unusual she is. She already thinks I’m lost, and she’s right. So, what’s one more thing to add to her mental list of why she shouldn’t want me?
I break the eye contact, my gaze falling to my open palm, the pen already pressed to my skin.
When I finish, I look up, and she’s already inching closer. As soon as she stops in front of me, her eyes drop to my hand resting on my thigh.
It’s not you. And It’s not one of them.
“Then who is it?” Her voice trembles slightly as she asks.
I don’t know. She’s always been there.
I write beneath it before lifting my hand and pointing to my temple.
She stares down at me, gun still aimed at my head, eyes frantically searching mine. It’s like she’s looking for something that makes sense, but she won’t find it. I can barely fucking make sense of myself, let alone try to explain it to her.
I’ve never had to explain myself. Everyone’s just let me do what the fuck I do because it’s normal to us. Then I have this beautiful little thing in front of me suddenly, who expects me to be… different.
But that’s not fucking me.