Page 2 of Midnight Coven

He didn’t like to think of who he had been, what he had lost.

He didn’t have anything anymore. Not even a name.

He wouldn’t use his human name. Not in this form.

He refused.

Yet name or no, that long-lost biological connection lingered.

He glanced at his own reflection in the polished metal side of the antique automobile that took up most of the garage. When he saw his reflection, he winced. The bandage had slipped. Part of his neck showed, or didn’t show, depending on how wanted to think about it.

Part of his shoulder, too.

The missing piece was visible, strangely disorienting.

He supposed someone might look at him and wonder what was wrong, what it was about him that seemed so disturbingly out of proportion, out of place.

He would have to fix it later. The bandage. He would have to put it back over that gap in his physical form. Like the Invisible Man, in a movie he’d seen long ago. He was a mummy of bandages and old parts, both too young and decaying too soon.

But he would go home. Then he would be whole again.

All he needed was to make it back to his world.

Until then, he would fix the bandage.

After he washed his hands.

After he finished his work.

The strange eyes stared out at him from under his hood, glowing faintly from ambient light, like the irises of a great cat. Those weren’t his eyes either.

Even after all this time, he did not feel they belonged to him.

He knew it was delusional to think that.

He knew he had been this thing longer than the other.

He couldn’t help it.

He did not know himself in those eyes.

He never had.

Now, it was worse.

Now they saw worlds, people, he didn’t know.

He heard those people speak to him. He heard them in his ears, in his head. He heard echoes of that other world. He heard traffic sounds, branches rustling in the breeze, voices calling out to one another in the water. He heard the noise of a crowd, thethud thud thudof fists hitting another body, of that body hitting back. The scream of crowds, cheering on the fight, the warped, echoing voice of the announcer.

He heard her.

He heard her voice as she coaxed him afterwards, her blue-green eyes flashing as she took his hand, drawing him into a room he knew but didn’t know.

He felt his cock in her.

He felt himself forget who he was inside her.

He felt her tongue in his mouth, her lips on his…

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