Page 21 of Drawn to Death
“I was wondering if you would like to draw in the living room today; the lighting is better, and the view is… something.”
I glance around the apartment. It’s clearly a temporary home set up for my stay, a safe house or whatever they are called in my killer’s world. There are no signs this is lived in, no personality. But there is a chair near the window, and he’s clearly dragged the coffee table closer to that seat.
“I’d love to.”
As soon as my food is gone, my only thought is to try out the seating, the lighting, the view. He obviously does the grown-up thing and clears away breakfast. The chair is soft; the lighting is better. The view is…there. The view is of a red brick building, but rather than being a few feet away like the view from mybedroom, this one is separated by a little sideroad, room enough for a car and the trash bins.
My sketchbook is already open, with a fresh blank page waiting. I like this one. This one is new, expensive, the kind with thick, heavy paper that holds onto shading, the kind I’d never buy for myself. I’ve been drawing in it since I came here, and I approve of the paper.
I pick up a pencil next, rolling it between my fingers, feeling the cedar, smooth and solid. With no visions pushing at my brain, nothing urgent waiting to get out. Just the quiet, humming possibility.
Talon moves around the apartment, doing his thing, making a phone call in the bedroom, his voice too low for me to catch. Making the bed with perfect hospital corners, even though he knows I’ll wreck them again by morning. Lining up the books on the shelf, even though they’re already lined up.
I smile, finding comfort in the company. Just being in the space with someone else. Not home, not prison. Something in between.
When did that change? When did the safe house stop feeling like a cell and start feeling like… something else?
My old apartment flickers in my memory, a comparison I can’t help but make. The musty smell of cheap carpet. The leaky faucet I never bothered to fix. The creak of floorboards that haunted every step around my living space. The silence, so thick I'd turned on the TV just to hear voices, even if I never watched.
Talon emerges from the bedroom, tie knotted perfectly, jacket draped over his arm. "I need to go out," he informs me, not quite meeting my eyes. "I’ll be back before dark."
I nod, trying to ignore the dip in my stomach. I guess I’m going back to my room to be locked in.
“Will you be here when I get back?”
His question throws me. Here, as in on the chair, in the apartment? Still behind his locked doors.
"I’ll be here," I nod, as if I have a choice. My smile is broad, trying to show him that he can trust me to exist outside of the small bedroom while he is gone.
He crosses to where I stand, and for a second I think he might say something else. Maybe about the drawing. Mickey. The future I see that scares us both for different reasons.
Instead, he reaches past me to check the window lock. His sleeve brushes my arm, just a whisper of contact, but it sends electricity racing across my skin, like the air before a storm. I freeze, breath caught, as the sensation travels up my arm and spreads through my chest.
It isn’t like touching anyone else. It isn’t like anything I've ever felt before. Just fabric against skin, and yet my body lights up as though he pressed his hand straight to my heart.
I can smell him; that crisp, sharp scent that isn’t quite cologne, isn’t quite soap, but something in between. I can feel the heat of him, close, then not, as he steps back with his keys in hand.
My mind spins. Is it affection? Arousal? Or just the starving need for human touch after so long alone? I can’t say. Everything blurs at the edges, like looking through a rainy window.
Talon pauses. His eyes flick to my hand, now gripping the armrest for balance. He doesn’t say anything, but his gaze sticks for a moment too long, and I wonder if he feels it too. That sudden current, unexpected, impossible to ignore.
“There’s food in the fridge,” he says, voice flat and careful. “Help yourself.”
Then he’s gone. The door clicks shut, the lock turning. I’m alone, but the apartment still has him in it; the smell, the memory, the ghost of his sleeve brushing my arm.
I drift through the day. Draw for a while, nothing clear, just shapes and shadows. Make tea, drink half, and leave the restcooling on the table. Eat the lunch I find ready-made for me in the fridge.
When did this place start to feel like mine? When did the urge to run finally let me breathe?
Maybe it was the day Talon brought me the sketchbook. Or maybe the night where he sat across from me and actually listened. I tried to explain the visions to him, how they feel; not like dreaming, but like drowning in someone else’s life, lungs full of water that isn’t mine. He didn’t just nod along. He asked questions, real ones, like he wanted to get it. Like I’m not just something broken he has to fix.
Or maybe it was earlier that same day. He looked at one of my sketches; not a death, just a bird using a picture he gave me as a blueprint, and I caught him smiling. He didn’t look away. He even seemed to like it.
The hours stretch out, weird and loose. I think about my old life: how empty it is, that constant edge of fear, the nightmares that chase me out of sleep again and again. I'd drag myself to my drawing table, barely awake, desperate to get the images down before they burned a hole straight through me.
When Talon comes back, the apartment seems to relax. He has a grocery bag in one hand and a jacket folded over his arm. The evening light hits him just right, making him look gold for a second, and then he steps into the shadowy hallway.
“You didn’t draw today,” he says, glancing at the blank page in my sketchbook.
