Page 7 of The Monster of Hotel No. 7
There was something in my drink.
It comes to me quickly, being a child of Writhe.
Someone drugged me.
The thought is welcoming. Horrifying. Grotesque and sensual and frightening all at once.
Sullen.
“Have you missed me?”His voice is rightthere,deep and croaking, as if he never spoke, just like the rumors say.
A sharp intake of breath hovers between us before I feel strong arms beneath me and I am tilting, the couch is long gone, fallen away, and instead, I am being…carried.
I cannot pick up my limbs. My muscles do not work, my bones are sinewy rubber, snapped from a band, useless and dangling. I can breathe though, and the inhale through my nose brings the traces of darkened roses, earth, and sandalwood. I obsessed over this same scent each time he passed me on Ritual Drive, wearing a black hoodie, the same color pants, hands in his pockets, chin dipped, hood over his deep brown strands. Darkest eyes, flecks of amber lifting to me and framed by onyx lashes, his heavy bottom lip pushed out further than his top in a severe sort of pout.
I studied him in ways no one else did.
They were too busy casting judgment.
There was no room for inquiry where my other friends were concerned.
But I noticed things about him. I found his history in the way he began to wear black, high-collared shirts underneath his hoodie as we grew older, covering the column of his throat, all the way to the underside of his chin. He was always buried in fabric and yet... He was tall, strong, moving with a preternatural, wicked grace, like a boy who had been taught in violence how to remain a shadow. Never seen, rarely heard, forbidden, it seemed, from looking out.
Yet when he did, he only ever looked at me.
I took pride in it. Secretly, in stolen, quiet moments. When Von teased me about the arranged marriage to Sullen, I would pretend I loathed the idea, while on the inside I glowed with a sick, secretive pride.
But now, cradled in his embrace yet held at arm’s length, sticky regret sludges through my veins as my pulse thumps quickly but weak, too feeble and frail to fight an agony like Sullen Rule.
I blink heavy lids, fear of falling into a forced sleep oozing through my bloodstream.Stay awake. Don’t dream. This is a nightmare you have to survive.
My lips part, as if to speak, but when my eyes catch on the darkest gleam where Sullen’s gaze should be, the words scratching up my throat stay stuck there.
He is moving, I realize, a rhythmic motion swaying my body as he walks softly, striding as he always did, a murderer slipping through locked doors.
The room is still darkest night.
There is no sound and yet the sensation of cotton in my ears grows thick. I want to tug at them, hear more clearly, swallow to pop my auditory canal, yet I can do nothing but latch onto the whites of Sullen’s eyes. The circle of horrific sins contained inside of them.
And as he disappears into the corridor, toward the bathrooms, but further, deeper, into a hallway perhaps I did not know existed, my mind slips from wanting to move, scream, touch, run; to something far...worse.
Where have you been?
What happened to you?
Who put the fear of being seen inside of you?
Which one ripped away your voice; your mother? Your father?
When did you ever think of me, two long years apart?
He is staring at me as he moves, his fingertips digging into my hips, my shoulder blade, the way he’s carrying me with my head resting against the crook of his elbow.
He is looking back now.
I should think of Cosmo. Wish to know he is okay, unhurt, safe. Still breathing.
Think of the one who loves you.
