Page 8 of The Monster of Hotel No. 7
But Sullen is clawing into me, the same way he did when we passed like two ghosts in a graveyard years ago as children; him never seen and me rarely understood. We were never whole.
And I don’t think of Cosmo.
I think maybe I wouldletthis happen; Sullen carrying me into the dark. Perhaps, even if I could, I wouldn’t fight him.
But now my choice is taken away, so I don’t have to pretend.
I swear a smile curves his mouth, the glint of a few white teeth just visible in the dark, as if he knows precisely what it is I’m thinking.
“I can feel your pulse race through the back of your skull, on my arm.” He speaks in that same strange tone, and it is as if he is tasting words for the first time in far too long. “Don’t get excited, Little Sun. I will never bring you out of the dark now.”
Chapter6
Sullen
The room glows green. Test tubes and Mason jars line the walls, the lighting inset along the base of cabinets. It is not for decor. It contains not only light but air, chilling the subject, suspended in formaldehyde. There is half of a serpent stuffed inside one vessel, wicked patterns along his scales, the tail a sharp, dark point and the head…absent. Blood exists in vacutainers, a pattern of the tubes interspersed with other specimens in the room.
Each wall is filled, floor to high ceiling, the path to this secret of mine has no door. Instead, the escape is above my head. I have to climb each shelf carefully, past the lamb’s eye floating in the highest-most jar, reach a hand for the groove that does not belong, set in the deep black ceiling.
Then I must climbup,andout,and move through the air ducts to the places I am supposed to exist within this hell. The rooms my father strangles me inside of on Ritual Drive.
Now, though, I simply survey each wall, listen to every wire humming to keep my collection of monsters cold. This is not strictly necessary, but I have become accustomed to the lowest of temperatures. I cannot leave them in less. Besides, Stein is obsessed with fire, even on the hottest days. I cannot stand it. I can’t abandon my creatures to sickly warmth.
Some I have found on the premises. Others I have acquired through different means, plotting deliveries around Stein’s chaotic schedule.
They are the only ones who see me…if they have eyes to do so.
Even the maimed observe me.
What choice do they have?
I am their god.
And it is not enough.
I long for a different subject to worship me instead. I would crash each jar, empty every glass, swallow all of the slithery, slimy, sinister creatures caged in this room if I could only get a taste of her.
Sunshine hair, cerulean eyes; an unnatural blue. The way her pale pink lips slip into a hauntingly endearing frown when I am close. She stops speaking too, her breath catching in her throat. Even if she is beside de Actis, or Bentzen, or with one of her other, many friends, she becomes a frightened doll for me.
When I can’t stay away, when I need to inhale her innocence—bitten with the scent of violets and cedar—I come to her on our street. Her pupils widen, edging out the sharp blue, and I watch her pulse flutter at her throat and her long legs put distance between herself and whoever her companion of the night is, and I can’t help butwant.
In the darkness of Ritual Drive, she is the everlasting, unattainable sun. I want to storm over her, cloak her in violent lightning and blackest clouds.
I desire little more than to smother that hope she carries with her always, getting her on her knees for me as I do it.
It is a cruel illusion, that longing for better than she has.
I know this to be true.
But even as I stand in my lab and my fingers clench inside the pocket of my hoodie, bandages and broken bones lancing bright and dull pain both up my wrists, I know I will never reach for her when we dance by one another.
I don't trust my own desire to keep her alive for more than one use.
Hope.
It is all I have.
Maybe one day I will recreate this room for her, away from the stifling, torturous evil of my father. I will have only one wall.
