Page 1 of The Monster of Hotel No. 7
Chapter1
Sullen
Dear Sullen,
I miss you on Ritual Drive. There is nothing but everything here and yet I dream only of you. It’s pathetic and you would say so, wouldn’t you?
But maybe not. You never said much.
Besides, when I’m restless from my own apathy, I let Cosmo drag his nails down my spine and kiss the scratches in his wake. We fuck, too, and he’s good enough to make me come but…
I won’t say it, what I want to. You’d roll your eyes and probably stop reading, if you even get these miserable, desperate letters.
I wish I could’ve told your mother when she was still alive that she must have known exactly who you would be before you were born, the way she had the most accurate name picked out for you.
You were boring and cruel and quiet and awful and I cannot get you out of my head.
I know I won’t see you again. If Writhe couldn’t find you, how could I?
But you’ll appear in my dreams like a haunting nightmare and maybe one of these nights I’ll have the courage to turn my back on you then, too.
You never cared for me—I know. You never cared for any of us.
But you were a familiar shadow, and do you know what it’s like for your shadow to disappear?
No. Perhaps not. Maybe you were born without one.
Always unwillingly yours,
K. Ven
Icrinkle the letter in my fist and stare into the flames dancing in the fireplace of the sitting room inside Haunt Muren. Red and orange flicker alongside blue, and I imagine incinerating the white page with an anatomical header of hearts and brains stretched across the top. But Karia’s sloping script is soothing in its own way, even if her words are not.
Cosmo.
I grip the page tighter, my short nails digging into the pad of my palm as I grind what’s left of my teeth and effectively ruin her correspondence.
She could do better than Cosmo de Actis, a childhood friend of hers—I never had those—but she could do worse too, if I’m being objective.
It’s impossible though.
Karia Waveria Ven is embedded under my skin like a bullet I can’t remove. If she is dislodged, it’ll be fatal.
I can’t survive with her. And I can’t live without her. But I’ve had to try and do the latter for the past two years. The lacerations along my skin are nothing compared to the gaping wound her absence leaves in my life.
And the most pathetic part is she was never really therebefore.We had no love affair. We exchanged few words. But she looked at me more than anyone ever did and…Pathetic,I know.
A creak sounds above my head, and I tip my chin up, heart thudding fast inside my chest, heat that has little to do with the fire expanding in every cell of my body. After twenty-three years of him, my nervous system has not adjusted to his nearness.
Stein is awake now, rising as he always does just after dawn.
That means my misery is only about to begin.
Karia wonders why I stay away. Why I never returned to Alexandria. I have heard of the many theories swarming the air there: Kidnapped for ransom, a brief escape to clear my head, I finally lost what little I had left of my mind. The night I walked out of my father’s house on Ritual Drive when I was twenty-one, the speculation ran wild. Money was stacked upon my name as a performance from my father. A bounty offered for my safe return, then later, for even less. Scraps of my bones.
Two years ago now, almost exactly. Will be tomorrow. October second I went missing. The third is the day my new life started.
But I didn’t do it willingly.
