Page 71 of The Monster of Hotel No. 7
He shakes his head once and his eyes look sad as he stares at me. “You will regret this.”
Chapter28
Sullen
And so will I.It’s what I don’t say.
I tug off one glove with my teeth, turned away from her so she can’t see what she’s inviting in, then stroke my fingers along her inner thigh as I study her once more.
I am half-sitting on the bed, my hip next to hers, her face in my gloved hand, and I watch as her body trembles with my featherlight touch.
There is a part of me scared to touch herthere,because I don’t know what I’m doing. It would be better if she was bound to the bed in some way, like she was in the chair, but her intoxication will have to be enough.
I squeeze the inside of her thigh, hard, and watch as her pupils dilate. Her arms are once more above her head, her entire body laid out for me, but I focus on her face as I drag my hand up her bare leg, in awe once more over the softness of her skin.
Unintentionally, my touch has changed from aggressive to…soothing, maybe. Like a massage. I’ve never had one of those, but once a nurse had to check the piercings on my spine and perhaps she felt bad for me because she squeezed my shoulder blades a few times in some semblance of reassurance. I had never been touched like that; not that I could recall. It made pleasant shivers dance along my spine.
I wonder if it’s the same now…for her. There is a furrow between her brow as she looks up at me, but perhaps it is our positions. I know what it’s like in some ways; Stein ordered me naked many times while he lectured me, solely for the humiliation.
“At first,” I tell her as I touch her, still gripping her face in my hand in case she looks down to see my bare one— “the specimens were a punishment. I…” Trailing off, I close my eyes for one second.
Two.
She will hate me after she knows everything I have ever done, forced or not. It is impossible to stare this type of freakshow in the face and not feel revulsion.
But a deal is a deal, and I do not want to stop touching her, even if it is only her leg I’m brave enough to graze now.
“The Betta fish? They were…like that. I had to create them, of course. Fill them with formalin—”
She widens her blue eyes, staring at me so immediately it’s like we are… magnets. I loosen my grip on her face, trail my palm down to her chest, and feel her heart race.
I begin to massage her there. Kneading her in this way soothes me in my own.
“Formaldehyde,” I say softly, understanding her confusion. “It’s dangerous, you know. I should’ve worn a respirator but…” I glance down at the outline of her body beneath her dress, the way her abdomen contracts in and out as she breathes. I roam my eyes up higher, to her pebbled nipples, and I want to bite apart the fabric keeping her from me, but I clench my teeth and hold the compulsion back. I wonder, despite our deal, if I should tell her these things at all. It feels…acidic somehow. Corrosive. Peeling back layers of me so she can examine the burnt soul beneath.
“Tell me,” she whispers, making the decision for me.
“But I was not allowed. I injected each creature with a needle, placed them in the jar and sealed them. Some smaller creatures I kept in test tubes, like worms. After a few weeks, they were ready for ethanol instead. The final step. They began to…keep me company, in a way. Eyes and mouths and bodies. It was freezing in my room, always, some sort of strange draft in the house. They became a familiar presence to me, but when I did something wrong… I had to… consume pieces of them.”
She trembles as I touch her, gliding my fingertips up and down her thigh, and I cannot bear to look at her face. I keep my gaze on her chest.
But as fear and anxiety storm through me, I need something more than what I’m touching.
I slide my hand up further, then feel the silken edge of her underwear.
A low breath leaves her lips, audible between us, but I still don’t meet her gaze.
Slowly, I inch one finger beneath the side of the silk fabric, feeling her short hair there.
It feels so good, just this, that it’s hard to breathe, let alone speak. Discomfort blooms inside of me, butdesireis thicker.
“It made me sick. Always. But I still…liked them around me.Company,”I reiterate. “I never had that, after my mother…” I lift my gaze and stare at the lightest blonde, thinnest hairs just along her upper arm. She is made of light. “When Stein realized that, caught me speaking to them one night, he forced me to destroy each sample, watched as I broke every jar along the pavement behind our home.” My chest tightens. It felt like killing friends, that night. “Eventually I…recreated everything. Our house is big, and he never went near the little office upstairs my mother claimed for her own in her wing. Nor the small, secret space beneath it. I’m sure he knew it existed, but maybe once he loved, before. My mother. He stayed away, and over time—years—I made my own lab. I grew my friends again.” I don’t mention the fact it seems he knew about that, and the lab at the hotel. It still doesn’t make sense to me that he let me keep it at all. I don’t mention either the way I hurt the snakes a little bit, taking out my anger against Writhe and Stein on them. She might despise me for that, but they were the only punching bags I had.
“When you left? Who looked after them?”
Slowly, I lift my chin to look at her. Surely she is mocking me. I understand, logically, wet specimens are not friends. Not even pets. I do know the difference between a beating heart and a lifeless one. And I feel the familiar despair and rage and anger twisting under my skin with her questions, but when I stare into her eyes, she is not smiling or cruel.
I don’t understand it. Or her.
