Page 16 of Death's Obsession

What the hell?

No, I wasn't so drunk that I went to bed naked. I’m not a nude sleeper and I most definitely do not go around commando.

No, I wasn’t so drunk that I would cover my entire bedroom floor in rose petals.

Red creeps up my cheeks when I realize that he would have seen me naked in my bed and seen my scars. Worse, he could have seen me in god knows what state while I was having the raunchiest dream in my life. Was I moaning in my sleep? Oh god, was he watching?

My thumb grazes the velvety smooth petals, confirming that they are in fact real, and neither I nor he had gone to the dollar store to buy fake ones. I reach for my bedside lamp and turn it on to inspect one of the petals closer. It’s of the deepest red I’ve seen, but there’s something off about it, with veins-like threads going through the petal.

Blotches of blue amongst porcelain catch my attention and I discard the petal back onto the floor. Four blue bruises marr my thigh. When I turn my leg, I spot a fifth.

My heart slams against my ribcage. I leap out of the bed like a woman possessed and almost slip on the roses as I head straight for the bathroom. I flip the light switch before I make it inside, and stop dead in my tracks in front of my mirror.

Oh god. Oh god. Oh god.

I turn in front of the mirror, then turn again, angling myself this way and that while trying to convince myself that I’m just imagining things.

The area around my nipples are red and raw, but that can easily be explained away with an excuse I’ll think of later. I’ll even find an excuse for the five small circular bruises on my hips. There is no explaining away the handprint that covers an entire ass cheek and then some though.

The size of the handprint is larger than anything I’ve seen in real life. The sting that follows when I touch the welt both shoots heat straight between my legs and fear straight to my heart.

I’m not sure if this is the reason I’m not meant to drink alcohol on my medication, but I swear the handprint is as large as the shadow’s hand, and I do vividly recall that it slapped my ass in the dream.

But that’s all that it was: a dream.

Right?

It must have been a dream. I didn’t make my way to a forest where I was practically mauled by a Faceless Man with moving tattoos and a gigantic shadow while lying on a velvet altar in what looked like a sacrificial circle. I’m only a few miles away from forestry, but I didn’t walk there naked or in a skimpy robe, and I most definitely didn’t drive.

I sprint back to the room, aiming straight for my phone to watch the nanny cam. As expected, half the footage of the night is completely sliced away. One second I’m snuggled up in my robe beneath the sheets, and the next, I’m completely naked with roses blanketing the floor. In the blurry footage, I notice a rolled parchment that slips between my pillows as I sleep.

With my heart caught in my throat, I throw the pillows onto the floor in search of the letter. I jump onto the mattress and lie flat on my stomach as I reach behind the bed, blindly patting the wooden floor until I touch familiar parchment.

My blood vibrates as I fish it out of the darkness, and move to the very edge of the bed near the light.

Keep dreaming of me, my dark love. I’ll be back for more.

Chapter five

Letum

For eons I have been tasked with one thing: Bring souls to the afterlife.

Day after day, night after night, with a single touch from my hand, a soul will pass peacefully and their body will sleep for all of eternity. I have known no other life other than this morbid repetition and passionless existence. For eons I have watched humans, standing to the side and waiting until they inevitably pass.

Because I am inevitable.

Poets have written sonnets about me; composers have written music. Beautiful as they may be, they never amounted to anything more than a moment lost to time.

Until her.

Lilith, my sweet love. She is a dream and a nightmare, merged into one.

I never thought I would find a woman such as her; a woman who can gaze upon death and bring him to his knees. The sight of her, the smell of her, the taste of her, she has made death himself come alive.

Even when fear poisons her blood, I could take a bite out of her and eat the softest flesh. My night monster is perfection, an anomaly in a room of normality, a miracle in the face of wonder. There is nowhere she can run where I will not catch her, nowhere she can hide where I will not find her.

Her soul sings to me like a summer’s breeze: fresh and decadent. I have not been able to get enough of her since the beyond called for her. The afterlife wanted her in its grasp, but I wanted her in mine.

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