“I do. Or rather, did. But the night is young. There’s always room for round two. What do you say - me and your ass and a very good beating?”
I’ve never understood the whole rave about ASMR - that thing where people listen to whispers and it makes a chill run down their spine. It’s gotten super huge on the online forums for Oregon State, people linking videos for other people to watch, to relax them before exams or to help their overworked minds go to sleep or whatever. I watched a ton and never felt anything special, but this awful shithead whispers in my ear once and my whole spine decides to tremble like the beads in a maraca. The way he says ‘beating’ makes it sound totally different from the way I said it. He means sex oh god he means sex with me oh holy -
The guy leans back from my ear, and then laughs. Not a dark chuckle like before, but a full-blown stomach laugh, clear and honest. This laugh is a nice laugh. And that’s when I get it - he’s laughing at me. He wipes his eye, a tear in his dark eyelashes, and stutters as he catches his breath.
“T-The look on your face! I can’t believe you actually fell for that. It’s 2018, little beast - being naive is very last century.”
“Fuck you,” I snarl.
“No,” He looks me up and down. “With that plain face, and that ungainly body? Not a chance in hell. I’d have a better time fucking a dust mop - ”
Like I said - I’ve got a lot of resource, and its name is Rage. I roll a natural 20 in Agility and shove my broomstick straight into his chest, hoping to make his stupid ass stagger and eat dirt, or at least apartment floor. But the second the tip of my broomstick touches his black shirt, something shifts. In him. And outside him - the air around us suddenly so cold I can see my breath. It’s May - it’s never this cold in May. All I see is a blur of black and then I’m pressed up against the wall, his broad hand around my throat and his whole body pinning me to the plaster and all I can think is fuck. Fuck I’m so dead - you knew this would happen, May, you knew confrontation with your neighbors leads to you getting murdered and here you are, getting murdered. Mom and Dad are gonna be pissed they wasted all that money for nothing. God he’s pretty but you sure wish he wouldn’t fucking murder you and does his left eye have a flower in it - a big white rose blooming from his socket - or is that just you hallucinating because you’re running out of oxygen -
“Dane!”
A shuffle, the guy holding me getting jostled around. My vision’s going black at the edges.
“Dane! That’s enough!” Someone roars. “If we kill an innocent Van Grier will end us! And I don’t about you, but I wanna get fed - not ended.”
I squint - I can just barely make out someone’s face over the guy’s shoulder. Another guy, with long black hair hanging around his high cheekbones. Handsome too, but tanner than the guy choking me. Why - why at the end of my life is the only I can think of how pretty these people are? I try to kick, but the blonde guy presses into me harder, his hiss audible.
“She tried to stake me with that thing.”
“It’s blunt, Dane. A sweeper for her house, not a weapon. For the Bright Lady’s sake; let her go!”
Dane - that’s his name. Dane’s turquoise eyes pierce me, every inch of me, and then change. From hate, to confusion, to shame, and back to hate again. But not aimed at me. He’s struggling with something inside - a memory, maybe. Finally he lets go, all the pressure lifting off me and I collapse to the ground like a sack of potatoes, gasping for air.
“Are you alright?” The black-haired guy kneels on the concrete next to me, my eyes adjusting as they get more oxygen flow back. His black hair, straight and luxurious and nearly down to his shoulders, shines in the fluorescent hall lights and its’ the first time I’ve ever seen fluorescence make someone look better instead of worse. He’s so well-tanned, his eyes dark but with that same weird undefinable gem-like quality that Dane’s have - though his are like black onyx with beautiful silver dots in them like stars and I swear for a moment I see a black rose in his left eye but I blink and breathe in again and it’s gone.
“I-I’m seeing things,” I mutter, my voice struggling to come out. It’s dry, like I haven’t drank water for years, and when I touch my throat it stings and aches, too sore to even glance over.
“Sorry about him,” The black-eyed guy helps me to my feet and I try to stand on my own but I stagger, but he catches me in his arms and he smells like copper and rainwater and - not this shit again. He’s jaw-droppingly handsome, but mercifully my body doesn’t scream for him like it does for blonde asshole over there. I push off him. He wears all black just like Dane, but his pants are jeans and his jacket is lined with faux-fur. No more of these weirdoes. I’m just gonna crawl back to my apartment and shut the door and double-triple lock it and maybe put a chair under the doorknob for good measure.
The dark-eyed guy smiles, his teeth sparkling white and his grin nothing but friendly. “You’re not, uh, going to sue or anything, are you? Dane’s just…had a rough day. Rough life, really, and uh we don’t live in this area, so a beautiful, kind girl like you probably won’t want to pull us into court, right? I mean, this isn’t even our town and it was all a mistake -”
“I’m a college student,” I wheeze. “I don’t sue.”
The guy laughs, eyes crinkling warmly on the edges. “Fair enough. Beautiful and a sense of humor!”
“Ass-kisser.” Dane, his eyes much clearer now, scoffs and starts striding down the corridor with his long legs and heavy boots.
Dark-eyed guy shuffles, calling after him; “Hey! Wait up!” He looks back to me and salutes me with a brilliant smile. “Thanks. For not sueing. Dane, c’mon, wait up!”
I’m sure as hell not walking after them. I wait until their footsteps fade, and then limp back to my apartment. Double lock, and a chair underneath the doorknob, and only then do I collapse in my bed and pass out, totally drained.
My last thought is of eyes like gemstones, cracking down the middle and blossoming with roses.
-2-
I hold a funeral for Sir Charles because that’s what any sane college girl with a finals week coming up would do. It’s hard to find a patch of dirt deep enough for him in the city - the ones in the park are covered in litter and I can’t stand the thought of Sir Charles getting an empty Big Gulp or used condom thrown on him. But I finally find a patch good enough - on campus, near the Agriculture building. It’s the least manicured part of the school, and my reasoning is maybe the caretakers will think it’s somebody’s project. Or so I hope.
The week passes in a blur and I try not to think of what came before. I wear the only turtleneck I own - one of those intentionally tacky Christmas sweaters and people look at me like I’m escaped from prison because I’m wearing a Christmas sweater in May, but at least they don’t get to see the massive bruises on my neck. Affording any makeup beyond dollar-store chapstick is a distant dream for me at the moment, so being called tacky will have to do. Work is harder - I beg my supervisor to let me wear a bandana around my neck, and only after I reveal the bruise to her does she agree with a hint of pity in her eyes, on the condition the bandana is plain.
I feel like I do great on my finals - but it comes at a bizarre cost. The boys upstairs pretty much always play music and party, on the weekends the most, but weekdays, too. In the year I’ve lived here they haven’t gone two days without blowing off steam.
But this time, my upstairs neighbors are silent for a whole week.
At first I just take full advantage of it - cramming as much study-juice into my virgin pina colada of a brain as I can. By the time seven days goes by I’m made of coconut liquor and a healthy dose of Godel’s first incompleteness theorem topped off with whipped cream and a cherry and the fact a precedent is an existing opinion that guides a court in the case before it, and an antisymmetric is a binary relation where R is an antisymmetric and so on and so forth. Rest assured - it’s a godawful cocktail, but I gulp it down and finish my finals feeling on top of the world
.
It’s at night when things get hard.
When I strip down to take a shower to wash off the day’s grease, I can’t look at myself in the mirror - the bruise on my neck is too raw and real to confront. I don’t want to look at it, if I do it might solidify or get darker. That’s not how injuries work, I know, but rationality’s never been a star player on my team. And then after I’m clean and not in front of a mirror my bed yawns like the Grand Canyon, echoing back that night at me. Dane’s lithe outline, the way he sent my body quaking in its own boots, his hand around my neck as he tried to definitely kill me -
I almost got murdered by a runway model with bad taste in music.
I almost got murdered.
I shudder and pull all my blankets around me, but it’s never enough. I still feel cold on the inside. He really wanted to hurt me. I could see it in his eyes and his beautiful shitty face. And I couldn’t do anything to stop it.
Looking out the window at the hill - the fairy lights of the fancy houses and the moon beaming down there - warms me up inside, but only slightly. It’s not the same without Sir Charles here.
I catch a flyer on a campus corkboard in the hall one day and it screams in comic sans at me; JUDO SELF-DEFENSE TRAINING! ONLY TEN DOLLARS A SESSION! I scoff and crumple it - ten dollars is ten ramen cups. Ten ramen cups is ten dinners. I don’t fucking think so. I don’t know what it is about the world trying to squeeze every last penny from college kids, but it feels like an Olympic sport everyone’s competing at, these days. Except then I spot kids in my class with clean Apple laptops, who drive home in BMWs and sleek Volvos and all I can think of is that not everybody lives like me. Some people are just lucky.
My fingers flit over the Christmas sweater shrouding my neck. Or in my case, unlucky.
Finally, my pile of clothes in my room gets too stinky to ignore. I arm myself with a pocketful of jingling quarters and a near-empty bottle of detergent and truck up the stairs to the laundry room.
When I get to the top of the stairwell, I freeze. My upstairs neighbor’s door is right there - that wall opposite is right where Dane pinned me and choked me. I scurry past it with my head down, and load the washer up. But when I come back, someone’s standing there. Not a runway model in all black, but my landlord, an ancient old man with liver spots for hair and fingernails longer than most ladies’. He stands in front of the door, painting it with a can of dark green paint. I try to sneak past him but he sees me and smiles.
“Hello there.”
“Hi, Mr. Reginald,” I force a smile back.
“Be honest with me,” Mr. Reginald puts the paintbrush down. “Does this fresh coat of paint make the door look more rentable, to you?”
“Rentable?” I frown.
“Yes - the boys who lived here cleared out recently. Probably for the best, I got quite a few noise complaints about them.”
“Why -“ I blurt. Shit, can’t seem too interested, or it’d be suspicious. “Did they go on vacation?”
“Oh no,” He waves his paint-dotted hand. “They just called to tell me the rent was too high. I could’ve sworn they told me it was just right when they first moved in. Anyway, I came up here the next morning and all their things were gone. It’s a good thing we’re month-to-month, or I’d have had them for early lease termination!”
“When,” I swallow, trying to make it sound natural. “When did they call you about that?”
“When was it now?” The landlord thinks. “Exactly a week ago. In the middle of the night, too. Kids these days - don’t know a lick of manners. Not you, of course.”
“Of course,” I force another smile. “I should get going.”
“See you on the first of the month!”
I take the stairs faster than a hamster running a wheel, my converse pounding the cement. I slam my front door behind me - one week ago was that night. The night I knocked on the door.
I put my head into a couch cushion and breathe the stale smell in. Anything to ground my wildly flailing thoughts. It’s just a coincidence. More importantly, Dane and the other guy were their friends, and now that they’re gone from here I’ll never see Dane again. I’m safe.
I celebrate that night by putting frozen peas and shrimp in my ramen, and I splurge maybe a little too much and buy myself a pint of mint chocolate chip ice cream. I eat so much I feel like a mint-flavored swamp shaped like a girl.
I start to save up to buy another cactus. I make plans to visit Mom and Dad over summer break, working big chunks of hours the rest of the time to save up for next year. There’s still one more week of school, but after that I’m home free. If I work enough, Mom and Dad won’t have to give me as much, and that thought alone makes all the twelve-hour shifts worth it. It won’t leave much time to make friends this summer like I wanted to, but who am I kidding - even if I did make some, school and work would eat up too much of my time to ever keep them. That is, if I knew how to keep them in the first place. I had friends in high school, but we were never close. Sure, I went to a few sleepovers, and we shared homework answers, but that was it. I’m not even sure I know what real friendship is.
Regardless, life slowly goes back to being alright.
Until I see him again.
At first I think it’s a trick of the light. Someone tall and blonde is waiting at the bus stop outside my work. I can see them through the windows of the restaurant. All black clothes. Hair short and almost white. A languid, easy posture leaning against the bus stop sign, like they own the world.
My hand shakes filling up a cone of soft-serve for a customer. No, that can’t be him. Even if it is, it’s a coincidence. He’s catching the bus to go somewhere else.
Except he’s staring right at the restaurant.
I take my break in the back and steady myself on my knees. Marie, my only co-worker here who doesn’t treat me like gum on their shoe, takes her break too, lighting her cigarette and watching me with her cornflower-blue eyes.
“You alright, hon?”
“Y-Yeah,” I breathe in deep. “Just…didn’t sleep much last night.”
“Does that have anything to do with that man who’s been looking in here all afternoon?” She asks lightly. When I gape at her she waves it off. “Oh come on, sweetpea, it’s boring as fuck behind that counter. Of course I’d notice him. Is he your boy?”
My traitorous meat sack of a body reacts to the idea of him being mine with every hair on my skin standing on end. “No!” I shout it, but then lower my voice. “No. He’s just, uhm, a cousin. The weird one.”
“Well that weird cousin of yours sure likes staring at you.”
“Yeah, go figure. Some people just have crap for manners.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” Marie laughs, coughing a little. She pats me on the back. “Let’s go back in and finish up. And maybe you can introduce me to him, if he ever comes in.”
She gives me a wink and I flinch. I do my best to have Marie work the cashier, shuttering myself away in the back working the deep fryer. If I keep his line of sight off me, logic dictates, he’ll lose interest and leave.
But then, over the din of people eating, I hear a deep voice. Murmuring. I hear Marie giggle, and then heavy footsteps, the kind with boots on. Crap on a biscotti, Marie let him back here - I need to get out. I fling myself towards the back door, but before I can open it long, pale fingers dart over the handle. The refined smell of gin and rosemary cuts through the kitchen’s heavy haze of grease. My eyes follow the leather jacket arm and freeze on his shoulder. That insane pressure comes from out of nowhere again, leaning against more than just my skin. It’s like my entire being can feel him without even touching him, like he’s an important weight in the fabric of reality.
“You’re the broomstick girl.”
Dane. His voice has none of the lazy purrs it did the night we met. It’s all crisp and clear, now, business-y. Marie is watching us from over his shoulder, so I relax just a smidge. He wouldn’t try to hu
rt me in front of her, would he? I touch my bandana to make sure it’s still on.
“Yup. And you’re the guy who tried to kill me,” I say softly. He clicks his tongue, narrowing his left eye with the sound, almost like a flinch.
“That was a mistake. On my part.”
“Really?” I snort and stare at his boots. “Is that your best excuse?”
“It’s not an excuse,” He snarls. “It’s an apology.”
I wave my hand. “You call it an apology, I call it not-an-apology-in-the-slightest, tomato tomahto.”
“You shoved that broom at me first.”
“Oh, now you’re victim-blaming. I bet you get all the ladies doing that.”
He lets out a raspy snarl and massages his forehead, muttering something under his breath. I swear I hear a snippet of it, but I clear my throat.
“What was that?”
“I’m sorry.” He says, his gemstone eyes darting away from my face for once. I look up - its easier to look at him when he’s not looking at me. His dark blonde brows are knit so fiercely he looks like he’s in pain, the sapphire of his irises dimmed. “I have a past. And that night it caught up with me. You took the brunt of it. And I’m sorry.”