inquinatum; chapter 05
Chapter 05;
NC-17, m/m stuff, evil plotting, swearing. Read at your own risk. :)
* * * * *
Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too.
They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.
- Stephen King
Ever since the attack, I had been hesitant to step outside into the dark, or walk down dark alleyways. I realised the next day that I had lost my phone, possibly dropping it when running away from the crazy thing that was chasing me. Nothing was going to make me go back into that street however. Caius wasn’t interested in retrieving my phone and insisted on buying me a new one, and Bender wasn’t answering my calls. In fact, I had no idea where he was, which left me to spend more time with Caius…
In ways possibly that shouldn’t have been right.
Pulling myself closer to him, I looked up at Caius and smiled a little, softly asking, “You’ll be with me, right? You won’t leave me… I need you. I need you more than you know, more than I know.” I bit my lip, looking up at his perfect face, ruined by the patch and scar.
Caius smiled for a moment and brushed his lips against mine, “Of course. I won’t leave. Ever.”
“You promise?”
“I promise.”
There was a moment of silence as we adjusted ourselves into a cuddle.
“Why do you never take your bandage off? You know, at home, there isn’t anything to hide…” I said softly, glancing over.
Caius stiffened under me, “You’ll be repulsed.”
“I won’t, believe me. Surely there’s nothing bad there, just a closed eye…”
Caius gave a soft grunt and mumbled what sounded like ‘and an empty eye socket’, but didn’t say anything more. I pressed my lips together and looked away.
The sharp ring of the house phone broke the rising tension, and Caius pulled away first with a soft groan, standing and picking it up. He put it to his ear, listened for a bit, frowned and put the receiver down. “What the actual fuck,” he murmured, shuffling around the room.
I sat up, “Huh? What’s wrong?”
Caius ran a hand through his hair and shrugged, “Some creep on the other side was just hissing and whispering something and it made no sense.”
I frowned, but again, kept quiet. Who could be calling in the middle of the night? “A prank, most likely.” I tried to say casually, but the creature from before rose up in my mind, wickedly grinning with its jagged mouth from ear to ear.
Caius nodded, and lay down again, asleep within seconds. Tossing and turning for half an hour, I too soon fell asleep.
*****
The morning was crispy and fresh when the next call came, the phone seeming to ring louder than ever. This time I picked it up for Caius was out again, and the breathing and hissing, the murmuring of words from the other side chilled my bones. I lingered in ending the call, simply looking at the phone in my hand. The image of the creature rose up again and again in my mind many times after the call, and I felt sick.
The mail proved to be no better. Along with the usual bills and junk mail, I found a piece of paper with two letters ‘S’ and ‘T’ written in scrawny messy writing. Frowning, I looked down at the piece of paper before scrunching it up and shoving it into my pocket. I took the mail inside, and carefully shut and locked the door. As I did so, another note fell from the door and landed at my feet. It was very similar to the one I had just gotten in the mail, with the same writing, except this time, the two letters were ‘U’ and ‘N’.
I had no idea what this was supposed to mean, perhaps some silly prank pulled by teenagers from the area, but it still chilled me inside. I shuddered, and after a quick non-eventful breakfast, headed up to the art room to relieve my mind. Ever since Aunt had taught me to paint and draw, painting had been my escape from the real world, the real problems. I could paint out my fears and worries.
Taking the paintbrush and softly humming to the radio I had turned on, I began to paint, letting my mind wander free. The tension was swept away and I felt my shoulders relax. With a smile, I closed my eyes, still painting. I did this in some sort of trance, however, because I don’t remember how I painted with my eyes closed, I could never do that, it was impossible.
The stereo suddenly switched off, and my eyes snapped open. In it’s ghastly form, with a snarling face, the creature from that one night glared at me. The moon was high, the buildings crooked, leaning in, towering over and closing up the space. The creature was posed, ready to leap.
I screamed.
Stumbling back, I grabbed for whatever was closest to me to use as a defence, but as my back hit the fall and the creature didn’t move one inch, I realised something was wrong. Taking a deep breath, I studied the still creature, the buildings. It occurred to me that this was a painting, painted by me for I still had the brush in my hands, paint dripping all over the floor. I covered my mouth and sank to the floor, holding back a sob. Two red letters stood out in the bottom left corner of the painting. ‘T’ and ‘R’.
I curled into a ball, letting the tears go. Oh sure, I painted my fears; I painted them so real they scared the shit out of me. I had painted without seeing or knowing, or being aware of it. And that scared me most.
*****
Caius returned late, grumbling as he walked through the front door. The sudden slam of the door made me spill the hot chocolate over the newspaper, soaking the title save the two ending letters. I sighed, picked up my cup and looked up. “What’s wrong? Why are you so mad?”
Caius set his coat down on the chair and moved to the fridge, pulling out some juice and shoving some food into his mouth. After swallowing, he replied grimly, “Some fuck scratched my car. I think he was trying to write something, cause he only got two letters on before leaving.”
I pressed my lips together, then as casually as possible asked, “What were the letters?”
“N and I, he was probably trying to write some racist thing, or some crap.” Caius shook his head, ran a hand through his hair, sighed and glanced at me. “Why?”
I blinked and looked down at the newspaper, the two leftover letters of the title before shrugging, “Just curious.”
Caius looked at me oddly for a moment, then walked over, gave my forehead a kiss, wished a good night and moved towards the stairs, where he stopped, “Oh and Micah,” he called.
“Yeah?” I looked up, quickly as if he was telling me something important.
“Some guy walked up to me today, and told me to pass on a message to you,” Caius looked rather uneasy for a moment. “He said that you’d understand.”
I turned to face him, “Who was it? What was the message?”
Hesitating for a moment, Caius said, “I don’t know who he was. Never seen him before. Tall, black hair, was wearing sunglasses… He said, the last letters are ‘A’ and ‘R’.”
Without waiting for my response, he shrugged and walked up the stairs. I sat quietly till he was gone.
‘A’ and ‘R’? What was that supposed to mean? There had been a lot of letters coming today, all in pieces, all in pairs…
An idea hit me, and I sat up straight, looking wildly around. Digging into my pocket, I pulled out the first note I had gotten in the mail, I put it on the table then ran to the bin to dig out the second note and put it beside the first. Looking down, I tried to remember where else I had seen more letters. Grabbing a note pad, I wrote down the letters passed on from the man, and the two letters that were painted on the painting upstairs.
So far I had ‘ST’, ‘UN’, ‘TR’ and ‘AR’. They made no sense, and I was slightly disappointed. Recalling the two letters Caius had mentioned written on the car, I added them in, but the ‘NI’ made no difference. Putting them out into a row, I looked at them, twisted my lips. It was like a puzzle, similar to one where you had to unscramble the letters to find the word, but no word made sense. I rearranged them a few times, before giving up and putting them in a pile, chucking them on top of the coffee stained newspaper.
Standing, I turned to go when the last two letters from the title caught my eye. ‘NG’. I returned to my seat and spread out the notes again, this time including the title letters. Pushing the notes out into a row so I could see them all, my heart skipped a beat.
They were in perfect order, and made sense. They spelled out two words, two words that both scared and confused me. The letters, aligned in their formation spelled out what was both a threat and a suggestion, which I didn’t know, but they held a serious air to them, that the person who spelled this, wasn’t kidding around.
*****
“You finally arrived.”
A soft smile crossed the woman’s lips, and she tilted her head, studying Caius. “I thought you would not come, even though you sounded pretty urgent when you called.”
Caius shrugged, “Why would I not come? It is a privilege just to see you, mother.”
Jasmine laughed softly. “You are so amusing, Caius.”
Caius grunted, and looked away. Standing, Jasmine moved to the window and looked out.
“How is Micah fairing? You are still keeping him around, yes?”
“I am. And he is well.” Caius replied with a short pause, “And evolving. Which is why I came to see you today.”
“Oh.”
“He painted something, something I think you should see.” There was a soft thud as material fell to the ground and Caius set forth the painting.
Jasmine looked over, and a sharp cry of both shock and horror came from her throat, “How!”
Caius looked down, “I do not know myself. He has never seen them, as far as I know. Either one has appeared to him, or he somehow managed to create a detailed perfect image of it and draw it.”
“Impossible,” Jasmine whispered, looking at the painting and putting a finger to her lips in thought. “He must have seen them. One does not simply draw out what he has never seen before. Even when the humans drew God, they made him look human. Every creature created and made up is gathered from what they have seen already…” She trailed off and stomped her foot, turning away. “Either the bastard has made his move, or…” She didn’t finish, caught by another thought. “His friend, his boyfriend, who is he?”
Caius looked up, confused. “Bender? He’s a Hunter,” he paused for a moment and then added, “Do you suppose Bender has somehow influenced this?”
“A spill of memories, perhaps. Unconsciously picked up by Micah.” Jasmine looked out the window. “This Bender, he is such a prick under my skin. While he helpfully kills all of His scum, he gets in the way.”
She paused and without looking at Caius, gave a soft hum of final decision. “Keep Micah close to you and far from Bender. In fact, get rid of Bender...
"...Kill him."
***********
A/N: c: my 'ill be done in 2/3 days' turned into like a week xD But I went to university and had some fun there doing various things with researches as part of a work experience like thing :) So yup. *yay for crappy coffee stain*
Next chapter you get to meet some cool people(hm.) and all shit and hell is unleashed mwahaha. I'm also going to post a fun update on this LJ about inquinatum, just funny stuff I came across while writing/taking pics/deleted scenes etc ^.^
Hope you enjoyed and thank you for reading!! :)