Itried not to stare at the black stain at the bottom of the landing, the one that my mom made as she hung from her neck, her stomach slashed open and pouring out all over the floor beneath her. I wasn't even sure anybody ever tried to clean it up and had often wondered how long the cops had allowed her body to hang there while her blood soaked into the floorboards. Exactly how much of my family had been left behind in this damn place?
I took the stairs slowly, dragging my hand along the banister, trying to breathe evenly. In and out. In and out. It was useless. I couldn't quite catch my breath. My heart beat so hard that I could feel the thumping in my ears.
I paused halfway up the blood stained staircase as a thump echoed to my right. The framed photo of my parents on their wedding day shook, settling again slightly crooked. I stared at the wall, trying to figure out if there was something behind it to explain the thump, but I was pretty sure it was just an empty crawl space. The smile on my mom’s face caught my eye, and I had to swallow the lump in my throat.
They looked so fucking happy that day, her belly already starting to swell with me inside it. My dad was staring at the side of my mom’s smiling face, his eyes shining with nothing but worship and adoration. He had always been the hopeless romantic when it came to her. Magnolia and I used to make fun of them for being so openly head over heels for each other. Nowadays, I’d give just about anything to hear my mom giggling again while my dad chased her around the kitchen.
It was hard to tear my eyes away from the photo, but I managed it, peering up the staircase to the darkness above me. There was a lightswitch at the top, and I was tempted to run the rest of the way up and flip it on. I huffed a laugh at myself. I was being an idiot. I’d already seen the horrors this house had to offer, unless Kaz was right and there really were more monsters lurking in the darkness around here.
Monsters… Fucking monsters. As if the ones lurking in my head weren’t enough to drive me insane, add in some real ones who seemed to want to fuck me more than eat me. What did that say about me? That I enticed the creatures of the darkness this way? That they craved my sadness and rage so deeply that they wanted to savor it, to coax it out of me, sipping it bit by bit until they drained me of it?
I should have run. I should have left this place far behind me, but again, I’d never been levelheaded or logical. If these creatures were willing to drain me of my misery, then I was going to fucking let them. With any luck, I’d soon be a dried up husk, lying on the floor of this house next to my mom's bloodstain.
I was on borrowed time here, and I knew it. Sooner or later, they would get tired of playing with their food and consume the rest of me. Their sharp teeth and claws were meant for slashing through supple flesh and meaty bone. I just hoped I was long dead before they decided it was time to clean up the scraps of me.
I’d almost reached the second landing when the walls moved—literally moved. Several framed photos clattered to the floor, tumbling down the staircase I'd just ascended. The old floral wallpaper stretched, undulating as if suddenly the plaster and wood beneath it had turned to water. I grabbed the banister, trying to steady myself and keep from tumbling over it and plummeting to my death. I looked over my shoulder, again spotting the black bloodstain at the bottom. Such a long fall…
The wall stretched and moved in such a way that it looked like dozens of human faces were pressing forward, with mouths agape in silent screams, as they tried to escape. My eyes widened in horror, but then came the hands, grabbing for me, stretching the wallpaper until I was sure it was about to tear. My heart thundered as I let go of the banister and dashed up the remaining stairs, all while the tips of those grabbing fingers brushed my arm and pulled at my hair.
The top of the landing was in view, only about five more steps…
I didn't make it.
Just as I was about to lunge, taking them two at a time, a hand gripped my wrist and tugged me towards the wall. I stumbled, my feet twisting around each other in my attempt to run. I screamed as more hands gripped me, holding my arms, my legs, and my hair. I could feel the fingers and faces rubbing against my back as I pressed into the wall. Their hold on me was so tight that I couldn't move, could barely even breathe.
I screamed and screamed, but nobody could hear me. Cyn and Cilas were off somewhere, hunting who knew what, and Kaz was probably underwater, recuperating from being out of it for so long last night. Why else wouldn't he have responded to my screams?
I fought against the hands, trying to bite at them, thrashing every which way, but it was no use. There were too many of them. My body was being pulled so hard against the wall that I was pretty sure that any second, I would disappear into it, to be forever trapped inside the walls of this cursed house. Still, I fought against them. The open, gaping mouths released noises that sounded like the moans of the undead. They groaned and wailed, their voices low and cracking, as if they weren’t really voices at all, but rather the wood, metal, plaster, and the very foundations of the house were yawning, stretching, and growing.
The pressure on my body hurt, to the point that I felt like my skin was being stretched, my hair yanked out of my scalp by twisting fingers. Nothing I did made any bit of difference.
Then the darkness descended—not the darkness of the hallway, nor the emptiness that stretched out before me at the top of the stairs. This darkness was full, heavy, and alive. It undulated like smoke and reached for me, tendrils of it wrapping around my wrists and pulling them out of the wall’s grasp. One by one, the hands released me, the darkness chasing away those screaming faces.
I still writhed, feeling like my skin was overrun with millions of tiny spiders as sensation slowly rushed back into my limbs. Already, I knew I was bruised and scratched, probably bleeding in some places.
A voice spoke in a language I’d never heard before. Actually, it was two voices speaking as one. I could hear them both distinctly, yet their words wrapped around one another. It reminded me of those old religious songs spoken in tongues. The words were guttural and made no sense, but the moment they were spoken, the wall began to smooth out again, returning to the way it was supposed to look—solid and faceless.
It took seconds for everything to return to normal. I fell forward off of the wall, but the shadows caught me. I was wrapped up in a pair of strong, smoke-like arms, and when I looked up, I met a pair of burning white eyes peering down at me with unfathomable need…
Iris
Fingers tightened in my hair, holding me in place as the stranger slammed into me from behind. I didn’t know his name, and I didn’t care to, as long as he fucked me hard enough to make my brain shut off for a while.
My eyes rolled back as he hit that special spot deep inside me over and over again. His cock was comically thick and long, almost to the point of pain, but again, I didn’t care. I wanted the pain. I wanted to cry, to bleed, and to scream. Whoever he was, he was happy to oblige, because his pace quickened and his thrusts pushed my face into the headboard. I didn’t know if this was his bedroom, or if he even lived in this bar with the other bikers.
Music from the party drifted beneath the closed door, along with a bright light that barely filtered into the dark bedroom. Needles littered the floor, there was spilled weed on the nightstand, and a leaking bottle of tequila was staining the carpet. It wasn’t my finest hour, to say the least.
Through the haze of drugs and fucking, there was a voice in the back of my head, screaming at me to stop, but I ignored her. I always ignored her.
Pressure built in my lower stomach, and a tingling sensation traveled up my thighs as my pussy clenched around the stranger’s cock. He cursed under his breath, yanking back on my hair again. I cried out in pain but moaned as I came around him. I felt him follow me over the edge, hot cum filling me up and spilling down my inner thighs. His hips twitched against my ass, and his fingernails dug into my skin.
Underneath my screams, the room was relatively quiet, save for the whispering. There was always that damn whispering. Voices seemed to follow me wherever I went, forcing me to seek out new and dangerous ways to drown them out.
When my orgasm subsided, irritation set in immediately. Suddenly, I wanted his nasty hands off of me and to get as far away from this bedroom as I could. Reaching back behind me, I pushed him and he toppled onto the bed, clutching his softening cock. “What the fuck is your problem, bitch?”
I ignored him, not even looking his way as I hopped off the bed and fumbled for my clothes. My thighs were sopping wet with cum, so I used the rumpled bed sheet to wipe myself clean before shoving myself into my jeans and T-shirt.
The stranger laughed bitterly. “They told me you were a whore, but I guess I didn’t believe them. Jokes on me, huh?” In my peripheral, he sat up, just a shadow passing in front of the illuminated window with the blinds drawn. “At least make yourself useful and pass me a bump.” He gestured to the nightstand.