Work Text:
Cold.
You were cold.
You twisted uncomfortably, the pleasant bleary darkness of sleep reluctant to drain from your head.
You clung to your pillow and sighed, licking your lips to try and get rid of the cotton feel of your mouth.
Bed, cold. Why were you in bed and still cold?
A dull, glassy fear slowly sank into your chest when you indirectly realized you were in bed, more piercingly so when it dawned upon you that you went to sleep in the first place. You were supposed to stay up. You couldn't afford to fall asleep with.. him possibly looming overhead at any given moment. You couldn't. You caught a faint drift of disinfectant beside you, but swallowed and squeezed your eyes shut.
You didn't want to think. Thinking meant hopelessness, but not thinking meant defenselessness. You spent the night on the couch with the lights on. You knew it before you wanted to acknowledge it. He'd been here, put his hands on you again. The guilt in your weakness and horror ate at you as you shot up, looking to see your sheets crumpled up and half slipping off of your mattress on your side.
Reluctantly, you glanced to the left. The sudden relief in the absence of a figure lying beside you was drowned out and snuffed by the sight of a still present depression in the pillow, a deep point beside where your back would have been moments ago, as well as a more shallow indentation stretching all the way to the foot of the bed.
You pretended to not already feel tears pricking at the corners of your eyes, biting the inside of your cheek as you forced yourself to take a deep breath. All you could smell now was the hospital grade disinfectant and distinctive dull stench of blood mingling with pot and your throat tightened, lips pursed. You had to get out of this house.
Getting up was more difficult than it should've been. Your legs felt heavy as lead when you forced yourself up onto your feet, holding yourself tightly in attempt to soothe yourself.
You fucked up again. It was one fuck up. Just one. You tried, that was the point. If you tried, you'd get better at keeping yourself up. But it'd only be one time. All it would take for you to end up dead, violated and gutted in a ditch somewhere out in the country would be one time, one night of sleep.
This wasn't helping the nerves.
You could hear the television drone on about the perfect weather, something political and something else about the beach from the other room when you stepped into the hallway, ignoring the exhaustion still trying to lure you back to bed. Sleep was slowly becoming a secondary enemy. Your mouth was still dry.
While dragging yourself into the kitchen for some sort of fluid, water if you still had any from the last time you actually went shopping, you reached up to move the hair from your eyes but your blood ran cold, freezing upon the sight of what was placed on the counter.
Along with the dreaded note, there was a can of redbull sitting inconspicuously. It was unopened and pinned the torn piece of journaling paper in place.
This was so, so fucking sick.
He got off on this. He got off on this, all it was to him was a game. You two were just playing. He was just playing with you.
You wanted to scratch your eyes out of your skull and lie down for a week.
As you dropped your hand hopelessly, you felt your fingertips graze wetness again the side of your neck and your instantly heart caught in your throat. The tears were back.
You didn't want to look at your hand. You didn't want to know. You didn't want to see. You didn't want to be here anymore, if changing the locks held him off for three whole days imagine what moving would do, moving would be so loud though, he was always there he never left no escape, no escape--
You looked at your hand.
Clear.
The wet substance on your fingers was totally clear, sticking to you and then itself before you shook it off so hard your wrist popped. That was drool.
"Fucking--!"
The curse was the only thing that broke the stillness of the air. You hoped it made the fuck fall on his ass wherever he was watching you from right now.
You dug your nails into your palms, holding your hands to your chest as you hurried through the house to go and find a mirror, any fucking mirror. It wasn't like you wanted to see, but you had to. You had to see what was being done to you.
Bathroom, you stumbled through the door and knocked a bottle of soap into the sink as you propped yourself up against the counter to face the mirror, forearms turned outward as you stared at your reflection in lowly burning horror.
Along with the various fresh scratches that you had unwillingly grown accustomed to, no mark the same length or depth, as well as the faint little red bruises on your arms, on your hips, there was one, no, three things that made your hair stand up straight.
Three heavy, indented bite marks, one on the upper arm, one on the clavicle, and one-- still damp with his saliva, on the side of your neck.
You were going to cry. Or vomit. Whichever overpowered the other. Multitasking was always an option.
The gravity of your situation didn't hit you all at once. It seeped in slow, intrusively gnawing at your resolve to keep pushing regardless of him. What did hit you all at once however, was nausea and the way your mouth suddenly filled with watery saliva. So it would be the latter.
Your body barely gave you a moment's notice to get on the floor and definitely not enough of an opportunity to properly crouch over the toilet, instead leaving you to grapple onto the trash bin just in time before you heaved out the contents of your stomach.
It was more bile and spit than anything, burning your throat as you gripped the rim tightly. Tears finally broke free as a bodily default, but were fueled by the mourning of your personal agency.
He practically had you under his thumb by now. Too scared to leave your house, too scared to stay in, too scared to eat, too scared to drink, too fucking scared of him to do anything for yourself. Anything that could get you out of this was a massive risk. He had you cornered and limping like a wounded animal, chained to your dwindling sense of safety in motionlessness.
You were pathetic.
This was pathetic.
You spat out the lingering taste of acid before wiping your mouth on your shoulder, planting your hands to the tile and just pausing for a moment.
Breathing. In and out. Breathe. You nodded against the wall.
He loved you more than anything, in his twisted, fucked up head. He wouldn't hurt you maliciously. He loved you. You'd read how much he did every morning in every note, phrased in a hundred different ways. This didn't feel like love. You felt caged.
You should probably get up and finally read what he had to say for himself.
It took a moment for you to totally regain control over your limbs, knees still somewhat weak as you stood up and grabbed the ledge of the counter for support. You'd dump the puke out later.
The house was uncomfortably quiet as you slowly made your way back into the kitchen. Drifting to the sink, you decided you might as well wash your hands, along with your neck at the very least before you touched anything else. Whether it was stalling or not didn't concern you.
As you went to dry your hands afterwards, mind gradually returning from the apathetic fog, you noticed the clean dishes set to dry out beside the rag you were reaching to use. Whatever he thought this was, you saw it a weak fucking attempt to nullify his bullshit.
You just wanted to get this over with. Over with and done. You begrudgingly crossed the kitchen to go read out his note, holding yourself once again.
The energy drink really was just a slap in the face at this point, but it was such a stupid jab at your pitiful attempts to evade him that you almost wanted to laugh. You chewed the inside of your lip instead.
What you hadn't noticed earlier, was the way the entire upper right side of the torn page was encrusted with an unfortunately familiar rust red. It was so thick in place that a few of his words were indecipherable, but you were fairly good at guessing what was being said.
The note read as follows.
"The skin isn't enough. I know it bothers you to see the marks I leave as a result, [and I]'m sorry it gets you so sick, but it's the best I can do without [cutti]ng you open and crawling inside of you. That wouldn't be [enough?] either, I don't think.
I need to be you, be within you and far beyond it, behind it. This isn't enough for me. Leaving you would kill me, I can't die anywhere but beside you. They won't let me. I have to do this, and you're supposed to run from it. Things will still fall in place. We will still fall together in the end. It's kind of like a game of cat and mouse, don't you think? You're having your turn as the cat, too. [As I wri]te this, you are off, a few parallels between our world and the beyond, writing these exact words. I adore you, we will devour one another as the same, soon.
You are mine, and I am lifelessly yours. We are the inescapable.
Eternally, Your Ghoul."
Initially, you didn't respond. You didn't even stiffen up out of disgust or fear. Just looking the note over, and over, and over, until the words began to turn to jumbled and disjointed letters piled on each other. That's kind of what it looked like too, with his shitty, barely legible cursive that spilled all over the page as if the lines didn't exist.
Now you just wanted to vomit again. You wished he didn't have this sort of power over your head. The rightful paranoia and constant state of dread, it was getting to be more than exhausting.
He was running you down to the wire on purpose. You were sure of it.