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There was someone in my territory. I felt it with that inexplicable, indefinable sense that had developed and grown in me in the time since the Entity had enfolded me in its fog, altered me, and brought me into its realm. A sense both benign and irresistible. Distant and as present as the breath washing back over my face under my mask. I knew someone was there, but I didn’t know who.
Not one of the survivors, I thought, though a few of them were prone to wandering frequently in my territory. The Saboteur, the pest who tore apart my traps and who I thought was rather fond of my ire. The small, frightened one with his eyes behind glasses, whose presence I had yet to understand, as he scurried away from me before I could catch him and discover what he wanted. The tired one, the one Kruger called his, who came to scavenge whatever he could find in my manor and who I sometimes ignored and allowed to steal. Others I knew less well and who I drove away with ruthless thoughtlessness. I was not here to be kind, after all. Not one of the Entity’s favored killers for allowing the prey to roam freely through my territory.
Grumbling low in my throat, I put aside the trap I’d been bent over and stood from the stool near my work table. The intruder could have been a survivor, but I doubted it. Not now. It was one of the curious lulls in the Entity’s trials, where the trials weren’t so much at a standstill, as were happening infrequently, irregularly, with long stretches of nothing strung between them, like pearls of rain on a spider's thread. Bright, shining spots of energy and motion clinging together by bland, slow exhales of nothing. The survivors seemed to move less at times like these, adhering close to their campfire, as if they were languid and sleepy, while the killers appeared to wake more from their typical lascivious apathy and grow tired of their own territories.
More times than I could count, I’d had to chase some bored member of my own brood out of my area. Some I could tolerate, but most I had no use for. They could go find someone else’s hunting grounds to stalk.
I let a huff of breath, like a sigh, escape me and it rolled back over my face in a dark wash. Driving other killers away was a less than inviting prospect, but I still paced out of my workshop, steps measured and slow. There was no need to rush forward, though I did not know exactly where my intruder was, his presence drew me, pulling on my nerves the way a magnet drew on metal shavings. I would find him, as long as I allowed my feet to carry me forward.
Forward. Out of the manor and through the remnants of the once garden that had graced its grounds. Over the farrow earth, where I spread my traps for the unwary and the foolish and the little Saboteur, as well. And there was the one bold enough to trespass on my ground striding toward me, avoiding my traps with the long-limbed grace of which only he seemed capable.
Philip Ojomo, the Wraith.
He glided toward me easily, as if his feet didn’t touch the ground and my traps didn’t exist. Every movement and willowy sway of that body liquid and lithe, making his simple walk look like a dance.
But Wraith was just like that, his movement and grace all unconscious and without premeditation. All of it. Right down to how he stopped in front of me, head lowered. Somehow appearing small, in deference to me and the fact this was my territory, despite his height. Wraith was lyric in motion and poetry in repose and he didn’t even know it. And it would do no good to tell him. All one could do with Wraith was take him in for what he was and accept him.
I let him stand for a few moments, while we just breathed, let him feel I was deciding what to do with my intruder, before finally breaking the silence encompassing us and uttering a single word. A simple word. His name. “Wraith.”
In response, he tilted his head from side to side and raised his hands to me, palms up, fingers reaching, appealing and confused. And I remembered the young thing couldn’t speak.
When the Entity had taken Philip Ojomo and altered him, much of what had been soft flesh had petrified, gone hard and rigid and smooth as varnished wood. His body moved with that ever-present grace, but his face was now set in forever-sad, pensive lines, his eyes downcast and distant and faintly glowing. A beautiful, sorrowful picture painted on hardened, living tissue. Wraith’s breaths came thick and noticeable from a tightened throat, but he never spoke. I guessed his vocal cords were fused, but what did I know about the inner workings of another killer?
It wasn’t as though he was actually young, either. Wraith had been a man when the Entity had taken him, but in hell time held little meaning and I’d been here the longest. Any of those who’d come later on in the Entity’s game seemed younger to me. Wretches to be mildly cared for or nightmares to be chased off my ground.
Wraith was one of the former. The young one made it an intermittent habit to show up in my territory. Sometimes he would do no more than follow me at a distance, drifting and dogging my steps, while I mended traps, made minor repairs to the manor, before silently disappearing back to his own area. Other times, he came for other things, and with no voice to speak his desires, he relied on other means to pierce the silence imposed on him.
What was important with Wraith was allowing him to articulate what he wanted in his own way and time.
“Wraith,” I said again, slowly, unhurriedly, giving him that time.
He swayed in place, not out of fatigue or imbalance or any other incapacitation, rather just Wraith’s way of being in motion, even while he was still. It was a pretty sight, like wind-tossed grass. Slow. And thoughtless. A matter of height and unnoticed grace I doubted the Entity had anything to do with. This was all Philip Ojomo, some leftover of what he’d been in his humanity. Was that thought melancholy? Or just regretful? It didn’t matter.
The young thing swayed there a moment more, eyes downcast and averted, but he didn’t drift off to the side, to avoid me and slowly follow me wherever I decided to go, and he didn’t absently turn away to return to his own area, after a glimpse of me. He merely lingered there, within the confines of what could be called my personal space, and mutely raised his palms to me again. Inquiring. Pleading. Perhaps even shy of what he needed.
“Come on, then,” I said, turning leisurely and taking my time, as I made my way back to the manor. He would follow, I knew, and if I sauntered, so as to keep his lither form in my peripheral vision a short while longer, that was my own concern. Beauty, or anything that could be called beauty, was all too rare in the Entity’s realm. Philip Ojomo may not have been beautiful in any conventional sense any longer, but he had a way about him and I didn’t mind serving his needs when he chose to express them.
I led him straight into the manor, ignoring the workshop, where I’d left my traps. At times, I took him to the living room and utilized the heavy couches or chairs there, but not today. This time, I brought Wraith to a bedroom. Not my bedroom. What a man could call his own was also all too rare in the Entity’s realm, and I’d grown defensive of the few things I’d kept to myself. But a bedroom. One of the ones I’d cleaned and brought back to as near what it’d been before the Entity as being in its realm allowed.
Wraith deserved a bed. And some gentleness. And someone who didn’t view him as a monster.
I could give him some of those things. Sometimes. When we were both in a certain mood.
“On the bed.” I said it, but it wasn’t really necessary. Wraith glided to it and spread himself out, as if this were all he could want. As if I were all he could want. An errant thought I grunted at and pushed aside, as I unfastened my clothes and stepped out of them.
Wraith was humming inviting sounds and had his knees up and his thighs open for me before I even knelt between his legs, and this was good. The young thing could not speak, but he could still show consent and articulate some form of enjoyment. If he had been incapable of it, I would not have done this with him. I did not mind taking care of Wraith’s needs, but I wasn’t one to participate in anything that left me doubting my partner’s willingness. I was not in the Entity’s realm to be kind, but I was not its dog, either. I kept parts of myself, just as Philip Ojomo did.
And perhaps he knew it. That small sense of personal dignity might have been one of the reasons Wraith willingly came to me and mutely begged me for relief. But what did I know? All I really understood was he kept coming back and sometimes we could do this together.
Admiring the young one below me, still cooing wordless noises of invitation, I put one hand on his hip, to steady him, and let the other trail over the expanse of exposed flesh just above the layer of thin bandages swathing Wraith’s lower half. Allowed myself to explore what had once been textured skin in another time, back before the Entity had taken Wraith, and what was now something resembling flesh turned to living wood. My fingertips encountered nothing but unnaturally smooth, hardened, yet yielding hide, like the skin of a silver birch.
Often, I wondered if Wraith could feel me touching him or not, but whatever he was or was now unable to feel, his breathing roughened and grew more labored, and the young thing beneath me tossed his head back, even as he rolled his hips up into my touch. A clear, if silent, indication I do more than just run my hands over him and continue admiring all that elegance in stillness spread out on my bed.
Grunting, I did as he wanted and slid my hand lower, down between his legs and under the bandages there. I knew what I would find. Nothing but more, smooth, leathern, silken-softness of flesh-turned-hard, until I reached his entrance and cupped it in my palm. The Entity had left Wraith with desire, but had taken half of what he needed to sate that desire all at the same time.
A thing I didn’t dwell on. Philip Ojomo was warm against my hand, and when I ground down on him that thick breathing came even louder, echoing around the room. Whether Wraith’s enjoyment was physical or mental, it was a real thing. A solid thing. A thing just as centered in reality as the oak frame holding the bed we shared.
And we were both impatient, and never knowing when you would be pulled into a trial made lingering a rare pastime in the Entity’s realm, one to be indulged in at your own risk. I’d brought a small tube of grease with me, the kind I used to keep my traps oiled, and I used it to slick my fingers, easing their glide into Wraith. As I spread him open, one finger at a time, his legs wrapped around my hips and twitched into my movements, while his hands came up and grasped my shoulders.
Somehow, Wraith’s fingers always avoided the hooks in my skin, just as his willowy sway never seemed to encounter my traps. Yet, the young one gripped my skin, fingers digging in with enough force to bruise, and all with the intention I should not leave. That I stay there and finish what I'd started. And I let him dig into me. The almost pain from his crushing hold was better than the dull burn the sensation of the hooks had become, and the urging of his heels into my tailbone refreshing in a way few other things were.
When I retracted my fingers, Wraith and I were both more than ready. I went to grip the young thing by the jut of his hipbones, to pull him close to me, but he had other ideas. Using his hold on my shoulders as leverage, Wraith both pushed me up into a sitting position and used my wright to pull himself up into my lap. He perched there a moment, head slightly lowered, face set in those forever-wistful lines, then he raised himself up, balancing with his hands on my shoulders and his knees around me, and settled himself down onto me in one motion.
The action pulled a groan out of me. However hard and near-lifeless Wraith might appear to be on the outside, he was hot and soft on the inside, and his body clenched around me, as Wraith breathed disordered breaths by my ear.
He stayed still a moment, adjusting to me, then began moving up and down on me. I let him do this, as well. Let him set our pace and direct this interaction between us, only supporting him and gently gripping him at the hips. Loosely holding those protrusions of bone, so my hands slipped over his hide, as he moved up and down. Wraith’s head was tucked into my neck and his breath was heavy on the skin there. My heart was hammering in my chest and a part of me wanted to reverse our positions, but that was a distant want. Another part of me reveled in the young one’s energy and want. He wanted to be right where he was.
Riding me into my own mattress.
So, we stayed like that, him on top of me, until Wraith brought himself to his own climax. The fact of it, and the proof Wraith could still feel this, evident in the clench of him around me and the way he straightened his back with a hiss of expelled air and threw his head back. His body was spasming in little, fluttering pulses where it encased me, and all of it, the sight of Wraith in this pleasure and the feel of him, made me decide he’d had enough. I’d let the young one have his way and now I wanted mine.
With a huff of breath, I upended him off of me and let him sprawl onto the bed, while I rolled onto my knees and spread his legs, once again. Wraith lay there a half a beat, then cooed an invitation and opened his thighs even further. I pressed back into him and he struggled, gave something like a weak squirm, most likely gathering himself and experiencing oversensitivity. But this was fleeting.
Momentary.
Then Wraith was nudging his hips up into me and my thrusts and drawing rough, difficult breaths and letting them out as encouraging hums and coos, inviting me to continue. And then Wraith’s hands were coming up and his fingers were dancing over my face. His fingers caressed each plane and crevices and marred ridge of what the Entity had left me with, each brush soft as butterfly’s wings. Wraith was examining me. Feeling me. Memorizing me, as if he were blind and had no other way to drink in my features but through the subtleness of touch and I was the most beautiful thing he had ever known.
But neither of those things made sense. Philip Ojomo was mute, not blind, and my face was nothing lovely in any understanding of the word. And it didn’t matter anyway.
Wraith’s hands were soft on my face and the inside of him soft and tight around me, and I found my own release, and then just went still there. Spilling deep in Wraith.
It was several moments before I realized Wraith was pushing me gently, his palms light but insistent on my shoulders and chest. I backed away and sat up and the young one came with me. He hummed and purred in my lap for a little while, articulating gratitude in the only way he could, his head down, resting in the curve of my neck, so his audible sounds were more vibrations across my skin. Then he was slipping from my thighs and my bed and gliding away with his personal, easy grace, like water over stones in half remembered streams. Slow, unhurried. Philip Ojomo merely being himself, his poise all unconscious.
When he was gone, I lay there, in the mess of blankets we’d made, and allowed myself to feel the tug of the young one’s retreating presence pull at my mind and that inexplicable sense I now possessed. A magnetism like metal to magnet. Wraith was leaving my territory, but he would be back. Back to silently follow after me and quietly watch me go about my business. Back to implore me to see to his needs. And there were times I wondered why I looked forward to that, to seeing him walk toward me with that willowy sway.