Midnight Monster

There it was again.

That sound.

The one I wasn’t sure if I was imagining or not.

The kind of noise you’d like to ignore. Nails on a chalkboard. Rustling under the bed. Tiptoeing rats across scuffed floorboards.

A room that’s too silent.

There were pros and cons to living alone. The big negative currently showing itself was the lack of a burly, baseball-bat-wielding boyfriend while the dark of my small bedroom grew thicker. I pulled my covers tighter around me, closed my eyes, and wished for sleep.

“Rissa.” My name, hissed from somewhere in the heavy black. My heart stopped. It had to be a prank, right? A friend with a cell phone.

I had to open my eyes. I was going to lose my mind if I didn’t. I slowly peeled one eye open, and then the other.

I wasn’t alone in my room. Next to me stood the most imposing…thing I had ever seen. Even in the dark, I could see them clearly. At least eight feet tall, with horns taller yet rising from shadowy features. Electric blue eyes stared at me out of the confines of a sharply chiseled face, one that looked carved out of coal. 

My mouth dropped open, ready to scream and rage, but before I could, a hand clamped over my mouth. Except the creature’s arms — if you could call them that — never left his side. But I wasn’t imagining it. Something was covering my mouth, preventing me from making a single sound.

“Marissa.” There was my name again, a gentle caress of my mind. I wasn’t sure if I was actually hearing the words aloud, or if they were for me alone. The thing’s mouth wasn’t moving. I found myself unable to look away, oddly compelled by this monster watching me carefully. I had done a lot of terrible things in my life. Was this my punishment? Maybe he was here to drag me through the fiery gates of hell.

“I’ve been watching you. I thought you would’ve noticed me by now,” he murmured. For surely it had to be a he, for the way the deep voice ran over my body. “I’m going to take my hand away from your mouth now. But you have to promise me you will not scream when I do so.”

I nodded, eyes wide. I wouldn’t scream. I wanted to hear more of what this monster had to say. Why was he under my bed? Why was he watching me? I wasn’t entirely convinced that this wasn’t a dream, brought on by the sleeping tablets that rested next to my headboard. The weight moved off my mouth, and I took a deep breath in, savoring the fresh air. “I can hear you,” I whispered. “I mean, not in my mind.”

I sounded crazy.

He nodded, the big head tipping down. “Yes. You’ll be able to hear me both inside your mind, and outside of it. It’s one of my many abilities.”

“Many?” I was fucked up. People didn’t wake up to monsters next to their bed and ask them about their talents. They screamed and ran. They didn’t find themselves with a growing ache between their legs as blue eyes stared into them, through them.

The mouth curved up, in what I assumed to be a smile. “Many. Would you like to see them?”

I chewed my lip. If this was a dream, I didn’t really have a choice. “Will they hurt?”

“If you want them to.” A low laugh punctuated his words. “I’ve been watching you for some time, Marissa, and I think I can offer you what’s been missing from your life.”

“And what exactly is missing?”

A quiet pause surrounded us as we stared each other down. “You want to ride the edge of pleasure and pain. You want someone to give you the bliss you crave, instead of creating it yourself. I can give you that.”

A touch was stroking my bare legs, drawing goosebumps from my skin. But his hand still hadn’t moved from his side. What would that feel like? To have multiple touches at once, all from one being. Kisses were trailing down my neck, from a mouth that didn’t exist.

“Will you let me?” A question. A command. Let me.

I nodded, unable to look away. Yes.

He was over me, faster than I could track the movement. Instead of a single hand tracing delicate circles on my legs, there were two. Maybe three. One gripped my skin tightly, surely leaving bruises in its wake. The result was a dizzying combination of gentle and rough.

I gasped, trying to find something to cling to on his massive shoulders. A touch, rubbing my clit in a way that was sure to drive me crazy.

“What do you like more, Rissa?” he rumbled. “The pleasure, or the pain?”

“Both. Both, please.” I grasped whatever purchase I could find on his smooth skin. A twist on one nipple at the same time as a gentle suck on the other dragged a moan from my mouth. I could no longer tell the difference between reality and imagination. It didn’t matter. This monster knew my needs better than I knew myself. His weight pressed against me in a comforting way as he used my body in a way I had been desperate for. A thick length pressed against my thigh, and I was soaked with the idea of how he would feel deep in my pussy. I would feel him everywhere, in more ways than one.

The circling on my clit turned into a quick smack, and I shrieked. I was overwhelmed with sensation, craving release from the darkness that loomed overhead. The touch between my legs was replaced by his thick length, and I looked up into those icy blue eyes once more.

All at once, the touches faded away. There was nothing more than his massive cock between my legs, and my aching pussy. “Please,” I begged. “Please.”

“You’ll be ruined for any other man. No mortal will be able to compare to what I can give you.” I could’ve sworn he was smirking.

“I don’t care.”

A moment passed, and then he pushed inside my wet heat. He was everywhere, and I was riding the edge of pure exhilaration. Each thrust brought me closer to release, and I was no longer sure of my own name. All I knew was the orgasm I was chasing, his cock reaching places I had no idea were possible.

“Come, Rissa.” The loud demand was joined by all of the sensations coming back. All of the hands, the pinches and kisses. The strokes and pulls. “Come for the monster under your bed.”

I cried and trembled, my release shaking through me. A growl of my name was all I heard as he came inside me. And then the weight was gone, leaving me with just pleasure racing through my veins. He was gone, leaving me alone in my room again. Had I only imagined the whole thing? The throbbing between my legs told me otherwise.

And then from the corner, I heard it. The fluttering of bat wings. The creaking of an old floorboard. And my name, hissed.

Rissa.

The room grew silent once more, the oppressive darkness giving way to the dawn. Sleep called to me, and I gave in, finding myself dreaming of what nightmares tomorrow night would bring.

I Always Knew I Was Rotten

I think I always knew something was wrong with my soul.

I always knew something was rotting beneath my skin. That the soft flesh of my heart was giving way to nothing. A sludge, held on by desperation and contempt, nothing more. Nothing less. Still it beats though, doing as it’s told to do. I’m not sure it knows that nothing is there anymore, just battered trash, a ghost of what it’s supposed to be. It’s pretending, wearing a mask so that no one guesses we aren’t who we’re supposed to be.

I think I always knew my veins didn’t pump blood, but poison. Thick and hot, bubbling through my body. A toxin, leeching its way through my easily corruptible parts. I don’t know where it started, though. Maybe in the heart, turning me with pump of the vessel.

Thump.

Thump.

Thump.

Maybe it started in my lungs, with each breath I desperately sucked in through anxious lips. Oxygen turning into venom. Love turning into bane.

Breathe, they say.

How? I ask.

Maybe it began in my bones, the very core of my body. The framework that keeps me upright, the structure of which I am built around. Because if there is corruption in the foundation, surely the whole thing would crumble down around it. Or maybe it would grow larger, stretching toward the sky, no one the wiser that the shapeshifter blending in with them is actually a demon in disguise.

Maybe this is just how I’ve always been, born from the grave, and to the grave I’ll return. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Just in this case, my bones were formed out of the ashes of my last life, a soul just as dark as the one that currently resides inside me. One day, when I’m found out, and burned alive, and the dust will carry across the gravestones of all the lives I’ve lived before this, a new me will be formed. We will be just as dark. Just as poisonous. A moonlit flower with teeth.

I think I always knew I was rotten. I always knew. There was no shock when my brain registered what was happening beneath my delicate flesh. The surprise came when I began to accept the corruption.