In which the game continues.
The first time…
When I reluctantly returned to consciousness, my head was in James’ lap, a smooth fingertip stroking featherlight over my forehead. It made my skin feel flushed, itchy. Opening my eyes gave me a blurry vision of the monster smiling down at me, just a hint of fang reminding me of what had happened.
One hand flew to my neck, accidentally knocking his away as I felt my skin. It should have been torn apart. Skin lacerated, bruises blooming like violent purple flowers. But my fingers found nothing but smooth skin, nothing hurt, nothing to prove what happened the night before. Rolling away from him, I winced. My throat may seem untouched but I was pitifully weak, making vague paddling motions, trying to get to the edge of the bed.
“Stop.”
His voice was calm, but I still froze.
“I don’t want to be near you,” I rasped, my throat felt like it had been skewered with a rusty nail file. “I … need to go to the bathroom.” I kept my back to him, head down. If I looked at him, I’d scream, or try to tear his throat out.
“All right,” James said, drawing it out long enough to make my nerves want to snap like piano wires. “Then come back to bed. You’re going to feel weak and tired today.”
The bathroom mirror proved to me that there was, indeed, no damage to my neck. I felt it, though. The exhaustion, the throbbing under the skin that felt like a contusion trying to surface. My unmarred skin mocked me as I thumped ungracefully down on the toilet.
I can’t go out there.I wasn’t speaking out loud, I knew how good his hearing was, my lips just shaping the words.I can’t look at him. As if he could read my mind, James tapped mockingly on the door. Like he gave a shit about my privacy.
“Come on out, my pretty doll,” I could practically hear the grin in his voice. “You need to have breakfast before I leave.” Cheered by the thought that he would actually leave me alone, I reluctantly opened the door.
“Look at you,” James was practically purring with satisfaction, holding me still with one hand while the other straightened the long white dress he’d given me to wear. His hands were large and smooth, oddly warm and I wanted them the fuck off of me. He was so big … the bulk of him caging me in and it was like my captor loomed, something relentless and monolithic and amused at my feeble efforts to resist him.
The table by the fireplace was set for one, but after courteously pulling out my chair, James seated himself across from me, alternating between watching me eat and reading through a press release. I hated his stare. James watched me put each bite of waffle into my mouth, gazed intently at the movement in my throat.
“Don’t people wonder why you don’t eat?” I asked abruptly, desperate to break up his perusal.
“I can eat,” he said, running a thick finger over his lips. “It’s just not necessary, obviously.” Standing abruptly, he looked out at the heavily overcast sky. “Be good and finish your breakfast,” he smiled at me mockingly, “get your strength back.”
My voice stopped him as his hand reached for the door. “Why me?”
James turned, unfairly beautiful in half-profile. “You’re necessary.”
“Wait- what? What do you mean?” I stepped toward him, but the door was already closing, the clear ‘snick!’ of each lock being engaged.
To my relief, he didn’t come back to the bed - his bed - I slept there alone. I didn’t know where he slept, or even if he did. James could come and go during the day, although Seattle was, admittedly, routinely overcast. I didn’t know if that made the sun issue moot.
I just knew that every time he opened the door, my pulse started rabbiting in my neck and I couldn’t swallow as he smiled at me, not bothering to hide the terrifying sharpness of his teeth. He refused to answer any more questions about what the whole, “you’re necessary” comment meant, or if he’d ever let me go. I lapsed back into bitter silence.
James…
“You’re necessary.”
This girl is so much more than that, I’ve been looking for someone with her gift for what feels like an eternity. But why the hell did I tell her? She doesn’t have to know anything in order to give me what I need. That the first century or so of my life was a black hole. That I regained awareness of myself as a man, as a monster lying on top of a pile of dead bodies, covered in blood.
I’d traveled to every seer, mystic, and shaman I could find who could tell me my given name, who I had been, where I was from. No amount of money or violence could give any of them the ability to find my past for me. The closest was a woman in Mozambique. The locals revered and jealously defended her, but I had my time with her.
“I am not what you need,” Mahina said, fanning herself. She was wearing a colorful caftan, lounging casually on a couch piled with cushions. This seer was not afraid of me, even after I’d made it very clear what I was by lifting her huge “caretaker” by his throat over my head. He was a big man, but he screamed like a child when I grinned up at him.
“You haven’t even attempted to read me,” I said, nodding to the front porch. “Should I bring your bodyguard back in for another demonstration?”
Mahina laughed, a thousand tiny wrinkles appearing on her smooth face. She had snow white hair but the face of a young woman, until she laughed. “Leave the poor man alone. It won’t help your cause. I can’t help you because I am not what you need.”
I folded my arms, leaning against her table scattered with animal skulls, crystals, little bags of mysterious somethings. “What do I need then?”
She stopped fanning herself to reach for my hand. Running a finger along the skin of my wrist, Mahina looked up at me. “You need a scribe. A scribe will touch you…” her finger drifted up my forearm, “they touch you and the words hidden inside you will rise to the surface and your scribe will translate them for you.” Mahina patted my hand and then dropped it. “Everything you wish to know is there. You have to find the scribe who will bring it forth for you.”
Everything had always come to me, everything I wanted. The minute I wanted it. “You have the arrogance, mystic, to tell me that I have to just … look around?” I could feel a growl building in my chest, ready to explode.
