Page 12 of Shattered In Darkness

I tilt my head, giving her a look, careful not to soften even a millimeter.

“Old people are annoying,” I say. “They leave behind weird smells and plastic on the couches.”

That gets Sophie’s face to fall, but Lola snorts, her lips twitching.

She tucks her hair behind her ear, jaw set, and a fire burning bright in her eyes. “Sophie tells me you’re kind of a neat freak. Like, bordering on psycho.”

Sophie shushes her. Too late. Lola grins wider.

“Yeah. I am a psycho. Girls like you learn to stay far away from guys like me.”

I don’t know why I say that. I want her to come closer, but I can’t control my tongue sometimes. I watch her eyebrow rise. My lips pull into the faintest smile. She takes a step closer. Still far enough to put distance. But her smell? It’s consuming. Tantalizing.

“What makes you think you know what kind of girl I am?” Lola speaks in a way that sends heat straight to my dick.

I hold in a breath and clench my fists. “I don’t plan to care about what kind of girl you are. Just stay away, got it?”

I put some distance between us. Who the fuck does this girl think she is? Coming in here, challenging me. I fucking like it though. It feels good. But I’m not used to this feeling. It scares me. It makes me want to run.

Sophie is about to say something, but Lola stops her and rolls her eyes. “Whatever you say. Nice meeting you, Mr. Grouchy.”

Lola walks away with Sophie, flipping me off and swaying her hips. I watch. Fucking obsessed with the way she moves. I watch her until she vanishes, and I realize that my heart is beating too fast.

What the fuck is happening to me? I can’t get her out of my head.

There’s a low, gnawing ache in my chest, harder and brighter than before. It hurts, this thing I never had a name for, not in all the years they tried to label me with syndromes and dull me with bitter pills.

I’m not a good guy. I’m not a soft guy. I’m a guy who has already killed somebody. There’s blood on my hands and ghosts in my head.

The worst part? I do not feel guilty. The kid had it coming. He was pissing me off. He was the kind of guy who pushed other kids around for no reason. That day? He was pushing me around. Calling me names like “robot boy” and “empty eyes.”

I only meant to make him afraid when I shoved him down. I didn’t intend for his head to crack open like an egg.

I’m not a good guy, but I do not want Lola to know that. My Bambi is so sweet. I do not want to scare her away by showing her how fucking dangerous I am. How I can snap at any moment. Lust, desire, obsession. None of those capture the fractal edge to it, the split-second violence of needing her closer, even if it means tearing her open or burning down everything between us.

My Bambi. My Lola. My light in the dark.

4

BRODY

After all this time, my Bambi is still as stunning as ever. Those hypnotizing eyes that pierce through me. Those round tits. Always fucking turning me on.

I went into that building to do a job. My father made it clear what kind of person I needed to be after the incident, so, I became that. I did not intend to come back into town, but things change. I came back home to be closer, and to do my father’s dirty work. He needs me here. So, I’m here.

Despite my rage towards her.

The first girl to ever make me feel. To make me yearn. To make me fucking obsessed. I fell for her and she fell for me, then, it all fell down. Back then, just the thought of her made me feel something that wasn’t hunger or hate, but this sick, shivering hope that maybe I could be changed. That she could fix me.

Lola Bloom is exactly like her father: a sly snake. A conniving bitch.

I can still envision her. Earlier, in the studio before I made my kill. Lola, spinning slowly in the center of a biting white light, music pulsing and hands everywhere, her hips grinding. Her face was a half-shadow, but I knew every line. The perfect jaw, the lips made for sucking, those blue eyes that lock and twist and take.

She gave a performance back there. She was the best at pretending: helpless, desperate for rescue, needing someone to champion her, when what she really craves is power. Control.

But I couldn’t stop looking at her. Never could. The need is still there, festering, doubling back on itself, black and bitter and endless. She is an infestation in my fucking blood. The anger consumes me, but so does the obsessive hunger.

It’s pathetic. I want to break something. Rip drywall, splatter blood. Instead, I focus on the aftermath of the job. My father’s voice echoes from a thousand dissected memories: