Something gnaws away at me, wastes inside my head.
I strut into the cupboard, shut the door, and prop the mop under the door handle. I turn over a bucket and sit down.
Amy looks at me like I’m the King of Rats. Like she believes I’ve come in here just to eat her alive.
I lick my lips as I enumerate that in my mind. And other things. The ones where she’s screaming. The ones where she can’t get breath to whimper. All the ones where she’s under me and begging, and I’m so drunk on lust that I’m not even capable of mercy. In the back of my mind, that stretching beast pricks up my ears and scents the air, thinking about the salty-sweet tang of her pussy, her honey.
She stands still, like a little stone statue, her hands clasped together low.
I smirk. ‘Come here often?’
‘Why did you follow me in here?’ she squeaks like a mouse.
‘Why are you hiding from me in the broom cupboard?’
The past comes back to haunt. Happy memories of us turn sour in my heart.
She rushes towards the door, then realises I’m blocking the way.
I turn the light off, put her in darkness.
Dead in the light, I wake up in the black.
‘Shepherd?’ Her voice is a whisper.
She pushes to get past my dominating body.
My heavy boot scrapes against her ankle. Amy jerks back. I catch her wrist and tug her against me, my hand a burn on her skin.
The beast in me is pushing out in all directions. She’s sharp angles and tight skin. Defying me, and stinking with fear. Her resistance makes it so much better. Everything else falls away, until there’s just the need to get into her, consume her, with my teeth on her flesh, until I fuck her.
It’s probably a good thing she isn’t obsessed with me as much as I am with her.
‘Put the light on,’ she pleads.
‘You really afraid of the dark?’ My other hand explores the neck of her dress.
The way to get at your soul is through that body.
‘Thing is, you were never afraid of the dark when we used to hide in the cupboard.’
‘Please,’ she says. ‘Stop putting me in the dark.’
I might’ve escaped Nazareth stronger, but the light still pains me. I’m a selfish bastard. I want her to stay in the dark with me.
‘Fine,’ I say.
The dim yellow light kills the darkness.
There is a tiny window, stained cracked glass. The dim light puts a hundred different colours of gold into the small, tight space. There’s a baby wooden crucifix hung on the wall, half broken. And there’s Amy in her white faded dress, golden in the light. She gazes up. All of her white and gold.
When there’s light for her to see by, her gaze is beyond me.
I am nothing.
Amy wakes up my worst feelings, but they get me under her skin. Crawling. Slithering. Touching the secret little spots of her soul. Now I live for them.
She twists her arm. She can’t break free. The smell of her lemon-drop lips is enough to trigger me. So I let her go. Never want to. I want her to keep looking at me so bad. Want my dead heart back.
She scuttles like a scared little mouse to the far corner of the cupboard.
‘What’re you doing in here, Amy?’ I sit back down on the bucket.
‘I come here sometimes to think . . . when I’m sad.’
‘Why won’t you admit you come in here because it reminds you of us?’
‘That’s not why.’
She looks like someone who’s just woken from a dream, and dropped straight into a nightmare.
I am her nightmare, a thousand dreams undone.
There was a time, I guess, when Amy would've given herself to me. But that was back when she didn't know what I am.
If I were a decent guy, I would stay clear. If I were a decent guy, I would've done a lot of things differently.
But I'm not.
I point to the book in her hand. ‘What’re you reading?’
Amy allows herself to look at me. Head shaved on the sides, clad in black like some malevolent villain. I’m a shadow, shepherding darkness to every room she walks into.
‘I like poetry,’ she whispers.
She is like a poem. The complicated kind. The ones that take time to figure out. But when you do, it’s fucking magical.
‘I don’t know about poetry but I’ve got a couple of dirty limericks you’re welcome to.’
Amy sighs audibly.
I’m a thorn in her rose.
‘You wanted to be poet once. I remember. You still want that, Amy?’
She shrugs her shoulders.
Silence.
‘There used to be angels,’ she says, lifting her book up. The title reads Snow Angels. ‘The story is they were incredibly beautiful, with blue feathery wings and real gilded halos. But they’re all gone now. They’ve left us. They must have. Otherwise, how can they let such bad things happen?’
She closes her eyes. ‘It’s pathetic,’ she says, ‘how we can’t live with the things we can’t understand. How if we can’t explain something we’ll just deny it.’
Her short laughter is hollow. Her eyes are red, raw from tears.
She’s practically naked in her thin white dress. Naked and as pale white as the skin under her hair. Naked white and about two steps away. And extremely fuckable.
Just one reach away is the curve of her tiny waist going down along the outline of her sweet tight arse. Just that far is the shelf of her tits pushing up rose button nipples. Just my arm away is the warm hot space where her legs come together.
To keep myself in check, I think of staph infection. I picture the skin infection ringworm. Skin
