“The hide comes from a man I flayed before eating.”His voice curls with satisfaction. I don’t know how I hear it, but I feel it.
“What the fuck even are you?”
“A voice in your head.”He chuckles.“I am your friend, don’t you remember me?”
My head begins to pound the more I focus. “I don’t remember…” I clutch the tooth to my heart. “I don’t know where to begin.” I admit to him. “I just feel the need to run. To fight.”
“You shouldn’t run from me.”
The ground ripples again and I hold the pointed tip of the teeth at the figure that’s emerging from the black soil. I just know this is the voice in my head. He’s tall. So fucking tall that it took me a few seconds for my eyes to reach his.
He’s looking down at me curiously like I’m a creature, too.
“You hold my gaze very well, my sweet dreamer. Most humans cannot stand seeing my eyes.”
Ugh. The creature has an ego. He thinks he’s a prophecy. Total. Ick.
“Ick? Why am I an ick? What makes me an ick to you?”
Weird how he even understands slang. I move back, shaking the tooth at him. “Are you reading my mind?”
He grins wide, cheekily.“Only if you think loud enough.”
“How the fuck does that even work?!” Nothing is making goddamn sense!
“Nothing should make sense. If you think it should, you’re in the wrong place.”
For a moment, my anger wavers, crumbling to the weight of existential crisis. What’s a worse fear than not knowing who you are?
“There’s a greater fear than that.”He responds, his mouth not moving at all.“The fear of knowing who you are deep down and realizing you do not like that person. Sometimes, you have to succumb to the fear to discover how strong you truly are.”
“Geez, can you get any more philosophical.” I quip uncomfortably.
His eyes turn into slits as he laughs. The trees sway, earth quaking.“You make comments to sweep uncomfortable things under the rug.”
I purposely ignore him and leave. He doesn’t walk, he glides through the ground.
“Tolerating discomfort is a slow death, Xiaoyu.”
“Right. Love that for me.”
“Do you?”Something twists my hair at the back of my head, halting me. He pulls me back until I am embedded in him. He feels warm and soft like a cradle.
Wrapping my arms around myself, I feel our bodies becoming one. I don’t know why I know this, but it’s his form of a hug.
“I don’t know what to think. I’m a blank slate. I don’t have opinions, just reactions.”
“That may be because of me, I apologize. It will return eventually. Right now, let me feed you. Take you somewhere safe.”
I don’t even knowwheresafe is.
“I don’t trust people who put their dick in my mouth while I’m asleep.” It’s embarrassing how easily I choke up. Tears fill my eyes, my lungs deflating.
His hold around me tightens. “Forgive me. I am not above begging you to give me consent to fuck you in the mouth while you sleep.”
The laugh that erupts from me is grateful and tearful. Still…boundaries. I don’t even know him.
“No.”
