Page 115 of Pareidolia

“Like you?” I can’t stop the question, but I do finally turn to get him back in my sight. He’s closer now, so close I should be able to feel the heat from his body pressing against me. Instead, there’s just something cool, a tingling chill that races along my skin and whispers for me to step forward.

The whisper of the dead leaves, of the frozen ground. The echoing call of the cold air outside, somehow made physical.

“I’m more than a simple human word… but you… you are a little monster, aren’t you?” He leans in, and a long, dark tongue flicks out to lick his lips, to taste the air. “You’re broken.”

Broken.

I’d been called that before, though anyone who’d said it was dead now.

“Broken, right. Fuck you too, I guess.” I frown. Fuck, of course even a giant-ass moth is going to judge me for how fucked up I am.

“Broken,” he whispers, stepping closer. “Broken, broken, broken.” The word comes faster and faster, until it blurs together like the hum of beating wings.

There’s something so strange about his voice, a cadence that runs along the inside of my skull. It feels like he’s taking the word “broken” and pressing it into all my empty spaces to prove it’s true.

It’s that voice more than anything that feels inhuman. I shiver, taking a step away from him. Just that small movement makes his eyes dilate, and the flash of sharp teeth spark through the low light of the room.

Like a predator.

Like he’s smelled weakness.

Before he gets any ideas, I turn to face him, moving forward the half step I’d put between us. It’s obvious if I want to get out of this alive, I’m going to have to prove that my earlier words were more than just bravado.

“Maybe I am empty, or broken. Whatever… but if I am, why are you here?” My head tilts, my chin tipping up so I can look him in his crimson eyes.

Fuck.

Crimson eyes.

I’m still half convinced that this is a dream and I’m going to wake up with a new book idea.

“This is my forest.” He answers like I should already have known.

“Last I saw, it belongs to everyone.”

His wings flutter again, fast enough to match the hum of his voice earlier.

“I was here before humans walked, when the soil was still new, before the trees grew.” He shifts even closer, close enough that my hand starts to ache and that red flare beneath my skin bursts to life again, tearing a pain along my skin that seems to pool from the center of my chest and spill outward to my fingertips. “I existed before you were a thought in the eye of the universe, and I’ll be here long after you’re food for the worms, dead in the earth.”

All of this is too much. I still can’t wrap my head around the fact that the thing standing in front of me is real, and I’m not sure if he isn’t going to eat me after he stops telling me how old he is.

“I didn’t know it was your forest.” I mentally berate myself for mocking the giant moth monster with biceps big enough that he could probably crush my head four times… but… “If it’s really that big a deal, I can leave.” Even as I say it, a stab of irritation rips through me. I don’t want to leave. Especially not now.

Not when he’s here, and I can get answers. Not when I’ve had the mark of his wings tattooed on my body for years. Not when he’s helped me get away with murder more than once, even though I’m sure he didn’t do it out of the kindness of his heart.

Hearts?

I wasn’t sure if moths even had hearts.

He tilts his head in a sharp, jagged movement that makes that humming sound spill through the air again as his wings flex. The blur of color makes my breath catch in my chest, and whispers in the back of my mind that I don’t have to go anywhere.

That I’m right where I’m supposed to be.

“Leave?” It comes out in a strange mixture of a growl and a purr.

“I…” I did just offer to leave, didn’t I? It’s probably a better idea than staying here and getting hypnotized by his wings. Fuck, didn’t they used to whisper about that in the stories I heard? A creature in the forest with red wings, white wings, a voice that could promise anything and teeth sharp enough to make sure you’d never want anything ever again? “Yeah. Leave.”

Or wake up. One or the other.