Page 13 of Pareidolia

All I can feel is how wrong it is when he stands from the desk where he’d been sitting and tilts his head as he looks at me.

“Am I dreaming?” The question is right, but the tone is all wrong.

He sounds almost…

Excited.

I’ve never met a human who was excited to be swallowed by shadows. It makes me pull back, let moonlight flood into the room just enough that I can see his face—just enough that he can probably see the faintest outline of me. The soft glow of red that spills from beneath my wings in an ebb and flow of my strength, my power, the core of what I am, reflects in his eyes.

“You’re in my forest.” I growl, flicking my wings out as I speak so they brush the roof of the little cabin we’re in. There’s barely enough space for me to move in here, but it’s enough for me to spread the appendages wide.

My wings are the lure, and the shadowed tentacles that spill from beneath my skin and stretch out, ready to strike, are the weapon.

But the man in front of me isn’t acting like prey.

Just as much as my shadows fill the room, his emotions do as well.

He stares at me with wide, curious eyes, and I find myself nearly drunk on the lack of fear spilling from him. He’s cold—the only emotion I can taste is fascinated confusion. A little disbelief. They all slip and slide through my body like glacial ice. Most humans run so hot, sweaty, sour.

He’s clean and cool. Refreshing apathy that’s nearly flavorless on my tongue as he steps forward. The tastes I’ve had before are nothing in comparison to what it feels like now that I’m close to him, now that I’m getting it straight from the source.

“I have to be dreaming,” he breathes, and his hand reaches up like he isn’t approaching the body of a monster.

“I don’t deal in dreams and wishes,” I rumble. “Others of my kind do, but I don’t ask for the emotions I eat. I take them.”

It’s a warning.

To my surprise, he laughs. It’s just as neat and apathetic as the taste of him as he steps closer. “You can’t rob a man with nothing to give.” He breathes it out like a confession he’s been waiting to spill his entire life. “I’m empty through and through… and you…” He stops when he’s standing so close I could reach out and break his neck if I wanted. “You’re real.”

I lift one arm and wrap my fingers around his throat, while another rakes spiked claws down his front. I’m delicate, careful—I want to shred through the fabric without marring his flesh so he can see the danger, so I can know if he’ll give me a reaction.

He’s unlike anything I’ve ever met before… he…

My thoughts trail off as his skin comes into view. His entire upper body is littered with tattoos, but there’s only one that matters.

Across his chest, on his collarbone.

It’s my wings.

I did taste him all those years ago, his murder and apathy clinging to a dying boy’s skin.

And he…

“You saw me.”

“I thought I made you up,” he whispers, rough and choked with my grip still on his throat. I bring a third arm up, raking claws through his hair to jerk his head back so he has to look at me.

“I’m real.” I wait—watch his pupils dilate as I flex my wings behind me. Most humans get caught up in the swirl of the eyes, the spotted black and white. The red glow. My body is only a body I made up, that I conjured centuries ago and decided to keep when people whispered mothman beneath their breath in fear.

“You’re beautiful.” It comes out in a gasp, and he brushes his hand past my arms and over my shoulder.

His fingers touch my wings, smoothing along edges that no mortal has ever touched… and then his eyes flare wide—flicker.

Spill to white.

To red.

To black.