Page 138 of Pareidolia

ASPEN

Nothing feels right. Walking out of Duskfen feels like I’m walking out of somewhere that finally feels like…

I am not using the word home about a place where a monster held me down on a table and forced me to choke on his shadow spit.

Absolutely not.

And yet my eyes keep flicking back to the line of the trees.

Standing in front of the house where I grew up seems to really drive the point home. I never felt home here either, even though it was the only place I’ve ever been able to call that word. I feel more comfortable in my van, sleeping under the stars…

I felt more comfortable in the fire tower than I ever felt here, and I don’t know how much longer I can deny the fact that I just want to go back now that I’m away from it.

I mean… I have to go back. I left my laptop there, my clothes, my chargers. Everything that makes up my transient life is sitting in a fucking backpack on a bed that’s stained with blood.

Well, that and…

My hand touches the center of my chest again, and the things beneath my skin squirm against my palm, silently sending out an SOS that I get back to where I belong before they burst through my flesh and drag me back one painful inch at a time.

I shiver and silently berate myself, because it’s not out of revulsion.

I’m not going to figure out twenty-something years into my life that I have some weird-ass tentacle fetish, or monster-fucker tendencies.

I’m not doing it.

At least not willingly.

I lean my forehead against the cool metal of my van and blow out a slow breath. Earlier, when I was in town, one of the people recognized me. I guess it’s just luck that Noah Daniels hasn’t, because his dad sure as fuck did. Ewan Daniels looked me up and down and called me by name, shook my hand, asked me how I’d been.

I’d had to plaster on a happy face, and silently cursed myself for not driving to the next town over to get food and take a fucking shower. It was inevitable that someone would recognize me, but I don’t know why the people I keep running into have to be related to the boy I killed before I left.

At least he let me leave without any real issues, though I don’t know how long I’m going to be safe in the fire tower now that Noah’s dad knows who I am. I didn’t tell him where I was staying, just that I was passing through to check out the house that my parents left for me after they died.

It was the only fucking reason I drove here to begin with.

I glare at it now, like a dwelling has the ability to plot my downfall.

Empty. Fully furnished. From what Ewan said, well maintained at the moment. If I really wanted to settle here, all the answers are right there waiting for me. All I’d have to do is use the fucking key that I know is waiting for me if I just bother going to the court house in the middle of town to fill out the paperwork.

All the answers are right there at my fingertips, and the clawing tendrils in my chest are demanding I figure it out sooner rather than later, before they decide to figure it out for me.

Right now, I’m just trying to breathe around that squirming sensation… right now, I just want to get back to my laptop and write about eyes that glow red in the dark until I can figure out how in the fuck to get my own thoughts under control.

I’ve never felt more out of control in my life.

“Come on, Aspen,” I mutter under my breath. “You don’t want a home, and you don’t belong to anyone.” The squirming in my chest is a direct contradiction to the words. It spills up, clawing through my veins and dragging along the back of my throat until I nearly gag.

“Fuck,” I hiss, and then again. “Fuck.”

I have to get back to the fire tower.

“I need to leave.” Leave town. Leave this place. Leave everything before I’m completely consumed.

The crunching sound of a car pulling into the driveway is all the more incentive for me to start moving, because I realize exactly who it is the second I see the stupid little forest logo on his Jeep.

“Alex Michaels.” I freeze with my fingers on the door handle to my van. I was so close to leaving—so close to getting as fucking far away from here, from memories and moths and the way it felt for Nox to touch me like he had…

So close, but Noah Daniels calling out a name I haven’t used in years makes me pause.