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He took photos, the rain coming down harder now, and looked back at the buildings.
Movement.
He crouched and pricked his ears. One hand of his went behind his back and clasped one of his knives.
He froze, cat-like, in the shadows.
“Oh goddammit!” He heard a voice curse. A female voice. A soft female voice, not used to cursing. Not used to being frustrated, strained. “Oh, for fuck’s sake!” It said again. Phantom didn’t miss the tinge of desperation in her voice.
In the gathering gloom, he looked to where the voice came from.
A woman.
He watched. He stared on at her like he had seen an endangered animal. Entranced. A brunette, wearing a dusty, paint smattered overall. She was petite, lithe. His dark dark eyes clocked that. She must have been in there, renovating the shop all this time. Behind the misted windows. He watched her struggling to haul trash bags into one of the dumpsters. She looked thoroughly pained about the rain that was now coming down thick and fast. Dampening the sound, thickening the air, dark and foreboding.
Yet he was drawn to her like a moth to a flame. He looked on at her, getting wetter and wetter and more frustrated. And he spiraled down the rabbit hole, fast.
He wanted to feel her breath against his skin. He wanted to hear her scream. To gasp for breath. He wanted to smell her. He wanted to feel her pulse fluttering erratically under his strong palm as he held her down. He wanted to see that slender neck of hers against the blade of his knife. He wanted to have her flesh in his mouth. To bite her. To taste her. He wanted to do violent things. He felt himself get hard. He was confused. Did he want to kill her or fuck her? He wasn’t a man, he didn’t need or want what other humans did. He didn’t deserve it. The only way he got near warm flesh was when he was taking life. That was all a monster like him deserved. Wasn’t it?
Fucking hell.
He stared. He wanted to devour her with his eyes. He felt a need in his body. The kind of need he felt before a kill. The enraged beast inside him, rattling its cage, demanding satiation. His fingers itched to grab a knife and throw it. To capture her, like the rare butterfly she was. Or, wait, did they itch to trace the delicate line of her jaw? What kind of satiation was he craving right now? He needed closeness. He needed to see and hear and feel more of her. He wanted to taste her skin in the rain. He bet it tasted like the dew from heaven.
He crept forward, he wanted to taste her. He knew he shouldn’t. He knew he couldn’t.
He knew this was a mistake, this would only end in tears. Salty, bitter tears all around. He knew, just from watching the way she was struggling to move the trash bags, he knew she was too pure for him. Innocent, good. He was a tainted, hideous monster who had no business watching her. He couldn’t trust himself. Even if he did get close, to try to initiate anything vaguely resembling romantic affection–hell, he almost sneered at the thought of that–he might hurt her. He might kill her. He accidentally killed everyone else. His former family. He didn’t mean to, he was angry and… the next thing he knew he was waking up with blood on his hands. He might do that again. He might accidentally squeeze her throat too tightly. His hand on his knife blade might slip. He wouldn’t want to, but he was scared it might happen. He had some sort of blood fury within him, when he saw red, that was it. He left a trail of blood and bones in his wake. He didn’t want that for her.
He knew it would be trouble, he should just walk away. Slip away into the darkness, melt with the rainwater into the gutter and sewers, down into the pits of hell. Get back on his bike, ride home. He knew it all. And yet he could not tear his eyes away. It was like his body was coming alive again, after a thousand years in ice. In a tower, asleep, surrounded by a fire breathing dragon and a forest of thorns. He had been waiting, not sleeping beauty, this time. A sleeping monster, a fucking pandora’s box full of shit, but closed, asleep, unaware. And now he was aware again, coming around, seeing, hearing, tasting. Wanting. Wanting her. He hadn’t wanted a woman in… a long time.
He watched her stand back, bracing her back. She tipped her head back and embraced the falling rain, getting wet instantly. He watched her eyes close and her mouth open a little and sigh, he watched her chest flutter with little breaths. Her hands came up, swept back her hair, glided down her cheeks, her neck. Fuck, her boobs, her torso. He wanted to feel her like that. He wanted his dirty, fucking monster hands all over her. Her flyaway, brown hair was tied up in a messy bun, that was now sagging and dark in the rain. He wanted to grab that bun and bend her over and fuck her until her hair came loose of that bun. Until wet tendrils of hair clung to her face and neck. She wouldn’t know what had hit her. He almost snickered at himself. He had no chance of that, but he could dream about it.
She suddenly yelped, “Oh!”
He found himself startling, too.
She stared straight at him. Fuck. No one usually saw him when he became The Darkness. Once he’d stepped beneath the cloak of the shadows. Somehow, she had.
* * *
“Oh sorry,I didn’t realize there was anyone else here!” she exclaimed.
He wasn’t just anyone else. He was a monster who was thinking about killing her. Thinking about fucking her. Thinking about holding her until she couldn’t breathe. Of course you didn’t realize anyone else was here, he thought in his head, I’m the fucking darkness, the bringer of death. There is no one here, no human, anyway, just a fucking empty shell of a man, a corpse, a phantom.
She looked straight at him, fearless, naive. Her dark eyelashes clung together in the rain. She had light brown eyes, he could see, amber flecks like honeycomb. “I’m just having some difficulty with the trash, I don’t suppose you could help me, could you?”
Phantom was rooted to the spot. The voice in his head spoke to himself. I would love to help you, Sugar Plum, but I’m scared I’ll kill you so I’ll stay right here, thanks.
She thrust a bulging black sack at him, which he caught automatically. He blinked down at the bag in his hands. “Hmm,” he grunted. Guess he was helping her load the dumpsters after all.
“You work for the pharmacist, don’t you?”
Over my dead body, he thought. He felt the slight whoosh of air through his nose that might have been a laugh, but Phantom didn’t laugh out loud.
She carried on, despite him not saying anything back to her. “I’ve seen you waiting on your bike outside, you are like their courier, right? Delivering medicines?”
Delivering death, Sugar, he thought, imagining his responses as he often did. For he never spoke them.
She carried on, even though he hadn’t uttered a word. “Well, I’d really appreciate it if you could not mention this to them, that I’m just sneaking my things into their trash…” She huffed. “I’m just setting up. I got a delivery of all the furniture and everything but it was wrapped in so much plastic and cardboard, it won’t all fit in my dumpster, I’m stuck with a huge amount of stuff that needs to go…” She chatted on and Phantom could only stare back.
