Page 55 of Beneath the Dirt

“He won’t hurt you,” Harlan attempts to reassure me, but the snake’s hiss indicates otherwise. “Not if you cooperate, that is.”

I scoff internally, still not able to muster up the energy I need to fight him or this damn snake off me. Not yet, at least.

“What did you give me? I feel…” I pause, trying to determine how I actually feel. Aside from the very real fear I have of snakes—which Harlan clearly made note when we dropped acid before Heathen’s Cross—I surprisingly feel rested. Something I haven’t felt since, well, that night or since I stepped foot in this godforsaken house for the first time.

“You feel relaxed, don’t you? I, myself, love a light sedative every once in a while. It works quicker than melatonin and doesn’t have all those nasty side effects like the concoctions you usually flock to.” He sounds so sure of himself. Like there isn’t even the faintest of inklings in his subconscious that what he’s doing to me is wrong.

He’s sick… and it’s allmyfault. The old Harlan would never do this. He would never do anything to cause me pain, let alone enjoy doing it.

He continues on, “I just wanted you to get some rest. We still have a long night ahead of us.” The cheshire grin on his face unveils more sinister intent. Something that usually would entice me, though now, coming from him, I feel an immense unease that won’t dissipate.

“No. We. Don’t.” My words are choppy. The tension in my jaw is mounting.

Harlan laughs at me, and with a snap of his fingers, the snake is practically charmed away.

Thank fuck.

“Oh. Yes. We. Do.” He corrects me. “You should be thanking me, by the way.” He spits, and a strand of saliva drips onto my cheek, only adding to the swarm of goosebumps already plaguing my skin. If it were anyone else, I would be disgusted. However, his warm, slippery spit transports me back to when he fucking devoured me like I was his last meal; when his spit became lost in the wetness he created at my center.

“How else are we going to finish what you started?” The cryptic nature of his question pulls me from reminiscing.

My neck twists, eyes now on his. “What the fuck are you talking—”

He waves his inked finger my way, retrieving a notebook from his back pocket. My eyes widen. That’smynotebook.

“Where did you get that?” My accusatory tone causes him to laugh, arrogantly so.

“I found it.”

“Liar!” I spit at him, but all my saliva does is spew droplets onto my face.

I flinch upward, but he scoots forward and onto my chest, trapping my arms under him before he lowers his mouth to my face, licking up my spit. Humming as he does it, so every stroke of his tongue vibrates my skin, distracting me.

“You—” I begin, but my voice isn’t angry, it's breathy. I push through the current of twisted intrigue his new persona evokes throughout my entire body. Trying to ignore that his tongue’smodification reminds me of a serpent’s, or how badly I want to take his gauged lobes to my lips and sink my teeth into them. “You stole it,” I manage, through a half pant, though it's not enough that my statement is mooted.

His tongue skims my cheek before he rolls and flicks the wet muscle over to my chin. He takes his time there, circling the edge of my chin in alternating jabs with either side of his tongue, before he drags it to the column of my throat. This teasing dance continues, with my laying motionless to the spell he’s put on my body until he’s satisfied with the wanton need he’s creating inside me. It’s then, as a whimper betrays my silence, that he decides to retract his tongue from my skin—leaving me high and dry.

“Asshole,” I mutter.

“Come again?” He lifts his brows. “Oh, that’s right, you can’t,” he singsongs before his voice drops to a dangerously low and seductive octave. “I won’t let you.”

My eyes roll. Hating that every word he’s spewing my way is slowly breaking through the strong front I need to maintain if I want to get what I came here for. Which, at this point, feels so futile. The necklace I came for, that he took, it’s supposed to protect me, though looking at what he’s become, I’m starting to think that’s impossible.

I should’ve never come back.

This was a mistake.

He lifts the notebook up. Pages shuffle, wafting the musky aroma of aged paper my way until he lands on a random spot. “Here we go.” His throat clears, but he doesn’t dive right in. Instead, he looks over the book, boring those ocean blue eyes that are so deceivingly peaceful looking my way. “You should’ve never opened the can of worms you did when you wrote me that bullshit letter. I was going to leave you alone. I had every intention of letting you slip away from my memory, even if it left me eternally lost and aching to be inside that tight cunt forever. But you just had to interject yourself, once again, into something bigger than you.”

My lips part, about to ask what the fuck he means by something bigger than me. What, to apologize? I wrote to him to apologize for the time that’s slipped us by.

“Shh,” he coos. Let me read.”

‘His body, already bloodied and beaten, hangs on the cross. The same cross he made us look at as he punished us for our sins. Now the only punishment that will be heard in this room is in the echoes of a wailing man, not a god or a descendant of him, begging for a life that neither of us deem worthy of saving. His cries fill the room, though with each one, my patience grows thin as does the fleeting compassion I once had for a man so innately rotten and so unbelievably volatile.

“Are you ready, hermano?” I ask, as he hammers a nail into his father’s hand.

“Why?” his dad, our victim, croaks. “Why are you doing this?”

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