Page 6 of Sick Like Me

Let alone one that hasn’t stepped foot near me for weeks, no matter how often I track her down.

I’ve never given a fuck before. I’ve shared women with my brothers, both younger and older. I fucked my way through college, through most of my teenage years, and not one woman has ever lingered inside my head past my final nut in them. I’ve never gotten jealous.

Until now.

It’s why I find myself in this mess.

A literal mess.

Exhausted whimpers finally reach my ears over the rapid thudding of my heart, blood rushing in my ears as breath heaves its way in and out of my chest. Crimson paints me up to my elbows, red splattered across my chest, blood dripping from my brow, the taste of it heavy on my tongue. But I’ve got what I came here for.

“You touched her,” I spit at him, thinking of earlier, watching him, through the small circular window that looks into the music hall, sit down beside her and lay his hands atop hers. Hisbody sprawled out beneath me, eyes glazed, brow and upper lip wet with sweat, “You just couldn’t keep your fucking hands to yourself, could you?”

“Wh- who?” the man mumbles, his teeth chattering with shock.

“Ostara Stone,” I hiss, lifting his severed hand and tossing it up in my palm to feel its weight.

“But I- I’m- I’m just her teacher!” the idiot yells, groaning, and clutching his arm to his chest, blood shooting out in small little spurts and lashing his chin.

“You teach piano, you don’t need to be pressed up beside her and sliding your filthy fucking hands all over her!” I roar, spittle flying from my mouth where I’m crouched down over him, my shadow smothering the entirety of his rapidly expiring body. His eyes start to roll as I finish sawing off his left hand, “Now you won’t be able to touch her ever again,” I tell him slowly, calming my breathing with the affirmation.

Gathering myself up from my crouched position on the ground, back twinging as I straighten my six-foot-four frame. I swipe the back of my bloodied wrist across my forehead, pushing back fallen strands of my straight, brown hair, and stare down at the man bleeding out.

Fury bubbles beneath the surface of my skin as I head towards Ostara’s room, amputated hands clutched tightly to my chest.

I need to show her.

She needs to know exactly what happens when someone touches something that belongs to me without my permission.

Legs eating up the distance from the music hall to the dorms, I’m blinkered, blinded by rage. Taking the stone stairs three at a time, leaving little droplets of blood in my wake like a brutalised version of a gingerbread trail. I’m mad, enraged, feeling as though I could spit fire and burn this entire castle to the ground.

I don’t worry about the butchered body I’m leaving behind in the music room, the state of me, covered in blood and carrying severed limbs, as I move through halls that are currently empty, but might not be for long. All I can focus on is Ozzie. The way she’s avoided me for weeks, left me to die in the woods without ever seeking me out before straight up ignoring me altogether. Like a spectre, a ghost haunting this old building like a true nightmare,mynightmare.

And then today, I finally catch sight of her like a summoning from a spirit board, and that filthy slimeball tutor had his perverted fingers all fucking over her.

My fist hammers against her door, rattling the solid mahogany, it’s an echoing boom in the long corridor, the ceilings high and illuminated by flickering wall sconces. I grit my teeth, bashing my fist into the wooden barricade between us once more. My breathing is ragged, desperate sips of air filtering in through my barred teeth, nostrils flaring, and it’s like I can smell her, even from out here, this dark, delicate scent teasing my senses. Everything about her dizzies me, images of her writhing on my dick flash through my mind and I imagine that night all over again.

If I could take a screwdriver to my temple and twist the memory out of my skull, I would, but as it stands, I’m feral over protecting that moment. Even after the fact when she told me it wasfine.

I’ve hunted her since, skulking through the shadows, spending hour upon unhealthy hour watching her room, stalking her classes, for any sign of her. There’s been nothing. It was as though she didn’t exist in the world for the last however many weeks. Everyday felt longer, every painstaking second seemed to drag like a dull blade down the insides of my wrists. Teasing and useless and providing no satisfying outcome.

I step away from the door and do the only thing I can.

Ram my way through it.

Pain explodes in my shoulder as I finally break through, bursting into the dark room. A single bed dressed in purple sheets is pushed up into the corner behind the door, and there’s a desk beneath the window overlooking the courtyard. I push open the door to my right that leads to a small bathroom that’s empty too. Bright orange light floods the opposite side of the room, multiple glass tanks perched on a large, metal shelving unit that lines the entire left wall.

The hands thud to the floor as I let them go, ignoring the way they bounce on the stone flooring, and walk over to the shelves. The orange glow is from heat lamps, keeping the snakes inside the glass units warm. There are so many different ones, most of them hiding from view, curled beneath bark and hidden inside little caves made of rock.

Absently, I drop into a crouch, fingers finding the glass of the largest tank on the bottom shelf, the tail end of a yellow and black striped snake exposed in a nest of crunchy dark leaves.

“That’s a Banded Krait,” my little ghost informs me as she enters the room silently, her warm breath feathering down the side of my neck where she bends forward, a severed hand held tenderly between her fingers. “Are these Professor Dubois’ hands?” she asks innocently, as though this is normal, finding a teacher and a pair of severed hands in her dorm room.

My eyes slide up to hers, her face cast in the warm glow of the heat lamps, her cheeks shadowed, hollowed out further by the uneven light in the room. She doesn’t look at me as she leans over my shoulder, her attention on the snake even as she fondles her piano professor’s hand.

“Where the fuck have you been?” I spit at her, anger this living, breathing thing inside of me, it’s as though every muscle in my body is locked up at her complete lack of reaction.

“They have a highly potent venom, neurotoxi-”

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