Page 5 of Hollow Nights

“Get off me!” I tried to push back, but he only shoved me harder against the cold ground.

“Haven’t you figured it out yet? Ican’tleave you!” I stopped resisting, completely taken aback by his words. His demeanor lightened with his hold on me as his tail lifted a long chain attached to a studded collar around his neck. “I am your monster, and you are my fleshbag.”

My monster? His fleshbag? What the fuck did any of that even mean? What was happening?

He pulled the chain, my eyes following the link to find it somehow melting inside me, almost invisibly linked to my heart.“No matter what, I am chained to you, to your soul. You can try to outrun me, Libra,” he leaned close, widening his mouth, allowing his tongue to dance along the side of my face as I groaned, “But you can’t hide.” Nothing he said made any sense.

“P-please,” I strained. “Just let me go.”

“Go? Go where?” he cackled, his laughter distorted. “You think you can just run away and get help? What’re you going to tell them? No one would believe you.” He leaned close and whispered in my ear, “Because you’re the only one who can see me.”

What?

“You can run, tell your friends—the police—but no matter what, you’re the only human soul who can see what I am. To the rest, I’m but a shadow that bolts across the room, a flicker in their eye or the wind that whispers in their ears. I am nothing to them.”

“Why can I see you?” I asked, feeling less afraid and more…curious.

“I already told you,” he snapped back. “I amyourmonster. Your sleep demon. Always have been and always will be, until the day you die.”

Sleep demon?

“Wait—” I stuttered. “You mean all this time, all those years of torment, facing endless nightmares and evil shadows—that wasyou?”

He shrugged, smirking with pride. “Guilty.”

The very thought that this monster was real and the one responsible for my shitty sleep all these years enraged me. I no longer felt scared for my life, but instead, an overpowering urge to beat the shit out of him. Monster or demon, I didn’t care; I wanted to hurt him for what he’d done to me.

“Get the fuck off me!” I yelled, using all my strength to try and kick him off. “You fucking?—”

“Feisty,” he purred, slamming my arms harder into the ground. “I’ll make a deal with you.” I stopped, huffing as I tried to calm my angry heart, sore and tired. “You stop running, stop fighting, and return home with me. Then, once you’ve calmed down, I’ll explain everything.”

Really? This monster wanted to make a fucking deal with me?I stared back at him, breathing heavily as I studied his monstrous face.

“Do we have a deal?” The spade of his tail jabbed the underside of my chin as he impatiently waited for my reply.

I didn’t trust him, and I sure as hell didn’t feel safe with him, but I wanted to know more, to know why he’d been haunting me for so long. Why me?And why could I suddenly see him if he’d been here my whole life?But mostly, I wanted to know whose fucking blood was all over me and my room.

My jaw tightened. “Fine.”

“Alright then.” He lifted a brow, slowly easing off me and standing. I remained on the ground, nervous to move. He offered a hand to me, his claws frightening and sharp. I looked at it, hesitating. “We don’t have all day, Libra,” he groaned. I swallowed, sliding my hand in his palm. He yanked me from the ground in a single swoop, grasping it tight. “I’ll tell you what you want to know, but first,” he eyed my body, “you should probably get cleaned up and dressed. Hard to focus when you look like that.” He winked.

The monster under my bed was real. He was here, and he was…hitting on me?

The warm water of my bath washed over my naked body, rinsing the blood that was soaked into my skin. I scrubbed my body raw, trying to clean away every little reminder of what had happened the night before, the bath now a murky brown.

According to the monster, a man had broken in and attempted to assault me. He spared no details in describing the sick events, how he brutally murdered the man and ate him. Knowing he ate someone freaked me out, but the thought of a stranger being in my home, straddling me in my bed, jacking off to my exposed, unconscious body... That made me shudder. All of it made me sick. And to think, if that monster didn’t stop it, what else might have happened…but shit, he didn’t have to kill him. Could I really believe him when he said he wouldn’t hurt me? He claimed he protected me, but how did I know he wouldn’t do just the same to me?

The shower curtain above the tub pulled back as his tail poked through, offering me my towel. I gasped at the sight of it, still uneasy over him being here—real. In my bathroom.

“Oh, calm down,” he groaned from the other side, his tail shaking. “It’s just a towel.” I pulled the plug to drain the bath, carefully taking the towel as his tail retreated.

“And you’re not looking?” I asked, wrapping the towel around myself, careful to keep everything covered.

“Not looking,” he groaned.

I yanked the shower curtain back, stepping onto the tile floor and towards the bathroom sink. My hand wiped the foggymirror to see his unnatural smile reflected at me. He was leaning against the wall next to the bathtub, watching me. I could feel his gaze running along my curves, as if somehow seeing what was under the towel.

“If you’ve always been here, does that mean?—”

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