Page 31 of Entity

After a few minutes pass and nothing happens, I start to feel ridiculous. What did I think was going to happen? Ian suddenly rushes at me with a knife just because his Pleasurebot malfunctioned? Because now that I’ve had time to think, I realize it had to have been a malfunction of some kind. Eros’s whole demeanor changed when he said that. It wasn’t part of his programming. It was a momentary system failure.

Sighing, I sit up, pushing the blanket off. I inhale cool air and stare restlessly out the window. I’m also certain I was overreacting to whatever I heard downstairs, but my nerves are still buzzing like live wires. I take a drag from the whiskey bottle, then I roll off the bed, shed my clothes, and head into the bathroom. I need to cleanse myself, both literally and figuratively.

The hot shower streams over my naked body like a baptism. Whatever I witnessed in the vault earlier, it’s being washed away with every drop of water on my skin, every fortifying breath I take.

And the wail I thought I heard coming from Ian’s room? The wind howling. It’s been the wind every time.

I open my eyes to grab the shampoo.

A tall, dark shape stands with me in the shower. It’s fuzzy at the edges, undefined, like a figure obscured by fog.

A scream grows and dies in my throat, my terror choking me.Instinctively, I throw myself backwards, away from the figure.

Its edges flicker, beaded with static, and it moves toward me.

The next thing I know, I’m slipping, scrambling to catch myself in the slick shower. One foot loses its grip and flails out from under me. For a split second, I see my skull slamming on the edge of the tub and Ian finding me there in a pool of my own blood. But I catch myself at the last second, regaining my balance.

And by the time I’m firmly on two feet again, the figure is gone.

It was only there for a second. Like a shadowy, human-shaped glitch in the universe.

Nausea churns in my gut. I turn off the shower, grabbing a towel and drying myself as quickly as possible. It was the same as the arm reaching into my room yesterday. The same as the figure outside the building, standing in the rain.

I’m going fucking crazy.

I dress hurriedly in the same skirt I arrived in, a pair of old tights, and yesterday’s sweater. Not bothering with my damp hair, I grab my recording device, shove it into my pocket, and get the hell out of my room. I’d rather be downstairs with a drunk Ian than in here with…that.

I clatter down the spiral staircase, half hoping Ian will be back on the sofa where I left him before I went with Eros to the vault. As if I could erase the last hour or so from existence. I wish.

The living area is still empty.

All at once, a wave of anger rushes over me, heating my skin. Who the fuck does Ian De Leon think he is? Inviting me here to interview him for his book, promising me a bestseller, and then taking none of it seriously? All he’s done since I arrived is get drunk, initiate sexual encounters, act like a dick, and then disappear mysteriously. Meanwhile, I’m seeing fucked up visions and being subjected to a bizarre warning in the basement.

And I’m starting to feel like I should take that warning to heart.

“Ian!”

His name, clipped and bitter on my tongue, hangs in the air. But there is no answer. Not even a distant, muffled wail from his room like before. Because that was a hallucination. Because I’mlosingit in this place.

I stand there fuming, wondering if I should just storm into Ian’s room and demand that he get his ass out here and take this book seriously, but then something toward the window catches my eye.

I squint, leaning forward, not sure what I’m seeing. It’s… a shimmer in the air like a migraine aura. But when I move forward, I see that it’s not just in my vision. It’s real. It’s stationary, a glowing irregular shape between me and the window glass, roughly oval, about a foot tall and half as wide. It’s like a tear in the fabric of the world. It wavers just below eye level like a heat mirage. But unlike a heat mirage, it’s fractured and jagged-edged, and fully opaque. I can’t see the window through it. Instead, its center seems to be crackling with a dark, colorfulenergy. Colors shift within the mirage, orderly in shape — squares, lines, checkered patterns — yet utterly chaotic in their movements. Like pixels on a dying monitor.

I take another step toward the mirage, entranced. Its kaleidoscopic colors blend together like a drug.

And then something inside me…flickers. A dislocation. A glitch. A crackle in my ribs, as if my bones are coming apart delicately at the seams. It feels horrifically wrong, and ithurts, but part of me is also crying out for more, begging to be pulled apart and dragged through the darkness, to be remade on the other side.

Like the sensation in the elevator. Like the windows, when I’m too close. I remember the feeling of the fall, the pressure.If I can just get to the other side—

My breath hitches. The mirage is gone. Nothing stands between me and the window, the curtains of rain sweeping across the glass.

I sway on my feet, putting a hand out to brace myself on the sofa. I press my fingers to the bridge of my nose and mutter a string of soft expletives. Enough with thisfuckingshit.

“Ian!” I shout again, my voice rough with adrenaline.

No answer.

I barely know what time it is anymore. The city has been rain-dark for days now. Surely, Ian needs to eat. He’ll come out eventually. A distant siren shrieks, faraway and eerie, as if the city below is another world entirely.

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