Page 27 of How to Seduce a Slender

“Why don’t you sleep beside me, huh?” She slid onto her left side and snuggled down into the bed. Smith lay on top of the duvet in front of her. A soft, minty scent floated from his mouth and brushed across her cheeks. Melody poked her hands up and out of the blanket. “Now, take off your gloves. I know it’sscandalous,but maybe we could just hold hands?”

Smith rumbled with warmth and laughter as he slowly peeled off his gloves. Much like his face, she could tell he had fingers, but they weren’t defined. There were five fingers that stretched past where they should be. His voice floated around her face as he slid his fingers across her palm. “What ever will the papers think?”

Melody swallowed down the shivers as they raced down her spine. Goose bumps broke out across her arms and across her collar. “We’ll be the talk of the house, and here Agatha claimed you were a gentleman.”

Smith wrapped his long fingers around her hand, squeezing it once as the vibrations set in. At first, she hardly realized it was there. Then it became a constant. Like the loveable hum of a fridge in a deadly quiet apartment. It was just a small reminder of life, filling up an otherwise empty space with some spark of magic. It lulled her deeper into the mattress.

“Just remember, I’ll be there with you. Sweet girl, may you rest.”

Melody fell asleep to the consistent hum of Smith’s magic as it coursed through her blood.

And awoke in a world far different from the one she was used to...an Endless Wood. Trees skinny as telephone poles and tall enough to scrape the sky. Lone branches, warped and weak, loitered at sporadic heights down and endless horizon of flat earth. She could see miles of hazy, foggy oblivion. The trees were spaced out enough to allow her to weave between them without making an actual path. Hard, packed earth beneath her bare feet led to patches of moss and grass. A cluster of underbrush would tickle her fingers as she passed them. It was almost monochrome, yet there were just enough hints of green or brown to pass as living.But everything felt dead. Even the air.

Nary a single crow nor skitter nor crunch; there were no woodland creatures here. Just an endless expanse of trees in dizzying patterns of hard dirt or moss. Occasionally she stepped over a small, thin log.

It was an eternity before she stopped walking just to study the spot she stood in. Her nightgown—a silky pearl-colored, spaghetti-strapped gown—flowed from around her chest to her ankle. The fabric fluttered around her as a soft breeze brushed past her. Melody turned to face the breeze and saw him. So vaguely human shaped it was frightening. Taller than she remembered, limbs elongated at his side. He stood in the haze that scratched like a record. He was a computer glitch that never fully froze nor cleared; a constant white noise static. Smith shifted in and out of view before he disappeared fully.

Melody collected the skirt of her nightgown and turned away from the emptiness, back toward where she’d been headed. Normally, she would feel lost, panicked, afraid...but for the first time during a dream, she was completely at peace. Her heartbeat was a soft, steady thump, thump, thump as she climbed over another log. Melody lowered herself down onto it, studying the fog around her. The chill in the air bit into her cheeks. It was peaceful in its vast emptiness.

The longer she stood still, the more she recognized. She wasn’t alone. Melody glanced around, craning her neck to watch as shadows shifted from yards away. They wove in between trees. Hulking beasts and things that lumbered slowly. Some skittered soundlessly, some took enough time to take a singular step. Silent.

“Welcome to the Endless Wood.” Smith’s raspy whisper brushed against her ear.

Melody laid her head back, emotionless and calm to stare up at him. His massive hands braced the two trees behind her. He was once more her own personal storm cloud, ominously looming.

“Who is that?” She lifted a finger to the right where a lumbering thing stepped beyond another tree and disappeared into the hazy fog.

“I do not know all their names.” Smith crouched down behind her, his fingers clawing down the tree bark. It exploded off the side of the wood and fell around her like snow. Then he hoisted her head by the back with a gentle press of his palms. “Keep your eyes forward, never look back unless you want me to catch you.”

Melody’s lips curled warmly. “Am I allowed to run here?”

“It won’t affect your body at all...but it will feel real. So please, do proceed with caution.”

“Why do I feel so...loose? Like I’m not attached to my emotions?” She slid up onto her feet. Turning her back to the woods, she faced Smith once more. Despite the smile touching her lips, she didn’t feel the warmth behind it.

“I apologize, do you want that?” Smith made no sound as he rose to his towering height once more.

“Are you controlling them?” She eyed him, cocking her head an inch to the left.

“I intended for you to rest. But the dream realms don’t work the same as the mortal plane or the material realm. It’s not that you don’t have emotions, but that your natural senses are suppressed to what your hunter wants them to be.” Smith motioned toward the wood behind her. “I wasn’t sure what you’d want to feel, so I was holding onto them. We can just sit here...and you could draw?”

Melody glanced down to her hands as her journal appeared, she flipped it open and unfortunately found it empty.Right…dream realm, not reality.Melody sat back down, her spine pressed against the log for support. She bent her knees to prop open her journal. The Slender stepped over the log and sat beside her. Melody brushed her hand against the page, flattening it before a pencil appeared in the crease of it.

“I still need to feel to draw, Smith,” she whispered, peeking up at him. He sat still, staring into the endlessness beyond them. “I’m not scared. Or, at least, I don’t think I am.”

He sank further into the ground, his head propped against the log. Then, slowly, Melody felt it. The buzz, his soft, consistent hum return to her flesh. She felt a steady increase in her heartbeat, heat return to her cheeks, her fingers prickle as feeling returned. Full feeling. It was heavy, to suddenly have everything back. There was a spike of panic as she was flooded with more than the silence she’d believed surrounded her.

Suddenly, she heard cracks of branches. Shuffling of feet against the ground. Leaves as they fell around them, the groan of wood as it shifted...and a ghastly moan. Soft, lingering, stomach twisting, it came deep in the wood. Melody ripped around to look over her shoulder. Smith immediately caught her face in his palm and turned it back forward. “Ignore them. They are not hunting you.”

“Will they start if I react?” she hissed, her blood rushing fast in her veins making her body tingle.

“I won’t allow any harm to you. You’re my prey.” He nodded his fuzzy static in the direction of her notepad.

Melody obeyed as she tried to ignore the sharp scream that was wet and cut short far off in the distance.Maybe he was right to withhold my senses from me.The ground thundered as something larger than a mountain rushed past them to the left. It would grow quiet for a long time as things settled down. Then a steady cracking of branches made her shiver. Smith disappeared in a blink of fuzzy static. Melody froze, stuck on the linework of Carl from memory. Her ears strained to hear what he was doing but did not dare turn to see where he’d gone.

Something grunted as it thudded closer before the ground violently shook. A pair of moose antlers flew over her head and shattered like glass nearly a foot in front of her. Melody squeaked, clamping a hand over her mouth. Something wet splashed against the back side of the log. Her trembling hands reached back but a familiar, warm palm took up her hand.

“Keep drawing, sweet girl,” Smith breathed against her ear, slipping away once more. Melody took her hand back to the paper and continued to draw. She focused on the dancing flames, on the way Carl’s whole tongue fell out of his mouth, the floppiness of his ears, everything.Anything other than the gorey sounds of something being ripped to shreds behind her.

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