Page 8 of Halluci-Dating A Demon
I crawl away, rushing back into the trees, and he calls after me. “Wait.”
He’s going to open his eyes soon, and I need to be ready when he does. Sure enough, when I enter the room again, I have no clothes on. They were here when I first appeared, but that’s because I relied on his bad emotions. I can’t do that again. I don’t want to. It’ll be too tempting to keep leaning into them, and I’ll forget why I came. Hey, I never said I was perfect. I am still a paralysis demon and strong energies, whether bad or good, can be addictive. And I’m quickly becoming hungry for all of his.
His dark eyes flash open, glazed over and darting around. Spotting the hoodie draped over a desk chair, I grab the large piece of clothing and throw it on before his gaze lands on me. His lips move but nothing comes out, and my muscles are too small to pull him out of the REM stage. He looks down at his lower body then back at me.
A breath of relief exits my mouth as I look at the mirror on the wall. I’m still in human form. Well . . . kind of. I shove my tail inside the hoodie, leaving a hand behind my back to keep it from finding its way back out.
“Hi,” I say, stepping closer.
Muscles in his neck and face tense as I lower myself onto the bed. “It’s okay,” I whisper, wanting to keep my voice light and soft—nothing he can connect to anything scary. Not thatanyone’s ever said I’ve sounded scary before. Cute, I believe is how many describe my voice. Cute and delicate. One guy I dated mentioned there was even a little vulnerability there.
Come to think of it, I’m not sure I do a great job at invoking fear in people anyway. I really do have to disguise myself as something they would typically run from if spotted in a dark room or alleyway. It’s all the ammo I have, really. What a sad excuse for a demon I am. But I still get by okay. Yeah, sure, my powers are not as strong as they could be, and my energy levels are low. It could be worse, though.
Scooting closer, I tuck my legs up into the hoodie and twirl the strings around my finger. “I see you like to read. Maybe I can read you some pages from something.”
Searching around, my gaze pauses on his Kindle. I flip through his books, my eyes darting between his and the light green device. There’s a note taped to the back that reads,“Happy Birthday, El. There are only two books, but I figure I can add a new one every time we have an argument where I’m in the wrong.”
Edges fringed and color fading, the tape barely hangs on to the paper. This has been there a long time. I’m guessing a year. There’s no name. It’s not needed. Especially with the way he’s watching me with watering eyes. I run my fingers over the words and continue to scroll through his library, laughing at some of the added books. So many with the title “sorry” in them. I click on the one with the Berenstain Bears on the cover and begin on the first page, smiling through every word I read.
Occasionally, I search for his reaction, and I swear I see a smile come across his face more than once. A surge of energy zaps me on the inside and his fingers twitch. This is comforting to him. It’s one of the things he wants to remember about his brother. What he wants to hold onto. He’s had so many happy moments in his life and needs help being brought back to them.
My fingers begin to fade as I flip to the next page. He’s waking up. Fully coming back to reality. It’s time for me to go, but I wish I could stay and keep reading. To see how many more smiles I can bring to the surface. There’s always tomorrow, though, and I keep thinking about how I can’t wait as I slowly drift away from his room.
Four
Elias
When my brother’s haunted expression and bloodied face is replaced with someone else’s for the third time in a row, I begin to wonder if he’s real. He keeps coming back and is nothing like any hallucination I’ve experienced before. Usually, I count the minutes until they leave, but with him . . . with him . . . I don’t mind him overstaying his welcome a little. Especially when every time he’s been here, I’ve gotten the best sleep I’ve had in a long time. It’s not something I want to want so badly, but it’s hard not to. I get lost in how relieved my body is to have it that I let myself go, forgetting that I’m supposed to be punished for the rest of my life.
His eyes have changed. As he curls up beside me, stealing more of my pillow, purple rings wrap around his blue irises.The charms in his hair glow too, turning different colors, reminding me of a mood ring. When he smiles, the center charm turns purple—black when he frowns and seems low on energy. Pressing an AirPod into my ear, he shoves another one in own his while humming the soft melody of the song playing and the stone shines blue.
He has to be real. He feels real. I tried so hard to convince myself that the terrifying figure showing up, acting as my brother wasn’t, but the man singing the song Adam used to randomly dance to whenever he wanted to cheer me up is making me want to believe he is.
He smells good too. Like sugar and . . . so much life. Flowers, trees, the sky, and fresh rain. Reminding me of a rainbow, he’s a promise of good things to come. But he can’t be real. He’s a figment of my imagination like everything else whenever I’m somewhere caught between awake and sleeping. Only fear isn’t tickling the back of my neck with him here. My heart rate is more regulated than it’s been in a long time when I first wake up. I get up from the bed with ease when he’s gone, not shaken by the horrors I endured. Not shaken by the ugly sensations clawing at the pit of my stomach.
What brought him here? Was it the comedies I’ve been watching lately? The sweet, fluffy romances I’ve filled my breaks with, or the songs I play when I want to remember the good days I had with Adam? When I want to feel like nothing has changed. When I want to pretend he’s only a call away or in the next room.
Did I have the ability to change my dreams and hallucinations somehow? Was I doing something right before falling asleep without realizing? If so, how do I stop doing it? What if I want the bad memories and trauma to remain? After all, I deserve to suffer. I should experience pain and agony for the rest of my life.
Amy always says that’s not what Adam would have wanted, but how the hell does she know? My knees felt weak that day,with a strange buckling sensation before I got into the car to drive. It always passed, so I never thought anything of it. “A vitamin D deficiency,” the doctor said. No, it was my muscles loosening up and relaxing from laughing too hard. From being annoyed or agitated, or from being too turned on and over-exhilarated from an orgasm.
Why couldn’t I have known then what I know now?
“Do you have songs you like to dance to?” the man next to me asks . . . Or is he a man? I guess he can be whatever I want him to be if it’s my mind that invented him. “Do you like to dance? Or maybe singing is more your thing? You strike me more as the sing-in-the-shower type.”
He keeps going, jumping from question to question while rambling on about what he likes and other topics that have nothing to do with each other. If I could laugh, I would, and then I’d hate myself for it. All his babbling settles something inside me, though. It’s a nice break from the darkness in my head, and I fight hard trying not to lean too far into it. His questions distract me from all the ones I drive myself crazy with daily. Ones I have no answers to. Unlike mine, I can answer his.
“I keep forgetting you can’t talk.” He laughs. “Oh, I got it.” He jumps up against the headboard, earbud falling from his ear as his eyes light up.
“You can write them down for me to read next time.” He smiles down at me, the tips of his hair changing to match the ring in his eyes. Purple. His nails turn the same shade, a little longer than before as he searches my nightstand for a pen and paper. “You have a lot of candy in your top drawer.”
Rummaging through the different packages, his hand freezes on one, and his eyes narrow in on it. “Cotton candy sour belts. Do they really taste like cotton candy?” He opens the package, inhaling deeply with his nose shoved in the top of the package.“I guess I wouldn’t know. I’ve never had it. They don’t sell it on base. I’ve been told it’s better at carnivals than stores anyway.”
He gives the candy another sniff before sliding it over his tongue, and his eyes close as a throaty moan escapes him. Shoving more into his mouth, he makes sounds that cause warmth to spread in my groin. The sudden arousal has my head spinning and my body going slack—not like I can use it now anyway. My vision fades a little, and my eyes close for seconds before opening again.
More sugary pink strips are being pushed into his mouth, and when he finally stops devouring my candy, the package is empty. His frown triggers something weird inside me. For some reason I want to wipe it from his face and find a way to make him smile again. Light fills his eyes again when he looks down into the dresser, and then his cheeks redden when he glances back at me, the package slipping from his hands.
“Sorry. I got sidetracked. Happens a lot.” He mutters to himself about how he needs to make sure it doesn’t happen during work hours. He does that often, it’s kind of adorable. He’s adorable.
