Page 21 of All Saints Day
The words seem to scald Frank—he recoils, his hands cupped over his ears like I’ve seen him do before.
“I can’t do this,” he whimpers, screwing his eyes shut as tears flow in rivers from behind his closed eyes.
For a moment, hope swells in my chest. Is this the moment I’ve been waiting for? Has Frank just been playing along until the last possible moment?
When his blue eyes fly open, Frank’s gaze fixes on the empty space beside the banked wall of windows.
“You need to do something!” Frank shouts at the nothingness as if another person were standing there—his palms pressing together as if in prayer. “I don’t know! Anything—I can’t handle it, and if I can’t handle it—he’s gonna show up,” Frank pleads to dead air, his sobs nearly choking out his desperate words and turning his back to me.
I watch with captive breath as Frank rushes to his phantom conversation partner on the other side of the room.
“We can’t let Rook get to her—I’m worried that if he gets ahold of her—” Frank gasps so suddenly and so loudly that I can’t help but flinch.
The room becomes still, thick with silence, and I’m afraid of what will happen when I finally exhale—if the sound will set Frank off, bringing him back to the moment.
Unnatural quiet has begun to settle like a blanket—a dull low ringing slowly rising against the thudding of my heartbeat in my ears—the click of my own eyelashes as I blink nearly makes me jump.
With nascent horror, I watch as Frank’s spine elongates, his posture once again razor sharp—the sound of his knuckles popping as he flexes each hand before wrapping them into tight fists at his side feels deafening—the sun falling across his face in unfamiliar lines as he turns to face me.
I can tell right away that something is wrong, Frank’s eyes—pupils dilate so large that they look flat and black like a shark’s. There’s a smile on his lips that doesn’t reach those deep, light-sucking eyes. Not the sharp, cruel challenge of Frank’s usual dangerous smile—but a smooth slickness, like an eel wriggling cold and snakelike in the pit of my stomach.
Even the way he moves is wrong, not the cocky rough-and tumble carefree gait of Frank Stone; each step is like liquid—his body moving in sinuous, graceful swells as he slinks toward me. As he steps more fully into the golden light of the windows, I am reminded of that night in the lakeside cabin; an apex predator eying a kill—a meal.
He’s only a step or two away when his name crosses my lips—my building panic finally spilling over.
“F-frank,” I stammer as he draws closer, pinching my chin painfully between his thumb and forefinger as he tilts my head back, forcing my eyes to lock with the dark pools of icy cold—vacant of any familiarity.
“I’m sorry, Frank isn’t home right now, precious,” he croons sweetly, running a thumb over my trembling bottom lip.
My heart pounds, my panic high and buzzing behind my eyes—threatening to make me pass out as I take a shot in the dark.
“Michael?” I grope blindly for some kind of explanation—for a way to survive whatever fresh hell this is.
“Oho, that old dog got put down a while ago,” he sighs, a silken purr of a laugh rumbling up from deep in his stomach as he allows his hand to caress the side of my face. “Poor Frankie won’t ever get over it—even if he’s done a good job of keeping himself busy in the meantime, hmm?” he hums appreciatively, gently pushing a lock of errant hair out of my face—ashen and drenched in cold sweat.
There’s something frighteningly familiar about his voice—the way he looks at me. When the Saints first took me captive, there had been moments where Frank had felt fractured.
Quentin and the others had talked about Frank’s frequent and sudden mood swings—had expressed the feeling that there was a stranger somewhere inside that they only caught fearful glimpses of.
“I’d say I can’t believe he’s been hiding you from me, but I can see exactly why the old dog has kept you entirely to himself—greedy bastard,” he muses in a sweet, eerie tone—his fingers finding a lock of red hair hanging in my eyes and tucking it tenderly behind my ear before combing his fingers through the toss of fiery auburn, until he reaches the crown of my head, the pads of his fingers trailing delicately down the nape of my neck as those inky eyes rove the curvature of my facial features.
I’m not sure what’s happening—some sort of psychotic break or dissociative episode? I’ve seen Frank have his meltdowns, his tantrums. I’ve seen him cup his hands over his ears and scream until he goes quiet and still for long periods of time. More than once, I watched the other Saints exchange knowing looks as he ranted and railed at himself behind closed doors. Never have I seen evidence of any kind of system—of an alter.
I do my best to track those flat, black eyes as he leans in close—his nose ghosting against my pulse point as he breathes in my scent.
“Iris, green apple,” he lists the notes of my sigma scent, giving a little surprised laugh as he rounds out the list with “pink pepper.” He gives a little snort—his breath on the hollow of my neck raising all the hairs on my arms—as he murmurs against my ear. “Like a mirror of old Mikey’s scent—I shouldn’t be surprised. Before you came along—old boy Duboze was always his favorite, but don’t tell Q—it would probably break his slutty little heart.”
I nearly jump out of my skin when he presses the tip of his tongue to the tender place below my jaw—giving a single gentle lick at the soft skin over my carotid before making a low satisfied hum, as if tasting a fine wine or scotch.
“I could just eat you up,” he snickers—a thin, dry, awful sound that couldn’t be further from Frank’s bold and brassy laugh—as he withdraws, beginning to loom above me once more.
My pride in shambles, I do my best to square my shoulders and fix my gaze far away in the middle distance. Something tells me there will be no appealing.
“He’s going to regret keeping you from me,” Frank sighs, looking down at me with that lifeless stare—his fingers still ghosting over my nape.
No, not Frank—Frank is far away from here.
Something in my stomach tightens all at once—my abdominal muscles coiling, my breath hitching a split second before his hand closes over the back of my neck, hard.
