Page 33 of The Monster of Hotel No. 7
I roll my eyes. “Give me more than that.”
He studies me for a long moment, tension pulled taut between us. Then, so fast I didn’t anticipate it… he lunges toward me.
I react quickly, spinning out of his grasp. I dart to the right, intending to head around the table and into the darkened space that was at his back. I know the door behind me is locked and he would easily grab me as I tried to figure out how to open it. Yet even now he moves with me, and my hip bumps into the steel table, the jarring impact causing me to cry out softly. I don’t stop moving though, facing him now with my back to the green-lit shelves housing the rabbit I saw when I first opened my eyes in here.
His hands are in fists at his side, his gaze darkening on mine. There are feet between us, and I am behind the gurney. I could dart to the back of the room, pray there is a place to slip away beyond the cutout.
But he isn’t moving, so I don’t either.
I don’t really want to run. I just want to talk.
“What do you want to know?” I ask quickly. “Ask me anything. Unlike you, I’ll give answers.”
His lips press together in an unintentional pout. “I can’t talk to you this way.” It sounds completely sincere coming from his pretty mouth, but I don’t know what he means by that.
“What way?” I try to steady my breathing, so it doesn’t sound like I am gasping as I question him. “Why can’t you speak to me normally?”
It’s the wrong thing to say.
He lunges toward me again, frighteningly fast, and I reach behind me, searching for a weapon in the form of a jar. I palm one, fingers closing around the cold glass. Then I hurl it at him with a small cry.
He neatly jumps back, and the glass shatters along the cement floor, causing me to flinch, the sound loud in the quiet room.
A bright, acrid scent fills the air immediately and I take several steps back as I look down, where he is staring.
The white rabbit has slithered onto the floor, surrounded by liquid and shards of glinting glass.
Its body is still curled up tight, little paws bent, fur damp and eyes facing me, pink and beady and judging.
My breaths are gasps and I take another step back.
He jerks his head up, narrowing dark eyes on me as he comes a step forward, crunching on the glass with his black high-tops, seemingly indifferent the splintered pieces could pierce through his rubber soles.
“I am notnormal,”he says, voice low and throaty and angry.
“I’m sorry,” I say, grasping for some peace between us. “I didn’t mean to…” I take another step back.
He advances, toe of his shoe so close to the large body of the white rabbit.
Fuck.
He might step on it. Perhaps he wouldn’t care at all. I remember how hard he pushed on my belly.
And I know he somehow blames me for the horrors of his life; or at least, some of them. He said so himself. ThatIdidthisto him. Made him.
And I remember what else he said, too.
That when I woke up, everything would be so much worse.
I don’t know what he meant. But I think it’s this.
“Sullen.” I gasp out his name.
He stops advancing.
His brows lift a little, giving him a strangely innocent expression.
“Talk to me,” I whisper, wanting to reach him. Wishing for a connection between us that I perhaps invented in my head all of these years.“Please.”
