Disclaimer: Justified ain't mine. Sadly. Comments welcome.
Author Note:This was written in response to a prompt from the ever-lovely AndItsOuttaHere: Boyd/Ava - scary movie. I doubt, though, that this is what she had in mind - sorry!
Monster
From goulies and ghosties and long-leggedy beasties
And things that go bump in the night
Good Lord, deliver us.
When she was a child there was a monster that lived, as monsters so often do, in her bedroom closet. She never actually saw it but Ava knew it was there and just knowing was enough. Something there watching, waiting to gobble up naughty little girls who wouldn't keep their eyes closed in the dark. She tried to be good but the trying always chafed, a restraint that she would kick against and the need to stare into the dark, to feel herself a part of it, was too much, her eyelids screwed tight but still peeling open and she would wait for it to burst out of her closet and take her.
In the end she made a bargain with her unseen monster: after the light went out she could open her eyes three times without fear; after that she was fair game.
The tiger that lived under the bed wouldn't harm her as long as she didn't step on the bare floor; she took a flying leap every night from the rug onto her bed.
And so it was throughout her childhood until the monster and the tiger moved on and then after that she wasn't afraid of the night. Later still, fear became ever-present but it had a tangible form then, a name, a face.
The vicarious thrills of the horror film are just that: the superficial rush followed by the relief - and release - when the terror is routed and all is right with the world once more. Not the blood and the gore, her horror films of choice, when she watches them, are the old ones, cheesy and even more unbelievable than more recent offerings but still enough to raise a prickle across the back of her neck. And she doesn't watch them often but it is the time of year for it. Tradition, more than anything else.
She curls herself on the sofa, under a blanket, a bowl of popcorn still warm from the pan. She's turned all the lights off and the room is illumined by the flickering black-and-white from the screen.
The house is so quiet she can feel its stillness. Every sound is louder. Dull metallic thuds reverberate; pipes cooling, wood that squeaks and cracks as it settles in its nightly ritual. And then a crash above her head and her body jolts, the popcorn spilling across the sofa and the floor. She sits forward, looking up as though she can see through the ceiling. Her hand grips the arm of the sofa so hard that her nails bend and break under the force.
Muffled screams from the television, the tortured scrape of strings on the soundtrack to tell anyone watching that this is the scary part and Ava sits on the edge of the sofa, her body taut and covered with cold sweat and her breath comes fast, hard.
Silence from above.
Then something skitters across the floor.
Bile rises, thick in her throat and she drags in a breath, stands slowly, keeps her eyes fixed on the ceiling, this unseeing sight a protection against whatever is up there.
She heads for the stairs. One foot in front of the other, slow, her head still held high but every breath catches in her chest. Her back is pressed against the wall and she takes each step carefully without looking at it. She thinks about the gun in the cupboard in the kitchen and then laughs at herself because a gun can't kill someone who is already dead and then laughs at herself again but not really because the dead cannot return, cannot rise from the cold, cold ground and stand in the house in which they once lived.
Something scratches against the closed door of the spare room and fear is liquid, coursing through her, weakening her knees and she sags against the wall, its hardness suddenly malleable and far away from her.
The intelligent part of her, the rational part, tells her that this is ridiculous. But there is something else, something primal and rising with a violent urgency that keeps her pinned against her patch of wall, that tells her that people laugh at ghost stories because they can't bear to think that they are true.
There had been so much blood and that had been a shock. That and the noise. A rifle going off outdoors is one thing but when she had pulled the trigger it had been like an explosion near her head and her ears had rung with it for days afterward.
And it had not been a neat hole like they show on TV. The back of his head had blown out, blood and bone and glistening bits of grey, gelatinous and stained red, had splattered against the wall and the floor and the air had been high with a heavy metallic scent. A butchers' smell, rich and sickly and she hadn't been able to scrub it away.
When she thinks about him, and it isn't often if she can help it, he is wearing a half-smile, predatory, and the other half of his face is blackened with gunpowder and bloodied.
There is something in the room, behind the door. It isn't just her imagination and it isn't the normal house-sounds magnified by silence. She is alone in the house except for the fact that there is something in here with her. This is the part in the horror film when the heroine, courageous, confronts the monster, endures the terror, and then the hero rescues her.
But the hero, for these purposes, is over in Corbin and she's unreasoningly furious with him for that, for not being here now when she needs him. Or she would be furious, if she weren't just so damn scared.
Another step and the stair creaks under her foot and she flinches, not wanting to draw attention to herself, no wanting him to know she's there.
Him. Why is she so convinced of this - and it's a question she doesn't really want to think about.
No such things as ghosts, she tells herself fiercely, no such thing, she had protected herself from him in life and he can't hurt her now. He can't hurt her now. She tells herself this and takes another step, the one that takes her to the top of the stairs and she can't make herself go any further. Throat tightening, eyes blinded, she grits her teeth and her nails dig deep into the palms of her hands.
Oh God her voice tiny in her head ohGodpleasepleaseplease-
'Ava.'
She lets out a yell, body jerking and throws off the hand that Boyd had laid on her shoulder. She stares at him, wild-eyed, and he takes a half-step back.
'What the hell- What do you think you're doing? Sneaking up on me?' Her breath shakes and her heart hammers so hard that she thinks she'll be sick. She takes in air, blows it out. 'Why didn't you tell me you were coming home early?'
'Cellphone died,' he says, 'the battery.' He keeps his eyes on her and he frowns slightly; he can see all of her fear, she knows that, and the strength of it is what puzzles him. Worries him - the frown deepens.
'What's wrong, baby?'
'Nothing.' He wouldn't laugh at her if she were to tell him, but she already feels stupid enough anyway.
And then something scratches at the door again and Boyd's eyes move from her to it and he moves past her. For a moment his hand brushes hers - warm and steady and she hadn't realised how cold hers had become - and he throws open the door.
A ball of fur streaks past them, paws light on the stairs, green eyes malicious while it hisses and spits during its flight. It looks feral, its brindled coat thick and matted.
'Hey!'
Boyd starts after it and she hears the cat's vicious howl as it is chased around the house. Ava leans against the wall, passes her hands over her hair and keeps her eyes closed for a few minutes. Then she goes into the spare room and closes the half-open window she had forgotten to shut earlier.
The front door is opened, their uninvited guest ejected with a few choice words of farewell, and firmly closed again.
When Ava goes downstairs Boyd is nursing the scratches on his hand and glowering darkly in the direction of the porch. He brightens when he sees her, however, and when he holds out one arm she goes to him, savouring the embrace.
'I'm sorry I scared you,' he says, voice soft and a sweetness to it that hardly anyone hears but her.
'Take your damn charger with you next time.' She tilts her head back and looks at him fully. 'Or send a carrier pigeon.'
He smiles and kisses her, his fingers twining through her hair, one thumb caressing her cheek.
A strangled shriek from the television draws his gaze, critical. An unknown blonde is being terrorised in the requisite abandoned house; his eyebrows go up. 'This is what you watch when you're on your own?'
Ava shrugs. 'Horror movies don't scare me.'
'Oh, well, that's good,' he says lightly, ' 'cos they scare the hell out of me.'
The obviousness of the lie makes her laugh and he draws her down onto the sofa, his arm still around her shoulders.
'I wonder where that cat came from,' she says, absent, her fingers playing with the blanket he's pulled back over her.
'That wasn't a cat it was a beast from hell.'
She smiles against the collar of his shirt, keeps one hand flat against the solid warm wall of his chest. She doesn't really watch the movie and only listens with half an ear to Boyd's running commentary: the inexplicable puzzle of zombies and their shuffling ability to catch up with sprinters; the heroine (No spunk, that woman); the hero (He'll blow himself up with that dynamite).
What she really does is concentrate on him. The cadences of his voice, the way words roll around his mouth. The fineness of the cotton shirt and the slight fray at the corner of the collar. She can't see his eyes but she knows their colours, the way the clear green will flare and brighten, a piercing gaze, and other times when they are smoke-soft and muted. No part of him is yielding, the contours of his body hard, corded with muscle and the arms that hold her are fast but will let her go whenever she wants.
He's stopped talking, she realises, and he isn't watching the movie anymore. Ava gropes blindly, finds the remote, presses the button and the flickering light stops, the only sounds the hum of his heartbeat under her ear and the catch of his breath.
'You don't want to watch anymore?' he asks, grave, his hands moving to frame her face.
'No,' she tells him, her face so close to his, 'I already know how it ends.'