Possessed
March

Ciel did not touch the board after that, and with every passing day, it became easier and easier to throw out the idea that anything had happened had all. If Elizabeth had been there, she would have been very sure – no, positive that she was being assaulted by some infernal forces, and told her stiff parents every detail. Then, she would have cried and cried until some change was made. She would have wanted an entirely new house, and if she'd explained the ordeal to her father and her father alone, she might have gotten it. Seeing as her mother was far more rational, Elizabeth would have probably just ended up trading rooms with one of her brothers. And of course, the Ouija board would have been burned, and Elizabeth would have gone to the school to have blessed by a priest.

Ciel, however, was not so foolish. No, in retrospect, his reaction seemed so silly. It was obvious that his fingers ending up flinging the planchette without him realizing it, so it gave the appearance of snapping out of his hand. Then, having successfully scared himself, he had an asthma attack. It was just… embarrassing. He was thankful no one had been there to see it.

Since the event, nothing much had really changed. Despite his growing confidence that he'd used the toy to successfully scare himself, Ciel had thrown the thing out. If he could scare himself into having an asthma attack once, he could do it twice, and there was no joy in something that uncomfortable. Once thrown out, he'd resumed his life as normal. Each morning he woke, dressed himself in his school uniform, and left for school. His parents had meant well when enrolling him in Catholic school, but his faith had waned to nothing by about thirteen. At best, Ciel was an atheist. There was nothing out in the universe waiting for anyone, and it was a bit silly for people to still believe in monsters under the bed.

No, in Ciel's mind, it was an event he couldn't forget soon enough.

Vincent and Rachael Phantomhive, however, did notice a difference in their son. It wasn't immediate, and they blamed themselves for this later, thinking that if only they'd seen the signs earlier, maybe they could have done something. Maybe they could have saved him. But this sign was so small, so insignificant, that if they could be blamed for everything else, they could not be blamed for this. Ciel's appetite began to change. His appetite had always been flighty anyway, just as with all growing boys. But it was on an inconspicuous day in early March that Ciel decided he was going to stop eating breakfast. It had actually been a conscious decision, but only because he'd realized he'd been wasting Rachael's breakfasts for the last week, barely eating his eggs or taking one bite of toast. Neither of his parents noticed this, and neither of them should have.

Another change in his appetite, this one even less noticeable, were his more frequently occurring bouts of binge eating. Again, this was left to the fact that he was a growing boy. Ciel would skip breakfast, pick at lunch, and have a salad for dinner. Pick at breakfast, skip lunch, say he had a massive lunch and skip dinner. And then, as if waking from a long dream, his stomach would suddenly lurch with hunger, and he'd gorge himself. Sometimes it was at lunch, Elizabeth watching on with a bit of unmasked disgust in her eyes as Ciel would go through three plates of the cafeteria's standard issue Fish and Chips, three bottles of milk, and plate after plate of chocolate cake. Most of the time, though, it would be at breakfast. Ciel would tear through his own plate, then the leftover's his parents had abandoned, then a bowl of oatmeal, then a bowl of cereal, two bowls of cereal, four frozen waffles, four slices of toast. He'd eat and eat until the emptiness in his stomach vanished. And then he'd forget to eat for a few days.

But as startling as this behavior would be under the observing eyes of a psychologist, no one else found it entirely surprising. As effeminate as Ciel was, he was an adolescent boy. It meant his body was going to do things that didn't make logical sense. It meant he could grow two inches in a month, and subsequently lose all balance of his body. It meant he could develop muscle (should he want to) with only ten or fifteen reps at one of the gyms in the mansion. It meant that he'd be interested in girls, have entirely bizarre sleeping patterns, and yes. Eat strangely. It was only little Lizzie Middleford, who watched him starve or binge every day at school, that brought it up.

"Erm, Ciel?"

He looked up. Today, he was nibbling on an apple. He wasn't hungry. "Yes?"

"You should… eat. You're going to shrivel away like that."

He gave her a disapproving look, as if to tell her to mind her own business, but he would never say that out loud. They might be dating, after all. He didn't really know. As long as he could remember, Elizabeth had been at his side. They'd shared a few sticky kisses in their childhood, and a few more in his adolescence. When walking around together, she remained close, but at school would never go as far as to hold his hand. It was against school policy, and Ciel was mildly grateful. He didn't particularly like being touched, but being touched in public made him extremely uncomfortable. On what Elizabeth (Lizzie, she'd told him to call her Lizzie because Elizabeth sounded old and not cute) called dates, she'd hold his hand, kiss his cheek, and he'd long grown out of being obviously repulsed by the actions. Internally, each kiss, sticky with gloss or staining with lipstick but never just her lips – each was just a bit humiliating.

"I'm fine, Lizzie. Just not hungry today. I really overate at breakfast."

She frowned. "But isn't it healthier to… I don't know. Eat normal-sized, three times a day?"

"Probably." He shrugged dismissively. "So, what are you doing for spring break?"

The distraction worked, as she launched into a description of a lovely cruise she was going on, a beautiful Titanic style ship with better safety features. He'd laughed, expressed how he'd wished he was going too (a brief vacation with Lizzie was still a vacation, and he loved sailing) – and the two of them mourned about it, as lovers do. It was normal. And Elizabeth didn't bring up his eating habits again.

When Spring Break did arrive, the Phantomhives bid the Middlefords bon voyage, and a day later, took a train together to Paris to spend the break with Ciel's lovely aunt. They did this rather often, and in his youth, these trips were something he very much looked forward to. Aunt Angelina was flamboyant, glamorous, beautiful, and brilliant. People looked at her, with her socialite lifestyle, and expected her to say she was a former model, still working in the fashion business as maybe a designer, or a magazine editor. Instead, she was a plastic surgeon, which was so shocking to those who meet her that it was almost equally glamorous as saying she was a model. She'd cut into the faces, breasts, and buttocks of anyone who was anyone, and could command attention in ways other people could only hope to.

And, to a degree, Ciel did still enjoy these trips. He just ended up spending much more time alone than he ever did before – and that was by choice.

Aunt Angelina was changing. Every year they'd been to see her, it became more apparent. Although she projected outwardly a love of her socialite lifestyle, the loneliness and even jealousy in her eyes was becoming more and more evident with each visit. What were once long conversations full of laughter became filled with uncomfortable silences, and so Ciel spent most of his days out in Paris, visiting all of his favorite cafes, sipping tea under umbrellas, taking the boat tours, seeing the Louvre.

At night, he was plagued with nightmares. In the beginning, they were just dreams. Blurs of color, sensations, nothing recognizable but an overall sensual tone that left him yearning when he woke, and he'd try to think of Elizabeth when he'd masturbate but it usually ended up ruining it. He attributed that to the fact that he remembered Elizabeth at five years old, that he could see that version of her so clearly that he felt dirty imagining her naked. The few times he'd climax after those dreams, thoughts of her were gone, and in her stead long, raking fingernails, black nails dragging over his thighs, his shoulders, indistinct but terribly erotic. That had been at first. And he hadn't minded them terribly, not terribly.

The nightmares were entirely different. He dreamed of indistinct figures clawing at his skin, tearing into his chest, opening it up for the word to see and mouths at his heart, licking, sucking, eating it right out of his chest as he screamed and screamed, screamed until it was over, until he was dead, until one of his parents shook him awake, startled and frightened and yelling in his ear about how "Baby, it's just a dream! Wake up!"

And the moment he would wake, he would forget him. Only the terror, the terror that knew no name or face or even the vaguest description, remained.

They left France the night before school resumed, and Ciel was exhausted. He napped dreamlessly through the two hour train ride, and his parents worried for him then, that was when the worry had fully begun. But when awake he would chide them, throwing their words in their faces and reminding them how they were "just dreams." This seemed to sate Vincent's nerves, but not Rachael's.

Once at the house, Ciel stuffed blankets in the crack of his bedroom door, so if he started screaming, it would be quieter. Maybe it wouldn't carry all the way to his parent's room. By then, he'd lost three pounds. Despite his cycle of binging and starving, his binges weren't frequent enough to offset the sheer amount of calories he wasn't eating during the week. The three pounds he'd lost was hardly noticeable, just a little bit of baby fat out of his face, which everyone mistook for him finally "filling out". Elizabeth mourned the loss of his cuteness, and Ciel – had he been a bit more suave – would have told her that she was cute enough for the both of them. But he wasn't suave, so he'd said something along the lines of "I'm not supposed to be cute at my age, I'm a guy…"

He slept during class. This statement, just by itself, is somewhat incredible. Ciel Phantomhive, even at his brattiest age, had never disrespected teachers. He'd not gotten in physical fights, he'd not chewed gum or eaten food when he wasn't supposed to, he'd always been ready with an answer when called on. Every report card came home with A*s, filled with notes about how he would be absolutely perfect if only he was a little more social. A little less distant. But aside from Ciel's tendency to be a loner, he was positively model. So it was incredulous that Ciel was sleeping in class, and on the first day, his teachers prodded him awake. The second day, they felt sorry for him, and let him sleep. And the third day, per school policy, they were forced to call his parents.

Vincent had been almost livid when Ciel's teacher, Sister Katherine, had informed him that his son was slacking off in classes. His father had taken away his television and told him that if he got another phone call, he'd be punished much more severely. Ciel didn't really know what that meant, but it scared him. He'd been in trouble with his parents before, but never had he been in trouble over school, so he made a concentrated effort to stop having nightmares. Unfortunately, this ended up an impossible feat.

Every night, they were there. Machetes digging into his gut, cutting it open, the slap of intestines as they spilled out of him and hit the concrete floor, the agony as he was forced to endure it, endure it, because he never was given the chance to die in these dreams. He could feel the teeth grinding through his organs, masticating him, tearing through the tissue and a series of snaps as it caved like rubber. And he would scream. And scream. The next night, they were making him eat his fingers. The next night, they ate his genitals, then his pelvis, up his abdomen, grinding through bone, drinking the marrow, eating, eating, eating.

Ciel had perfected soundproofing his room by then.

By the end of the month, he'd stopped sleeping most nights. It was easier to simply not sleep and drink coffee, because there was always a point when someone who hasn't slept in days becomes high. Running on nothing, but terribly awake, jittery, giggly. Ciel liked that high. Elizabeth found the change in behavior disturbing, until Ciel began to kiss her more in those days when he would be shaking with energy, and she liked kissing Ciel, so she couldn't really complain. It was nice, feeling like he wanted her.

After three days and nights without sleeping, Ciel found his body would need to sleep so much by then that he wouldn't dream. It mirrored his eating. He'd pick at food, and then gorge himself. The difference here was that staying awake was far harder than not eating because his body needed it, needed it desperately. But he fought it. Because even if he slept, a sleep full of nightmares left him feeling less rested than no sleep at all.

He had been sitting in his bedroom, doing math problems at a little past three thirty in the morning, rocking lightly and hands shaking messily when he could have sworn he heard someone laughing.

xx

Hello again! Thank you for sticking with me to chapter 2 :) And a big thank you to my beta reader, Ms-Psuedo-Writer, for her help in making this fic suitable for human viewing. I will be updating every Wednesday, and already have several chapters written out ahead, so I'm almost positive this won't end up like my other multichapters bahaha. If you'd be so kind, please review! Feedback keeps me motivated and inspired, and sometimes people say just the right thing to give me just the right idea for the story's progression. Thanks again!