Chapter 3 She herself is a haunted house/ Clicking teeth, shifting skin.

I apologize for much-delayed uploading of this part, life catched up to me and couldn't be ignored anymore, unfortunately. I edited a bit of the last chapter to add few lines that fit what I had in mind better. I added them near the end of the fight sequence, I hope they prepare the reader for what comes in this chapter at least a bit. After this there should be more interactions between the protagonists. Also, because English is not my first language, the mistakes I make may be in some instances comical and I apologize for them in advance. Any suggestions on how I can improve this story would be more than welcome. Lastly, I would like to thank everyone who subscribed to this story, favorited and commented on it, this makes me very happy & keeps me motivated!

"She herself is a haunted house. She does not possess herself; her ancestors sometimes come and peer out of the windows of her eyes and that is very frightening."

― Angela Carter, The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories

He never came to get her.

Wretched and bloody nightmares troubled Lotte incessantly throughout that night. Fantasies of yesterday's stranger ripping her to the shreds, that somehow gotten intermingled with chopped and warped memories of what she herself has done before, produced a potent nighmtarish poison her mind kept feeding her for hours on end. Fear and visceral lust continued to plague her weary mind throughout the night and she kept dreaming of those tattoed hands tightly clasped around her throat, life slowly trickling from her body. An end coming not with a bang but a drawn, torturous moan.

In direct contrast to her dark dreaming, it was actually quite calm outside her apartment; nobody was there. The phone rested near her palm, its yesterday purpose all but forgotten due to the shaky connection across the Pacific. It rang a few times come morning, failing to arouse the girl from her slumber.

What awakened Lotte, however, was a very persistent ray of light, signalling that it was becoming, indeed, well into the morning. Long and in the shape of the spear, it warmed the tip of her nose at first, and as the morning hours progressed, started to advance towards her eyes, inducing in her the kind of blurry, transitory period between the deep sleep and lucid awareness. The light pretty much invaded her mind, up until now tangled in muddy and grim thoughts that would've been somewhat akin to dreams, hadn't they resembled a seer's vision so disturbingly. The music must have stopped playing some time ago, as it was an eerie silence that greeted her upon awakening. That and the raspy breath of Berg, curled into a tight ball next to her.

Moving proved to have been of grave difficulty. As blood flushed her veins anew and awareness creeped from every corner of her mind, Lotte's predicament would surely become more pronounced with each passing minute. Presently she noticed, and to her distaste too, that a side of her cheek was slathered with saliva. She must've dribbled during her restless sleep and now had a tart, funky feeling on her tongue that she suspected might have something to do with that other thing she did yesterday on her way home. Reaching with a still-gloved hand, she labored to rub it off, only to have the offending liquid cover even more of her face. Forgoing the ill attempt and feeling a first rush of fever tentatively working its way all over her body, Lotte settled for lying down for the time being. Her cheeks, aflame in the sort of uncomfortble, dry heat and a runny nose complemented the morning's state of discomfiture.

A disgruntled moan that escaped Lotte's lips as she was trying to untangle herself from her clothes and failed to do so - the thick jacket suddenly more akin to some torture device - roused the dog from her sleep eventually. Observing her morning routine of stretching and bending her back, Lotte idly toyed with the idea of going to the park to walk her. And it was precisely that moment when recollection of previous night hit her, hard.

There was an alien man living in uncomfortable distance from her own premises. He also happened to be a ghoul, quite powerful at that, if her dulled senses where ever to be trusted at this point. Considering how dependable they proved to be before, even as she grew weaker with the time passing, it seemed indubitable that this man's most salient feature weren't tattoos after all, peculiar as they were in a ghoul.

As she laid on the bed, body frozen in a state of semi-awareness coupled with absolute lack of ability to move, Lotte contemplated relocating to some other safe place before he managed to catch up to her. Good luck with that, she thought bitterly, testing her unwieldy legs whether they would move, against the numbing fog of disorientation that settled into her mind and body. And the legs wouldn't budge. It was chilly outside and it didn't seem she would be able to get up and close the windows any time soon.

Cold sweat poured all over her body and her throat went sore some time ago. It was funny then, that instead of feeling cold, she was positively burning with heat. Attributing it to the heavy clothing she slept in, Lotte made one another lousy attempt at sitting up and at least stripping partially. This time she made it, albeit it came at the cost. Dizzy, her head swaying a little, the girl tried to still her upper body, all the while bracing herself for the impact getting up would have had on her already fragile state. After a while she managed to move both of her legs, inch by inch, until her feet were firmly planted on the ground. The world seemed hazy on the perpiphery of her vision, contours that belonged to well known objects becoming blurry now. In and out, Lotte counted her breaths to ten before she braved getting up.

God damn.

It's been more than nettling to stand there, febrile and disoriented, and instead of devising a much needed plan of action (now that her neighbour turned out to be a ghoul, and a patently dangerous one, at that), being preoccupied with the task of battling the dizzines that prevented her to even stand still. Instead of one fluid stream of conscience, a chopped and highly warped procession of pictures rapidly succeeding one each other had to serve as a highly deficient ersatz of the reality, not in the least helpful in current situation. A walk to the bathroom became a horror ride taken straight from some Silent Hill franchise, her disorientation and tricks her mind have been playing at her lending the normally dark interiors a colouring and even the texture of rust, paint peeling off in disgusting, cascading pellicles.

Ignore it, the girl kept muttering to herself as she felt her way to the bathroom, teeth clenched painfully and palms reaching tentatively, afraid of even touching the walls, afraid of what may have happened to them as she herself was increasingly becoming unstable. Maybe her home would beome sick too? It's walls, the layers of paint and wallpapers slowly exfoliating, baring the skeleton the walls have been built around, it's state of decay in direct juxtaposition to her own. Flashes of light danced before her eyes and feverish currents kept racing along the length of her body. Not yet, she kept reminding herself, not yet, I still have some time left.

Or so she hoped for, as she sprinted towards the bathroom, the wave of nausea threatening to spill a fountain of tissues and blood on a newly tiled bathroom floor.

She barely made it to the indoor pool and the vomit painted it's water pink, the half digested tissues from yesterdays murder floating around her in translucent petals.


The following few days proved to be of bleaker sort so far for Uta. Not much had to be done work-wise, save for maybe some finishing touches here and there. He had a meeting with a new client scheduled later that afternoon and till then he would have to busy himself with whatever shall come to his hands. Leaning back on his stool, he allowed his palms to rest on his laps as he sat perfectly still, thinking. Such dry spells weren't anything unusual in his line of work, he thought. If anything, they indicated that a somewhat stable number of ghouls remained out there, them growing up in number a threat in context of scarce feeding grounds. Nowadays, most of his clients were enduring acquaintances, with a few rookies sprinkled in between, just to keep things somewhat interesting. Their number remained balanced, as the scrutiny that always had been tight in the 4th let only those most fit for survival through, alive. The problem was, these days quite a number of younger ghouls proved capable to survive. Until they chanced upon him in some inopportune meeting, that is, as cannibalism was the way to go in order to persevere in this zone. Not to mention, a fun distraction, too.

But he was well fed these days, there were no pangs of hunger that made him stalk dark passages and alleways of neighboring wards in search of a meal, like in his younger days. Whatever he did recently, he's done that in pure recreational way. Even so, why was he that much restless then? Allowing himself a minute of calm deliberation, a few thoughts that arrived upon him during the last week kept jutting out.

First of all there was an apparently unaffiliated ghoul prowling the streets near the place he lived. Nothing to be concerned with, it would seem, but he needed excersise, and it would present as good occasion as any other. He caught his scent quite a few times in last weeks and fully intended to pursue that person before. If it weren't for his neighbor thoguh, the unruly ghoul could've been dispatched earlier and perhaps less attention would be bestowed to his newer territory. This wouldn't be the cause with her, it seemed, if what she has done recently constitued any recurring pattern.

He let out a faint chuckle, a hollow, resigned sound reverberating in the studio otherwise deadly silent. The situation could become rather precarious if the girl was to be allowed to roam freely crossed his mind, and his eyes widened instinctively at this thought. The newly arisen problem presented a few interesting routes for him to take, each of them amusing, if he chose with deliberation instead of following his more basic instincts that is. Uta's initial excitement slowly died away, replaced with intense concentration as he begun to ponder possible implications, some of them less advantageous than others. His hands clenched tightly on his lap, Uta let out a deep sigh. Nothing moved around him for a while, save for the few flies that were smacking against the windowpanes rhythmically, desperate to make it to the outside. Briefly he observed them, his eyes tracing their incessant endeavours with no apparent thought registering on his features, and then heaved himself from the chair and made his way to the window.

Roamingfreely. This was precisely the phrase Itori used to describe that girl's situation, some few hours ago when she was leaving for work after a long night of drunken debauchery. Uta was now deliberating at her words, many possible scenarios forming themselves in his mind. Lifting his one slender palm, he effortlessly caught a fly between his finger and the glass, feeling it's buzzing movements against his skin. Observing the little creature squirming frantically, the ghoul stood perfectly still, his visage faintly mirrored in the window. If pressed a bit too hard, the fly would surely explode, leaving an ugly stain on his newly polished panes. A visceral action and quite bothersome in the end, it would seem. Not worth the brief satisfaction of crushing it. Drawing back a little and reaching for the handle to let them go, Uta thought that for a time being, even flies should be allowed to roam freely.

No doubt to get stuck with him again in near future, this time for good.

That brought to his attention an item that was lying on his coffe table, tucked into a manila envelope that ever useful Itori left on her way back as a delayed birthday present. He already knew what comprised it's contents, it was just the exact content of the press clipping she enclosed with his book that made him curious. Plopping himself on the sofa, Uta removed the book on Egon Schiele from it's casing, eager to reach the piece of news in question first.

With ghoul attacks becoming somehow commonplace it wasn't bound to draw big newspaper's attention, but the sighting appeared to be gruesome enough to engage several smaller, regional dailies. Itori dutifully clipped them, drawing childish designs on their borders, and highlighting some phrases with bright pink marker. Words such as 'mangled', 'mutilated' and half eaten stood out, and it made him lick his lips instinctively to read the account on teeth like traces found on the victim's veins, marking both sides of a body, severed in a half at that. Faint ripples of desire made their way thrughout his body as he envisioned small, pointy teeth daintily taking a bite at one place of the body, just to rip it to the shreds in another. She must have been really famished to treat her meal with such degree of haste. It made for interesting fantasy to envision what she was capable of attaining with that tongue of hers, for the corpse was entirely devoid of even tiniest droplet of fluid.

Mauled, severed in half and sucked dry. Pretty vicious attack for somebody who wasn't even a ghoul to begin with. But of course, the press didn't know that. The fact that somebody apparently ate half of a victim's face secured the notion that the perpetrator was a ghoul without a doubt. There was also the question of the victim, a male ghoul no less. Deemed to be an especially flashy example of turf dispute between rivaling members of the same savage species, the journos treated their subject matter with a slight derision that didn't escape Uta's attention. Strewn between remarks intended to be witty, the gruesome details served mostly anecdotal purpose, more titillating than informative. Typical for humans to underplay their fear with ridicule, Uta thought, his fingers tapping on the table as he scanned the texts for some more info that would somehow strengthen his private theory on the perpetrator of that crime. Nothing more could be culled from them and he set the clippings aside with a frustrated sigh.

Vision of her bloodied knuckles and the heady smell of her illness mingled with her victim's blood came to his head and he remembered a brief, but quite strong rush of excitation he felt that night at the possibility of meeting somebody new outside of his own circle to fool around with. Blood has always been a big turn on for him and Uta's hand slowly rised to cover his eyes, in an attempt to somehow appease his growing need and soothe the storm starting to form within his body. Jerking off in a studio that was in a way a semi-public space simply wouldn't do, as would be hate fucking a complete, and potentially dangerous, stranger next door, however tempting the fantasy has been. Somebody who could mangle a mature male ghoul and have as little as a limp afterwards could become an indeed suitable lover.

The fact that she apparently was in habit of eating his own kin would perhaps be too big of an obstacle to overcome for that to happen in any near future however.

A/N A shorter chapter than usual but I've gotten a bit rusty and needed some warm up. Hopefully next chapter will come much faster!

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