I've decided to rate this M since things are becoming much darker...
I was still on the kitchen table when I gained consciousness. My back arched and little bolts of pain struck me like electricity. It distracted me for a moment until the ache in my leg returned. I shot up and clasped my thigh, gasping. At the bottom of my foot was Tate, bandaging my swollen ankle. He'd rolled up my jeans, now stained in a hard red crust. He didn't look up, he just continued to dress my wound.
"You've done a pretty good job there," I said with a smile. "I probably would have lost my leg if it weren't for you."
I was responded with silence.
"Tate?"
He finished pinning the bandage down and looked at me, eyes ablaze. "Aren't you angry? Scared? Don't you want to run away now that you know I live in a freak house?"
"I'm not afraid. I thought I was, but I'm safe now."
"No, you're not safe. Being in this house isn't safe! Didn't you gather that information when you went into the basement? What if Addy didn't come and wake me? That thing would have killed you."
I remembered the black pits of its eyes and cringed inwardly. "Do you know what it is?" I asked.
Tate shook his head and grabbed a cloth to run it under the tap. "I tried going down there once to see, but I couldn't get a close enough look without it jumping at me. From what I've seen, it looks like a child. A mutilated baby…"
He scrunched the wet cloth. "You've got blood in your ears," he said. I let my legs dangle over the edge of the table. Tate gently leaned my head to the side and pushed stray hairs behind my ear. His touch sent little jolts of delight to flow through me. Dampness filled my ear as he cleaned.
"You must think I'm nuts," Tate sighed, his warm breath lingering on my neck. If only he brought his mouth closer, he could press his lips against the bare skin. I thought I saw him leaning in, considering the thought too, but his was just concentrating on getting the blood out.
"I don't," I whispered. He let out a breathless laugh.
"There," he gave me a goofy grin and dabbed the tip of my nose with the wet cloth, "all patched up."
I went to wipe my nose when he caught my hand. "Wait," he said, eyes on my neck. "You have a bit of blood in your hair."
Tate took my neck in his hands and rubbed a few strands of bloodied hair between his thumb and forefinger. When he was done, he didn't let go. He cradled my jaw and stared at me in wonder. I sucked in a breath, lost in his dark eyes.
"You're so different, Violet. Even grown men would run out of my house screaming like a little girl from seeing what you saw. You don't even seem fazed, which interests me as to why."
"I've seen worse," I said, not leaving his face.
He chuckled and shook his head. "Who are you?" His eyes were glistening as he gently caressed my cheek with his thumb. I couldn't speak, I couldn't even breathe. Tate's hand trailed down my arm and stopped at my waist. My body inclined towards his as he fondled with the fabric on my shirt. I desperately needed him to kiss me, to feel his lips pressed harshly against mine. He was an addiction, like cocaine. Once I had some, I wanted more. I reached my hand to his bare chest, satisfying my desire to feel his muscle. His body reacted with a shiver. Tate lightly brushed his lips against the corner of my mouth and closed his eyes. "Violet…"
There was a knock. We broke apart, cheeks flushed. Adelaide was standing against the archway.
"Am I interrupting something?" she asked, though her mischievous smile indicated that she knew she was.
"No," Tate's voice was high pitched until he coughed it out. "I was just fixing up Violet. Go back to bed, Addy. It's late."
She chortled and walked off. "I'll leave you two be, then."
My cheeks were burning. Tate wasn't looking at me, just fiddling with his hands. "I don't think you're stable enough to go home till morning, so we probably should go back upstairs," he said.
I nodded and got to my feet. At least, I tried to. The moment my wounded leg touched the floor, it felt like I was stepping on shards of glass. I wailed, falling forward. Tate steadied me and sighed. "I'm going to have to carry you again, aren't I?"
"No, you don't have to, I'm sure I can manage to—" after taking another step, the pain increased. I gritted my teeth and fell back against the table.
"Let me help you." He picked me up and headed for the stairs. I'd underestimated his strength, for he managed to carry me up the vast staircase without a single irregular breath.
Tate placed me gently on the bed and sat on the side. "Thanks," I said. He climbed over me and slipped under the covers.
"Night," he said. I rolled over and stared at his back to me.
"Tate?" I whispered.
He too rolled over to face me. "Yeah?"
It would be so simple to pick up where we left off, to just lean in and kiss him, but I fought that temptation. For now.
"Sweet dreams."
Tate wasn't next to me when I woke up in the morning. I proceeded to remember going down to the basement and being attacked, and Tate patching me up along with a near kiss. I savoured the memory as my mind lingered on it. I'd played out different scenarios of what could have happened in my head; if he'd given me soft kisses or hard, been gentle or rough. Dreams fuelled my imagination with high expectations.
The door creaked open and Tate entered the room quietly, only to see that I was awake. His hair was wet and shaggy, dripping onto his neck. He smelt of soap mixed in with his usual coppery scent.
"I thought you'd sleep forever, you looked so tired," he said.
"Last night was pretty intense."
"Yeah, it was."
"Do you think your parents would care that you stayed here overnight?" he asked. I shook my head. "Lately, my parents have been so caught up in their own melodramatic lives that they've begun to forget about me. I usually stay in my room, so they probably haven't even noticed I've left it. They think I'm depressed, but what would they know?"
"Are you? Is that why you cut yourself?"
"I don't know. I'm just…confused."
Tate nodded once, dropping the subject. "How's your leg? Has the pain gone down?"
I'd barely noticed until Tate brought it up. But once my attention was on it, I could feel it throbbing through the bandage. He sat down on the bed and lifted my foot onto his lap. Layer by layer he carefully unravelled the bandage to reveal five bloodied craters in my ankle. It didn't look real, more like the makeup and special effects used in films. Now that the wound had been irritated, the inflammation increased in intensity. The skin around the gashes was tight with a greenish tinge to it, like venom pulsating through my bloodstream.
"It's getting infected. I'm going to have to go get some more supplies. This bandage is useless now." Tate held up the brown-red blood crusted solid to the material. Just as he started getting up, I finally worked up the nerve to confront him on the topic he seemed to be avoiding.
"Tate, about last night, in the kitchen—"
Tate sighed and looked at his feet. "I know, and I'm sorry for being so forward. I guess we were both scared and vulnerable and I took advantage of it. You could have been seriously hurt if I wasn't there. The fear of knowing that drove me to impulsiveness. I promise not to put you in that situation again."
"No, but—"
"I'll be back soon. Just rest your foot until I get back."
He was obviously avoiding the topic like the plague. I couldn't believe he thought I'd be scared away; I was the one encouraging him last night. I was the one who wanted it more.
The door clicked shut and I fell back against the pillows. It was just me, my thoughts and a leg wounded by a child-sized monster hiding in the basement.
But I wasn't alone. A gush of hushed voices was approaching like waves on the ocean. The whispers hit the walls, or were they filtering through them? Each voice floated around my mind, striking me with their tongues.
Violet…Violet…Violet…Violet…Violet…Violet…
I couldn't run. I was bound to the bed because of my leg. All I could do was lay there and endure the purrs and shrieks of my name repeated over and over again. No amount of force that it took to push the pillows to my ears stopped the sound reaching them.
I ripped the covers off and when I looked at my leg, there was nothing there. Pure shock and horror dizzied my mind as I felt the unblemished pearly skin. There was no pain, no nothing. Not even blood stained my jeans; it was like it never happened. There was only one explanation, I was losing my mind.
The voices started up again, louder and more determined. Blessed with the ability to walk again, I ran from Tate's room, banging into the wall in the hallway from exiting too fast. My hands slid over the walls and my head was pressed up against it. The voices were screaming, calling out my name in desperation behind them.
VIOLET! VIOLET! VIOLET! VIOLET! VIOLET!
Closer and closer I scanned the walls until I was led to a room, all the screams pouring out from behind the door. I had a habit of confronting them. Each room in this house was unpredictable, as it has been proven before. First the basement, now this.
"Enough!" I cried. I couldn't endure their wails so I ripped open the door. Everything stopped, leaving a trail of whispers floating in the air.
"Violet!" a frail woman said to one of the two girls bouncing upon her bed. "Refrain yourself, please."
The woman, whose curly ash hair was falling out of its pins, looked like she'd been crying. The girls sat still on their beds, watching as their mother doused their pink room with a bottle of liquid. When I looked closer, it was gasoline.
"Mommy, what are you doing?" one of the girls asked. The woman continued to splash the curtains and the sofas until they were drenched.
"Daddy wants us to leave," she choked. "And tonight, we're leaving."
With shaking hands, the woman took one look at her children, lit the match and threw it.
"No!" I gasped, running into the room. My body was hit with a scorching blow and I was knocked back. Inside the room the girls were screaming, their skin burning like plastic did. They turned into charred, bubbling bones in seconds. As for the mother, she was sitting on the sofa as the fire consumed her entirely.
Maybe this was all a dream, a hallucination caused by my slowly deteriorating mind. I could be in my bed back home, tossing and turning as I was trapped in this world where I watched as three people burned to death in this room.
I stumbled back and hit something behind me. Screaming, I turned around to see Tate holding my elbows. He grabbed the handle and closed the door, the fire licking beneath it.
"Hey, are you alright?" he asked, cleaning my face from wetness. I hadn't realised I'd started crying.
"That woman, she set her own children on fire," I sobbed. "Didn't you just see it?" I usually didn't let myself be overcome by things that scared me, but all this was taking it too far.
"Violet, all I saw was you screaming from that room," he said. Tate was proving my insanity.
"But it's on fire!" I shouted, grabbing for the handle. I expected heat to hit my face, but all the flames and screaming was gone. All that was left was a charcoaled room. Every corner of the room was charred, black stained the floor all the way up to the ceiling. From the top of the walls, I could still see the pink paint that once coated them.
"It was on fire, once," Tate said. "About six months ago, Larry was married before he told his wife about his affair with Constance. His wife set fire to this room with her kids in it."
"Shit," I breathed. "How could a mother do that to her own children?"
"I guess a broken heart can do that."
Tate lifted the shopping bag with his hand and said, "I've got the supplies, but by the looks of things, you seem to be walking fine."
"You have no idea," I said, lifting my leg for him to see. Tate frowned and took my leg, examining it. "How—?"
"I don't know. It was there and now it's like I was never attacked to begin with."
His eyes darkened. "I told you, this house isn't safe. It's playing mind games with us. I know I sound crazy, but I'm telling the truth."
"I believe you," I sighed. This damned house brought me to this time, called out my name and showed me the memory of a burning room like a scene in a movie.
Tate invited me into his arms. I embraced him gratefully, feeling security.
"I've learned to be stronger than this house. You need to be strong too," Tate said.
