This didn't feel right. No. Rather, this whole conversation felt fake.
"…Th-this door leads to the crawlspace, but I-I think you know that by now."
She could barely speak.
"Right." Demyx said with a nod. He bobbed his head in the direction of the hallway and made a pointing hand gesture with his thumb. "Those rooms over there are?"
She could barely think.
"Oh, uhm, those are the bedrooms, an-and the bathroom… Th-there are three of them… um, bedrooms I mean." She hurriedly explained, her brain failing to act in accordance with her mouth properly.
She could barely speak what she was trying to think.
He looked back and forth between the four doors surrounding him, as if looking at them for the first time. He continued to look at the individual doors one at a time as he proceeded speaking.
"So, which one can I stay in?"
Heather froze.
"Oh, u-um…" She started.
She knew that the man in front of her had to sleep, and she also knew that he probably wouldn't get much sleep on the couch; let alone agree to sleeping on the couch. The couch hardly had enough room for two people to sit on it. At that, whenever two people actually were on it, it was more like they were sitting on each other rather than on the couch. If Demyx were to attempt to lay on it his legs would go over the armrest. She was barely able to fit on the couch herself and he was nearly a head taller than her, if not a head taller than her.
She had found him there on it curled up sure, but she was sure that he probably wouldn't be willing to do that again. If he wasn't sleeping on the couch then there were only two options. He was either sleeping on the floor, or he was sleeping in a bedroom.
Something told her he wouldn't be all that keen on using the rug as a pillow.
Why didn't he just choose a room that he wanted? Things would be so much easier if he wasn't pulling this unknowing act. One of the first things that she saw after getting the blindfold taken off of her face was him going into her parents' bedroom, so she didn't understand why was he acting like he didn't know what all of the rooms were. He was aware of her knowing that he had gone into all of the bedrooms; that she knew.
Well, he was at least aware of her knowing that he had been in her parents' bedroom anyway. She didn't know for sure if he knew that she had heard him moving around the house before she fainted, but the logical part of her brain told her that it would explain why he had masked the sound of his footprints when he was approaching her.
However he managed to silence the sound of his own footsteps anyway.
Ever since he had essentially forced her to get up from that chair he had her busy showing him everything in the house, from the front door closet to the kitchen shelves. Normally it would've been easy to show someone all of the rooms of the single-floored room within a few minutes. The house was only a little bit more than twelve-hundred square feet after all. She would point out the garage, step into the living room from the patio, point over to the bedroom hallway, and just with those three steps she would have shown that person everything there was to see.
Demyx wasn't that person.
He was making her explain every little thing that he wanted to know about, every detail that he picked up on, and every object that happened to catch his eye. Basically, he wanted to know almost every single aspect of the house.
The only things he wasn't asking about, oddly enough, were the things that she thought were important to wonder about. Questions about the things like the water supply, electricity, wall insulation, food, and the piping remained unasked. She thought he would want to know if he would freeze to death when the snow season hit or if he was going to be staying in a place with a hole in the roof.
What she considered to be the oddest thing was that for some reason he was mainly having her explain the things that he had most likely noticed already. At that, he had her explain those particular ones in high detail. He had to know that she realized this.
She just couldn't understand what he was doing. Why was he acting like he didn't know anything when both of them knew that he knew everything?
As confused as ever she looked up from her blank gaze at the floor to immediately see that Demyx was looking at her.
She quickly averted her eyes from him and fought the urge to bite her lip as she tried to remember what he had wanted. Didn't he want to know about the bedrooms? She would have to start replying to his questions quicker. She would do it if only to keep him from looking at her, and to keep her out of his mind as much as she could.
"N-not those ones. The other one, um, the one down the hall th-there." She stuttered.
"Ah cool; the one with the big bed!"
A million more questions flew to her mind with that comment as he cheerfully wandered off down the hallway, indifferent to her internal utter disbelief.
Did that man just contradict his entire act?
She stood there, purely stunned by his actions, any words running through her mind as far away from her lips as the ice caps were from the tropics. When she came to her senses she quickly rushed after him.
There was no way that she was going to risk getting him mad at her for not following him into her parents' room.
The thought of him alone in her parents' own bedroom was enough to make her shudder. It was bad enough that he had to stay in the house in the first place, but she couldn't let him stay in her room; especially when she would be sleeping in it. She was not giving up her own bedroom to this man, and the other bedroom wasn't even up for consideration.
Her parents would understand.
If they ever knew.
The door to her parents' bedroom was wide open, and she hastily let herself in. Demyx was sitting on her parents' bed, almost hyperactively rolling around on it like he was some sort of earthworm. She simply stood in place, not making any action to indicate her presence. He continued on his bizarre behavior, undisturbed by her presence for quite some time.
He abruptly stopped. She blinked in surprise, and just like that when she opened her eyes she found that he had himself propped against the headboard.
"Doing that takes up so much energy…" He said in what was a bizarre mix of a grumble and a whine. He rolled his neck, and continued on talking to himself in an easier voice that she had to strain her ears to hear. "I guess I was just so excited to see a bed. A real bed! I can't believe-!"
"Eee!"
Heather yelped as she nearly fell face first to the ground, landing hard against the wall instead. She instinctively looked down at her feet to see the source of her accident; the long black boots that she had seen Demyx wearing. Blinking, she looked over to Demyx himself and tried to get a glimpse of his feet.
He didn't take them off while she had been in here for the last few minutes, and he had only been in the room a few seconds before she came in.
How did he manage to get them off so fast?
Forgoing her thoughts, she clumsily pushed herself off of the wall and brushed the newly formed wrinkles out of her shirt as a way to ignore the pain. There was bit of creaking from the direction of the bed, but she tried not to pay any attention to it. She knew it had to be the sound of the man on the bed moving.
"...so, uh, are you alright?" Demyx asked her.
"…yes, I'm fine." She squeaked in response.
What was wrong with her? She had been thinking into this situation with a lot of depth, and she was never the type to think too deeply into things. Plus, while she was easy to jump, she wasn't a regular klutz either. She only wound up hurting herself if she got too scared, not because she didn't pay attention.
Demyx being around was troubling her too much.
She expected to be bother by this; she expected to be really really bothered by this. She just didn't expect to be so bothered that she wouldn't be able to control what she was doing. Being scared stiff as she stuttered over her words was what she expected, but she never thought that it would go this extent. He was just… he was just…
He yawned and clicked his tongue tiredly, his eyelids drooping.
…the man was just so scary.
Demyx returned to lying on the bed with a contented sigh, and rolled around on it in a similar manner of a lazy worm until he finally became comfortable.
He was just so… spontaneous. Unpredictable. He was unpredictable. He was acting like this was no big deal at all; like he wasn't holding an unwilling teenage girl hostage in her own home. He was behaving like he was just a guest, a friend coming to visit for a while. It was so odd.
Just a few days ago she knew that if she were to ever picture herself in the situation that she was in now, she would imagine that she would be relieved to have a captor as casual as Demyx was. That was a few days ago though.
Now she knew that friendly, or unfriendly she was still a hostage.
It felt just as bad to have a friendly captor then to have an unfriendly captor. Any captor would still be a captor just as a captive would always be a captive at the end of the day. Well technically, she couldn't be sure since she had never had any sort of captor besides him, but she didn't want to think about that. She just hoped that she would never be able to compare the two through experience.
What she did know for sure was that either way she would be scared, and she was scared right now.
She just had to keep calm. Keeping calm was the only thing that had saved her from frightening situations before, besides running from them, and as she couldn't run away from her own home staying calm was her only hope. She knew that the man was going to be here for a while, and she was just going to have to get used to him; even if he was as scary as the boogeyman.
No matter how terrifying his behavior was to her things could be a lot worse. Things could have been horrible. He could've been violent towards her. He didn't have to tie her up, but he even let her out. He could've just… killed her…
She forced those thoughts out of her head, and focused on the situation at hand.
Heather was a prisoner, and Demyx was her jailer. It was as simple as that.
Even as she watched him hop around the bed like a rowdy toddler she realized that the way he was acting was just making things harder for her. How could such a friendly, average Joe kind of guy be so frightening to her?
Demyx remained unaware of her thoughts. There he was, a grown man she had just met, nearly asleep on her parents' bed.
He had managed to sprawl out as much as he could on the queen sized bed, his limbs spread all in different directions, making him look like a giant 'X'. At some point in her thinking he had moved himself so he was laying on the opposite side of the pillows. If he was trying not to sleep he was doing a very good job of it. While a part of his right arm was falling off the side, his entire head was hanging off of the bed. His right leg was barely avoiding the same fate as his arm. He honestly looked like he was going to fall off any second now.
She couldn't even understand why he acted like… the way he did. She didn't even know what she could call his behavior. So far he had been friendly, casual, and pretty laid-back.
Then again she had only known him for an hour or two; not including when they first met before he tied up her unconscious body. She still didn't know how long it had been since she had fainted. What was his point in acting like this? He didn't personally care about her, so why was he going to the trouble of trying to make her comfortable? Why was he doing all of this in the first place? With all of the new questions rolling around in her head those millions of questions that had been bothering her earlier came back again.
Why couldn't things be as easy for her as they were when her parents were home?
The room was nearly silent. With the absence of human voices and the natural noises of the world around them the only sound in the room was the unforgettable rustling of that horrible cloak of his. As time went on it would brush together regularly as his chest steadily rose up and down.
Heather merely stood at her place by the wall. She didn't feel like moving. She simply watched as Demyx lounged on her parents' bed like he had done so a million times before, and at some point she wondered if he remembered that she was supposed to be giving him a tour. There wasn't anything else for her to do.
One of the reasons for why she wasn't moving was because she wasn't dumb enough to try escaping, no; it was because she wasn't brave enough to even try escaping.
If she left the room on her own then there was a chance that he might take the action as her trying to escape, and she had no intention of finding out what he would do to her if she went against what he wanted. If she just stayed by his side until he said otherwise then she would be fine. All she had to do was listen to everything he said. She believed that it wouldn't be too hard. If the way that he was acting now was any indication, then she would be able to do what he wanted without a problem.
"Hey."
The aforementioned girl jumped in place and her eyes darted to where Demyx was sitting, watching her.
"There you are! Talk about getting lost in lala land. I guess I really did lose you there for a moment. I've been talking for a while now. Well, anyway, come on over here." He said, gesturing for her to come closer. "I know we just met 'n all, but that doesn't mean that you have to spend your time standing like a statue in the corner. You can't be antisocial around me forever."
Heather gulped, and against her hopes, he heard her.
"Aw c'mon." He said, his tone changing to that of a whine. "I already told you that I don't bite. If I did I would've bitten you already, and we wouldn't be having this conversation now. Well, me conversing to you anyway…"
She couldn't look him in his eyes. Instead, she directed her gaze down to her feet. She heard him shift on the bed.
She had the nagging feeling that while she wasn't looking at him, he was looking at her.
"Just sit down. Relax." He spoke, his voice calm. "Things are gonna' be rough for you in the beginning, and if you don't do anything about it, then these things are going to stay rough. The first step to making things easier is to take it easier. It won't exactly be a breeze, but you might as well speed up the process. It's all you can do, right?"
She remained motionless. While her face remained blank, it only remained blank because of her mixed emotions. Uncertainty overwhelmed her as every main option she had and every sub option she came up with seemed to always wind up with a losing outcome for her instead of winning one. There was simply no way around him. She was intent on remaining where she was standing, until his next words left his mouth.
"C'mon. I'm reeeeally bored."
Heather looked at him for a moment, his words slowly sinking in.
He was so unpredictable.
Wordlessly, she slowly moved closer to him, ignoring that his eyes followed her every movement. She approached his side, only to pass him by to sit on the old rocking chair across from his spot on the brown bed comforter. She tried to keep the old, creaking chair underneath of her steady as she looked at him, but all she could focus on was the odd mixture of both expectancy and anxiety that man was making her feel.
"Well you're within ten feet of me, so I suppose that's a start." Demyx said cheerfully. "So… uhh… do you play any instruments?"
She shook her head in reply, the urge to look away nagging at her.
"No? Uhh… so what are your hobbies then?" He asked in such an easy tone that it made her uneasy.
She nibbled on her lip and this time she couldn't resist that persistent urge to look away. It made her feel pathetic to know that he had to be staring at her while she had her head turned away from him, as if it hid her from him.
She was hopeless.
She expected him to speak up again, but all she heard was his cloak rustling. When she finally had the nerve to look out from the corner of her eye she saw that he was shifting his crisscrossed position on the bed. Almost immediately after she did so she saw a bit of his head move as he sighed.
"Alright, alright. It's obvious how uncomfortable you are. If you won't even talk about yourself then I'm guessing you won't be talking about much of anything. So I guess the question is when will you actually speak with me?" He said.
The question was rhetorical. Both of them realized that.
Heather felt all the more unnerved with his nonchalant inquiry, while she couldn't tell how Demyx felt. She couldn't tell what Demyx felt at all. It was almost like he was some sort of wall; an impenetrable wall without any sort of lock that could be opened with a key. Did all hostages feel this way about their captors?
His friendly gaze changed somewhat, and all of a sudden it was emotionless; almost like he was in deep thought. He couldn't be in deep thought. She knew he wasn't. It might have just been one of those silly gut feelings, but she felt that he was fully aware of every move she was making.
She startled as he stretched his neck. He made a curious noise as he looked at her for a moment before he continued stretching.
"Well Heather, how about this…" He started. "I can give you some alone time if that's what you want. This is probably pretty overwhelming. Are you interested?"
Heather remained silent, keeping her distraught sounds to herself as she hastily thought over what he said.
"I-I…" She stuttered. She cut herself off before she could stutter more, and then she continued, her shaking voice finally starting to become a bit steady. "I'm interested."
"There you go!" He said cheerfully. "See, you can talk all you want and it won't be that hard. Now, if you really want a few moments to yourself then I'll be willing to give you them. I'm not a slave driver, trust me. If you want a few minutes to yourself, all you have to do is stay in here quietly. Simple, right?"
That's it?
"That's it?" The words slipped out of Heather's mouth before she could stop them.
"Yep; that's it!" Demyx confirmed. "You can get a few nice minutes to yourself just for sitting around and being quiet. I'm pretty sure that you won't have much of a problem with that, being so quiet around me anyway."
He got off of the bed and walked past her over to the door. He pulled the audibly protesting door open, and turned to face her.
"Alright, you have a minute or so to yourself now. Breathe a bit; I won't be back too soon. I will be back though." He said, turning back to the door and exiting through it.
The loud click of the door knob meeting the wall pierced the now silent room, and she heard him walk away from the bedroom. All of her attention was suddenly focused on her hearing. She heard the sound of his footsteps as he walked further for a few moments, the floorboards creaking as he put pressure on one of his feet, and then the squeaking of a door in the hallway.
Adrenaline rushed through her body as she heard the door he opened click shut. Her body instantly felt energized from both the hormone and the emotions she was feeling. Her emotions were so strong that she didn't even recognize that she was feeling them, or rather, feeling anything. Her emotions had control of her free thoughts.
She had a chance, and she was going to use it.
She had to use it.
A few minutes passed. Heather was completely immune to the regularly occurring noises around her, the article in her hands one of the sole objects of her attention. She didn't run. She didn't hide. She just stood there, breathing, staring at the door.
That was what the rest of her attention was on. Her only purpose now was to do what she was thinking. There was no other purpose.
Only when the sound of a door creaking emerged did she pay attention to what was happening around her. She heard the click of a door shutting, and then the sound of footsteps getting closer. The sound of his feet got closer, closer, and closer until the sound of the door knob in front of her creaking replaced it. He then walked in, not actually looking at her. He was there; relaxed. He spoke, his own concentration on shutting the door.
"Hey. I hope you enjoyed your alone time. Sorry it had to be so short, but…" He trailed off, finally facing her.
In the decent amount of sunlight that was coming out of the blinded window behind her she was able to see him watch the dark metal in her hands glisten, and the gun in her hands made a warning clink as she pointed it up in the direction of his forehead.
"Don't move."