To the reviewers and all those who've shown interest, thank you so so much. I have been waiting to write this forever, but up until now I just haven't had the feedback to keep me going. I love every second of this story and I hope you do too. The more reviews I get, the more likely I am to update!
Sincerely, Dorian.
7
I woke, and waited, and slept, and woke again.
Sometimes I would hear his footsteps. Sometimes the footsteps came to the door. And sometimes, the green light would buzz and fizz.
The thing that killed Kat.
Once there was a gunshot, so abrupt, so excruciatingly loud that I jumped out of my skin and yelped.
But it just made a round dent in the metal, and the door never unlocked for him.
I couldn't tell how many hours passed – the artificial light gave away nothing. I'd left my phone in my bag next to Kat's body.
My phone. Mum.
She wouldn't realise I was missing for a day or two, at least. That was just me – forgetful, distracted.
But after that?
The ship wasn't in the university any more. Perhaps not even on earth. Why would it be? It was unmistakably alien.
Gradually it began to dawn on me that I would probably never get out. I would die here at his hand, or end up a refugee on a different planet at best.
Mum. That was all that really mattered.
It just wasn't fair.
My stomach was empty and growling – then it began to feel like it was eating itself. My tongue was dry and my throat began to burn. The only indication of time.
I slept again. Fitful but dreamless sleep. A blessing.
I was roused by more footfalls, dangerously close to the door.
Terror jolted me upright.
What if he'd found a way in? I couldn't be safe in here forever. It couldn't go on forever.
But there was no green flash, no gunshot.
I sensed more than heard his hand resting on the metal, his forehead pressed to it, his quiet uncertain breathing.
And then silence. Steady expectant silence, empty of anger.
"She likes you."
I realised I had sucked in a sharp breath, and felt a chill beginning at the base of my neck.
His voice was purring, softly coarse, like a gentle monster. Slow. Wondering.
"My ship is - fond of you. She won't let me at you... She's all I have now. She's all I remember." I could physically feel the fingertip he trailed along the doorframe. "So if she wants you safe, it must mean something."
My silence coldly illustrated the amount of trust I was inclined to give.
"You must be thirsty," he went on in that tempting growl, "If you don't want to dehydrate you should come out of there within the next twenty hours."
There was no humour in it. Just factual advice.
And true; my entire body ached to be quenched.
"As for food, I've found something for you."
Another pause, as though he expected me to fling the door open to him. Then, finally, his retreating echoes down the corridor.
I sat there for what could have been ten minutes or ten hours. I was too afraid and too hungry to tell.
The only thing that registered, after that indeterminable amount of time, was that I would rather take my chances with an alien than with dehydration.
At least the former seemed liable to changing its mind about killing me.
I reached up, and pulled the pinstriped shirt from its hanger. Exchanged it for my massacred blouse. Did the buttons shakily.
The rising scent of freshness soothed me, as though it had come straight from mum's ironing board.
My legs were rocks, my skull was a stone. It took draining efforts to haul myself to the door, to turn the lock, to stand on two feet and put one in front of the other.
One step, two steps, three.
The corridor wasn't as long as I remembered it. Perhaps the ship was making the journey shorter for my benefit.
A steady, intermittent throosh was the only sound to suggest machinery and movement.
We must be idling somewhere, I noted, else there'd be more going on.
Not that I knew what the internal workings of a spaceship ought to sound like. But I was convinced.
I was at the top of the stairs. The deck was spread out surreally below me.
And then I saw him.
He stood mirroring my stance, like a shadow, like a predator anticipating the victim's next move.
His awful silver-green eyes were trained on me. Pinioning me.
He was beautiful.
Like a black leopard in his jet black jacket, like a hungry lion with his wild brown mane, terrifying and fascinating. A maelstrom, a hurricane, a collapsing star, he was so unspeakably, horrifically beautiful. I wanted to tear him to a thousand pieces on the spot. I wanted to spear him, hit him, hurt him.
Because it was an insult to Kat.
It wasn't fair on Kat that this monster was being kind to me, that this ogre had such an advantage.
That just staring at him now was slowly setting me on fire from within.
I trod as though in slow motion, down, down, down. Until I stood on the transparent deck, within his reach. Eyes never leaving his. Never disengaging from the war between us, between our very life forces, that crackled and sparked in the air.
He remained perfectly frozen, like a camouflaged feline, right until the moment I came to a standstill.
Then, like a chess piece, like a king moving beyond his one square into the unknown, he advanced.
His gaze roved over the shirt with an intensity I didn't understand. As though he was trying to see something that wasn't there, both drawn and bewildered. Then his eyes dropped, and I regretted the high-waist blue shorts, the over-the-knee socks, the flesh exposed between. I hated the flush it brought to my cheeks. I resented the new energy that invisibly blossomed around us as he ventured nearer, nearer, with domineering steps.
"Look at you." he breathed, soaked in sensuality. His pupils dilated, disturbing the silver stains. "Hello, human."
When I didn't answer he seemed to bristle; he was a mere foot from me, bearing down upon my tiny frame. He inhaled, long and menacing. Then -
A hand shot out, closed around the back of my head, clenched a handful of my hair. Hurting me. Forced my face upwards, vulnerable, my jaw tight with fear.
His satisfied sigh that was almost a moan... His slanting eyes gazing down like a snake's, down into me, into my wide terror, his own teeth gritted with a mixture of sensation and restraint. His head dipping to my throat, a shock of hair brushing my cheek.
His nostrils flaring against my jugular as he smelt my racing blood and my fear and my skin, "Ahh. Yes. I was right."
"About what?" My words were frail in the close air.
He loosed his grip and sidled around me, examining every angle, breath on the back of my neck, fingers making a wandering line around my waist as he circled.
"My memory is excellent." he grinned, though a sharp venom spoiled his words, contorted his features.
"You've forgotten my drink." I said. Anything to get him away.
My blood was so hot.
"Yes, I have." He was suddenly gone, dancing away from me like a phantom, and I breathed again.
A plain glass was extended to me from beyond a hazy veil. I suddenly realised how thirsty I was.
Thirsty enough to gulp down a substance that could well have been anything.
It wasn't anything. It was water. Real water.
"More?"
I leaned against the stair rail for support, nodding.
I could feel him watching me as I swallowed mouthful after cold mouthful. Watching and waiting.
As soon as I'd finished, the glass was snatched from me. "Food."
Again I nodded, my stomach gurgling with liquid.
His purring tones drifted towards me. "... Come here."
I focused. He was propped up by a curious machine that hadn't been there last time.
A curious inchoate gleaming in his eye caught me. His hand beckoned. The corner of his mouth threatened to turn upwards while his brows drew down.
I realised it was thrilling to him.
To call me, and to see if I would obey.
My stomach jerked, with a deep sickness, a sickly excitement. I was repelled and pulled all at once.
It made me want to kill something.
But I did as I was told anyway. Because I wanted to live.
And because it was him. The words came from his mouth.
I knew, instinctively, that I could never disobey that sumptuous mouth, with its lopsided leer.
"What do you like to eat?" that mouth asked me, moving like sensation itself, mesmerising as it betrayed straight white teeth and a soft dark tongue.
I seemed to jolt back into myself, abruptly, shamefully.
I squared my shoulders at him.
He wasn't going to bewitch me so easily. He wasn't going to get away with it.
"You killed Kat." I said blankly.
He was intrigued by this. He shifted, only slightly.
"Who is Kat?"
"That girl? The first girl, who you electrocuted?"
Saying it was far worse than ever thinking it. My lungs wouldn't work properly. I had to speak in stilted bursts. "My best friend?! That girl?"
"Yes. She got in my way."
"So did I. She was the reason – I attacked you."
"Then you would be dead too, if you'd had an electric weapon, like she did." His voracious gaze scraped over me. "I must say, I'm glad you didn't. You're... it's strange…"
He was about to elaborate, but suddenly frowned. "What are you doing?"
"What?"
"What is that?" He slunk towards me, ignoring my alarm, fixated single-mindedly on my face.
His fingers reached out. Touched my cheek, and came away glistening.
"You're…" he stared, touched again, "You're crying. You're crying."
"Yes I'm crying." I trembled with utter rage, barely keeping my voice down. "Don't you know what crying means?"
His head swivelled away. "I don't know. I think – I used to."
"You used to know what crying is?"
He seemed to convulse, grabbing at his own hair like a madman, caving in on himself in a split second.
"Don't ask me questions." he spat at me from under his arm.
I seethed back at him, too overwhelmed with hatred to be afraid. "I'll ask you whether you've ever watched a friend die." I hunched with unutterable fury. "Do you know how to hurt because they're gone? Do you know how much I want to kill you because you killed her? Because it wasn't fair?!"
I couldn't stop it. My fist came out of nowhere, connected with his head, thudding dully.
He emerged from the shelter of his arm. His eyes were round for once. Like a child's.
Then my punches were coming thick and fast, wild, untrained, hardly effective. But enough to sting him, enough to madden him, enough to make him seize both my wrists in his claws and use all of his monstrous force to bend me to the floor, to cripple me as I yelled and screamed and struggled, to thrust me flat on my back with my arms pinned above my head, to roar back at me in a frenzied, incoherent statement of domination. He knelt over my defenceless body, growling and snarling, teeth bared, thighs ramming hard against my legs, nails digging into my skin.
We raced with our laboured breathing. Whose chest heaved the quickest? Whose heart pulsed most violent?
I was light-headed. Transported. Hating myself.
I had stopped fighting, and I didn't want to think about what that meant.
His awful searing eyes thundered into mine. His breath was scorching on my skin, burning my lips.
So close.
"There are no friends here." he rasped, "There is no fair. I don't cry. I don't tolerate."
For a long time, we stayed there. Our respiration continued to echo around the room. It didn't slow down.
We teetered on the edge of something.
But for some reason he never acted. He never moved. And until he did, I would have the strength to resist.
Especially as I was immobilised under his weight.
Finally, he snapped his mouth shut with a huff. Abandoned me. Rose to his feet, watched me struggling to mine.
"Now. What would you like to eat?"
I turned without another glance at him, grasped the stair rail, and fled back to that tiny room. Back to the timeless hunger.
However ugly it got – I wasn't going to eat from hands soaked in Kat's blood.
This time he didn't follow me.
