Author's Note: So...I would apologize for the lack of updates...but it doesn't appear that anyone missed them.
I'm going to be out of town for the next two weeks, so I don't know when/if I'll have access. Or inspiration.
Ten reviews is obviously never going to happen, so forget I ever said anything about it.
Enjoy.
Chapter 8
The Sunny Days Inn. Third floor hallway. Room 303.
The door swings open slowly, silently, as though moved by a pair of careful, perfect, invisible hands. Stealthy movement in the shadows. A presence, intangible and yet somehow overpowering.
Inside, a dark hotel room, a single bed with rumpled sheets kicked to the floor. A large man in nothing but white boxers, asleep, snoring lightly. Tall, blond—unbelievably handsome. A perfect outer shell concealing the corruption within.
The man stirs, grunts, sits up in bed. There is something here. He puts a hand to the back of his neck as his skin crawls, shudders and looks at the cast-off covers. Picking them up would help, of course, but it would also require movement. Movement which might cause something else to take notice. Might stir silent shadow things resting in the corners of the room.
Whispers of the past haunt him, muttered warnings and scoffed rebuttals.
Nowaycouldn'tbeyou'reparanoid.
I refuse to believe that.
I will not sacrifice everything I've rebuilt time and time again to feed your fucked up fantasy.
Still…at the end of the day…there is always the risk. The risk that has kept him running for years. On the road, selling vacuum cleaners that don't really work any better than the store brands to unknowing housewives in search of something to make their harried lives just a little bit easier.
The risk that has lost him his own family, divorced him from his wife and closed off the ability to spend even a short weekend with his children. The risk means he will never see his son graduate from high school or his daughter walk down the aisle smiling from below a white lace veil at her wedding.
The risk he created through greed and recklessness.
He sits up at last, leans over the side of the bed and snatches up the covers in one swift motion. Burrows down into the bed, trying to ignore the feeling of being watched. Something moves, there, in the shadows. A thickening in the blackness, almost. He pulls the blankets up over his head, cowering in the bed like a child. A glowing eye, green through a hole in the blanket.
He throws off the covers and dives to the floor, trying to find his way to the door. Something covers his eyes, like a thick black cloud, engulfing the light from under the door. He stumbles around clawing at his face, crying out in the dark and ramming painfully into pieces of furniture.
A pair of hands, cold on his hot neck.
He tries to scream, chokes against the stranglehold. Attempting to flail, he finds that he cannot even move, completely deprived of both oxygen and vision, pinwheels of gold swimming in the black.
The blunt of a knife—no, bigger—a saw? Brought down hard on the place where neck meets shoulder. The man crumples, fighting unconsciousness.
A searing pain on his hairline.
Whitehotpainfeardeath.
Black.
Come join Astral Light: A Constantine Fan Forum.