Author's Note: This is the penultimate chapter of this story. I hope you enjoy. I can not spend too much time on this these days. I hope it is still a nice read.

I sometimes wondered if it was that wish to help all the time that drew me nearer to her. What would happen when she felt better? Will I lose interest? No, people never stop needing care, I would tell myself, feeling myself more and more distant from her.

"Are you feeling OK?" she would ask.

If only she could have found a better person than me, I'd tell myself, tempted to quietly hide, and run back home alone before she could notice.

We'd meet sporadically, but if you were to ask me, it felt like every day. I asked if I was bothering her other friends, being 'round her all the time. She said I wasn't, but I knew she was always a little busier than she is now. She always seemed to have time for me, but what about the others? I believe that is why she stood out in the society - she thought she's better than us, people would believe but never say.

In a space of two months, she grew to be a best friend. We only passed a few words before, without an excuse to get to know each other. But I couldn't help but feel there was someone better for her. Someone who cared for her and thought of nothing else. That corrupted me. Polluted me.

Stomach cramps crippled her some days. One moment she's fine, talking of getting another drink, then she's running home with a rushed goodbye. I wanted to run after her, but then I would think it had something to do with me. As if she was scared to stay too long. But that is that strange habit of victimisation, centering myself when I'm not that important. It was only a doctor she needed, really. And it has nothing to do with me, as much as my stupid brain tried to convince me.

I was selfish. 'Come back to play,' I encouraged her, 'We really need someone like you.' When really all I wanted was to see her more, as well as someone to take away the pressure from my own head. Eleanor looks at me these days with a menace-filled glance. It's a well-known fact among stringed gossip that Katie and I are close. Since the episode, some people tuned in to the worn-out gossip and asked how she was. None of them cared, truly. They were just fishing. As for Eleanor, I had no clue why she looked at me like this. Who I choose to be friends with doesn't give her a right to hate me, I thought. Maybe it was more the challenge to her authority. Or my rudeness, yes, lack of manners in barging into her home. Maybe she could sense perversion in me. I tried to avert my eyes as much as possible. Then maybe she'd know I wasn't a creep.

Anyway, this is not why I'm writing. No, I can't make sense of it really. But since I've got to know her well, I've always wanted to do more. We watch old movies together and read poor and insane articles on The Sun website. All that laughter, and yet I could feel it drop. I was just a moment of joy. Deep down she was not OK, and I knew nothing about it. She wouldn't tell anyone, not even a psychologist.

I never stayed 'round. I did once, but the way she grimaced by the morning, I thought she wanted me gone. I fidget too much or something. Maybe we would never text again as a result.

But to my delight, we kept going into the early mornings. It was as good as being beside each other.

Recently, she had been obsessed with a 'smell.' And so determined was she to make me smell it too, she would find a different way to describe it nightly, propose what it might be, but always shyly. I couldn't understand it. I didn't think it much of a problem, but it was turning her off her food. She'd just watch me buy my green tea, buy my cheese toastie. Sit there empty-handed, waving her head at any offer. And she looked tired, dead tired. She wasn't sleeping much.

I continued to wonder if there was some way I could do more for her, someway I could be someone she could confide in. I thought time would bring it, but she was just getting worse and me nowhere. I felt like she wanted me too, but I couldn't say anything. I screamed in my head for her to say something, but she always found something else to talk about and it didn't seem to bother her. Then I read online. Forums said to be more daring. And I did, I think. I tried to hold her harder. Sent her reels which told her how much she meant. I would bang my head against a wall, scratch myself, watching for the message to be viewed. And yet, while she remained indifferent, maybe I could sense a slight hint in what she wasn't saying.

But it was enough to drive me insane. Enough to drive me to make a move I never thought I would do. And it happened like so: as I said earlier, we spoke until the early hours of the morning. We were speaking about maybe making a day trip to Bristol someday soon, when she complained about her cramps and she wished they would go away.

I thought for a second, my heart yearned, pulled itself apart. So I wrote, "Maybe someone will come and make it all better."

"I wish 3" she responded.

And then the idea came to me. What If I did? What if I turned up? Knocked on her door with the surprise. It had been long enough since the last time. Maybe she had forgotten about the fidgeting. There was not a lot of time left. In thirty or forty minutes she would sleep as usual. Maybe less now she was in pain.

I threw myself out the door, my coat still hanging off my shoulder, and made the ten-minute trip past the prison, past the smoke-filled alleys toward her house. For once I didn't worry. It was a great idea. And I kept up my confidence by reenacting the scene of opening the door.

'You needed me?' But even a drunk me couldn't manage something like that. Something more like 'Oh I'm sorry, it's late but I thought I'd surprise you…' would be possible. But I had nothing to give her. Would I be enough of a surprise? No, I don't think so. Not enough to really warrant going all this way in the cold. But I was so close now, I had to do it.

I looked up at her house on the junction near the church. It was still. Her light was on. I hadn't missed her. I kept my distance for a while, reenacting something respectful, apologetic, but not too pathetic. But I couldn't move, All my confidence had vanished.

Then I saw her. She left the house, shabbily dressed like myself. Her face glowing in the light of her phone. She was typing then nothing.

I looked up. She was walking off in the direction of the campus.

I couldn't go back now, I thought, and so I let that perversion sink in. I followed her, though I knew the entire time I couldn't exactly tell her I did so. I couldn't be caught either. We just had to meet by chance.

She walked with some pace. It made it easier to keep my distance, even when she suddenly stopped to sniffle.

I kept following her and following her, until we got onto the pathway to campus. The two of us passed beneath the orange glow of the lamplight. There was no one besides us. There was not any sound of creeping animals, planes, cars, music of some house party. Everything was sleeping. This made even a scuffed foot on the asphalt dangerous. I dreaded each time I passed beneath the lamplight. Just in case she might see me clearly behind her.

By this point, I was so committed. The voice in my head shouted at me. Creep, it said. Stalker, it said. And each time sunk deeper and deeper. But I had managed to counter it. I was only concerned for her. Concerned she might be doing drugs now.

Then she stopped, but thankfully the path curved, so I slipped somewhere where the foliage hung low to cover me.

Her nose lifted to the air and a bright and perverse grin stretched across her face. She then leaped over the fence and stumbled down the slope.

Again, I don't know what to say. I wasn't thinking properly. This is not the person I am. But I again followed her, deeper and deeper into the woods. I thought I could hear things on either side of me. I tried to look out on the moon-dappled floor for the glimmer of a needle or maybe the face of a stranger, but all I could see was Katie in the distance.

As soon as we got far enough in, she stopped. I was bold enough to get close, kneeling behind a tree. Katie looked around at every angle. Tiptoed to look out at the valley below. She was on the lookout. Did she know someone was watching her? What was she up to?

Then I had to look away. I had to face that voice. The moment she slipped off her jacket, I had a feeling what was happening. And I shouldn't look anymore. It was not my place. She had not allowed me to see her that way. And all these moments were beginning to add up. First Eleanor, now Katie. It wouldn't be an accident anymore. It would be that, a peeping tom. That's what I accused myself of at the time. Yet, there was every chance she wasn't, as much as my heart knew. Maybe she was just laying her coat on the ground. I couldn't be sure unless I checked.

Her long back was pale and bare. Her clothes were screwed up on the floor. She was fiddling with the button of her cargo trousers now. And now I knew, but yet I didn't look away, I couldn't. I thought so many things. I imagined us back somewhere warm. I could rest my head on her. Her hand in my hair. We could watch something so pressed up close that there never would be a secret anymore. I would prefer that, without a blot on my heart. The blot of a creep.

I played a little with the mulch of the trees below and a stick. I heard a grumble, a really sickening one, followed by a clutching moan of pain. I told myself I shouldn't be there. I was intruding. I felt like my face was melting. And really, I shouldn't have been.

Because that was when the flashing began, that sound of tense rubber. It was so strange I had to look again, and this time I couldn't look away.

Was I frightened? Yes.

But something else caught me. I found myself smiling. Why was I smiling? Why was I hoping for it to continue, for the worst of my imagination, which was pushed to its very limit, to come true? Oh, I hoped what I thought to be happening to be true. I was breathing a little harder, my body numb. I saw her scalp flip back, the green bold head. That was her stone, cold brow, bathed in blue. Her face lost its fullness, stretched to inhuman proportions. The smile now in charge of me took great delight in seeing that creature squeeze out from inside her, it was just pulling her off as if she was nothing, as if minutes ago she hadn't been that rakey girl I spent most of my time with. The electricity and light spewed out, touching the branches above, and reached out to me. God, I felt it hit me, I'm sure. There wasn't much of Katie left. She was slipping down her limp fingers were nearly touching the floor, where her feet still stood, as if nothing unordinary was happening at all.

Then there wasn't anything left but this creature and me. But she left herself behind, scurrying off down into the valley. I got up and found myself above her face. It was so strange seeing her. Facing her, and yet she wasn't seeing me. She wasn't aware of me. It was like staring into a photograph. I bent down and felt her hand. It was empty. Entirely empty.

I then walked on back to the path, still exasperated with what I just saw, a little frightened of the beast living inside her, but above all, the reason I am writing here now, is I felt excited, thrilled and I don't know why.

I didn't hear back from her till morning. She claimed to have fallen asleep. I remembered we had spoken about watching some trashy dating reality show, so I proposed it for that evening.

"Are you OK?" she asked as she let me in. I couldn't look at her for long. I just walked ahead straight to her room.

"Is it just us tonight?" I asked.

"David's out for the evening with Law soc. And the others, I think will come back later. I don't think they'll mind too much. They've never complained about our films before."

"That's good," I said at the top of the stairs. Still, I couldn't look round at her, but a great smile was trying to force its way through.

As we got in, Katie closed the door and laughed. "What's up with you?" she paused, then with recognition, "Ah, Lara's tried pulling someone else in the library again? Who was it this time?"

I put my stuff on the bed, took a breath, and approached her. She awaited my story, but looked more and more confused the longer I kept her waiting. I put my hands on her shoulders. I felt like I might be making the biggest mistake. But I couldn't help myself.

"Pull it off," I demanded.

Her head wobbled, "What do you mean? Wha-"

I looked at her straight in the eyes. I felt possessed. This wasn't me. But It was me. I was doing this. My throat was blocked up. She blinked a few times as if to prod me for an answer. Then the flow burst out.

"Please, take it off. I want you to pull it down. I want to feel you."

"What do you mean? You want me?"

"Yes, for God's sake. Do it?"

She leaned in. We kissed. She grabbed my collar and pushed me back to the bed. She was so gentle but I could feel a clumsy force behind it. She leaned over me and I pressed her in.

We spent some time like this, but I could feel the time passing. Soon her housemates would return, and what I really wanted had not happened yet. I pushed her away.

She was unbuttoning. I heard her stomach groan as if it was calling for her attention, but she was lost. She was glaring at me. "It's just the little goblin, ignore him," she chuckled. She threw the shirt away and her fingers directed my chin in line with her own. She then looked concerned.

"Is this not what you wanted?"

"No," I said. It came out too brashly. She pulled away and looked horrified with herself. "No, no, no, I didn't mean it like that. I just want to see you."

"You're seeing me?"

"No, I know and I want to see it. I…" I was going to repeat the same words again, but I knew I was going nowhere. She wouldn't understand. I thought about the words. The words that fell behind, hid in the shadows of my mind. I found them. "I-I know, Katie. I want you to take it off, your skin. I want to see you like that."

Katie withdrew a little. Looked shocked. She didn't say a word for a while, covering herself with a spare blanket. I could hear it. She was wondering how, but she couldn't ask. The longer it went on, I started to feel so human, so frightened. Not just because of the obvious, but I thought I had insulted her, that I had lost her. And while that shouldn't be equal in my head, I couldn't help it.

She fell into me, but her head fell over my shoulder. It felt wet. She shook slightly. My arms lay prone on either side of me. My cheeks stung.

She mumbled something I didn't hear. I still didn't say anything. I still stupidly prone beneath her weight. She said it again more clearly; she was a horrible horrible person. She didn't want any of this. It was not her fault. Her pupils wobbled in her. It wasn't her fault she said.

Only then my arms wrapped around her and pulled her close.

"I'm not a freak," she cried still.