I stepped into the narrow tub, welcoming the hot water as it sluiced over me, washing away the sweat, but unable to erase the icy fear that lodged in my throat. A choking sob escaped me, the sound lost in the rush of water.
Sliding down to the bottom of the tub, I wrapped my arms around my knees and wept. I wept for Samson’s latest victims who had died alone and afraid, for the girls who had died before me all those years ago, and for my innocence that had been so ruthlessly torn away on the soiled carpet of a cheap apartment.
***
The scent of blood surrounded me, cloying with the tang of copper, as it flowed hot across my skin. Things moved slick and warm through my fingers, things that I should never be able to touch or see. The wound in my stomach gaped wide like a grimacing maw, spilling the contents of my abdomen into my trembling hands.
Samson loomed above me, his normally chocolate brown eyes now shining a haunting gold as they gazed at me out of a face I barely recognized. I was having trouble making sense of what was happening, my thoughts slow and incoherent. I couldn’t tell if the sluggishness in my brain was from the amount of blood pooling beneath me, or from the shock that I was dating a werewolf.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew I should have been worried by the volume of blood flowing over my fingers, but I couldn’t focus on anything beyond the golden eyes staring down at me and the smear of blood, my blood, across Samson’s lips and chin. I’d kissed those lips a hundred times, felt them touch me in places no one else ever had, but never in a million years had I imagined that I would see them stained with my blood.
“W-what’s happening?” I asked, my voice sounding tinny and small, as if it was coming from somewhere far away.
“You’re dying, Riley,” he said, his eyes heavy-lidded and glazed, looking far more libidinous than they ever had when we were having sex. “And when you’re dead, I’m going to eat you.”
A bone-jarring shudder ran through me, but whether it was from his words or the chill settling into my limbs, I wasn’t sure. I tried to push him off of me, but my wet hands kept sliding off his shoulders.
Why are my hands wet? I wondered, looking at where they pushed ineffectually at his chest. Oh right, they’re covered in blood, I thought, staring at my pale fingers, as they left dark smears on his t-shirt.
The sight of my bloody fingers made me think of a pair of bright red woolen gloves I’d had as a kid. I’d lost them one year while building a snow man and cried all afternoon over having misplaced them. My grandmother had made hot cocoa and oatmeal cookies to comfort me, and then my grandfather had let me pack his pipe with sweet smelling tobacco. Even all these years later the smell of pipe tobacco revived memories of Papa, and how safe I’d felt curled up in his lap.
I wonder where those gloves are now, I thought, feeling sleep looming on the edges of my awareness, dark and seductive like Samson had been the first time I’d met him. He’d been so charming and witty, always quick to laugh, but there had been something dark beneath the warmth of his eyes that was so alluring. Now I knew what that darkness had been.
My head rolled to the side, a warm trail of tears sliding down over the swell of my cheek as I thought of those lost red gloves and my grandmother, dead and cold in the ground for two years now, taken away from me by cancer. I supposed I was glad she was gone, that she wouldn’t have to hear about the awful way I died once my roommate Emma found my half eaten carcass on our living room floor.
That would have made her so sad, and Nana should never be sad.
My thoughts were spiraling away into hysteria, becoming as insubstantial as smoke, but I was too tired to try and reel them in. A rattling, wet sounding breath bubbled out of my throat and I tasted blood on my lips. My eyes were heavy and filled with dancing motes of darkness as I stared at the remnants of our dinner, wax coated cartons spilling lo mein and Mongolian beef across the carpet.
There goes my security deposit, I thought, even as the effort of thinking began to be too much.
“Goodbye, Riley,” Samson whispered, leaning over to press bloody lips to my cheek in a sick facsimile of a kiss. I wanted to pull away but my limbs were leaden, too heavy to move. Pulling back slowly he left a smear of wetness across my cheek.
I watched, unable to look away, as Samson reared back, preparing to strike, and then froze, his head whipping around towards the door. His face contorted into an expression of fury, a thundering growl rumbling up out of his chest. I could hear voices and laughter in the hallway, but didn’t dare to breathe a sigh of relief. The voices stopped outside the door and, a key slid into the lock. Samson jumped up to his feet and darted across the room faster than my eyes could follow.
As my roommate and her boyfriend opened the door to our apartment the living room window exploded outwards. The sound of shattering glass was lost beneath Emma’s scream, and soon even that faded away as I closed my eyes and felt myself slip into the darkness.
***