The Stains Beneath Our Skin [mxm] ✔

32.2 | Grease

The bite of fluorescent light ripped away that pleasant stupor with flickering teeth and the stink of frying grease on its breath. Casper's ass hit plastic a second later, and the assault of fresh scenery hit hard enough that Casper groaned, curling over the stained table. It was sticky against his forehead, but it was better than every other fucking thing demanding a place in his mind.

A kebab place, butchered meat on a stick behind a pair of bickering men with thick beards and boredom in their eyes. For the brief second where Casper had watched its turn, the fat rolling down it like beads of sweat, all he could wonder was if Levi had ever had him like that – nothing but a sliced down corpse trundling over a burner. It raised a sickness in him so thick and greedy it consumed all thought, all sense, a pulsing heat through his body that grabbed at his throat and yanked it against the clenched shield of his teeth.

Don't throw up, Roach. Jesus fucking Christ, don't throw up. If he threw up, he was dead. Worse than dead, he was the fucking kebab. He was balloons.

The seat, adjoined to the next by a metal railing hooked into the wall, clattered beneath Casper's ass. The promise of Levi close but out of sight gave Casper that burst of brilliant inspiration he needed to assert some coherency over this nausea.

As soon as he lifted his head, something slid in front of him, pushed there by a hand with black-varnished nails and gold rings. Beneath, tattoos wound around the fingers like barbed wire.

Levi's other arm slipped across the back of Casper's chair, the heat thick and laden with the musty odour of old grease wafting from the polystyrene container. Ella sat across from him, mooching with her head in her hand and a sour look turned out the window. The light splashed across it so dense that it made nothing but a mirror to the white-tile barrenness of the shop.

Levi's lips brushed the shell of his ear, breath damp with cigarettes and something like red wine. "Make sure he eats, mitholdis." Ella slid her eyes back to them, something dour in the dancing depths. Her lips gathered in a pout and Levi laughed.

Casper hated his laugh.

The chairs rattled as Levi slid out, and the tap of his boots rang over the mumble of Psytrance pulsing through the shop. He circled the table with the light like liquid over the sheen of his crow's wing hair. Gold gleamed at his ears, around his throat, and through the lustre of that fur coat. The rings winked as he leant down behind Ella and one by one, curled his fingers around her neck.

Whatever he whispered in her ear came too low to hear, but his eyes trawled Casper's face like he already extended his jaw to feed.

Then he walked away, and it was just him and her. Ella. A glint turned her eyes as she twisted in her seat to follow Levi's path to the bathrooms.

The moment the door slammed shut, she whirled around. Elbows on the table and her body wriggling as she got up on her knees. Her brows knitted. Glitter carved a glimmer of stark silver across her face beneath the draining light.

"He was mine, you know." Ella's hands closed to fists, the knuckles that sharpened them delicate birdbones. "Cain, he was mine."

My Cain.

The swell of nausea blinded him. Casper gripped the plastic table. She. Like he always said. She.

It can't be real.

Around the halo of bleached bones that crowned her gossamer hair, the grime slurred to anaemia and stinking grease.

It hurt to push words out his ragged lungs, but something in the feverish light of her eyes gave him the drive to do it.

"So what?"

"So, if he'd just listen—" Ella's face scrunched up. A wet sniff, and the swipe smeared a wet track through her makeup, unveiling the shadow of a bruise beside her eye. Again, she sniffed. Venom grew in the tightness of her lips. "If he'd just give up this stupid game with you and listen, then I wouldn't have to keep doing this. It's your fault. Yours and his."

The vision of her swayed, edging black around the drowsy fall of his eyelids. Crazy. Crazy, crazy, crazy, and he waited with his tongue pushing against his teeth for her to break and giggle and drive a knife into his eye.

Didn't come.

Casper snorted, wet against the back of his hand. Crazy. "Crazy."

Her eyes narrowed to vicious slits. "What?"

"I don't know who Cain is."

Ella made a sound like spitting, petal lips twisting through vitriol like rose-dipped acid. The polystyrene container squealed when she shoved it toward him. Bled grease. The yellow trail slithered over plastic, curls of beef-brown running through it like mealworms.

"Vithr said eat." Ella dropped back in her chair. The jerk of her chin sent a splash of light through fresh tears pricking her eyes. "You better eat. He doesn't like when people don't do what he says."

Yeah, like she had to tell him that. You don't want me to make you, he'd said, like he'd relish every second of force.

Never. Casper popped the lid open with shuddering hands. That old grease stink slugging off the meat made sleazebag's tongue sliding down Casper's throat.

The kebab slopped across the container like a bed of worms. Strips of rotting skin. Ketchup drowned it, a soup that spread across the inside of the lid and glistened with a lipid sheen.

A finger pointed at Casper from the centre, the cracked yellow of the nail caked with cooked meat and filth.

Nausea surged through Casper. Something deific, every nerve in his body thrilling on end, and the finger like the relic of a saint pointing between his slurred eyes. It saw all. The nail scraped away his decaying skin and with haughty eyes, decried him.

It was fresh.

Holy fucking— Casper slapped it closed, choking. The polystyrene squealed, and split at the sides, ketchup and meat splurged out the container in a mess of red and grotty flesh. The glutinous give beneath his palm didn't end in a rigid knuckle. Just a wet slap, meat.

Casper stared at it, the thudding in his ears fading, shifting to build as a gristly lump in his throat. Tinkling silver filled the air.

Her laughter.

Ella's as sweet as rot. The words came with Cain's wicked grin. A viciously-toothed spectre of him leant on the back of her chair, his chin nestled in the crook of a crossed arm. His eyes splashed of blind white above shadows that curdled through his cheeks. He never blinked. But she's still sweeter than you, love.

Ella squirmed in her chair, head thrown back, the mirth in every inch of her. The way light played over her glitter-streaked skin made moons of the halogen draw.

Slowly, Casper lifted the lid. No finger. Nothing but a cesspool of old meat and too much sauce.

"Your face!" Ella clutched her stomach, her hair spread like wings across the condensation inside the shop window. It left spiderwebs trails in the mist. Gossamer thread sprung from Cain's fingertips as they played across her skin – silken strands walked up her arm, pianist caresses of her throat, and gently, so gently, pulling back the lids of her eyes.

They'd go as white as his if Cain lingered there too long. White as the moons they made tracing the charming laughter on her face. White as the needles of his teeth limning the indulgence of his smile.

My Cain. Casper drowned on it. Ruinously slow, his chest wrenched itself apart. My Cain.

The spectre's smile sliced open his face as Ella's laughter choked into tears.

"It's your fault!" Open-palmed, she slapped the table, her scream high and heady through the music's psychedelic slur. Tears slipped over cherub cheeks in black droplets. "He only left because of you. If it wasn't for you, I wouldn't have to—"

The bathroom door slammed open.