Demons Don't Feel Love

Chapter Thirteen: Anna, am I Dying?

Annabelle's POV

"Fuck." Daren whispered.

"It's too early, Daren. Go back to sleep." I mumbled back.

"Girl you're something else. I'm sore as hell." He replied. I heard him get out of bed. I rolled over and watched him as he entered that bathroom and washed the blood off his chest.

"There's some aspirin in the cabinet." I mentioned.

"Yeah, I'm gonna need some of that."

"Hey, me too! Just because I tore you up doesn't mean I'm not in pain."

"Tore me up? This is carnage!" He said, laughing. He gestured to the cuts and bruises that covered his body. "You're an animal!"

"As are you." I replied, as I showed him my bruises and the purple bite marks on my neck. We stayed home and ate aspirins like popcorn while watching movies on the couch.

"Mmm, look at that." I said.

"What?"

"The last aspirin..." I mumbled holding the small pill in my hand.

"Aye you better half that with me, you monster." He said. I broke it in half and we chased it down with a shot of whiskey.

"So what are we gonna do about this wedding of ours. We are having one aren't we?" I said.

"A small one, I imagine. Unless you have some friends squirreled away that I don't know about."

"I keep em hidden in the basement. I cut them into bits and put them in formalin jars." I replied. "Just kidding. Yeah, it'll probably just be you and I."

"Well, are you sure this is what you want? I don't want you to feel pressured to jump into this just because I proposed. We can always wait a little while."

"I want this, Daren. I've always wanted this." He smiled at me and ran his fingers through my hair. Soon. I thought. Very soon.

As the day grew later and night began to fall, Daren and I started settling in for the night. I had gone upstairs to change clothes and wash my face, and as I finished I noticed that Daren had never come into the bedroom. Normally he was in bed before me, so it was odd not seeing him in the bedroom when I opened the door.

I walked downstairs but he wasn't there, and I looked through the window towards the garden but again he wasn't there. At this point I was a little worried, but maybe he was doing something in one of the other rooms. I quickly returned upstairs and entered the room across from our bedroom.

The spare rooms were mostly still empty as we didn't need them yet, but this particular room was a sort of "office" space, though we didn't really use it as an office. I had hung a few paintings and posters in there and then added a couple of bean bags. From then, it became a sort of quiet/chill space where I often listened to music and doodled in notebooks, and Daren would go there to read sometimes.

When I walked in it was dark, and as I reached for the light switch I heard Daren say from the shadows

"Don't turn the light on."

I pulled my hand away from the wall and stepped closer to him as my eyes adjusted to the dark.

"Are you okay?" I asked. I kinda figured his solitude in this dark room was just some sort of demon thing, as like most of the odd things he did. I remember several occasions when I walked into a room to find him crawling across the ceiling. Shit used to scare the fuck out of me until I finally got used to it.

"Yeah." He replied. I sat beside him against the wall. I grabbed his hand and immediately knew otherwise. My turn now, love. I thought.

"You're not well."