: Prompting Needed_

Chris's Break

From Daily Quordle 345 (1/4/23): SHORT, KAPPA, SOBER, HARSH

It unnerved her, really, the way the Chris would sit and stare over her shoulder during dinner. At first, she mistook it for his whimsical way of dealing with the day. She imagined that he would be cataloguing the past stresses and finding little holes in which to store them. She would glance up every once in a while to watch as his eyes would flit back and forth towards points that only he could see while his fork lay limp in his hands. But, after a week and a half of that, she began to wonder if something was wrong. Tonight, for instance, not only was Chris staring, but his mouth was moving with just the tiniest quivers. He was muttering something. Try as Alyson might, she couldn't make out the words. They were halfway through the dinner when finally, she let her fork fall to her plate. "What are you doing, honey?"

Chris started. His hair – a thin, unruly mess that probably should have been trimmed by now – fell from where he had swept it up onto his head. It fell like a curtain over his eyes, and it was only then Alyson could see how dark the circles were under them. They loomed like deep pools under her boyfriend's chestnut hair. He brought his gaze from over her shoulder to her face and his mouth froze. Then it grinned. Alyson shivered. There was nothing warm or... human about the expression. Dull white teeth peeked from behind thin lips. And then, like that one magic trick where a guy pulls the cloth off a table, leaving only the dishes behind, Chris's face was swept with a change of emotion. The smile really was warm. He brushed his hair back over his ear and blinked a couple of times. He looked... brighter. Must have been a trick of the light, she thought.

"Hey, babe." He extended his hand across the small table and placed it on hers. "Sorry. Long day."

Alyson didn't mean to glance around her at the tiny apartment. What could he have possibly been doing all day, alone, in this perpetually immaculate apartment? When she returned to his face, though, she knew that he had noticed. His smile faltered just a bit and his features sharpened into a harsh tilt. She began to think that maybe it hadn't been a light trick. Something in Chris was slipping.

He examined her eyes, darting back and forth between as if gaging the space between. Finally, he said, "Kappa."

Alyson ran her tongue against her gums then sucked her teeth with a little pop of air. She cocked her head. "What?"

His hand slid back, and it left the top of hers cool with a sheen of drying sweat. "I'm beginning to think Clark was paying attention to the wrong thing." He crossed his arms and sat back. "And before you say anything, Ally baby, I'm stone cold sober."

The chill from her hand seeped into the rest of her body with a violent jerk. "Clark?" she whispered. She folded into herself and leaned back as far as the wall behind her would let. "I thought we were done talking about that asshole, Chris."

"I'm not though. I'm talking about the kappa. 'That asshole' is just a byproduct. Do you remember-"

"No." She pushed the table and stood while collecting her plate. She angrily scraped the food into the short trashcan and shoved Chris with her hip to get to the sink behind him. "I'm not engaging in this." She felt him spin and lay a hand on her back. She could feel the fevered heat bleed through her shirt. She cringed and arched her back to slide further to the left and away from him. Her glare slammed against him, and he recoiled.

"It said 'Theta'," he whined. He turned to face her and leaned on his knees; his hands folded in a pleading gesture. "He got his words wrong."

"Stop it," Alyson warned. "Or I swear I'm calling Doctor Warren and he'll put you back in the hospital so fast-"

"It's about the shirikodama," he breathed. He stood and before Alyson could move, he had closed the distance. His hand slapped the door behind her and then snaked around her waist to enclose her hand on the knob. He began to tug at it with sharp, insistent jerks. "He needed that gem, baby. He was after that immortality." She began to feel the heat roll off him in a steady, sick warmth. Now she could smell him, too. He smelled sour. He smelled wrong. "We find that right person, the one with the right gem, we can give them to the kappa, and they'll give us the gem. Only they can get it out of there." The hand against the door slid down and grabbed her buttock.

"GET THE FUCK OFF, CHRIS!" she growled and stamped down as hard as she could with her foot on his. His toes separated under her heel, and he flinched back. Immediately she brought up her knee and kicked forward against his shin. He stumbled than fell, his arms tangled in his chair. In the dim light of the oven's solitary overhead bulb, he looked smaller than he was. But nothing about the shadows playing across his face hid the wild, oily glare he held. She reached back again and unlocked the door. "I'm going for help," she breathed. Her heart hammered in her ears. Once the door was open, she backed out of it and plucked the keys and her purse off the inner wall. "You shouldn't have come home, Chris. You're not well."

"Babe, wait!" Chris began to thrash as he tried to stand. Alyson flung herself around the door, pulled it shut, and then ran down the hall. Behind her, the door to their apartment slammed open and thudding footsteps began to chase her. The sound of another door opening gave the footsteps pause then the unmistakable sound of a fist hitting something made her look back. Their neighbor Derek was standing between her and Chris. Her boyfriend was sprawled on the carpet, his hands covering his shattered nose. Blood was splattering everywhere as he rolled and gasped out wet breaths behind cupped hands.

"Fuckin' Clark," she breathed, and then turned to run further down the hall, towards the elevator.