Pure of Mind and Sharp of Knife (Male Reader x Female Creepypasta)

Where Crows Don't Perch

The rain falls in buckets, and lightning curves through the skies like electric dragons before their thunder crash slams against the mansion. My bedroom window trembles in front of me, and the lights go out for the second time today. I glance over at my clock to make sure I'm not crazy. Okay, I'm not; it's only 2:35 PM.

Undaunted by the natural calamity above and the darkness of my room, I lean back in my chair, my legs propped up on the windowsill as I hold my notebook closer to me; I sketch the bending trees outside which rock back and forth amidst the tempest.

Someone knocks on my door, and I look over my shoulder, "Come in."

Jane enters the room, her pale face lit up by a candle, "Did you not lock it?"

"Why would I?" I push my pencil into the book and put a pause on my attempt at art, "I don't want to keep you all out."

Jane grins after loosely crossing her arms, "I suppose there is no reason now."

Small footsteps with attitude stomp past the door, "Right in the middle of a fuckin' game!"

I smile and promise, "I'll be down in a minute."

"Are you busy?" Jane glances at my sketchbook, which I drop onto my desk.

Looking down at it, I nod, "Yeah," I open the pages again and sift through my drawings, "Helen said it'd help – even if the drawings are shit – and it does."

Jane nods after eyeing one of my works, "Well, I doubt the power will be out for long, so take your time."

After leaving me a candle, Jane exits the bedroom and shuts the door. The sky rumbles like the stomach of a hungry storm god. The floor shakes under me, and I return to my chair to finish my drawing. It's not the best, but Helen said she'd offer me her critiques. Not that becoming Leonardo da Vinci is my goal or anything. I just want to keep from slipping back into my worst self.

Eventually, I finish drawing the last tree outside and close my book. Everyone's probably messing around in the living room with some snacks and stray knives. I wouldn't want to miss out on a moment like that stuck in my bedroom.

Lightning erupts from the clouds, its blue light flashing into my room and revealing the Rake in the corner. I glare at him, his gray form barely visible in the darkness.

Meds don't do anything to keep my hauntings in check anymore. Neither does abstaining from blood. I took things too far by drinking it, and now I've doomed myself to hallucinations and madness. It didn't take long for me to get used to it, though.

A flare from the window blinds me, and the Rake is gone. As I walk over to my door, still staring at where the Rake stood, I notice Gray's bandage on my desk. Gray, himself, is standing beside it, one hand on the wooden surface as he stares at me.

"What?" I let go of the door handle and approach him, "I didn't take it from you."

He looks down at the strip of cloth. I do, too. When I look up, he's nowhere in sight. Gray's bandage still burns, its embers not yet starved, but the cloth not yet eaten. It hasn't broken down at all, in fact. I walk over and touch the purple cinders at the edges of the strip, still surprised when I'm not burned for the hundredth time I've felt it.

One of its ends flicks upward from a draft. It does it again, and I look up to make sure my fan's off. When I look down, the bandage wriggles out of my fingers like a snake and coils around my forearm. I gasp and swat it away, but it constricts tightly, growing hotter and hotter until it's boiling, blistering, and melting into my skin.

The whole mansion hears my shriek as I run to the bathroom to shove my arm under cold water. I shove my forearm under the stream of liquid until the burning stops. Footsteps race toward my door while I stare at my arm.