Single mom Selina Sardi would do anything for her 6-year-old son. Eager to turn their new house into a real home for him, she's devastated when she discovers that the monster under his bed is not a figment of his imagination but the real deal.
Elia...
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The third night was equally horrible. Selina never wanted to see a snake again, but this time, when she emerged from her nightmare and the fear slid from her like snow from a thawing roof, Elias' face was not thankful like the night before. Even though his cheeks had again gained some color and his chest expanded beneath his rags, he didn't look satisfied. He glowered at her, one hand touching the stab wound in his neck so he could glower at his soiled fingertips next, then back at her.
"We're done? Three out of seven?" she stammered hopefully.
"Why do you keep doing that?" he thundered.
"Do what?"
"Bring the boy along. I explained to you how it works. You're making this unnecessarily hard on yourself."
"I removed him when you told me to." She hated how the words sounded like a whimper ... as if she was cowering for him.
"It costs me. It costs you. You're slowing down the process."
"Then why do you bother? Why not gorge in my worst fear like the monster you are?"
He rose quickly, soaring through the room until he hovered over her, his clawed paws stretching in anger, but then halted and averted his gaze.
His chest expanded big and sank deeply with his next breaths. The paws relaxed. "Because I don't need you to claw this open again every single night." He lifted his chin to show her scratch marks surrounding the wound she had made two nights before. Again, it was seeping nightmares from his neck. "You get unpredictable when your son is involved and your fear turns thick and heavy. It's hard to stomach. I don't like it."
"Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry my fear is not the right flavor for you. I'm sorry I'm making it hard for you to torment me. I don't know what got into me. Why don't I make it easier for you? Sweeter? You like sweet fear? You want me to indulge in my long-life anxiety over fucking care bears? I wonder why I can't do that. ... Oh I know ... because you're a fucking, trespassing monster."
"I'm not a monster."
"Your sole purpose is to make people miserable!"
"It's not."
"What else can it be?"
"I'm hungry. I have to eat. Fear is the only thing I can eat. I don't do it to make people miserable. I do it because I need it."
He hovered so close, anger fanning from his pores, the mares seeping from the holes and scratches in his neck turned more wicked, more frightening, more serpents, ghostly clowns, dead children ... His palms closed around her throat again. "I need it." He breathed in with such force, sucking every nerve on edge out of her.
Anger and survival instinct winning from her fear, she snatched the scarf from his face. It fell, and for the first time she saw his fear-sucking mouth, formed by two gorgeous, plump lips, soft and pink, unexpectedly human, but he hissed like one of his serpents, drawing up his lush upper lip and in doing so, he revealed a set of fangs.
