Switch Blade Romance

Eyes without A face

January 20th 2015: Sneedville Arkansas

The birds were chirping outside, cheerful little things that didn’t know any better. It was 7:30 a.m., and the world had slipped into that lie it told itself every morning—that people woke up safe, that homes were sanctuaries, that daylight meant mercy.
Andrew Grant woke slowly, the way something buried alive might—careful not to move too much, afraid of collapsing whatever fragile space still allowed him to breathe.
The bedroom was wrong in its calmness. White carpet, clean. Brown wood-paneled walls, old but sturdy. Thin blue curtains fluttered faintly at the window, sunlight leaking through them in pale, forgiving stripes. For just a second—one cruel, beautiful second—Andrew felt peace brush against him.
Then the arm tightened around his chest.
Charles groaned in his sleep and dragged Andrew closer, pulling him back like a fisherman setting the hook deeper. Charles buried his face into the back of Andrew’s neck, warm breath soaking into skin, teeth grazing just enough to be mistaken for affection.
Andrew didn’t move.
Fear held him more tightly than Charles ever could. If he shifted, if he tried to escape the embrace, Charles might wake—and when Charles woke angry, people bled. Sometimes they disappeared. Sometimes they stopped existing altogether.
Do you really want this? the voice in Andrew’s head whispered.
Curled up with a murderer like he’s something human.
The voice was merciless.
He’s killed at least eight people. Maybe more. You’ve lost count.
Andrew swallowed hard.
Because if you upset him, the voice continued, he won’t just kill you. He’ll take his time.
What could be worse than death? Andrew wondered.
The answer came immediately.
Charles coughed himself awake.
Hot spittle struck Andrew’s neck. Charles yawned and kissed the spot lazily, like a man kissing a possession he’d already paid for.
“Good morning, honey,” Charles murmured. “How are you? Sleep good?”
Andrew turned slowly, carefully, like prey afraid of triggering a reflex. And even then—even now—revulsion tangled sickeningly with desire.
Charles was still beautiful.
His brown hair stuck up at odd angles. His face was sharp and familiar, carved with the kind of features Andrew had once traced with his fingers in the dark. The curve of his nose. The softness of his mouth. The faint shadow of stubble on his chin.
Then Andrew saw his eyes.
Not brown.
Never brown again.
They were bright green. Too bright. Wrong, like glow-in-the-dark paint left out in the sun too long.
The Rag Man’s eyes.
The eyes that had watched Andrew scream in a hospital bed. The eyes that had watched Casey beg. Peter sob. Aunt Paula stop moving. Deria go quiet. Maybe Max, too—Andrew couldn’t be sure anymore. The dead had started to blur together.
Andrew smiled because smiling was safer than screaming.
“I did,” he said. “How did you sleep?”
Charles smiled back.
“Like a baby.”
He kissed Andrew’s nose.
“Come on. Let’s start our day.”
The shower was a test. Charles made Andrew stand with him beneath the pounding water, close enough to feel the heat of his body, close enough to feel how easily this could turn into something violent. Andrew waited for hands to tighten, for breath to change.
But nothing happened.
That was worse.
Afterward, Charles cooked breakfast. An omelet. Bacon. The smell filled the kitchen, warm and domestic, obscene in its normalcy.
Andrew stared at the food.
“Where did this come from?” he asked. “How is it still fresh?”
Charles shrugged.
“My stepdad keeps a dry pantry downstairs. I restocked it a couple months ago.”
Andrew’s chest sank. No delivery. No strangers. No witnesses.
Charles set a plate in front of him.
“Eat.”
They sat across from each other. Charles watched Andrew chew, watched him swallow. Andrew felt like an exhibit. A specimen. A thing that needed to be monitored to make sure it didn’t break too soon.
When they were finished, Charles stood.
“Come sit in the living room.”
Andrew obeyed.
“I need something from the basement.”
The door opened. The stairs creaked. And then—
Chains.
The sound crawled up Andrew’s spine like fingers.
Charles came back holding handcuffs and ankle restraints.
“What are those for?” Andrew asked, already knowing.
Charles smiled kindly.
“I’ve got to dump the station wagon. Can’t take you with me. You’d run.”
“I wouldn’t—”
Charles laughed, sharp and hollow.
“Oh, Andrew. Of course you would.”
He stepped forward.
“Sit down.”
Andrew hesitated.
“Sit,” Charles said softly. “Or I’ll hurt you.”
Andrew sat.
The cuffs closed around his wrists. Then his ankles.
“Aren’t you afraid I’ll try to escape?” Andrew asked weakly.
Charles winked.
“I planned for that.”
He returned with a syringe.
Andrew tried to move. Charles pinned him down easily, like breaking a toy. The needle slid into his arm, cold fire spreading through his veins.
Charles kissed him.
“When I get back,” he whispered, “you’re going to meet some new friends.”
Then the door closed.
The world softened. Colors drained. Andrew sank into gray nothingness.
As the drug pulled him under, one last thought surfaced—not hope, not prayer.
At least now someone will find the note in the car.The gray didn’t come all at once.
It crept in.
Andrew felt it first in his fingers. The room was still there—the couch beneath him, the cuffs biting into his wrists—but the sensation dulled, as if his nerves were being wrapped in cotton. His hands no longer felt like hands. They felt like an idea of hands.
Stay awake, he told himself.
But the words slid away before they finished forming.
The ceiling breathed.
No—that wasn’t right. Ceilings didn’t breathe. But it rose and fell anyway, slow and patient, like something very large pretending to be inanimate. The light shifted, pulsing faintly, and Andrew realized the sun stripes on the floor were moving even though the curtains were still.
Time hiccupped.
He was aware of the chains on his ankles, then suddenly he wasn’t, then they were crushing him again, impossibly heavy, dragging him downward through the couch, through the floor, into something colder.
Voices came next.
At first they were just sounds—murmurs, distant and overlapping, like a TV left on in another room. Then they sharpened.
“Andrew.”
Casey’s voice.
He turned his head—or thought he did—and she was there, standing at the edge of the living room. She looked wrong. Too pale. Like all the color had been washed out of her and left behind somewhere else.
“You should’ve run,” she said calmly.
“I tried,” Andrew whispered, though he wasn’t sure his mouth moved.
She shook her head.
“No. You waited.”
The room flickered.
Peter was sitting in the armchair now, his hands folded in his lap the way they’d been at the funeral. His throat was dark, bruised, collapsing inward in a way Andrew didn’t want to look at.
“He always keeps them,” Peter said. “The ones who stay.”
Andrew squeezed his eyes shut.
When he opened them, Aunt Paula was there instead, hovering too close. Her mouth opened, but ants poured out instead of words, spilling down her chin, crawling over her sweater, onto the carpet.
“Not me,” Andrew begged. “Please. I didn’t mean—”
The ants rearranged themselves into words on the floor.
YOU LOVED HIM
The letters crawled.
The couch wasn’t a couch anymore.
It was a hospital bed. No—it was the backseat of the station wagon. No—it was the Pizza Hut parking lot. No—it was all of them at once, layered on top of each other like bad transparencies.
Andrew smelled blood.
He heard breathing that wasn’t his.
Green eyes appeared in the dark, floating loose from any face. They blinked slowly.
You’re safe, Charles’ voice said, coming from everywhere. I locked you up nice and tight.
Andrew tried to scream.
Instead, laughter came out—his own, warped and echoing, stretching too long.
His body felt miles away now, drifting somewhere he couldn’t reach. He could still feel the cuffs, but only dimly, like remembering pain rather than feeling it. His heart beat wrong—too slow, then too fast, then not at all for a terrible second.
The dead gathered closer.
Deria stood by the door, her shadow stretching unnaturally long.
“He’s bringing more,” she said. “You’re going to watch.”
“No,” Andrew whispered. “I won’t.”
She tilted her head.
“You already did.”
Something wet slid down Andrew’s arm. Blood? Saliva? He couldn’t tell. The living room warped inward, folding like paper being crushed in a fist.
Then—quiet.
No voices.
No ceiling.
Just darkness.
Andrew floated there, bodiless, thought-thin, convinced for one sweet, horrifying moment that this was death.
Then he heard the chains again.
Only this time, they were inside him.
And Andrew understood, with sickening clarity, that the drug wasn’t meant to make him sleep.
It was meant to make him remember.