hands entangled in thick locks of dark hair, rocking back and forth on the wooden floor that creaked with every rotation below you. He reached toward you, lovingly, tenderly, but the dark came clawing up your throat and slithered itself over your tongue and you could taste its salty despair. it left you, and you were a glass case a dropped coin away from shattering. the thing transformed itself from the thick mud that clogged your brain into a goopy pile of slime on the hard floor in front of you. It wrapped itself around him and he staggered backwards, away from you, away from the monster that had just come out of you. it growled and left a ringing in your ears that was not present before; it stayed. his black converse got caught in the muck and you told him to run, yelled and screamed for him to run, but it was too late. The thing had slithered up his legs and around his calves and thighs and had planted itself into the strong muscles that lie just beneath his golden skin. the sturdy tissue morphed and became black and weak, and you watched as he withered away in front of you, helpless, wanting to reach for him as he had for you. instead, you turned your face the opposite way, and after a millennium of screaming so loud you drowned out the bells in your head, the monster climbed back inside you.
when you turned back, he was gone. and that was it.
