Crimson

The Change in Monsters

I dragged my nails down the side of my desk, listening to the sharp, painful sing the simple movement emitted. I opened the contract again, the tips of my fingers running down the print before I cast it away from me again and let my nails resume their relentless tapping.

 I could feel the eyes of Bethany from the cubicle beside me on my hands and I heard the slide of the wheels on her seat against the ground and her scent hit me, harsh perfume, beneath which was a light floral scent and then the twang of blood. It was a heady scent and I began breathing through my mouth to avoid temptation.

‘Bethany.’ I said tightly and was rewarded with her light giggle.

‘That always scares me how you know who’s around.’ She edged her seat closer still and leant over my shoulder. ‘Having trouble reading the fine print?’

I nodded. ‘I can’t seem to focus today.’

‘I know what you mean.’ She laughed again and my fingers dug into the wood of the desk, and I grit my teeth. ‘I have the worst hangover…’ She continued

‘I think I’m going to call in sick. Say my wife needs me or something.’ I placed the contract back onto a pile of like ones and stood.

‘You’re married?’ She was downcast and I hid a smirk.

‘Yeah.’ I turned to leave, telling my boss on the way out, who smiled sympathetically and flicked her hair.

I walked home and kept my nails safely buried into the skin of my wrist, biting through the pain and flickering images in my eyes. Ever since I’d seen Anna, I had begun to feel like my old self, I couldn’t sit behind a desk. When my tongue ran over my lips I could still taste the leftover blood from when Anna had touched me.

I stormed through the door of the plain, suburban, white washed house and was bombarded by the neighbours, people I’d been able to put up with before, but not in my current mood, not when I felt so close to being myself.

‘Hey baby.’ I said in greeting as Fred’s delicious scent hit me and I felt her arms wrap around my chest in greeting. ‘Toby, Isabel.’ I nodded to my neighbours in turn, knowing their whereabouts with some sixth sense no one quite understood. I still missed the vision that had been lost to me when I gave up the cannibalistic lifestyle, but this would do.

‘Isabel and Toby were over helping me with some heavy lifting in the garden.’ Fred smile lilted in her voice and made me smile too. We’d lived in this average house nearly a year and still the house was filled with half unpacked boxes and the overgrown garden left to us by the previous tenants.

‘Well thanks for helping Fred out.’ I smiled in their direction and gave a slight incline of my head towards the door, a subtle hint that that was their dismissal.

‘Well, it was no problem.’ Toby smiled and his footsteps retreated to the couch where he dropped down. ‘I’m just concerned about why we saw your wife struggling with you nowhere in sight.’

‘Well Toby, I was at work.’ I really was not in the mood for this, and I hoped I conveyed that in my biting tone. This feeling in my chest was beyond irritating, getting to the point a feeling became physical discomfort, and this discomfort became pain. I could feel my former self at the edges of my mind, tapping at the walls I had built around him, close enough to gently brush my mind and taste buds with remember delicacies and emotions and yet I couldn’t fully remember them, I couldn’t seem to recall the silky feeling though the taste remained vivid. I took a deep breath and wished for eyes I could close beneath the dark sunglasses I wore to obscure the two holes where my eyes should be from sight.

Toby was speaking and I realised he hadn’t taken the hint and left.

‘Isabel will you please escort your husband home, I would like to spend some time alone with Fred after work.’ I grit my teeth and forced my voice to politeness.