Haunted

Chapter Four

A/N: Trigger warning on this chapter for implied (that is, not explicit) mentions of sexual assault. Things will intensify from this point forward with violence, but given the fandom entails a barber who literally kills people and bakes them into pies, I'm assuming that most of my readers will not have any major problems with my choices.

Thank you for reading, and please continue to review if you enjoy. :) 

 Lucy's face drew near to him. "Good morning, my sweet," purred the pretty blonde, her flaxen hair falling over his face and tickling his cheeks. Sweet minted breath wafted into his mouth and nose as she exhaled through luscious pink lips. "Did you sleep well, Ben?" Her nude body cradled against his, her curves falling into his muscles. His breath hitched. "Ah, there's no need for that. You know we're married now, love—not to worry." One seductive long finger traced his face down his cheekbone. "What stubble for such a barber. What'll the customers say, eh?" She giggled. "Anyway, the sign's turned and everyone knows we're closed. I thought maybe we could go out for breakfast, then..."

Her skin tone began to shift from fair to slightly darker with a dusting of soot under the eyes, laugh lines deepening around her mouth, lips shifting from pink to sheer red and azure eyes darkening to milky chocolate. The blonde hair kinked upward and changed to brown, and Mrs. Lovett kissed his cheek. "Then we'll move down to the seaside, won't we, Sweeney? If the business stays this good, respectable business we got here, Mr. Todd, just got to get the judge out of the way, that nasty bugger, then we'll all be free—"

She shrank down into a baby with its jaws parted and it wailed, and he wrapped his arms around dear little Johanna, and she grew again back into Lucy with her mouth wide in an O unable to breathe. Her neck split open and blood poured against him and around him, eyes peeled to the ceiling. The O of her mouth extended. Popping and crackling met his ears as her jaws broke, and then silence resounded. Her lower jaw touched her chest. The gaping hole of her mouth bled around the stretched lips. Silence, complete silence that filled his chest as he scrambled back across the bed away from her. Where was his razor?

A shriek pierced the air of his sleep budding from Lucy's mouth, and he shook upward from his sleep with a gasp and chilled sweat all over his torso. The scream didn't cease into his wakefulness. "Ah!" He covered his head with his hands a moment and shrank into himself. Terror clutched his insides for the moment that the paralyzing thought passed through—that his nightmares had come alive to haunt him.

Then the shriek ceased, and after a pause long enough for a hearty breath, it began again, and he froze in his bed at a more horrifying realization. "Mrs. Lovett." He started up from his bed, clothed in his thin sleeping shirt and yesterday's bloody black pants, a razor still in the pocket. He grabbed another razor from the desk and lashed down the stairs, barrelling without a glance into the pie shop. "Mrs. Lovett!" he shouted. The snow flurried in a cloud kicked up by his bare feet.

"Mr. Todd! Help!" wailed Toby. His hands and feet were bound and he sat in the parlor floor with a failed gag wrapped around his neck.

Swinging around the corner, a young man, no older than twenty, stood sentry outside Mrs. Lovett's door. "It's the barber!" he cried, and Sweeney rushed at him, and he ducked into the open bedroom door, narrowly missing the back of the youth's neck with the swipe of his razor. "Get off it and let's go!"

A masked man rolled from on top of the bed, from on top of Mrs. Lovett. She shrieked again. The man's bare ass gleamed in the window as he struggled to pull up his knickers. Sweeney watched his dick flop in the air. Consumed in rage, Sweeney pounced, ready to seize the man by the hair and slit his throat, but the fat man shoved the youth at him. The teen fell forward onto the razor and slammed into Sweeney so that they both tumbled unceremoniously onto the bed, bounced off of the loose mattress, and rolled onto the floor. Blood poured out of the kid's mouth. He struggled to stand, to speak, when Sweeney shoved him off and snatched the gleaming blade free of the gaping wound, but he collapsed again. Droplets scattered crimson off of the sharp edge of the razor and onto the floor.