Flies

White torture

Fragile lungs erupted as she gasped, the bitterness scratching at her skin as she shook. Soft toes sank into the frost followed by filth, and Blake shivered as she stained at the forest's edge in the back yard, fragile and static under the mist. The trees stood powerful before her lifeless, glassy eyes as she stared beyond them both and into the void; right here. Right where she was stood, was right where he was stood... Her trepidation and curiosity grimaced at each other under the 4 O'clock moon that watched down on her as she neared the forest's throat, What are you doing? Go back to bed, why on Earth did you come out in the first place? There's nothing here, go back inside... It's cold...

Is what she would've thought. But there were no thoughts. Her consciousness slept, but her eyes were wide open to the humming from beyond the trees. Behind all seeing eyes, further still through the walls of her mind, deep inside the cracks in a flawed awareness was white torture.

The girl was not alone. Blood lapped in her veins towards the vibrations, the hum seething and violent,  growing louder and drawing Blake closer. Just beyond the trees it stalked, beckoning, waiting- it could smell the fear between her lungs. One foot before another, two footprints and two more. A pair of cold hands, twice shivering. But watching eyes doubled, and Blake's were penetrated from afar. Her frail body quivered in the wind that had stolen her privacy, he was there, no longer too distant, watching her stand and unable to think. The air crystallized with each step they took toward each other, and the vacuum between them breathed a dangerous breath as the gap closed. Four eyes- two distant and unaware, able to view and unable to interpret, no longer too far from two more, watching and knowing. She stumbled over the sharp winter blanket that encased the rock and thorn- from them sliding  crimson tears that pressed their tongues from soles to frost- her feet bled as they carried her. Like moth to flame, he glided nearer.

 Seconds apart...

 A touch apart...

A breath apart...

...Soft breathing was warm on coarse skin, blue blood running between the man's casing and mind. His eyelids twitched over beady, glass eyes that stared through the girl- analyzing from the inside to out, where her shell stared, static at his stern expression. It twitched like an insect as the corner of his thin lips lurched upward, just for a second... Before it dropped. His arm raised slightly, unknown to Blake's absent mind. Unaware of everything, like a puppet under his droning control. Scarred skin tightened around his bones as he reached toward her; nearer, nearer, the air beneath Blake's flesh swarming from her throat outwards and onto his face, as if to escape his grasp as he reached his clutches slowly forward... 

Finger tips slightly curling... skin slightly crawling, heart slowly racing- the gap was closed. Clinical talons clutched her eggshell neck tightly and dragged; the girls limp body was stabbed by the frost on the ground where she kicked while the figure towered above. Mind followed eyes, and they were open, aware- her veins pulsated and sweat and blood dripped off her toes, despite the cold. She tried to gasp, tried to pant, forgotten how to breath between his fingers, legs kicking into him and the silent air. Her fingers scratched at his while he slipped her through the trees, moonlight and fear dilating the pupils in her sky blue eyes as her face turned a similar color. She couldn't breath, his hand laid so heavy across her throat, she pried and clawed for a chance gasp in the cold night air once more. One hand was ripped from her throat allowing her to let out a single scream, but her face stung in his force once again as he clamped his hand back around her mouth. She struggled her way closer to the ground in attempt to cease the movement, but he was stronger than she knew, and he followed her to the floor to constrain her breakable frame as she thrashed. His head, overrun by power, leaned in to her neck, expression still stale and eyes still cold.

"...I want you intact," He growled in her ear- his grasp tightened with each word he spat into her soul, and he dragged her another few inches. Before it caught his eye. The lights in the house  had flickered on, and someone would be coming soon: Elliot had heard her scream. 

He couldn't stay there with her, yet his sadistic controls urged him not to leave a fresh young body where he could not reach. But he was decisive, a sharp hero of the twisted, like the blades valued by those not unlike him. Blake's throat was freed of a hand, but no more able to escape his presence than before: it fell to the ground to scrape a handful of frost, which then was slid across Blake's neck to relieve the burning of his claws. 30 seconds passed before the redness disappeared, and with it disappeared the figure that Blake had seen through her kitchen window just a few hours prior.

Distraught, freezing, bleeding- her body lay beneath the shadows as she screamed and whimpered alone into the nothingness. What the hell?! The remnants of his venomous touch still flowed like cement through her veins, muted by the numbness of his blunt, gravel voice in her ears. Somebody find me, I can't be alone. Please... But she wasn't.

"BLAKE! Why the hell are you out here? are you okay, what happened?" Elliot panted as he ran toward the girl, who lifted her head as his voice pierced her.

"I- I don't remember how I got out here...It's like I just snapped into reality and I was outside... Some how. But the man was right here, Elliot, I told you! He grabbed me and tried to dra-"

"The man?Jesus Christ, Blake, I was so scared something had happened to you. What did I say about locking your bedroom door at night? I can't believe you even found your way out here in that state, Jesus... We've gone years without an incident like this,"

"W-what..? Wait, you mean... You think I was sleepwalking again? Elliot, sleepwalking doesn't make a man appear in the woods outside your house, does it?! It doesn't put hands around your throat, it doesn't fu-"

"It was a dream, Blake" He sighed and rubbed his eyes.

"No! It-" Elliot's hand tightened around her arm, his fingernails ever so slightly digging into her paper thin skin- it lingered for just a second before dragging her to her stained soles. His stone eyes fell through her pupils as he spoke firmly but quietly and leaned in, she listened,

"It was."