Veins of Ice

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Slowly walking down the hallway, Stephen ran his outstretched fingers along the wall to his right, screams and bloody memories filling his head as he made his way to the creaky door of his study. He paused, keeping his fingers planted on the wall as he re-lived a particular memory playing out in front of him.

Break his bones. Break him down. Crush him into nothing.

Stephen, covered in splatters of blood of the victim that had wandered needlessly and invaded his privacy in his home, stalked towards the boy.

He had blood mixed with tears and bruises covering his face and body, being barely able to even drag himself along the ground as his legs were twisted and bent in ways no human should ever be able to bend and twist their limbs.

"I gave you a warning," Stephen's cold, emotionless voice made the boy cry out in fear as he began to sob and plead for his life that was barely hanging on by it's thread. "And yet you continued to invade my home like the rat you are."

"Please! I'm s-sorry! I-I won't tell anyone about what I s-saw!" He cried out, trying harder to get away inch by painful inch as Stephen gained ground on him. Stephen gave a strikingly icy and hungry laugh, that came out of his throat and echoed through the halls. "Too late. You're mine." he growled.

Breaking free of the memory, he found himself smiling. Unfortunately his hungry was beginning to boil in the bottom of his stomach, and would continue to fuel until he satisfied it. He forced his body to continue moving towards the door ahead, and when he reached it, the door made a creaky noise as it opened.

His study was nearly filled to the roof with projects he had to get done, and it all seemed so daunting when he looked over all of it just standing from the doorway.

Cracking his knuckles and stepping into the room while closing the door behind himself, Stephen set to work on organizing the items into categories he could sort through easier to work on rather than let them sit astray in clutters.

*----*

Hours passed, and Stephen was nearly done with the organizing. He had lost track of time up until the doorbell ringing echoed through the house. Smoothing his shirt from the wrinkles, he stood and stretched, examining his work before turning, leaving the room, and heading down the long narrow hall past the kitchen and to the living room.

Cracking open the door to peek out but remain unseen, he quietly breathed out as he saw that his brother was the one standing there bearing his usual cheery smile. "Oh. Has it been that long?"

"Well, considering I've been standing here for about an hour now, Steph. Yeah." His brother retorted in a tone that came off as a bit impatient but still trying to be nice. He knew how his brother could get when it came to organizing or getting down to work for his shop so he didn't mind the wait so much.

"I apologize, I've been up in my study organizing everything.." He replied, opening the door a bit wider so they could see one another. "Come on in, Billy." He stepped aside just as his brother began walking forward and into his house.

The house was as dark as usual, so it made it a tad difficult to maneuver around furniture with the dim light filtering in from the kitchen window which was only lighting up the edge of a chair and the hallway.

Then, like a freight train, another memory swarmed Stephen's vision before him.

"Stephen?" Billy's voice rang in the darkness, causing all movement to cease immediately. He moved carefully through the silence. "Stephen it is alright, it is just me Billy. You can come out." He continued.

Stephen appeared from the darkness, his hair matted down and sticky with blood, as he was cleaning up his hands and face with an already red-stained rag. "Is it really alright?" he questioned.

The look of surprise soon turned into a much different look, one of understanding. But he couldn't yet reveal his own secrets to his brother. He clearly wasn't in the right mindset at the moment. "It is alright, but you can't just... Kill relentlessly." Billy stated, inching towards him with a growing need to help.

"How are you not freaking out?" Stephen asked bluntly. His voice was a tad shaky and muffled as he was in the process of cleaning off the remaining blood spots on visible skin. "Because, I'm okay with it. I won't tell."

As quickly as the memory had begun, it faded. Stephen blinked and recoiled a few times as he returned to reality and realized how close he and Billy were standing to one another as he was trying to gain his attention.

"Stephen, you alright?" Billy's voice sounded muffled in his ears, like he was underwater trying to listen to someone speaking above the water's surface.

Stephen took a few steps back and looked at his brother a bit more skeptically, almost as if he could not believe, though the memory was there, that his brother of all people had accepted him easier than anyone else he would've thought of. Or gone to with a secret such as his. 

"Yes.. I'm alright." He stirred a bit, shifting weight to a different leg, before walking into the hallway and down to his study. "It's close to my shop needing to open, so I need to get going. Feel free to stay if you want to, if not, up to you."

This odd feeling Stephen had in the back of his mind wouldn't go away, and he couldn't just simply ignore it like every other feeling he had prior. So why this one? What was so significant about this feeling that he couldn't shake it away?

Checking the time he sighed. It was just after 9:30 in the morning, he was running late. But his hunger, which made its presence known, wouldn't go away either.

As he went out the door of his house with his brother making himself at home inside, and papers that he grabbed from his study tucked safely under his arm, his thoughts finally settled. Of course, it wouldn't be any harm done if he had just one , or two, more victims before his day officially started... would it?