(18+) Someone in the dark

Ch. 25: Let there be light

We were lying in the grass, laughing, and panting from the aftermath of our lovemaking. Despite the roar from the ferocious flames eating at the building, everything was so silent now that the beast was dead. We felt it. And the spirits in the shed were gone. We felt that, too. This was the end of an era.

"Thanks for putting my clothes back on," I said, trying to make pieces of clothing appearing out of nowhere and swarming around your body sound completely normal. But the absurdity made us both resume into another fit of laughter. "You better not try any of that when we're in public, or else..."

But Michael just snickered at my threat and sent me a mischievous wink. That made me shove him until he groaned. But it wasn't what I did that made him groan, but pain.

"Are you okay?" I asked with concern, but he tried to act like nothing. "Hey, let me see. Are you injured?"

"I'll be fine," he said, but I'd already pulled up his shirt and saw parts of his torso covered with beginning bruises and several cuts of different sizes. Some of them were deep, too.

"Oh, my God! What happened to you?" I exclaimed and suddenly felt on the verge of tears. I'd been too dead to react before, then too horny to think straight, so I hadn't even noticed the three scratches on his forehead and chin. There was dried blood both on his skin and clothes, and his shirt had several flares, looking like someone had sliced it with a knife.

"Remember when I said I couldn't get out?" he asked, and I nodded and helped him sit up. "When I heard you outside my door, I felt desperate to get to you. And when I saw you stumble toward the old oak trees and the shed, I literally tried to tear down the walls. I smashed all the furniture against that damn door before I started on the windows."

"The windows? Your room is on the second floor, Michael," I said, but he ignored me and was clearly back in the moment of desperation.

"... and then one of them suddenly cracked. So I grabbed whatever I could find and started banging it against the window until it finally broke. And then I tried to climb..."

"You climbed down from the second floor?" I exclaimed in disbelief, but he shook his head.

"No. There wasn't anything to hold on to," he explained, and I was just about to draw a sigh of relief when he said the words that almost made me faint. "So I jumped."

"You jumped?!"

"Duh! What you were doing was way worse."

I thought for a moment and had to admit he was right. But I didn't have any choice. He did. He could've just ignored me from day one, and he'd be fine. Then I looked back at what once was his prison and found that jumping from the second floor probably wasn't that bad.

"As long as you don't do any more of that in the future," I muttered and made him chuckle. Then he whimpered when I pulled him up from the ground.

"Ribs?" I asked and tried to scan him in the half-dim, flickering light from the burning house. He made a face as a reply.

"And my ankle."

"Your ankle, too? How on earth did you manage to carry me all the way from the shed?"

Michael shrugged and chuckled, then kissed my chin when I wrapped his arm around my neck to steady him as we started walking. "Adrenaline, baby. The purest kind."

"Well, you better use that adrenaline to tell me where to go to get to the nearest phone, because I'm not staying here one minute longer," I muttered, and steered us toward what I once saw as an idyllic avenue leading up to the grand mansion. Now it was a giant gangway leading us away from a sinking ship and if it wasn't for Michael limping next to me, I'd be running like the ground was lava under my feet. Then I noticed the slight hesitation in him. "You don't know what a phone is, do you?"

"I do! Or... Not really. I mean, I read about a gentleman named Alexander..."

"Bell?" I exclaimed, utterly shocked. "Don't tell me all you know about phones is an article about the man who invented them? Come on. Have you never spoken to anyone on the phone before? Never seen one?"

He shook his head at each question I asked, and I stopped and stared at him in disbelief.

"You know what year we're living in, right?"

"2018," he said, relieved to finally knowing the answer.

"Right. And the technology today is nowhere near comparable to back then. Oh, boy..."

I rubbed my forehead, fascinated by how it was possible to live on the same planet and be stuck in a bubble completely different from the rest of the world. Then again, nothing inside the walls of the Silver Fox mansion was normal, so they probably didn't need phones. I hadn't even questioned that when I read the ad in the newspaper that day. It said to meet in person for an interview. Oh, how I wished I never did. Unfortunately, that would also mean that I wouldn't have met this peculiar man who was hanging around my shoulders, so maybe it was meant to be, after all? Then I squinted at him while I thought of something else.

"How old are you?"

"Thirty-two. Why?"

I hummed skeptically and sucked on my cheeks.

"Just checking to see if you're not some kind of three hundred- and twenty-eight-year-old ghost stuck in a time warp."

He chuckled, and I couldn't help but to join him. This was all so surreal.

"If so, I'm a baby ghost and you need to take care of me," he teased, and I was about to poke his ribs when I remembered he was injured.

"You're gonna have to clean up and make your own food from now on, mister. Out here, men have the same responsibilities doing house chores as women."

"Does that include picking flowers, too?"

He looked at me with the most adorable hopeful eyes and melted the last fragment of what had been cold and dead inside me.

"It does."

His face cracked into a wide grin.

"Good, because then I'm gonna bring you flowers every day for the rest of my life."

I laughed, and I sounded just as happy and carefree as I felt. If someone else said those words, I'd cringe all the way into the next week. But I knew Michael well enough to know that he would probably do exactly that. It wasn't just a lame pickup line or fake promises. He was genuine and had the purest heart you could find, and right now, his eyes were glittering as he smiled at me.

"I'm looking forward to that."