READER

I'm drifting on a cloud, floating in its soft warm embrace. I smell salt and look down to see a shimmering blue ocean below me. The waves twist and dance and take on a bleaker hue until I am faced with an expanse of deep dark blue.

Suddenly my cloud fades away and I drop into that deep blue sea. It is warm and my skin tingles where it washes over me. Then, as my feet kick, I see something rise. A thick black oil bubbles to the surface and envelops me; as I struggle it gets thicker until it's a sticky tar holding me in place. I begin to sink and all fades to black.

Now I'm suffocating, sinking further into darkness. I open my mouth to scream for help but the dark claws into my throat and fills my lungs. Then suddenly I'm rising, fingers grip my arms tightly and pull me up, up, up into the light. I cough and splutter and dislodge the pitch in my lungs and, hands still gripping my arms, open my eyes.

My wrists hang limp by my sides and something heavy pins my legs. I see hands curled round my arms, supporting my upper body. And directly in front of my face, a blue mask.

My throat is too hoarse to allow me to scream and so all I can do is blink at the pale imitation of a face in front of me. We stay like that for a few moments. Him the predator, two black pits fixated on me; and I the prey, caught in his grip and in his gaze. I feel the blood rise under my skin, blossoming a red flush. But the moment ends as he leans back and stands up; his fingers never leave me and I'm pulled along in his wake. As my feet touch the floor I try to flex my toes into the soft carpet, but my legs stagger and buckle under the weight of my body and I slip from his grasp and to the ground.

He laughs under his breath as he reaches towards me and I cower against the bed. I want to run but I'm so exhausted. It feels as though all of my energy has been leached away.

I take notice of the soft cotton against my skin; my bra and jeans are gone, replaced by a soft black shirt that hangs low on my shoulders and high on my thighs. The material is thin and I feel exposed, vulnerable. I'm powerless to stop him from pulling me to my feet and sweeping me off them.

I'm slung over his shoulder and he holds me still by my thigh. His hand is uncomfortably warm and pressed against the exposed flesh at the top of my thigh, only centimetres away from becoming inappropriate. He doesn't seem to notice, doesn't make any lewd gestures. He simply keeps his hand there, as if stopping me from forgetting his presence.

We move into another room with a tiled floor, a bathroom. The room only contains a bath and cabinet but has several adjoining doors. The white bath rests against a wall and a pale grey curtain flutters open around it, caught in the breeze generated by our arrival. The room is warm, the air thick and heavy, and I notice the bath is full of clear water, with a thin vapour trailing away from it.

I gasp as he lowers me into the warm water, it washes over my legs and covers me up to my waist. He draws the curtain and shoves his forearm past it. His veins are taut under his grey skin and his arm is muscular, imposing.

"Take them off,"

His voice drifts through the curtain as if carried on the steam.

I wince in protest as I pull the top over my head; my wound throbs but in discomfort rather than pain. I pass him the damp cloth. He sighs before he speaks again.

"All of it,"

His voice is strained, slightly uncomfortable. I'm glad to be concealed by the silvery curtain as I delicately rest my undergarments on the shirt.

His hand is pulled swiftly away as I huddle beneath the hot water.

"Clean yourself. Keep the wound dry." He commands before I hear his footsteps fade. The door stays open.

I wash the dirt and sweat away from my body, aware of just how filthy I am. There's some kind of body wash for which I'm grateful. It smells like mango.

I close my eyes and enjoy the simple pleasures from the sweet smell and the feeling of warmth on my body. My eyelids sink and I feel tightly wound muscles uncoil; I could almost forget the situation I'm in,

until I see him.

His silhouette stands dark and harsh through the curtain; his stance like iron, hard and unyielding. I expect him to walk with an almost mechanical edge, but he saunters forwards in a disturbingly human way. I pull my knees to my chest and make sure I'm covered only moments before he pulls the curtain back with such force as to surprise me it isn't ripped away entirely.

His eyes linger on me for but a few seconds before he moves to kneel behind me. He pushes my hair behind my right shoulder, his hands lingering by my neck. He leans towards he till I feel lips brush my shoulder and inhales. I shiver violently, despite the warm water, and he pulls away. My bandages are ripped from my skin in one swift motion, causing me to gasp suddenly. I catch sight of them as he tosses them aside.

They're black like ink.

He gently wrings water over the exposed wound and my skin tingles at the contact. I tilt my head back slightly and see the water begin to turn opaque with a black substance. It runs down my back in thin rivulets and clouds the water with a thick black oil. I remember my dream, drowning in darkness and choking on it as it filled my lungs. I lurch forward in panic; trying desperately to get away from it.

He is impatient as he pulls me back and dislodges my arms. My panic only escalates as my chest is exposed and I wrench my arms back to preserve my modestly. My breathing is laboured as choked sobs fall uselessly from my mouth and I pull my head down to rest on my knees.

He stays silent as he continues to rinse water over my back. Washing away the black substance. It is not until he is satisfied than he pulls the plug and lets the water,now faintly grey, wash away. He pulls down a shower hose and rests it on my feet before pulling the curtain closed. I don't wait for him to speak before I wash away any residue, noticing the veins of red among the black.

He pulls open the curtain once more, mask pointed away from me, and passes me a towel before he leaves the room. I try to stand on shaky legs to dry myself as best as possible, muttering profanities.

EJ

Jack leant back against the purple wall, it was distastefully bright in his opinion. Steam poured out of the doorway next to him and he heard her as she stumbled and cursed under her breath. The steam made to uncomfortably hot under his mask so he pushed it back. As his nose was freed (Y/N)'s scent became stronger, no longer masked by dirt but enhanced by something pleasantly sweet. He recalled the slight of her, her (S/C) skin warm beneath his touch and her (H/C) hair tossed over over one shoulder. When she looked at him she did so with exquisite (E/C) eyes, so unlike the chasms he had in place of his own.

He couldn't help but let his gaze wander as she sat in that pool of water, so vulnerable, so defenceless. The familiar urges came over him, to rip and tear and bite and taste. They nearly overwhelmed him and cost (Y/N) her life if not for one detail. His curiosity.

A life of friends and normal hobbies would never be a possibility for Jack, not looking the way he did, and he'd long since finished mourning those lost opportunities. However a life consisting of nothing but hunting and eating bored him. He needed something more, to stimulate his mind and keep him occupied. So rather than enjoying a life of his own, he studied those that he stole. He didn't look into every meal but pried into the personal affairs of those with lives that stoked his interest.

And this girl interested him very much.

It would be a waste kill her before he'd extracted everything useful from her, and her story could almost be as delicious as the way her beating heart would taste on his tongue and the sweet flavours of her kidneys.

READER

I step slowly towards the door, now draped in a soft towel with only a pair of plain cotton underwear beneath. As I step under the door frame I steady myself, one hand grips the side and the other holds my towel in place. I turn to the right and see nothing out of the ordinary. Then I look to the left and let out a gasp. He is sitting there, hastily pulling down his mask. He hauls himself to his feet and slams one hand on the wall by my head, stepping uncomfortably close his other hand rests on the small of my back, pulling me towards him.

He looks down on me in appraisal and pushes me towards the bed till my legs collide with it. An ugly orange towel rests on the covers. He gives me a less than gentle shove and suddenly I'm lying face down on the orange cover. He moves my towel and hair to expose the wound and probes at it. I hiss at the intrusion but I can feel how it has healed. Impossibly quickly. He's done something; I'm sure of it.

Then he takes of his mask.

He sets it near my head, turned awkwardly to one side, and I stare at it in confusion. It's a deep dark blue and a black tar-like substance drips from the eye sockets. It all seems so familiar. I hear movement above me and something warm drop onto my back, only to be quickly massaged into the wound. It's thick and warm and my skin prickles at the contact before starting to go numb. It makes the area feel heavy and as I sink into the bed I remember something else.

I'm suffocating, sinking further into darkness.

My dream! My dream of thick black tar drowning me, inky black contrasting with deep blue. Just like the mask in front of me.

So then, the black secretions from his eyes...

In a way I'm becoming horribly used to, I start to scream.