phantomgiggler

[phantomgiggler]

all I do is listen to music and think about my silly little fictional people

[phantomgiggler]

luvvvvvv ur work omgggggg u could do remmick fucking the reader in the middle of the dance circle…. or is that too freaky here idk if this is a safe space💔💔💔 love u mwah

..oh…

That’s not…

Nah I’m just fucking with you. You’re a nasty freak and I want to smooch you on the mouth. NOT PROOFREAD AT ALL!! Just wanted to note this isn’t the Juke Joint, a bar is mentioned, but it isn’t said nor hinted whether it’s the Juke Joint or not, that’s completely up to you if you want to interpret it as such. Also reader’s race isn’t brought up either, again, up to you readers to interpret or imagine which race reader is.

WARNINGS! Smut.. uh.. duh. Technically a weird.. orgy I don’t fucking know. None of them fuck each other aside from Remmick and reader.. but shit gets weird okay.. remember they CAN feel what Remmick feels. Also Reader is fem. No penetration but he eats her shit OUT, also jerks off. Reader’s emotions and reactions are all over the place.. I was kinda experimenting on how someone might feel during all of this in the beginning. Okay bye.

Tag cause some folks askkkkedddd: @jimmys-tiara and @porcosjaw

The chaos is loud. The rumble of feet, the pounding of drums and cries of the wicked fill the night air.

It sucks the life of the living, the fear of those being hunted by something they can’t wrap their minds around— can’t fathom being something real. This chaos, this crowd, bleeds into each other. Bleeds into everything around them.

Ties everyone into one. Into something connected, something whole.

Something deeper than flesh, deeper than bone. You can feel it, gripping itself into your whole being. Ripping and tearing your flesh straight off you and leaving you vulnerable.

It slithers its way through your stomach, up through your veins and hangs low in your throat. Every swish of a skirt, or the pull of pants, the ruffle of a jacket or shirt, you feel like it’s your own. You can feel the breeze of the wind not only brush across your cheeks, but everyone else’s.

There’s a loud howl, something you can not only hear but feel as if it’s your own, and then a loud cackle. Something that sounds like it hurts, like it holds traces of a loud cry for help, but the pure ecstasy on the new vampire’s face is far from dread or pain.

Then there’s another laugh, and another, until everyone keeps laughing between lyrics. A song twisted with laughter and joy despite its gloomy meaning.

A song that speaks of longing, of wanting to belong again— but you do. Belong. Together, with each other.

Whole.

You can just feel it, every time you brush your hand across another’s cheek or hold hands with another vamp, or laugh with someone, you feel it. That connection.

All around you, you can feel it.

It’s a massive circle, one that makes everyone face one another. Some folks move, others stomp in place. There’s a few that even go into the center, giggling and dancing before leaving again.

You feel another brush, hear someone giggle. Feel the brush of your lips against your own, despite no one being near your face to kiss you. Instead, it’s the couple across from you, making out.

You just ignore it.

People tend to get strung up by the emotion of it all, all the weight being lifted off their shoulders, all the fear being washed away. Scraped off gums and spit onto floors, or even into each other’s mouths.

You feel that tug, suddenly, between your legs. That ache, that pull. Another brush against your flesh, but this time higher up your thigh— a different couple this time, a more handsy one.

The thundering becomes louder, feet quicker, pace quicker. A tumble towards something. The middle of the circle is empty, the empty space welcoming, urging someone forth to take its place.

It’s not long for Remmick to be that very person, always one to fold for an ancient call, and he steps in the middle.

The dirt is kicked up with each knock of his shoes, dust rolling into the wind in small clouds as he dances. He does a small circle, dust following as the claps and instruments become louder.

More chaotic, more frantic, like everyone was desperate for something. Another tug, another pull, another kiss— all of which you attempt to ignore, but everyone seems to only get worse, feverish and hungry.

You glance up at the sky, the warmth and noise becoming overwhelming, downright unbearable but you’ll be damned to leave it. Couldn’t, even if you wanted to, because he won’t allow you to.

Remmick has a way of stringing everyone along, coaxing them with soft calls in the mind, a small curl of his fingers and his feet dragging across the dirt urging everyone to follow him. It’s why everyone is in a circle to begin with, singing a song none of them knew, but somehow could recall each lyric to.

So you stay, and instead escape the festering heat by looking to the night sky. There ain’t any stars out tonight, though you could recall seeing them earlier. When you had come out for a quick smoke, lingering in the quietness, the ease of being alone and away from the tumbling of sweaty bodies or loud music. Away from the bar. But now it’s nothing but space and darkness, and something drops in your stomach. Like an understanding that the stars will never grace your sight again, that even space itself is terrified of what you’ve become.

The same stars your mama used to tell you, promised you, would always be there as a guiding point, no longer wanted to protect you. To lead you home.

And why should they. There was no home to be had anymore.

You feel a pull on your hand, this time actually for you, and you glance down only to be immediately met with red eyes.

“Come ere’, in the middle.” Remmick cocks his head back, urging you forth.

Despite your better judgment, you follow without a word. Always do, always will from here on out.

You expect him to sway away from you allowing you space to do your own thing, or to lead you in the center to try and copy his moves before shoving you back out. You don’t expect him to linger so close, or to interlock his hand with one of your own and place his other against your waist. Don’t expect him to pull you so close to the point where his chest presses against your own, nose almost tapping against yours as he gives a small breathless huff.

Despite the cold brace of death, and the lingering smell of your own blood along with many others still slathered across his flesh, you feel your muscles relax. Feel that wave of nausea, of misery, swish away again.

He distracts that heavy weight of dread squished between your ribs by swaying you back and forth, the hand on your waist guiding you through a messy dance that hardly fits the rhythm. It’s far too slow, not in the same fast paced beat set by those on the instruments.

Not that he cares. And he’s working extra hard to ensure you don’t either. He sways you away, keeping you out by only an extended arm before twirling you. Once, twice, thrice until he hears you laugh, his own following soon after. Though it’s much more quiet, cut off by a small hum before he’s pulling you back into his chest again, although this time it’s your back pressed against him.

“There ya go, just feel it, be with it.” He sways you both again, back and forth, his face tucked close to your neck. The same neck he tore into not even half an hour ago, but the wound had long healed, the blood of the living long curing the open ache of tender flesh.

He places a hand over your stomach, his nose knocking against your jaw as he takes a deep breath.

It’s much louder in the center than it was on the sidelines, everything so close and concentrated. It should be just as overwhelming, but you feel his other hand go against your chest, just above your breast.

He begins giving a steady pat, a quick thump twice. Again, and again, and again.

“Feel that,” gives another quick pat, “that’s us. One.” Gives a few more just for a good extra measure. To really reel it into your brain.

One. Whole.

You realize after a bit that he isn’t just thumping his hand against your chest for the sake of dramatics, but he’s mimicking a heartbeat. One that no longer resides within your chest. You don’t know what’s worse, the fact the same man who took your life is trying to mimic it back to you, or the fact that you find actual comfort in it.

You sigh, then nod.

“Just feel it. Take it in.”

Your body rocks side to side, slow. Far off beat, no longer with the crowd, no longer following along with their clasps or stomp of feet. Everyone is stuck in the same pattern, same rhythm, but you two.

He gives another pat.

Then, he slides his nose across your neck, breath warm as he mutters, “you still with me?”

You nod again. It’s only when you agree that he places a light kiss against you, your brows twitching into a slight furrow as you feel his tongue dart out to lick across your skin.

His hand stops giving the rhythmic thump, instead he trails it down to your breast, where he lightly squeezes the plump flesh. You feel him place another light kiss onto your jaw, his stubble scratching at you as he slowly rubs his face against you.

You two stay like that for a bit, his hands roaming over you as he places soft pecks here and there against your neck, cheek and back. Anywhere he can reach easily. And you tell yourself it’s not just because he needs to be close, despite the ache you feel in his bones or the hollow space tucked between his own ribs that has left him starved for the soft touch of a stranger. You tell yourself it’s not just because he wants to be close, that he also is licking the blood off of you and benefitting from the tight connection that hums under your skin, all the while he gives a content sigh.

You keep repeating that he’s doing this for the sake of securing his hold back over you, but he keeps contradicting all your thoughts. His mourning is far too loud and consuming to ignore, and he’s far too gentle to chalk it up to him just being ‘nice’.

Remmick places another gentle kiss against your shoulder before muttering, “you smell divine, real good.”

You feel him press his nose against your jaw again and take a deep breath in before exhaling loudly. It’s drowned by the music, but even then, everyone seems to understand his own interest with you, all catch the same whiff of your perfume mixed with the salty tang of your sweat.

All give a small hum of content in return. As if agreeing.

You aren’t given long to respond, however, because his hand that was formerly placed over your stomach glides down to grab at your heat through your dress.

Forces you to give a small yelp and jerk forward, taken off guard.

And the fucker laughs at that, finds that real funny. He jerks you back against his chest again, places a hand back over your stomach and forces you in place. His hand doesn’t move away from the space between your thighs, if anything, he presses his palm over your clothed clit. Does that until his entire hand practically covers your clothed pussy.

Remmick hums low when you give a small gasp, “feel real good, don’t it,” his canines poke out upon him smiling at your nod in return, happier than a fucking pastor on Sunday, “Wearin’ anythin’ under?”

You nod, and it’s stupid. Real stupid, because you aren’t. Far from it, and you know he knows that. You know everyone at this point knows that, can tell by the way some of them shake their heads no or the way they scrunch their faces upon hearing you lie.

Shit, they can all feel the way your slick wets the fabric of your dress. Not willingly, but they’ll be damned if you lied when it’s so fucking easy not to.

He notices too, chuckles low and mean against your ear before whispering, “liar.”

He flips the dress up just to tuck his hand underneath it, doesn’t care about flashing anyone or the fact you’re quite literally in the middle of the dance circle. Doesn’t really give a rat's ass when you gasp and immediately drag down your dress just to have some decency.

That decency is thrown out the window anyway, a real shame, because he presses his fingers against your clit. Taps it twice.

In return, you give a choked moan, mumbling a few curses before your hips jerk against his hand. You’re squeamish, unable to stand still as you desperately try to slide yourself against his open palm, hands clutching at his wrists, seeking for purchase.

In doing so, he tries to tighten his hold and move his fingers away from your nerves, but when he figures that won’t work he shoves a foot between your own. Lightly tap his shoe against one of your own until you spread your feet apart a bit. Taps harder again to get you to widen your stance more.

“There ya go,” he mutters when you finally open up, a small smile in place. You think he’s gonna continue, maybe even be nice and actually sink his fingers inside.. but he doesn’t. Far from it actually.

Instead, he drops to his knees, pulls your dress back up and goes underneath. His hands move to the front of your thighs where he grips the soft fabric of your dress, hands coated in blood and your slick. You hear a wolf whistle off to the side, then a loud laugh that strikes a match of embarrassment inside you. Strikes shame. But most of it is shoved to the side upon you feeling a wet glob of spit on your pussy.

You hardly have time to react before you feel his tongue between your folds, licking a long stride up. With it, everyone gives a content sigh, you included. Collective relief, even the instruments transition into a smoother beat, into something more airy and light.

Remmick gives another lick, hands clawing against the fabric of your dress before deciding to just ball the fabric into his fists that rest against your thighs. It pulls the fabric tight, until the dress partially covers your front and only covers his head in the back, otherwise it’s a full show. It wouldn’t take anyone much to take one glance over and understand exactly what’s going on— this man is tearing your shit up in front of everyone, and really has no shame doing it.

Once he’s down there, he’s stuck. Doesn’t let up, doesn’t breath, doesn’t pull away for anything. He sticks his tongue against your entrance, noses at your clit and spits globs of saliva against your already drenched center.

Doesn’t stop on the account of the other newly turned vampires moaning or howling, doesn’t boast or smile at any of those who whistle or wink at you. You doubt he even knows nor cares about what others have to think of the sight.

He just keeps licking and prodding around, like it’s his afternoon snack and he’s been dying for something to eat. The only times he does anything, gives any reaction of any sort, is when you do.

When you squeal after he nips at your clit, he smacks your ass, or when you give a sharp moan, he shakes his head side to side real quick, making you moan louder. His grip tightens on your dress when he feels your walls clench around his tongue, a groan of his own following when he feels your shudder after tongue fucking your hole.

You give a breathy gasp, hardly able to hold in all the air in your lungs before your moaning again. Another loud smack is given again, this time to your thigh, your dress dropping back down as he lets go of the fabric just to grab at your waist with both hands.

He tightens his grip and urges you to move against him, to rock yourself against his face. You hear someone else give a loud moan, then another giggle before squealing in pleasure, your presume. But you can’t see them, can’t when the crowd is still dancing and singing, all molded together tight.

You feel yourself move against him, don’t even notice how you’ve begun grinding against his open mouth and his tongue.

Jesus, his tongue, the one that keeps you locked in place, squirming and giddy despite the awful shame that lingers in the pit of your stomach. The same one that is slowly�� not even, it’s dragging you towards your climax, yanking you towards the edge.

Another voice, neither of yours, yells out, “Yeah baby! Just like that!”

Another chimes in, “Mhm! Ride that face, doll!”

You feel yourself grow warm with each comment, beyond embarrassed by being quite literally in open view. You think getting ripped into again would be a fate less painful than this.

But Remmick.. Remmick finds this amusing. Nips at your inner thigh with a small smirk in place, mutters something that you just know is teasing, but you can’t hear it. Just feel him talk against you before he’s latching his mouth back onto your slick.

After a few seconds, when your hips are fully jerking back against him and you're basically riding his face standing up, eyes closed and the most beautiful sounds leaving you, he moves both his hands away.

But, he smacks your ass and quickly moves away from your spit soaked pussy, forcing a loud whined plea to leave you. He ignores it, just to say loud enough for you to hear, “Turn around.”

You do, no questions asked. Your emotions curl and crash against each other, tangling into a mess of a ball, all of which leave you unable to think or act reasonably. Lust, ache, shame, fear, joy— all crash together, all too much to really handle separately. So you don’t.

You decide to let Remmick handle you for now.

And Remmick.. he’s a real sight.

He remains on the floor, both knees down onto the dirt, his clothes still dirty with sweat, blood and whatever the hell else he got into. His face is flushed, chest panting heavy breathes and his hair is a mess. Both of his suspenders are down, something you hadn’t noticed earlier, and his beard is wet with not only blood but also your cum. The small golden chain that rests on his neck also has small droplets of blood on it, but it still gleams bright against the reflected light of the moon.

He’s a mess. One you want to swallow whole.

He waves both hands over, signalling you to get close, but you're far too distracted with taking in the sight of him that he has to grab at your dress and yank you over.

Another cackle, another moan. The music speeds up again.

Remmick looks hungry, starved. Eyes your cunt even though it’s covered by your dress, like it’s his prey, his salvation and love all in one.

He goes to speak, mouth parting and teeth poking out but he’s cut off by another Vampire, one still in the circle who yells, “Put her leg up! Wanna see the sweet pussy she got on her!”

You look over to whoever said that, seeing them with a bright dazzling smile as they nod their head fast. Giddy as well. You just blink at them, unsure of what to say, what to even hit back with given how you can feel the bristle of their own joy strummed between your bones.

But Remmick seems unhappy, a small scowl crawling onto his face, but you quickly realize it’s not at the person but at you. The fact you aren’t paying attention to him.

Fuck what that person said, why the hell aren’t you looking at him?

You hardly mutter out a small ‘sorry-‘ before he’s picking up your dress again and diving back in. Funnily enough, he doesn’t put your leg up on his shoulder like requested, instead letting your dress fall back down so he can hide under it and with it hide you under it.

It’s purposeful. You know it.

You feel his tongue slather back into place, back into the warmth of your walls and slobbering all over you. He sets a quick pace, licking up and down fast while simultaneously using one of his free hands to roll his palm over your clit.

The pleasure shoots through you, down your toes and glides across your teeth that you almost lose balance. Him being under your dress doesn’t really help much, you can’t really grab at him the way you want to nor can you glide your fingers through his damp sweat hair.. but his shoulders are broad enough that you can still grasp them through the material. So you do. And you remain locked there, unable to move without the possibility of falling over.

And Remmick isn’t much help either, both of his hands are far too occupied, with one being busy playing with your pussy while the other is desperately yanking at his belt buckle.

A difficult task when you can’t hear, see or think much. Like a rabid animal, he claws at his pants, yanking at them and the belt as if they’ve started to boil into his skin.

It doesn’t take long for you to notice, given how much movement and groans of frustration you can feel.

“W-what?”

He moves away from you, again, but not too far, “can’t fuckin- can’t get my pants off.”

You shake your head, “what?”

He grows frustrated, yanking the fabric back over his head until he can meet your confused gaze, “can’t get my pants off!”

“Okay? Take them off now then.” You look down, pointedly, at his bulge and then back to his red eyes, “go on. Quick, needa cum already.”

“Right, needy thing-“

You give a small groan upon feeling his fingers leave you, blinking back your own frustration as he continues to stare at you, “Well?”

He works off his belt, quick, all the while looking at you. Doesn’t even say anything, not even a small ‘yeah got it’ just for the sake of letting you know. No, instead the only way you know he did is when he pulls your dress one last time over him and sticks his fingers back inside you.

Real nice, thanks.

Again, you're left on your own to keep yourself up by balancing on him. You’re not even sure why he made a big show of taking his belt off.

Not until you feel it. It’s more intense then the tongue on your cunt, even more intense then getting fucked in general.

The circle momentarily falters, everybody taking in a long, deep breath in. The music is off tune, slurred and lazy, caught off guard. You hear someone play their guitar too early, followed by another missing their Que in the song.

And when Remmick gives a deep groan, everyone else does too. Because underneath you, with him buried between your thighs, he’s jerking off to each moan you let out, to the taste of you on his tongue.

Each breath he takes in, each groan, roll of his hips, whimper and slick of precum that coats his dick.. you all feel. Like it’s your own.

Makes you all breath and moan together.

Makes your orgasm roll quicker, makes your eyes roll back and mouth hang open with a silent moan.

He feels you shudder, feels you flutter a little more and he doubles down. Goes quick, on both you and him. Fingers you faster and licks your bundles of nerves quickly, the sound of skin against skin becoming louder as he fastens his thrusts into his hand.

Someone gives a choked sob, another grabs onto a different random vampire just to moan into their ear causing them to get smacked away.

It takes him to just smack you on the pussy to completely push you over the edge. His mouth is open and waiting, slurping down your cum as you moan loudly, legs shaky. He’s a bit behind on his own, thrusts fast and frantic as he tries to meet you there, to fall with you while you're still drowning in pleasure.

Flicks his wrist a few times more and brings his hand down to his balls to give a small squeeze… and that does the trick.

One would’ve thought shots were being fired with how quickly everyone bowed over, with how loud everyone was. You give a sharp whine, almost screaming as you lean over, gripping onto him like a life line.

Your breathing matches each other, whimpers and pants in sync, even your moans matching.

“Fuck.. fuck..” you whisper out, trying to calm down, trying to ease yourself after having two orgasms back to back.. if it even was that. Felt like you were forced onto cloud nine and then taken higher than that all in one long orgasm.

Everyone becomes quiet, trying to catch their breaths. The music has stopped.

After a few minutes, he places a kiss against your thigh and slips out from under you, not to stand but to lay down onto the dirt.

You give him a lazy smile, and he matches it. You think you need to hibernate for a while, like a bear.

But before you can crawl away, or even attempt to leave the space in the circle, he waves you back over.

You ask a breathless, “What?”

Only to be met with a long groan, and then, “come. Sit on my cock.”

[phantomgiggler]

jfc this tweet blew up 😭

[phantomgiggler]

Mary is a better woman than me because I would have fucked Remmick raw right there on the dirt road if he looked at me like that

[phantomgiggler]

Back on my Teen Wolf bs

What do yall know about my boy Isaac?

[phantomgiggler]

SINNERS 2025, dir. Ryan Coogler

[phantomgiggler]

jupiterpiss my beloved, lemme see the toxic ex remmick post🙏🏻🙏🏻

It’s long.

Warnings: Briefly proof read. Sorry if there are any mistakes. This took a shit ton while and it’s long as hell too. Gore.. GOREEEE PEOPLE. Animals are harmed, some graphic detail of mutations and death. Blood mentioned, spit play. Lots of spit.. he licks you. All over. Reader tries to be cool and insult him but it literally fails. Also cause she’s partially lying. FEM READER. Pussy smacking.. yeah u read that right. Remmick threatens to kill children and members of readers family. He’s really mean here. Mention of curses! P in v. Porn WITH plot. Yeah. Uhhh I think that’s it. Can’t remember where.. but reader is kinda acknowledged to be poc? I think? Somewhere I wrote that but I can’t remember.. so if it’s not there, then just ignore this tag.

It’s the beginning of July when he comes back. When the heat is slowly climbing, held at a pleasant warmth in the beginnings of summer. Not too harsh but not too chill, just enough to sleep with the sheets on.

Although your bed remains cold, has yet to be comforted by the warmth of your skin, yet to cushion itself around your weight.

Instead, the rocking chair on your porch holds your frame. Coddles you, as your it’s child. Protected away in its wood bindings, softly rocking you back and forth.

Between your point and middle finger rests a cigarette, the smoke of it blowing lightly in the soft breeze, swirling around before disappearing into the dark, or lingering around the porch light you got on. Something to keep you awake, comforted. Just as the chair.

You’ve been doing this for a while now, sitting outside, smoking. It was a horrible habit, something picked up just a few months ago. Not too long after you met the man you keep waiting on.

It was actually due to him you even started, that you actually liked the taste of the cigarette, the breeze and roll of the smoke curling in your lungs before blowing it out. It got rid of the shake in your hands, the anxious tap of your foot. Eased you.

It also worked as a distraction, a tactic used to lie to yourself. That yes, you’re only out here for a smoke, only out here to whind down for the night. That you’re not waiting for him, not waiting to see if he’ll show. With his crooked teeth and cocky attitude that seems to fail.

The chair groans, creaks loud as you get out of it, as if it’s calling out to you, mourning the loss of you. The wood of the porch cries just as loudly, louder than it usually does. As if it’s calling for something, crying out the tears and calls you can’t bring yourself to do.

You’re halfway through the door when you feel it. That quiet. The pull of something old, a thread connecting you to the dead, yanked tightly around his finger as if he’s your puppeteer. It’s maybe why you pause, stay.

Then, turn, slowly, as if you could feel it. Feel him.

In the far distance are two little orbs, bright red. Too tall to be a mammal but too short to be an owl in a tree. You stay still, will yourself to not blink. That if you do, he’ll show up. Be a shit ton closer.. and then you’ll have to deal with him.

His hunger. Love. Whatever else that lingers in his bones.

A minute passes, and due to basic human instinct you blink. Once, twice. Each time he gets closer until he lingers just off the porch, by about an inch.

Only then he speaks, when he’s under the shadow of the porch light, gives a small, “Hey baby.”

You stare in disbelief. Perplexed. As if his existence is something other worldly.. which it could be. As if him coming back never occurred to you. It did, several times, but each time he entered differently.

Louder. Meaner maybe. Maybe he would come crying, or hell, even with some new broad. Maybe even a whole ‘pack’ he went out to create. Something.

Not this. Him, casual, as if he didn’t disappear for three weeks. All happy smiles and a lustful gaze.

He doesn’t take the silence very well, can’t, deciding to fill it with random conversation, “was hard to find ya’, at first. Thought you would be back with em’ family of yours. But this nice-“ he points a finger at your house, towards the door that remains halfway open with your body halfway in, facing him.

“Liked to see my girl independent. Always knew you worked hard. Hell, Went outta yer way to get us a house.. now we really can get crackin on the whole family thing, huh?”

“Where the fuck were you.”

His smile immediately drops, and he flinches at your words. Liked you smacked him.

“Well.. now that ain’t no way to greet a lover-“

You cut him off, not in the mood for his banter, “Where the fuck were you, Remmick?”

“Baby.. I was out. Getting food.”

You tilt your head at him, but it’s less of a naive curiosity, more of a way to show your anger. The offence of his actions.

“For almost a fuckin month?”

It sounds like he winces, you can’t be too sure, but with how his shoulders tense, and the way he trips over his words says enough.

“I-wh- lo-look. Look. I was out.. gettin’ food. And I heard the most.. baby.. when I say this voice was god damn beautiful.. I mean-“ he gives a light scoff.

Your eyes squint, and he straightens, “you should’ve heard it. You would understand. It was like the voice of.. of the angels. And I could see em’”

Your jaw clenches, tight, the muscles tense, “see who.”

“Ancestors. The dead.. the- the buried. And the alive. The future. Everything. His voice-“

“His?”

“Sammy,” he quickly clarifies, like a name covers any confusion, “His voice broke the tether. Broke that bound.”

He shakes his head, slow. As if reminiscing on the memory, the life brought on by ‘Sammy’s’ voice. He gives a low hum.

“I couldn’t let that go.”

Dread. Yucky, gross dread washed over you. You hate how this story is going, don’t like how he’s still shaking his head, eyes no longer on you but lost on something else.

Lost on the memory.

He looks like he’s mourning.. and you feel like vomiting.

“Remmick.”

He gives a small hum, eyes still stuck in the corner of the door frame.

“What did you do?” You whisper.

He doesn’t wait long to answer, “tried to get him. Couldn’t. Damn near killed everyone just to do it, though.”

The bluntness of his words, of what he did doesn’t seem to surprise you. He’s always been like that, always been forward with his intentions and words.

Doesn’t mean it didn’t crack something in you. Something deep, a dam waiting to break free.

“He’s a preacher boy. Spoke of God. Sounded like him too when he sang. Should’ve heard him in that Juke joint-“

Your heart plummets.

Falls. Hits the fucking ground and splatters everywhere. It takes everything in you not to make it noticed, not at first.

You heard about that, the whole joint that went missing, only left the Klan and one body to show for in the morning.

Guns were splayed out on the floors, a car on fire was found not to far, and the bodies. Several of em’, all belonging to the Klan. Their wives said otherwise, said there was no such thing, how could there be. Said that it was the one body that didn’t belong to them that did this. Killed their husbands unmercifully.

No one in the community believed it. White folks did, but no one else.

Among the chaos of the scene lied a man with a name no one spoke of, was afraid to. Smoke. Whispered among people, out from a mouth and into an ear cupped behind a hand. Just mentioning him got people in trouble.

But even then.. no one knew what happened to everyone else.

Children left to be orphans and spouses left widowed. The rumours pinned it on smoke, said he took everyone in there too. Some said the Klan did all that. Others said something of a mob.

But the blood. The blood. It was slathered all over, coated the fucking walls from top to bottom. There were trails of hands, feet, looked like someone painted with it. And the boy. The boy. Now you remember. He was said to have claw marks on him, clothes soaked in blood and hand shaky around a guitar. A broken one, not even something full. Hardly spoke, too shaken and scared to even mutter a full sentence.

Left soon after. Didn’t stick around long to see what would be made of the situation.

Your mother hummed low when she told you, said, “The devil is near. Always is.”

You prayed it just wasn’t him. That someone else among the dead did that.

Well ain’t that a fuckin joke.

Your voice comes out croaky, broken. Something that rips out your throat and into his hands.

It sounds like grief, “You did that.”

He snaps out of his daze then. Looks at you, really looks. Takes in the horror on your face, the way you no longer are half way out but now fully in, hand on the door ready to shut it.

Shut him out. He fumbles, brows furrowed together and mouth frowning, “Baby… honey listen-“

“No. No.” You shake your head, “No. I shouldn’t have done that.”

He takes a step up the porch, cautious. Slow, as if approaching a wild animal, “whatcha talkin bout?”

“I shouldn’t have let you in. Around.”

Another step, his hand slowly moves up, trying to reach out, “Baby.”

“I danced too close. Forgotten myself.”

His voice goes low. Muttered, desperate to comfort but no life.. no humanity to do so, “We all do that from time to time. All that matters is movin on.. being together. That.. that was-“

“My ma was right.”

Remmick pauses. You give a deep exhale, “I let the devil in.”

“I- no,” he cocks his head, face disapproving, “I ain’t no devil. Just a man. Your man. Your love.”

He places a hand on his chest, rubs just over the space of his once beating heart. It looks like he’s trying to will it awake, kick it back into working again with the way he lightly taps his chest.

It doesn’t matter much , dead or alive. You decide that then.

Decide that your naivety couldn’t excuse this, been letting this run on to long. Thought you could fix the situation, live with the fact that he forges on the blood of the unsuspecting. Live with the fact that he’s more monster than human now.

If he ever was human. You decide then that you must rid the sickness living near.

“I don’t want this anymore.”

Everything halts. The breeze no longer blows, the crickets quiet. Even the light of the porch flickers.

“What.”

“You ain’t invited in. Nor will you ever be.. I don’t want you coming around anymore.”

“I- are-“

You watch him flinch, eye twitching and mouth opening and closing. You think you broke him.

Eventually, he finds the words, though their shaky while they come out, “I know this is.. this is scary but it wasn’t anything in anger or hatred. I ain’t like that.”

“You teared into him. Ripped his fuckin face.. killed his fuckin friends. You drained the life outta’ there.”

He doesn’t seem to enjoy that imagery, almost looks disgusted by it. Even then, he pleads his case.

“I just wanted them to be family. To be saved. They deserved a life of creation, of unity. This is a world of hate and I was Savin them from it.”

“By killin em.” You correct.

He sneers, “savin. Savin em. I killed their body but not their spirit, not their soul. They got to be one with each other a shit ton longer than what life was givin em.”

Bullshit.

“Well ain’t that a lie. I don’t see em here now. Hell even then.. they can’t do shit now. Not what we can. Can’t be around their own folks anymore.. can’t even see a fuckin sunset, Remmick!”

He doesn’t wince, doesn’t flinch. He stays still, completely still. His face is stern, all humor and concern dropped, washed away with something else you can’t quite point out.

But his eyes flicker again. Red. That says enough.

“All you do is take. That’s the only thing you’ll ever do.” You sniffle, fingers going to wrap around the handle of the door again, “Don’t come round’ anymore. Or I swear, I’ll make you regret it.”

And you slam it shut.

—

It first started with the crops.

Everyone noticed then. They hardly grew, hardly soaked up the sun. The dirt, it was bared of nutrients, sucked clean. As if it was rotten, dying from the inside out.

Only the lucky few, which you could hardly call them lucky, had their crops only last a week before they wilted. At first, they thought it was an infection of some kind. Perhaps the soil carried something, or a crop gone bad.. infected everything else. Some said it was animal, others said bugs. The ones that borrow deep in the mud, rip the crops to shreds from down below.

There was really no clear sign of what it was. What caused this rot. Fingers were pointed, of course. Land owners, workers, black or white. Everyone targeted each other, blamed each other for the diseases that spread across their land. Blamed the soil, the clouds, the weather. Every single speckle in the sky.

There was no clear indication of what was wrong. You didn’t know. Couldn’t.

Not when there were spoken pasts of dying crops, of dying lands. People perishing under famines and rot. Depressing.. but not supernatural. Some of the townsfolk spoke of how this was meant to happen, how it was something that was destined. No land remained untouched by sin, not forever, it just so happened to be their time. The crops would fail, it was natural.

But there was something tight in your throat. Something that tugged deep in your stomach, pulled at your spine. You didn’t want to say what it was. No quite. Not if you were uncertain.

The crops remained dead for the rest of the season, but it slowly became the least of your problems. It remained a lingering warning, a sign. Something whispered in the wind but not quite heard, just a ring that faintly echoed in your ears.

There was other means of resources still left over, the life stalk, the water. Such and such. Most families had goats, cows, horses. Still well. Still alive.

Your father, despite his own concerns, tended to brush off old wise tales. Was never one for folklore, nor gossip, “We still got ‘em’ cows.. ain’t gonna die anytime soon. Just outta’ wheat is all.. we’ll go on.”

It wasn’t long before he ate up his words, because soon after the cows began to rot too. Their wombs at least. Your family only had one, but some folks had two. Or three. It was expected that they would give birth during the summer, and a new herd could be formed, an extension of some sort that the town could benefit from.

But.. they just kept coming out wrong. Not deformed.. couldn’t even call it that. They just..

Some came out with no limbs, some no mouth, others had far too many torsos. Or even in the worse cases some came out hollow, no guts, no organs. Nothing. Just a dead heart.

It was midway through summer, the July heat choking you, the sun blazing down at all hours of the day, not one point had it been cold. The cow began its birth at noon, and by two p.m everyone in the family had gathered around the half baked carcass of a supposed cow.

It didn’t have a back end, didn’t have a head. Only two legs, and a torso. Not even.

And the fear. The horror, the pure fucking terror on your family’s face marked a change.

This wasn’t an infection. It was hatred.

Only then you knew it was Remmick.

But whether you came to that realization now or not, if ever, Remmick really didn’t give a damn. Nor did he stop. But it became less broad, his attacks. His infection. It slowly started to affect less of the townsfolk and just your family. Just you.

The cow was murdered a week later. sucked completely dry. The goat, the only one you had, was pissing blood a day later. Small red dots among its pee, shaking as if it was scared shitless. It didn’t take long for it to also be drained of its life soon after.

Your mother called you over to the house, along with your other siblings who no longer resided there, sat you all down.

Her face was scrunched tight, as if she had tasted something sour, foul. Something wrong. Your father simply stood behind her, jaw set tight, hand steady on her shoulder as she sat in front of him. Comfort, or support. Perhaps both.

“Which one of y’all been dancin’ with the devil, hm?”

You all stayed silent. Your eye twitched, and as she could feel the twitch herself, as if her skin was yours and yours hers, one, she snapped her eyes towards you. The floor creaked under your uneven shuffle, weighing from one foot to another.

“Hm? What have I told y’all? Since birth? Don’t.” She shook her head, “don’t give into pleasures you don’t understand. Don’t give the devil an inch, he will take a mile. Don’t!-“ she slammed her hand down onto the table. Everyone flinched, aside from your father, “Give into the devil! What have I said!”

The room was silent. Tense. No one moved, it felt as if no one was breathing. Her anger consumed the room, sucked the life out of it.

“Look at what you have done. Look! You think he’ll leave now? He’s marked us! Marked! I won’t ask who.. I won’t need to. You’ve damned us.. and that’s-“ she cuts off, giving a low hum, shaking her head.

“That’s enough.”

She stared at you, silent. You think she knows, with how harsh her glare is. And maybe she does, maybe she always had an inkling that you were the one to do this, that you always were going to be the one to do this. Like it’s written in your blood, birthed from the ground of hatred and sorrow, dancing with the devil as if he’s family.

And he was. At one point— not even.

He is. He wears the brand of your mark, made of your comfort and soft words. Love. Felt the warmth of your body, both clothed and naked, been whispered the gentle promises of something more. Something kind, something that digs deep in his chest and forces that dead heart of his to beat.

The promise that he can always come back. That this is home. He’s home.

It’s why he stands outside your home now, in the darkness, eyes red and smirk loose. He waits outside, knows it’s only you that resides in your home, all the way out here in the wilderness and dirt.

His smile only widens when you crack open the door, pissed off. But if he focuses hard enough, sniffs the air a bit harder, deeper, he can smell the traces of your fear. That prickle of sweat nipping at your neck, the shiver you hide by partially hiding your frame behind the door.

“Hey darlin’, long time no see.”

You immediately sneer at him, “what the fuck is wrong with you?”

He puts up his hands, “watcha mean? I just came on down to visit.. ain’t do nun yet-“

“Fuck off with that. I ain’t a god damn fool, Remmick.”

He watches as you scoff, stares as you look away, off into the night. He stays silent.

“You’re killing the land. My land, my home.”

You don’t look at him, not yet. There’s not much to see in the dark, hardly any shapes or structures to really gawk at. But the shadows of the night seem more comforting than his harsh gaze, the one that digs and pulls back all your flesh. Bares your heart for him, to him.

You feel your eyes grow wet, but are quick to blink away any tears. There was no use in crying in front of him.

“You’re fuckin’ terrorizing everything, everyone. You—“ you shake your head, looking down at the wood, rotting as well. You hardly noticed, just days ago it was fine, strong, but it seems with his presence it festers with sickness. Wilts. Just like the crops.

It’s a horrid sight, makes your gut twist. It’s not even graphic, not like the cow or the crops or any of that. But it twists inside you, forces you to look up at him, “spreadin’ your fuckin’ disease… why-“

He cuts you off, “you know why.”

That shut you up. You have half the mind, the instinct, to look away. But you don’t, or rather can’t, because every time you do there’s something else dying.

And.. he’s right.

You do know. Jesus Christ of fucking course you do. But it feels yucky to say out loud, to say you are the reasoning this is happening. You did this.

Just as your ma said, you brought the devil in.. and got pissed he decided to stay.

He allows the silence to linger for a few more moments, watches you shift uncomfortably under the weight of your own sorrows. It’s only when a frown starts to take place on your lips that his voice tugs you back out of your spiralling thoughts, “I ain’t doing this for fun. This ain’t no afternoon past time— curses like these take will power, I’ll tell ya that.”

Then there’s silence, deafening silence, again. Not even the wind breezes by. The wood, creaky and groaned loud before, remains still. Remmick stares, and you stare right back.

A silent challenge of some sort. You two do that often, stare. See who blinks first in the quiet, who cracks first. It usually happens during arguments, but it occurred once during a love confession.

When you were far too stubborn to give in, and he was far too open to let you shut him out.

“You don’t get to do that.”

He tilts his head, “do what?”

“Blame me. Blame me for your own fucked up thing. That ain’t my fault-“

“But it is. Sorta. I mean.. shit, baby, I did all this—“ he moves then, just sways, back and forth, puts his arms out. As if showing off his work, the dead rotten land that lies before you and him.

“For you. All this. Just to show how much you hurt me.” He stopped swaying, opting to put both his hands against his chest, just over his heart, the one that remains silent.

The sneer is gone, filled with disgust now. Anger. Something boiling low in your stomach and clawing its way up your spine, into your throat. It feels like his claws, funnily enough, as if he’s working through you. And maybe he is.

“But I can change that. I can forgive the hurt. I will change that… if you just, lemme on in.” He nods his head towards the door, eyes briefly looking into the space inside your home, the space that was his.

“We can talk it out,” his eyes flicker back to you, the light on your porch reflecting off of them like a cat’s, “unless you gotta’ another means to figuring things out. You know I don’t complain.”

“Jesus Christ-“

“He ain’t around.. but you’ll be sure asking for him once I’m in there-“

“Are you fuckin-“

“We can get to fuckin.”

You snap, “Remmick!”

He doesn’t shut up, doesn’t really know how to, but he gets in close, places a hand on the doorframe, looks up real slow and says, “I miss you. I want you back.. and I want you to want me back. I know you do.”

You shift an inch away from the door frame, “You really think I’m just gonna’ move past this?”

He gives a small hum, like he’s in thought. That hardly lasts long before he tilts his head again, small frown in place before shrugging, “I’m Savin’ you, darlin, savin’ yer’ land. I would sure hope so.. if it all truly means somethin to you, then ya’.”

You blink at him, once, twice, in disbelief. He makes it out as if he’s the saviour in this situation, as if he’s the knight in armour.. not the beast that’s brought the terror upon everyone. Upon you. You would smack him if it didn’t bring the possibility of being bitten.

He doesn’t let you comment, again, deciding to guide the conversation, “Honey.. I want you to understand somethin’. I wasn’t kiddin’ when I said I would linger, that I would fight for you. I’m killin your crops, the cows, goats… you think I’ll stop?”

He slowly shakes his head, giving a small tsk as if he’s scolding a child. Scolding you for not realizing his presence will remain, a ghost among the living.

“No baby. This remains.. unless you lemme on in there. Lemme apologize, nice and soft. Slow. Just how I make love to ya’.”

It’s then that you snort, a noise that makes him flinch. His brows furrow, yours narrow, “you ain’t nice when you make love. Hell, you don’t even know how to be slow.”

His teeth shine in the light, bright and but not sharp, not yet at least. But his mouth opens as if he’s going to say something, something you hardly can care for, cutting him off before he can even begin.

“You ain’t nice then, you ain’t nice now. And honestly… this is hardly love.”

That seems to brush him the wrong way.

His eyes narrow, offended, as if you made fun of his mother and told him to blow off his father. Which to Remmick.. it basically translated to the same thing.

Fuck off and die.

“The fuck you mean this ain’t love, woman? If there’s one fuckin thing about this situation.. is that it is. Hard, cold love. The fuck is wrong with you.”

You sneer again, “you’re killin everything I love, asshole-“

“Oh for fucks sakes.. and exactly why do you think I did that? You hurt me, broke all the fuckin’ promises you said you’ll keep.. and I dealt with that. Dealt with it fine, but to excuse me of not loving you? That’s fuckin evil.”

You stare at him in confusion, perplexed by his contradictions, “clearly you’re not dealing with it well.. don’t need to fuckin’ guess that, I could just walk outside and see all the dead shit you caused.”

He nods, again, slow. Though it seems like a lightbulb went off. A small click.

He backs away from the door only by an inch, puts a hand on his hip, “well then.. come on out. Show me exactly how I’m not dealing well.” He frames it as if he actually wants you to show him, shakes his head low and all, as if he really doesn’t have a clue.

Stupid motherfucker.

“Remmick.”

He perks up, “Hm? Yeah, baby?”

“Get the fuck off my porch.”

You go to slam the door.

He immediately yelps, “I’ll kill em.”

You catch the door before it fully shuts, rip it back open to reveal him with a stern face. Jaw set, eyes narrowed.

He repeats himself, “I’ll kill em. The life stock. All of em. Rip them to fuckin’ shreds, force y’all to scatter for food.”

He watches you take in his face, his features, his eyes. Watches you search for any evidence of him lying.

Your shoulders drop when you can’t find it.

“You’re gonna starve us. That it?”

“Not starve.. I know y’all got other means of food.. just in town though… far, far off into town.” He shoots a thumb behind his back, pointing in the direction of said town. Your gaze doesn’t wander away.

You consider him, for a moment. Stay silent as you look over him. The way he seems proud of himself, of his threats. The way he seems this is love.

Your voice cracks as you whisper, “Why can’t you just go.”

You don’t repeat yourself when he gives a small hm, just stand there and stare. Eyes glossy, small divet between your brows where they furrow.

“That’ll mean leavin’ you. Can’t do that now, right? Sides’… you miss me.”

Your response comes out quick, too quick. Practiced. “No.”

He immediately smiles, “yeah… yeah you do. Don’t lie.”

You hate how easy he can see through each answer, but even now, with him so close and so all knowing, you respond quick again.

Never could learn your lesson. “I’m not.”

“Baby.. honey, this is cute an’ all but it’s dumb how yer’ tryin so hard. Come on.. I mean what is this really?” He gets off the door frame again, hands back on his hips, “I’m gonna’ come in eventually.. don’t matter how. Whether that now or fifty years from ere’, I’m coming in. Just make this easy.”

Your tongue darts out to wet your lips, the same tongue his eyes catch on, a low groan leaving him.

You ignore it.

“Fuck you. I don’t what delusion your livin in.. but it ain’t sure gonna’ happen. So how bout you.. Eat shit and die, Remmick. Keep fuckin round and I’ll get the Choctaw a little note on where your resting.”

It’s a low , low blow. Hell.. not only is it childish but just straight wrong. You have no clue where he lives, if he even has a home to begin with. He could very well be homeless. Must be given all the time he has to curse crops and cast spells on people.

That and he’s dead.

Still.

“Well baby, that just mean.”

He gives a faux pout. You think of shooting him then, there. Right in the forehead. Too bad you don’t got your gun on you.

“Yeah? Well, you’re being fuckin cruel. Now do me a favour, and fuck off.”

He hardly gets a word in before you shut the door.

—

Maybe slamming the door on an ancient vampire’s face wasn’t the best. Maybe you should’ve reconsidered exactly what that would entail for him to do. What anger he would have left over.

It’s that very night that he kills all the life stalk. Doesn’t even suck them dry, just completely rips them apart. Eats them. Tears them from the outside in.

It’s your neighbour that breaks the news, sees you early in the morning, passing by their home. It’s the blood that’s slathered over their clothes, their face scrunched and their eyes wet with tears. It’s only then when you stop and ask what happened.

They only shake their head, eyes low, before muttering, “the devil got to em’. Killed ‘em’ all.”

You stay for an hour or two, helping clean all the blood. Helping put the bodies away. You have to, can’t go about your day without doing it. Without feeling that festering guilt run deep in your bones. Eventually you become drenched in it, there’s so much dunked into the floor, dragged across the walls. It looks like he hardly even sucked the blood. Looked like hardly even fed off them.. just killed them cause he knew it would hurt the townsfolk. Would hurt you, and your family.

You plan to take a bath, the sweat and blood starting to irritate your skin, make it all itchy. You keep scratching all over, scaratchinb at your neck as you prepare some water to bathe in.

You’re hardly paying attention to it, gaze away from the water that pours out. Don’t look when you pour it into the tub, not until you dip your hand in, and bring it back out to see red.

Blood red.

Your throat catches on a gasp, coming out a small whimper as you slowly rub off the blood onto your clothes. Short gasps come out with it, panicked. Loud. Each one more shallow than the other, faster and faster in tune with your heartbeat that seems to spike in its rhythm.

The entire tub is coated in what looks to be blood, thick blood. As if someone just slit their throat and decided to die there. It smells foul, like rot itself. Like death.

You go to the kitchen, partially jogging. You think you’re going to vomit but you swallow it back, but only a gallon of saliva takes over your mouth that’s thick and stringy that you force yourself to also swallow.

The faucet comes to life when you flick it on. but instead of pouring out water, it chokes out chunks of blood. Thicker than the one in tub. You shut it off immediately.

You’re not exactly sure how long you’ve stood there, by the kitchen, hands gripped tight in fists as they rest against the wood of your table. Not sure how long you’ve been combating an anxiety attack, or how long you’ve been sniffling back mucus after hanging your head down for so long.

You do know that your legs are achy, spine screaming in discomfort after being arched for so long, hating how you don’t stand to your full height. Your body keeps swaying slightly, as if trying to cue you to sit down but you don’t listen. Ignore it. Ignore the blood that still coats your sink, and tub. Dont pay attention to the way the blood slowly dries and then chips off your nails.

You’re not sure how long you’ve stood there until you hear a knock. Two slow reps, as if someone is calling out to you, calling for you, and less about the door. Less about signalling their arrival, because they already know you’re aware of their presence. Aware of the shiver that you also ignored, the shiver that shook your bones and forced its way into your lungs.

Upon opening the door, you’re immediately graced with the sight of a smiling white man.

Your white man.

His smile widens as he takes in the state of you. Bloody, sweaty and tired. There’s blood coated all over the front of your clothes, which he can assume is also on the back as well, and from your feet to just below your nose is blood. Slathered and sprayed all over, coated everywhere because you couldn’t stop wiping your face, willing the tears away.

“Awh baby, look at that. Look at you,” his gaze slowly trails from your feet to your face, slow. Taking in the sight like he’s drinking water.

“Figured you saw the little gift I left behind, huh?”

He smiles, big. Cocky. Happy with himself, with the sight of how ruined and bloody and gross you look. You feel your anger sink its claws back in, take hold of you.

“This is how you plan to get me back? Huh? Fuckin killin everything, becoming an obsessive, fuckin weirdo? That’s what you're doing to get my attention, that’s the plan to get back home! The fuck is the matter with you!”

He stands there, not stunned. No. But amused. Just slightly, hidden behind the glare he givens, deep within his flesh.

It’s troubling, makes your nervous, makes you shout out, “Just leave me the fuck alone, Remmick!”

It’s quiet. Too quiet. He watches you with keen eyes, mouth slightly agape. Like you just told him some of the most perplexing information known to man. At some point you think you’ve actually stunted him, forced him to rethink the situation. Then after a bit it becomes annoying, at one point you think he’ll just stand there saying and doing nothing. Like a god damn statue.

But then he gives a slow blink, one, two and then three of them. He nods his head, slowly. As if taking it in, understanding it.

Agreeing.

“Yeah… yeah okay.”

You move back a bit, confused, eye him suspiciously, “okay?”

He nods again, “yeah okay. I’ll leave you be.. actually-“ he places a finger onto his lips, traces of a smirk lingering of his lips, “I think everyone will.. yer’ family.. they still be livin down in that one house you invited me into, right?”

The smirk slowly grows on his face, no longer hidden, doesn’t need to hide it when you slowly pick up what exactly he’s putting down. The cogs quick to fill in the gap.

Motherfucke-

“You wouldn’t fuckin dare.”

He snorts, “oh I would. You know I would.. hell, yer daddy, he still got that shake in his hands? Yer ma still got the bad ear? Ya know..” he sucks his teeth, “I wonder how long it’ll take for them to recognize the sounds of their little ones cries,” he cocks his head at you then, “think yer daddy will fight me off in time?”

You damn near almost fly out of the fuckin house, almost grab at him, but it’s when your arm is almost fully out, body half way through the opening that you pause.

No. Rip yourself back into place, force yourself to remain inside.

Because just out of the corner of your eye, ever so faintly you could’ve missed it without the light on, you see the way his claws on one hand are fully out. Glint under the light. long and sharp, looks like small hooks on his fingers. He gives a small surprised laugh.

“Oh.. well, almost got cha’ there, sugar. Yer’ fuckin quick, I’ll give ya that.”

Your eyes flicker from his hand to his face, then back to his hand that slowly retracts his claws back in. You shiver.

“Stay the fuck away from my family.”

He licks his lips, as if the mere mention of your family was intriguing to his hunger, “mm.. I’ll stay away.. if you get yer’ fine ass self outta’ that house.”

A small ‘eugh’ leaves you, lip curling up as you shake your head, “that ain’t fuckin happening.”

He rolls his eyes upon your response, hands back on his hips, fidgeting with the clasps of his belt, “well then.. better start makin calls to that family of yers, say some last I love you’s before they leave.”

Annoying. That what this was becoming. Him and his threats. And you couldn’t even slam the door shut because you were certain he would kill em. It was just— it was annoying. And fucking terrifying. And he won’t leave.. and, and, and—

“God.. you fuckin messy piece of shit, son of a b-“

He perks up, like a dog, even takes a step closer to the entrance again, “messy?”

That catches him off guard, as if the rest of the sentence made sense until then, “I ain’t messy. This..” he points out his pointer finger, shaking it around, signaling to your house, you, the situation.

“This ain’t messy. But it can be.. just you wait. You really want shit to get messy.. oh baby.. it’ll get fuckin worse if you want it.”

“If I want? If I?” You point to yourself, brows raised, “I. Like this is fuckin up to me-“

“Yes!” He shouts. Temper rising. You flinch. He doesn’t care, keeps going, “yes of fucking course it’s up to you! All of this is! Jesus Christ— you’re gettin on my fucking nerves. I’m threatin your fuckin family! I’ve already taken your land, and the fucking cows and whatever else you fuckin have and still! Still! You can’t fuckin see how this is up to you! Still!”

His hands no longer rest on his hips, instead out on either side of him, up in the air, as if proclaiming this not to you but to the sky above. But God knows who he’s speaking to, knows in the way he only has looked at you this entire interaction, blue eyes washed away with red, staring. Always staring. This time they hold more anger than anything.. and something else. Something that makes your stomach turn.

Longing.

Still, even with that there, tugging at him, his anger lashes out.

“Really, I’m startin to think you don’t care bout’ yer family, not enough to save em’, let alone yourself.”

It’s not necessarily cruel, really he’s just saying parts of the truth. His own form of the truth. You have no doubt in your mind he truly believes that, despite his own manipulative nature, and the lengths he goes to basically bully you, you truly believe he thinks that.

And that almost hurts more.

You shove that feeling down, “Remmick.. be honest. Completely honest.. did you really think this was gonna’ last?” You tilt your head at him, set your lips into a straight line.

You’re closer now, hand back onto the door, just close enough to see all the freckles painted across his skin, but far enough to not let him in. He blinks, goes to say something, but hardly begins before your stringing along your sentence.

“Hm? Think this was gonna work out? That we were gonna’ be happy and completely fine, never to face the consequences of this unnatural connection?”

He buts in then, “Oh hey now hol’ on— this ain’t unnatural-“

You put up your pointer finger, nowhere near close to his face but close enough to cut him off, “it is. You know it. The fucking earth knows it.. I mean.. Even if I take you back. Even if. What then? Hm? I’ll grow old and die.. we can never be out together. Hell, can never grow together, never have a family! Never do shit! How long did you think that was gonna last?”

“We would figure it out. Always do— just cause it ain’t natural, hell a shit ton of stuff ain’t natural if you think about it. Cars? Ain’t natural. Fuckin—“ he points to the porch oil lamp, “ain’t natural. Those clothes ain’t natural, but you’re sayin just cause we are fuckin and loving, the earth and god above is gonna rain terror on us?” He squints his eyes in confusion, turning his body slightly as he looks you up and down, as if the idea itself was offensive. But you know he’s mocking you.

That demanor quickly drops when you quickly nod your head, “yes. It’s exactly that.”

His lip twitches, small sneer before his face scrunches together into something hurt. A piercing pain he can’t quite get rid of, not as long as you bend away from him.

“Well ain’t that something.” He trails off, looking towards the corner of the door frame again, lost in thought. You watch the way his eyes flicker, watch him flicker through his own brain, pin down something else to say. Something else to threat.

He comes up short. But he talks anyway, “well.. I ain’t leavin. Not tonight. And I’ll wait till that sun comes up.. and even then, shit, who knows, I’ll bury myself under your fuckin house and come back,” his eyes slowly trail back over to you, “or I can kill yer kin. All of em. Hell.. might just do fuckin both, night’s still young. And you ain’t going anywhere.”

He shrugs, as if this was a normal conversation about what time he’s planning to go to the store or some shit. You don’t know, but there’s no empathy. None you can find.

He tilts his head down, forces himself into your view as you look down, away from him, and that just won’t do.

“In or out.”

Your chest heaves, rising and falling. Fast. Heart pounding. Hard, so fucking hard against your chest you think you may black out. But you can’t, can’t when you're staring at him, can’t when you watch the way his expression falls into something horrible. A teasing smile, a playful wink as you glare at him.

He asks again, “in or out.”

“Shut up.” You whisper, foot tapping against the floor as you think. That pulls his attention down, a small snort leaving him as he watches the soft rhythmic tapping of your foot.

“Tic- tic-“

“Just shut the fu-“ the words down on your tongue, trailing off into the wind, in one ear and out the other as he mimics the same tapping, but with his hands on the wood of the doorframe he now leans against. Both hands against the frame, body just inches away from the threshold.

He sings it this time, an off key tone, “I-nnnn or ou-“

He doesn’t finish.

“In.”

His eyes flicker up, surprised. Like he actually wasn’t expecting you to say it. That shock doesn’t last long though, lips pulling away to reveal a strong set of teeth, a row of sharp jaggered edges that will cut deep. Have cut deep.

“Right on.”

—

He isn’t nice. Not at all.

He practically hauls you up, slams himself into you before he’s grabbing you up into his arms, slamming the door shut with his heel.

You feel yourself slam into your wall, a small squeak hardly leaving your lips before he’s shoving his tongue into your mouth. He groans like an animal caught in heat, his hands trailing over you so quick, so rough it forces the fabric of your night wear to tear in some places. The small rip of fabric against nails heard, but ignored by the both of you.

He doesn’t stick against your lips long, only there to taste the saliva that pools in your mouth and the blood that sticks against your teeth. He practically whimpers upon tasting the metallic twinge caught between your gums, nudges his nose against your cheek as he breaks the kiss.

“I could eat you alive.” It’s not a threat. It’s a promise. One he whispers against your cheek before he’s shoving his face into your neck.

You expect a bite then, the tear of sharp teeth and the gurgle of blood.. but you don’t get that. Not yet. Instead, he flicks his tongue out to lick the blood that’s there, going from just under your jaw to your collarbone. He practically makes out with your skin, traces his tongue over the soft flesh before nipping at it, then back to licking.

It’s only when you give a small whine he focuses back to your mouth, not kissing, but breathes against you. Takes in your air, just to breathe it back to you.

Then, “you still got those panties I like?”

You nod.

“Wearin em?”

You nod again. The sound that comes out of him sounds painful, like it gutted and clawed its way out, straight agony. One would think an animal just got shot, but really it’s just him. He places you back down onto the floor, but keeps you pinned to the wall with his own body, knees cracking as he slumps down onto the wood.

He’s breathing heavy, chest rising and falling so rapidly you think he’s about to collapse— despite the fact he practically already did. But just between your thighs. He doesn’t fall again, far too busy ripping the fabric of your nightgown, despite the fact it flowed off you, it seemed to be too much in the way for him to keep intact. Not that it wasn’t ripped already.

After some shuffling, and tearing, he makes it to his sanctuary.. one of the many reasons why he harassed you to begin with. There, your beyond soaked panties, practically see through if you place a light to them. He slumps again, this time against your thighs, resting his head as he gives a painful groan.

You glance down, confused by exactly what he’s whining about, only to see him whispering random words against your skin.

It’s only until you hear the small call of your name from his lips that you realize he’s begging. No.. praying. No.. you’re really not sure. Your name is jumbled with a bunch of ‘pleases’ and words you can’t quite understand.

Foreign. Not for him…but for you. A silent promise, maybe.

Nonetheless, you grow antsy, annoyed. He’s come all this way.. to beg, he could’ve done that outside.

“Remmick-“ he nods, “what are you doing?”

He looks up then, eyes heavy and mouth in a gentle frown, “appreciating you.”

You can only nod, slowly, more or less still confused. Perhaps not only by him.. but this whole ordeal. By this rapid change from point A to point fucking D. Still.. his whining didn't help much.

His gaze goes back down, to between your legs, a look of awe on his face. He doesn’t wait for you to continue, doesn’t care to, not when he’s trailing his fingers over your flesh and taking down the last fabric separating you from him.

He moans again.

The light catches just right on your flesh, coats it in a soft hue, and reflects the slick just right. Back into his sight, back into his hunger. He hardly waits before he’s darting his tongue out, and gives a light lick over your slick. A small one, hesitant almost. Oddly enough, as if he couldn’t bare taking this one thing, despite how far he’s come to get it.

But it’s with this small lick, one that doesn’t even arise a gasp from you, just a small tilt of the head as you continue to look down at him, that gets him going. Makes him groan, deep and low in his chest.

He tears the rest of your undergarment off, tattered and tossed to the side despite his own claim of it being his favourite.

He doesn’t allow you time to react before he’s muttering a small, “come ere’,” and grabs at you, coaxing you down onto the floor with him, prompted against the wall. Once your ass meets the floorboards, he doesn’t waste any time in grabbing hold of both your legs and putting them over his shoulders, hardly paying any mind to the act. Like second nature. Like a habit.

And given how often he does it, you think it’s come to be truly a mindless act. Almost as mindless as the gasp that leaves you when he spits on your pussy, hand giving a light smack to the outside of your thigh in response.

“Fuckin missed you.. look at ya’, basically cryin for me. She treating you right?” He nods towards you, but his gaze is stuck on your pussy.

Your brows furrow, “are you-“

He shushes you, giving a small shake of the head, “quiet, I’m talkin to someone real special.”

You give a shallow breath, and despite your confusion, you keep quiet. Even keep your breathing quiet, as if you’ll actually hear your autonomy speak back to him.. but he nods along as if it does. Traces his gaze over the expanse of your inner thighs and between them, even gives a small hm.

“Didn’t think so.. been neglectin you..” he shuffles closer, laying on his stomach now, rests his face close enough that you can feel his breath against your clit. “Don’t worry tho.. I’m ere’ now, be all better, promise,” and with that he dives in.

Licks from your opening to your clit, setting a steady pace. Down, up, circle, down, up, circle—

Its until he’s to the m that you realize he’s spelling out his name, tracing it along with your clit before gradually licking down to your entrance, where he begins the next m.

One of your hand’s hold tight in his hair, grip so fucking tense it makes you half worried that you might be tearing out his hair. Your other hand rests on the floor, clenching and unclenching. Scraping against the wood, you’re certain if you go hard enough your fingernails will start to break, or the wood will.

You feel one of his hands slip down off your thigh, sneaking it beside his mouth. He spread you open to him, the air cool against your entrance, clit twitching as he lightly coos.

“Fuckin.. shit-“ he goes back down, and you practically yelp when you feel his tongue enter you. You clench down on the muscle, hips knocking against him, pushing yourself closer to his mouth. The heat of it, the rhythm of ‘in and out and in’ a similar pattern to earlier, though he doesn’t trace his name. Just fucks you with his mouth, slowly. Moans along with you, almost like he can feel your pleasure, his own hips knocking against the floor desperate for friction. Anything.

He eats you like a man starved, like the entrance of your pussy is an open wound he’s teared into your flesh, feasting upon you like it’s his last meal.

And you let him. Have to, each time you push, to give yourself room, to let yourself a moment of breath, he doesn’t budge. Hardly moves, only groans, slightly distracted before continuing.

You whine out his name, pushing at his shoulders again, telling him to calm down. To relax.

Instead, to spite you, he shakes his head side to side, quick. It’s.. nasty. Gross. You don’t even say anything, can’t even insult him for the action, just watch slightly disgusted and quiet. But he doesn’t allow you enough time to react to the fact he basically just motorboated you, distracts you by doubling down. He shoves more of his weight onto you, forcing you off the wall and onto the ground, where he presses you uncomfortably close. A mating press of some sort.

One that makes you breath funny and his tongue sink deeper into your gummy walls that clench around the pink muscle. He ain’t slow, just like you said. He flicks his tongue fast, over your clit before prodding into your hole before going back up. Like he can’t decide what to do, and it fucking pains you. Pulls out whiny moans, eyes barely able to focus on him given how often they roll back.

He eventually pulls away, a pause to his torture. To his worship. It doesn’t last long, that small pocket of relief from overstimulation, not long before he spits another wet glob of saliva onto your folds. Although, He doesn’t rub it in like he usually would, no, he gives a harsh smack. Right against your clit.

And just as he hoped, you yelp. Loud. Flinch harder against the contact, hips jerkin up that are forced back down.

“Calm down,” he scolds, tsking.

He gives another harsh smack, tsking again when you flinch. Makes it out to be a you issue for reacting rather than him smacking your pussy like nothing.

“Flinchin like I’m gonna hurt ya..” he shakes his head, eyes downcasted, gaze stuck on the way your pussy clenched around nothing.

“You’re smacking me.. I’m gonna flinch-“ his eyes flick up, brows twitching into a furrow before he’s landing another smack against you. Hard.

You yelp again.

“Don’t be rude,” he keeps his hand over you, doesn’t move it until you break the stare he holds, tilting your head away. Only then he starts to gently rub, his hand working in a circle right over your bundle of nerves. He gets off his stomach and onto his knees, just hovering over you, hand soaked in your wetness as he works you over.

slowly, the pace in which his hand works builds, his eyes keen on the way you twitch and flinch under him, the way your thighs try to close but given he’s in the way, it’s useless. Watches as you clench around nothing, wetness practically seeping out of you, onto the floor. He watches, and waits. For that build, that fall. The climb before the climax, the way you gently jerk your hips against him, head thrown back and away from his gaze, bottom lip pulled tight between your teeth.

He waits for it. The eventual beg, the one he keeps his ears open for. That soft whisper you do, a gentle sigh that rolls off your tongue.

He waits.

You eventually break, unaware of his little game, “please.”

He doesn’t slow, not at first, just watches as you try to mouth out your words again, desperate, “please.”

“Hm? What was that, darlin?” He tilts his head. You whine again.

“Please..please—“

He buts in, “please.. what? Can’t read yer mind”

“Let me cum.. please.”

There’s a devastating long pause, where he just continues. Doesn’t acknowledge you, doesn’t give an hm or snarky remarks. You know better, he’s got good ears despite how fucking old he is, so you know he very well heard you.. he’s just being a dick. A dick you would want to bounce on, but he ain’t letting you yet.

You ask again, real sweet this time, pet name and all, “Baby.. please, please let me cum.”

He ignores you.

Instead, when you're just on the cusp, legs twitching and mouth open, moans pitchy and loud while you strain yourself to hold off your orgasm, he pulls away.

And that damn near breaks you, “fuck! Please.. please don’t- why- don’t-“ you got to reach for his hand, a big fucking no no, but you’re desperate. Desperate to get his hand back on you, desperate for him to fuck you.

He smacks it away, “don’t,” but that doesn’t stir him away, doesn’t even warrant any proper punishment he would usually do. The ones where he doesn’t fuck you on dick at all for the night, just snacks your ass and forces you to count each one before finger fucking you.

Really.. he’s desperate too. Has been for several nights now. His hand is tired of taking care of him, and his dick aches to be inside. He moves off you, hands gripping at your thighs as he does so, forcing you closer to him as he drags you across the floor by an inch or two.

Your hands work on pulling down the suspenders that are clung tight to him, hardly getting them down in time before his hands are working on getting his zipper down.

It’s not long before he’s prodding at you, just gracing your entrance, so close that if you rock your hips against him once, the tip will slip in.

But his hands have a death grip on you, keeping you in place and stuck under him. Doesn’t want you moving before he does, can’t allow you when he’s slightly hungry for something else that coats you.

The blood. Still clinging onto you, no longer wet by dry, flaking off onto the floor in places, still slathered across you face and down the rest of you. It’s only slightly wet against your chest, where he licked earlier.

You think he’s going in for a kiss with the way he slowly bring himself forward, eyes hungry and irises red. He might bite, actually, once you consider how hard he’s breathing.

But no. He doesn’t do either. His tongue is wet and rough against you as he licks across your face. From your cheek to your nose, over the bridge of your nose and over to the other cheek.

You push at his chest, “Jesus— Remmick!”

He doesn’t budge, licking at your ear, “just wanna’ taste, that’s all.”

Your face scrunches in disgust as drool drips off his chin onto your cheek, and when he shuffles a bit, going to lick your other ear, more drool drips onto your mouth.

It’s not that you have swapped spit, you have several times, but it’s the fact he won’t stop licking you like a damn dog. Nipping at your ears, gripping at your jaw as he licks at your cheek, licks the tip of your nose all the way to the top just below your forehead. You’re coated in his saliva. In him. And he’s not even inside yet.

You try to push him again, “You’re drowning me-“

He gives a small groan, nothing more. Doesn’t care if you sputter or happily moan, doesn’t matter when he’s cleaning up his mess. His baby needs to be clean, deserves to be.

But as you wiggle and try to get him to stop, his free hand snakes down to between the both of you, grabbing at his dick and giving a shallow thrust into his hand, tapping just against your folds. You whimper, try to look down but the hand on your jaw stops you.

Only then he pulls away, just to look at you. Take you in. Take in the way your cheeks are red and wet, the way his saliva is slowly drying on you and your lips are slightly bruised from him nipping at them.

Takes in the soft look of your features, of your eyes, nose that’s also wet. Licked clean now. Takes that all in as he slaps his dick against the top of your pussy.

Knocking. “Can I come in?”

Grins when you give a small snort, “Yeah.”

Both of you gasp upon him entering. He doesn’t push in all in one swoop, no. He savours it, always has, always will. This is the only time he goes slow, when your walls are clenched tight around him, and his dick weeps pre cum into your gummy walls.

He likes to drag it out, go inch by inch. First the tip, then he waits for you to grow impatient before he goes another inch. He waits until you open your mouth to say something, when you're about to tell him off. Then, he pushes in again. He finds it entertaining, the way the words die on your tongue and you give a devastating sigh, brows furrowed as your mouth drops open. He loves that. Shutting you up with just his length alone.

Makes him feel special. Knows only he can do that.

“That good?” He whispers, breathing on your lips. You nod, “yuh huh.”

He smacks your thigh, “bet it fuckin is.”

Again, he pushes in, another inch, but he doesn’t keep it there. He drags it back out , all the way until the tip hardly remains inside you, and he plans to just slip in half way.

But it’s when you give a small whimper, and your hand moves to his neck, where you lightly squeeze, he throws that plan out the window. He slams all the way in, and you practically scream.

Groans right with you and holds your hips right against him, dick fully in and kept there. You arch your back, head knocked back as you rise against the floor, hand slipping off his neck. He catches your hand, right as it slips down his chest and places his hand on top. Pats it twice.

He grinds against you, knocking the tip against that spongy bit inside you, making your legs lock around his hips. The floorboards creak under both of your weight, louder and louder as his pace grows. It’s clumsy, at first, neither of you able to stop jumping and grinding against each other. Each time you knock against him, he drags out, and each time he slams in, you push out.

It’s frustrating. Not in sync, at all. Makes him mutter out a string of curses, his grip tightening on your hips but neither of you have the strength to stop, can’t stop. you have to force yourself to meet his hips in time, force yourself into a steady rhythm with him. It’s only when you have a steady pace that he grows more desperate, hands clawing at you, dragging up and down over your nightwear, ripping small tears into it.

He becomes more encouraging as well, praises flowing out, “Yeah.. yeah there ya go, fuck— so fuckin wet, ya hear that,” he shuts up, lets you hear the squlench of your pussy and the soft smacking of his skin against yours. You whine, “Jesus.. yeah- yeah, don’t stop.”

“Oh I ain’t. Never gonna’, never leaving either, ain’t gonna let you kick me out,” he gives a small nod, “gonna have to fuckin rip me out ere’, move- fuck- move.. real far to.. to get away from me.” His speech slurs towards the end, dragged out and messy.

Just as before, he drags your thighs up further, goes as far to slide his arms under the curve of your leg and prompts your ass off the floor. He leans up, resting on his knees and pushes down into you. The new angle makes him go deeper, if that was even possible. Makes him touch an area that you are certain no one else could ever touch, your toes curling and pussy fluttering around him.

You don’t even realize you're drooling until you feel him lean over and lick it up, mixing it with his own before swallowing it down.

“Fuckin love the way you taste,” he mutters, voice raspy and low, “fuckin love you.”

There’s a pull in your stomach, not something made of dread, but something sweeter. Burns deep in your flesh, small butterflies flapping around as your nerves flare, nervous despite the fact he is quite literally inside you.

He slowly drops you back down, one arm slipping out from under your leg and hand trailing up to your throat, where he lightly moves your head to the side, baring your throat to him.

His nose nudges against your pulse point. He takes a deep whiff, his lungs fully expanding, taking you all in. He lets out a shuddered breath, “say it back.”

You stay quiet, far too gone to know what the hell he’s talking about. He gives your cheek a light smack, “say it back.”

“Mmm.. shit- say what?”

“That you love me.”

He gives a hard thrust then, hits just fucking right. Tip ramming against your g spot, fucking you dumb and quiet, your body hardly having the strength to even give out a moan. But he doesn’t care, nips hard at you when you don’t say anything.

You manage to croak out, “I love you.”

Then, pressure. Hot, white pressure searing against your neck. Teeth prick at you, and it feels like pure agony. Rips you away from the pleasure of his dick ramming into you and shoves you head first into pain. It doesn’t even amplify the pleasure, doesn’t do shit.

You scream, but it’s gurgled by blood, neck pumping it out in spurts that coat his awaiting mouth.

He doesn’t comfort you through it, not at first. Not yet. He just sucks it down, swallows it in large gulps, the sound so loud and prominent it brings tears to your eyes.

It’s only when you mutter his name, croaked and raspy that he starts to lightly brush his thumb back and forth against your cheek, hand placed just under your jaw.

He drinks it down like it’s his last meal. Drinks it with the same desperation he fucks you in.

With a mouth full of blood, pooling over his lips, dripping down his neck and onto the floor, “yer good, I’m here. Yer safe.”

Ain’t that fucking ironic.

“Rem-“ he shushes you.

“It’s all good.. just let it happen, let it wash over you.”

He’s no longer thrusting into you, just keeps himself deep inside. Still. Not completely, he twitches, but doesn’t move either. Gave up on trying to distract you.

“Yer good.. we’ll be good. Together, one. That’s exciting, huh?”

He smiles, big. Genuinely happy. You don’t have any energy to shake your head. He goes back down to drink more, “this is exciting. Now we’ll never be apart.”

He drinks from you happily, and it’s the sound of ripped flesh and blood seeping out that you die to.

At least he has you forever.

[phantomgiggler]

Remmick BTS pt. 5

[phantomgiggler]

Remmick BTS pt. 3

[phantomgiggler]

Remmick is always putting on a front, so for me Jack's normal face is the mask and the makeup, the prosthetics, it's not adding something to his face, it's taking away. So it was all about peeling back the layers of what Remmick is. - Mike Fontaine

[phantomgiggler]

ALL CROSSROADS BOUND TOGETHER

summary: twenty some years ago, you met a mysterious drifter who offered you something you couldn't resist and in return you offered him the only thing you had—your soul. just when you start to believe that he has forgotten you, remmick returns to collect what was owed.

pairing: remmick / f!reader

contents: f!reader, reader in their early 30s, no use of y/n, dark themes, vampirism, feeding/blood drinking, blood, fire, marking/biting, obsession, stalking behavior, yearning, corruption, feelings of hopelessness, religious undertones, selling of ones soul, violence (implied and explicit), abduction, death/murder. sexual content (MINORS DNI): oral (f receiving), p in v sexual intercourse, blood kink. cw: mentions of csa (not described in detail but still yucky—DEAD DOVE DON'T OPEN).

a/n: the title of the fic comes from the lyrics of "In Moonlight" from the Sinners soundtrack and the song included in the fic is "Sister Rosetta Goes Before Us" by Robert Plant and Alison Krauss (the song itself didn't come out during the time period, but it sounds like it could so that was enough for me to justify using it lol)

word count: 14.5 k

You were just a child, no older than ten, when you made that deal with him. 

He came to you in the night, when the nocturnal critters emerged from their dens and amorously praised the stars for their guidance and protection from the dangers that prowled in the daylight.

He looked like any other man you’ve seen in town. Tall and handsome, wearing clean, crisp clothes that seemed far too nice to be sullied by the rotten tree trunk he sat on, strumming on the banjo that was strapped to his shoulders. A musician who found solace in the darkness, like the cicadas and frogs that sang all around you in a calming serenade.

Remmick, that was his name, the one he gave you freely.

You gave him yours, unaware of the power it permitted him over you.

He smiled as he repeated it back, like a response to a Sunday hymn or reciting a song he only had ever hoped to croon. He said it as if it was the most immaculate thing he’d ever heard. 

You remember how his words were laced with a sickly sweetness that tugged on your heartstrings as he spoke with you. His voice was entwined with an accent, or maybe two you think, fusing together to create a dialect unique to a man that could only be him, something no one else would be able to recreate. It rolls off his tongue with ease, as if he had a century to perfect it. 

He offers you something you can’t refuse, something that you had silently prayed for but never dared speak out loud, not if you wanted to come out of this horrendous ordeal unscathed. 

And his eyes—the unforgettable, unnatural glow of them, as hot as embers—looked at you with a tenderness that you hadn’t seen in years, because he knew just by glancing at you that tenderness is what you needed on this night. Not harm, not violence, but tenderness. 

He spoke of a promise to release you of this suffering and all you had to do was offer him something in return, something of equal value. It was simple enough, so you offered the only thing you had to give. 

He accepted your conditions with a grin that stretched from ear to ear and assured you that if you truly agreed with all of your heart that he’d come back the following night.

And he kept that promise.

It was a night where the moon was bold, illuminating that hot, humid Delta night with an eerie glow only reserved for when the veil between this world and the next was thin enough for the wretched and malevolent things that haunted humanity to roam freely without fear of the sun’s divine might.

But the moon’s peaceful luminance was tainted by the blood-red stain of flames that painted the night sky a sickening crimson hue.

Your uncle’s house—the one that you were forced to call your home after losing your parents in that terrible accident some months ago—was now set ablaze by the flick of a single match, and the hand that held it was of the same wickedness that your grandmother always warned you about. 

She told her stories by the warmth of the fireplace, her voice withered by time and the disease that ultimately took her life after spending much of it smoking from the same old pipe that her own grandfather had passed down to her.

You remember the tales she spun, woven with the same kind of fear mongering that spewed from the preacher’s mouth every Sunday, warning the congregation of the evils that corrupted this world, turning the innocent away from God’s graces and His salvation with the invitation of temptation.

Because that’s all what her stories were: warnings laced with images of demons and vengeful spirits and of beasts that stalked the swamps looking for their next meal to keep you on the right path in life in an attempt to save your soul from the eternal damnation that would await you should you not live righteously.

But the lore of ghosts and monsters and witches did not frighten you. Even as a child you knew that this was just a way for the adults around you to scare all the children into listening and obeying them, even when they were wrong. Even when they did wrong but did not have the decency to recognize their own hypocrisies.

No, you did not fear her stories, not at all… not when the only monsters you knew that existed dressed in the same cloth and patterns as you, spoke with the same dialect that fell from your mouth… closed the door of your bedroom late at night when your aunt turned a blind eye and acted as if she didn’t know what your uncle was doing to you. 

The flames that tried desperately to escape from the wooden entombments of the house reflected in your irises. The heat that poured from the broken windows and cracks of the old wood, mixed with the ashen, black smoke that billowed out from the same crevices burned your eyes, tears welting up at the corners of your lashes as if begging you to look away from the devastation that unfolded before you. 

But you could not look away, couldn’t tear your eyes off of it even if you wanted to. Your feet anchored you to the damp earth, keeping you in place as you swayed gently with the cool breeze that swept through, moving with the spanish moss that hung on the trees. 

It was as if the fire had casted a spell on you, entrancing you to keep your gaze upon the smoke and embers that only grew more and more ferociously, climbing higher and higher and higher until it appeared that the flames tickled the star-studded night sky.

You couldn’t help but think that it looked as if they were trying to reach heaven, trying with all of their might to escape the evil that resided in that house.  

Above the roar of the fire, something else permeated through the air. 

A scream—so miserable and bloodcurdling that it pierced your sensitive ears. 

It sounded as if the person at the other end of such a disturbing wail was screaming out to you as a cry for penitence and not just a frantic call for aid all while the fire continued to consume all that it touched. 

But you knew better. 

Your uncle did not cry or scream to ask for your forgiveness. 

He was a man who did not know what the word forgiveness meant, wouldn’t know how to repent if his life depended on it—as it did now—because to men like him, his actions were not seen as sins. He was a man and everything belonged to him by his mere God given existence. There was not one thing that he could desire that he could not obtain purely by the fact that he was born as God intended. And if the almighty created all of his children in his image and some of those children had tendencies to do bad things, then surely they were not bad things at all… at least that was the way your uncle saw things. 

It was how he justified the horrendous things he did; justifications that made it easier for him to sleep at night.  

That’s why your heart felt empty as you sat in the crowded pews of the church house every Sunday morning since moving into that Godforsaken house. That’s why the preacher’s words felt meaningless, falling upon your deaf ears as you purposely turned your back on the God you were raised upon… because why would you give your devotions to a God if He would make vile men like your uncle? Why would you fall to your knees and pray to a deity that created a man who purposely harmed a child, one of His most precious gifts? 

Why did this God not hear your own cries when your uncle preyed upon you? 

Why did this God allow your aunt to let her husband hurt you in such a way, turning away with her head bowed in understanding of what he was doing to you when she should’ve been there to protect you from him?

No, He did not deserve your praise or your prayers, not when he abandoned you when you needed Him the most. When you were the most vulnerable. When you were still innocent.

It’s still night when the screaming finally subsided, fading into the darkness without much of an afterthought and leaving you in the beautiful smolder of the dancing flames and crumbling wood. 

Amidst the thick smoke, something heavy imbued the air—a shift, one that you had never felt before but was undeniably palpable—and a scent, sweeping through the yard on a gentle breeze, carrying the smell of dead earth—wet, damp soil and wood after the rain—mixed with tobacco and copper.

Then, you saw him, a dark figure emerging though the wreckage.

From where you stood across the yard, you couldn’t make out the details of his face, shrouded in the shadows of the doorway that were created by the flames that raged on behind him, casting his intimidating form in a ghastly silhouette. 

The figure looked up suddenly and his eyes glowed a dangerous, chilling shade of red that made your heart skip a beat. His gaze was hypnotizing, watching you diligently, the same way that a predator surveys its prey as it stalks, waiting to strike.

You blink slowly, feeling as if time has slowed, and when they open the man is standing before you, looming just mere inches from where you were planted in the yard, so much larger than your own smaller form. 

He was still casted in that same daunting configuration, his broad shoulders outlined by the malevolent glow that endured endlessly behind him and the only distinguishable feature you could make out was the crimson glimmer of his rapacious stare. 

Remmick doesn’t say a word, content in the silence that pervades around him while he continues to stare down at you. 

He half expects you to tremble in his presence. You may be a child but you were not stupid, you were born in a place where danger lurked where you least expected it if you weren’t careful enough. But your heartbeat didn’t quicken, nor did it falter when he took another step closer. It remained even-paced and calm even when he inched closer and closer until he towered above you like a giant. 

And just as he expected fear, he also expected that perhaps you would look upon him with defiance, to prove something to this stranger, but he doesn’t see it. Not an ounce of it in your large, doe-like eyes. 

Instead what he sees is indifference: a small mortal creature that neither cared or not of what he was or what he was capable of doing. It was evident in the way you just stared at the fire while it destroyed the only roof you had over your head. You did not cry in distraught as you lost everything you had left in the fire nor did you jump up and down with joy as the cage that kept you bound to your abuser burned to the ground. 

The wind picks up and instinctively he sniffs at the air, noticing another scent lingering there, one that doesn’t belong to him or the fire. His nostrils flare at the all too familiar metallic fragrance, his gaze drifting down your nightgown-clad frame to rest at the disheveled hem of it. 

He breathes in slow, deep, when his eyes fall upon the red that muddies the cotton. The breeze tussles the bottom of your nightgown briefly, revealing the same crimson ichor that stains the flesh underneath. 

His expression hardens and the corner of his lips twitch in a scowl as he tries to contain the disgust that eats away in his chest at the sight of the blood that coats your skin, still fresh. You shuffle at the unsettling look on his face, your small hands reaching down to smooth the edges of your nightgown while trying to ignore his dark, unwavering leer.  

It quickly reminds him why he is here and the red glimmer of his stare slowly dims into its natural color at the sight of your uneasiness, but it doesn’t make him any less intimidating, any less frightening.

“My end of the deal is done, little dove,” he says then, voice softer than you expected yet still harboring that same level of menace that radiates off of him like heat. “I will come for you when it is time to hold up yours.”

“When?” You ask simply.

He tilts his head, mouth downturning into a pondering curl before he straights back up, his eyes never leaving your tiny, unmoving form. “When the time is right.”

“But,” the sound of your interjection causes the man to raise his brow in question, “how will you find me?”

There’s no emotion in your voice that Remmick can decipher, no indication that you don’t understand his words or the meaning behind them. You knew exactly what was asked of you and you accepted his bargain and with it every gruesome and horrendous act that he committed to fulfil his end of it without question. 

He smiles, not smirking like you think he would, but genuinely smiles as if you asked the golden question, the one he’s been waiting for with keen ears. 

Slowly he reaches out and patiently bides the time it takes for you to give him your hand. 

His touch is soft as his fingers wrap around your wrist—not forcibly, not with the intention to harm you, but with gentle consideration he turns your hand over. His fingers slip from your wrist, his calloused thumb running down the expanse of your palm. 

A quiet, surprised gasp leaves your mouth, eyes widening at the sight of his nail growing longer, sharper as it scrapes against the skin, causing a dull but angry looking line to blossom beneath his nail and for the first time you feel yourself panic.

He presses the sharp tip of his nail against the soft pad of your finger, causing you to wince at the pain. But even as the crimson ichor oozes from the small wound, you don’t pull away. You don’t turn and run like you know you should. 

He swipes his thumb along the cut he’s made delicately, acting as though reverently handling the most holy of relics that lays in his hands, and coates it in the red warmth before bringing it to his lips and slipping his thumb into his mouth and sucks. 

He inhales deeply, relishing the sweet metallic flavor that dances on his tongue, but then his brows furrowed briefly as another flavor overpowers the sweetness—vaguely sour, putrid almost as if spoiled. 

He grins, knowing all too well of the taste and it forms a delightful pit in his stomach. 

“There,” he says and releases the grip he has on your hand, “now I know. Wherever you go, wherever you end up, I’ll find you.”

It’s all he says and then he’s gone. 

That was some twenty years ago and you haven’t seen him since.

It was quiet at first, no inklings that he was ever around, and that false sense of abandonment made you believe that perhaps it was all some kind of deranged hallucination your mind created as a way to cope with the trauma you endured… but then just a few weeks ago, you started to notice how the air suddenly hangs heavy, shifting with the weight of his presence—always at night, always where the darkness can hide him from you—and always lurking somewhere in the shadows. 

Sometimes you think you catch glimpses of him amongst the treeline and those glowering red eyes of his, watching you from the dark sanctuary of the woods that surround your new home—that of your new home across state lines and miles away from the where you once lived with your parents and that of your uncle’s house, but it’s gone before you can even realize that it might be him. 

The wind carries his smell from time to time, but still he’s nowhere to be found; even when you search and scour every last piece of land that surrounds you until your feet bleed from exhaustion, there’s not a single trace of Remmick anywhere.

It’s in your head, you sometimes think as you stand alone in the darkness. It’s been so long since that fateful night, surely he would’ve come to collect what was owed by now. 

Perhaps he forgot about you, or perhaps he found someone more worthy of fulfilling their end of the bargain, you thought woefully. 

Now in your thirties, you believed yourself past your prime, past any youthful appeal you once held, and reluctantly you doubt that you would ever see him again. 

It was foolish to think that you were the only one he’d ever strike a bargain with. You certainly weren’t the first, not with how fluently he was able to coax the secrets out of your heart with nothing more than a kind look on his handsome face, begging you to speak your sorrows to him, your wishes, and you knew that you couldn’t have been the last. 

Creatures like him don’t tread through the world waiting for one insignificant, lonesome soul to be ripened.

They hide where the sunlight can’t find them—lurking, hunting— never satisfied with the offering some wretched, wayward nobody had presented to them on a silver platter. Ravenous beings such as he were always hungry, always wanting more, and would stop at nothing to chase their immeasurable appetite.

And though you knew better than to hold onto that fleeting sentiment, your mind was only consumed with the thought of him and the covenant you made—ever persistent, ever resolute— and the idea of him not wanting you in return devastated you. 

It hurt more than how your uncle would use you, hurt more than how your aunt did nothing to stop it, hurt more than the passing of your parents and that of your grandmother… but the worst part was you didn’t know why he didn’t seek you out when he promised that he would.

Why didn’t he come back?

Why didn’t he return to you to finish the deal that was made?

Like a disease it ate away at you, purposefully taking its time to rot you from the inside until once again you felt empty, hollow, like that sad little girl at the mercy of your uncle; sinking its claws deeper and deeper as it gradually became a part of you, ensuring that you could never escape from it. 

Still, as you swore that he was there, watching, waiting, he never made himself known to you. He never showed himself, never gave you a glimmer of hope that he hadn’t forgotten about you. 

Besides, your soul was poisoned, blighted by the years of resentment that found its home in your worn out heart.

Even now you can still feel the heat of your uncle’s foul breath on your skin, smell the rancid stench of it invading your nostrils when you speak to other men like him, knowing who they truly are without being told so.

It followed you, clinging to you like a ghost.

Why would he want a soul that was mired, infected with the incapability of letting go of the memories that tortured you?

And you tried forgetting, tried letting go, by everything that was still good in this world you tried, but no matter how much light you let it, you always found an excuse to cast it out. 

And so, you buried that hurt away deep in the caverns of your downtrodden heart and did the only thing you could.

You waited. 

Tonight was like any other and when the sun finally descends past the horizon, you spend your time basking in the solitude you’ve grown to live with.  

The house was quiet, even more so now that you lived in it alone. 

Your mother’s cousin passed away some summers ago, leaving you to tend to the aging house that had cared for you these last couple of years. 

It was easy living with only yourself in that house once she was gone. Everyone in your life had the tendency to either leave or betray you—your parents, your grandmother, your aunt and uncle, even Remmick—so you found yourself embracing the loneliness, the solitude of it all, and you were content in living in the little, two bedroom house on the edge of the Mississippi. 

There were no painful reminders here, no devils prowling in the shadows waiting until your back was turned to strike. Just mundane memories that didn’t fill you with complete disdain and scorn.

The window in the living room was wide open, allowing the fresh, night breeze to sweep in and breathe life into the house. 

Sitting in the rocking chair that once belonged to her, you allowed yourself to sing the ballad that she had taught you.

“Strange things are happening every day, I hear the music up above my head. Though the sight of my heart has left me again, I hear music up above—” 

Outside, the harsh chirp of crickets slowly fades into silence, as does the croaking of toads and cicadas and all the sounds of the night around you until only your voice endures through the uncanny stillness.

“Secrets are written in the sky. Looks like I've lost the love I've never found. Though the sound of hope has left me again, I hear music up above—”

The wind picks up faintly, causing goosebumps to prickle at your skin, but it’s not from the chill of the draft that makes your body react. 

Your rocking stops and so does the song that fell from your lips.

There’s something different, something that was not quite right.

It’s the same shift in the air that signals that his presence is near—not here, but somewhere close by, so close you can almost feel him there in the room with you. 

And then, out in the distance, you hear it—a voice.

His voice.

He calls out to you like a whisper in your dreams, faint and dulcet as he recites the same lyrics that have since died on your tongue.

“Standing in my broken heart, all night long. Darkness held me like a friend when love wore off—”

Somehow your feet have pulled you from the chair, your body reacting solely on it's own accord, leading you out the house as if in some kind of surreal trance and drawing you out into the black Delta night. 

The soft strumming of a banjo hangs in the air, enticing you to venture further and further into the darkness, into the unknown, and far away from the comfort you've built in that little house. 

The earth is soft under your feet, sighing and kissing your skin affectionately with every step that you take. 

Closer to him, closer to the voice that lured you towards him like a siren’s song. 

Your gaze remained on the unpathed road before you, through the fields and grassland and into the swampy woods that separated you from your destiny, the one you sealed to him with a vow as a child. 

It was almost pathetic how you followed his voice without a second thought, as if this was meant to happen… because to you, it was. 

You had waited faithfully and now all of your patience was to be rewarded. 

 “—Looking for the lamb that's hidden in the cross. The finder's lost…”

Through the swampland you tread, turning and wading through it until the ground that once welcomed your journey now spites you; the twigs that litter the ground stab at the soles of your feet, at your ankles, and the prickly branches of the trees snag at the material of your nightgown as if trying to stop you—warning you. 

You could feel the wrenching of your grandmother’s withered hands grabbing at you, silently begging you to reconsider before it was too late—an attempt to save your soul from the covenant you were about to seal with this blasphemous creature. 

Her voice reverberates in your mind, soft and mild yet undeterred to break you of the spell that he had casted on you; for you to understand what was to come should you continue on and that your time on this earth would come to an end should you not turn back now, unable to join her and your parents in the afterlife.

But you didn’t heed that warning. 

You embraced whatever fate you had resigned yourself to long ago and no attempt at saving your soul would prevail.

You found your own voice effortlessly calling back to him, singing gently as your voice carried itself on the wind, hoping that he’d hear you.

And in the echoes of your mind, you hear your grandmother weep.

“I know I loved you too much, I'll go alone to get through—”

That slow, simple yet tantalizing strumming of the banjo leads you through the wood, deep and dark and twisting without the glow of the moon to guide you. 

Still you pursue it, even when logic and reason told you to stop and reconsider what might undeniably be the death of you, but there was no turning back. Not now that you were so close to what you had longed for.   

“I hear Rosetta singing in the night,” you both sing in unison, your voices melding together and becoming one singular, exquisite proclamation into the night. “Echos of light that shines like stars after they're gone. And tonight she's my guide as I go on alone, with the music up above.”

Time has evaded you, unsure of how long you’ve walked along this barren road, but eventually you reach the end. 

Through the thicket and trees of the forest lies a house—worn and old and decaying from years of abandonment, and yet it still stands tall and proud across the clearing, a remnant of another time that has refused to be forgotten. 

This is a place where the cypress trees and oaks have lived far longer than any human has, a place where they’ve planted their roots and refused to leave. Spanish moss hangs from the branches, spinning silvery green-gray threads of garland that sways with the wind, dancing to a melody only known to them, one they lived in harmony with. 

Though distance separates you both, you can see his shape lingering in the darkness, standing in the doorframe with his banjo in hand and strapped across his broad shoulders.

Remmick. 

As you approach you can’t help but think that he still looks the same as you remember, untouched by time. 

With his sleeves rolled up to his elbow you can see the veins that pulsate beneath his unblemished skin and the lean muscle underneath, a testament of the strength that he undoubtedly has. His dark hair frames the top of his head, catching the shadows that play off the contours of his handsome, angular face. 

He watches as you proceed towards him, those glowing red eyes never leaving the sight of you, drawing you closer and closer like a moth to the flame until you stand before him at the bottom of the few steps that lead up into the old house. 

You’d think that he’d be hardened from all the time that has passed since you've last seen each other, weary of you and unsure that you’re the same girl that he made that unholy promise to all those years ago. 

You trace every curve of his face, mapping the lines that kiss at the corner of his eyes and the relaxed slant of his lips, searching for any inclination that his perception of you is not what it once was. 

But the longer you look, the more you don’t see any uncertainty of your intentions reflecting back at you in those inhuman eyes of his, only adoration, only reverence. 

It makes your heart flutter pitifully inside of your ribcage.

“You found me,” you say finally, breaking the silence between the two of you. 

He smirks, recognizing the steadiness in your voice as you speak. 

Still unafraid, he thinks, still that same unfaltering spirit that he remembers from when he first encountered you just before that blood-stained night that lived in his memories like a keepsake. 

“I told you that I would. Did you doubt me?”

You shake your head, not so much as a response to his question, but more of trying to shake away the disillusion of your own equivocation. 

“I thought…” you start, feeling that familiar, unwanted hollowness in your chest return, “I thought that maybe you’d—”

“Forgotten you?” He answers with a seriousness that makes your heart stop beating for a second, “Forsaken you and the vow we made?” He tilts his head and smiles. Not smirks like he did before, but smiles, genuine and true. “I’m a man of my word, little dove, a man who keeps the promises he makes.”

Little dove, he called you that on the night when he slaughtered your uncle some twenty years ago. Such a fond endearment, one that he spoke as if he reserved it only for you.

“It's been so long, why wouldn’t I think that?”

“You were a child when we made our bargain, I needed you to be prepared when I came to collect what you owed. I needed you to be willing to give it to me without a doubt in your heart. Not taken from you. Not stolen. I wanted you to welcome it, to welcome me. Not fear me.”

“I don’t fear you, I never did.”

He chuckles. “I know you didn’t, not back then at least, but time changes people. Memories change how people perceive things. Maybe as you grew older you would come to resent me and the things I did to your uncle. I wasn't kind. I didn’t spare him one moment to repent for what he did to you… and who knows, maybe you found it in your heart to forgive him.”

“I can’t forgive him," you counter sharply, "don’t think I’ll ever be able to. And I don’t resent you either, not for giving me a second chance to live without knowing if the next time he’d visit me would be my last. Why would I resent you for that?”

He hums in response, your words somewhat convincing him that he was right in believing that you were ready for this, but he still has to ask, even when he already knows the answer. “And you’re still sure? You still want to uphold it?”

“Yes,” the word escapes your lips before you can even register it. 

Remmick nods solemnly, staring at you with those soul-piercing eyes. 

He’s spent the last twenty years waiting for this, letting time and severance come between the two of you and fermenting those memories, those emotions of that night until just the right moment that allowed this reunion to become all the sweeter for him; and for you too.

“That song of yours,” he purrs, inhaling deeply and allowing himself to reminisce about the lyrics, the sentiment behind it, of how it resonates with him just as much as it did with you, “it's beautiful.”

“It was the only thing that gave me comfort for a long time,” you say. “It was something that I could hold onto without fear that someone would try and take it away from me.”

“A beckoning,” he interjects slyly. The points of his fangs peek out from beneath the curl of his lip when he smirks, glistening in the moonlight—the canines and the rest of the teeth behind them are large and elongated and serrated, like a mouth full of knives. “An enticement.”

You nod, “In a way, yes, but not how it might seem. I just needed to know that you were out there somewhere and that you heard me, that you still remembered me. But you never answered—”

“It was never the right time,” he replies, “but I did hear you. Every time you sang out into the night, I heard it.” 

Remmick treads down a step, then two, until only one separates the two of you. He places a hand on your chest, right where the source of your music lies, the same beating mechanism where you kept your memories of him. Your intensity. Your longing.

His hand is cold, just as you remember, but it exudes more warmth than you felt in what feels like a lifetime. 

“Heard the saccharine crooning of your blood, even when you didn’t sing, especially when you didn’t sing… your heart reaching out in an attempt to call me back to you. Aching. Pleading for me to return—but you knew I was there, didn’t you dove?”

“I did, that’s why it hurt so much. Knowing that you were there, close enough to sense you but just far enough away where I couldn’t find you.”

He’s quiet then, eyes wandering over every little detail of you, every line that’s etched in your pretty face, every minute change. 

You’ve grown since he last had a proper glance at you, now taller and with a fuller figure that has filled out every curve of your body that he can see through the silhouette of your nightgown, clinging to the sweat that coates your skin like raindrops from the humid Delta night; not exactly the same thin, sickly looking girl he found decades ago with blood on her thighs and tears in her eyes—cursing silently to herself about all the wrongdoings that had happened to her, ones that should never befall a child as young as you were—but despite the changes, he can see the same spirit sweltering in your heart, untouched by circumstance and time. 

Remmick never let you drift too far from his sight, choosing to keep at a distance in order to preserve the decorum of the arrangement the two of you made, but over the years he noticed how your restraint began to wade and contort into something more zealous. 

He saw the way you searched for him relentlessly when you thought he was there, watching you or not. He felt the way your heart called out to him, felt it when you were in the arms of some long-forgotten lover that you still only ever thought of him, wishing that he would just come back to you, even when time and time again he never did. 

This, what he had, wasn’t an easy life, but it sure as hell was easier than the life you’ve lived thus far. And he just had to be sure, not needing to make a mistake that you would surely regret, a mistake that would make you resent him. 

“I wasn’t completely truthful when I told you that I had fulfilled my end of the bargain.” He says, his glowering eyes never leaving yours. Just as terrifying, just as soft. 

“What do you mean?”

He pulls his hand from your chest and straightens, nodding towards the inside of the house. 

“There’s one last loose end that needs to be taken care of before you can fulfill our deal.”

There’s something sinister that laces his voice and it sends a shiver down your spine. 

He turns and enters the house, leaving you alone once again as you watch the darkness swallow him. 

Without hesitation, you follow. 

Remmick’s already at the top of the stairs when you enter, walking down the short corridor that leads into one of the seemingly empty rooms. He moves seamlessly through the hall and without a sound. Like a ghost that is bound to this place, an apparition that haunts each brick and plank that holds the walls up, holding the nails and cement in place that prevents the house from collapsing in on itself.

Your feet carry you up the steps and the floorboards creak under your weight as you ascend the rotten wood, quietly threatening you with each step that it might be your last.

Still, you venture further into the dying house. 

The wallpaper peels off the walls in captivating spirals downwards, trying to escape the atrocities that this house has seen, of what it’s about to see.  

The air is stale around you, unmoving and void of any life that has not thrived within these walls in decades. Untouched by loving hands or caring souls that should be felt in any house. Instead it was just left to rot from the cancer that dwells in its underbelly until even time has forsaken it.

Pale moonlight seeps through the torn and tattered lace curtains, the glittering of dust hanging in the air as if frozen in time. 

Small paintings decorate the walls, depicting the vast and fertile swamps and wetlands of the only land you’ve ever known, of the dirt roads that lead to the small shacks that people here called home. But their colors had faded from neglect, drenched in the sunlight that filters through the window on the hottest of Southern days. 

Other than the moonlight, there is nothing to guide your way, so you carefully make your way down the hall. 

One of the doors on the right side of the hallway is slightly ajar and you can see the flickering of lamplight from beneath the wooden door, a sign pointing you in the direction of where you needed to go. 

Cautiously, you push it open.

Remmick stands in the center of the room, facing you fully, his face devoid of any emotion yet nothing about him is unnerving, least not to you.

Surely if he wanted to kill you he would’ve done it long ago, back when you were some weak little thing that was unable to protect itself. It was easy for him to kill your uncle, it would no doubt be easy to kill you too, you think.

Remmick seemed like the kind of man that could take life without reservation, not caring for who or what it was that he destroyed as long as he had a reason. If that reason was right or not, you didn’t know. But he didn’t kill you, didn’t touch you without your sanction, nor did he drain you of the one thing that kept you alive, and that was enough to reassure you, even when it was stupid to do so. 

He’s watching you with such intensity simply because he could, because he wanted to—wanted you to know that this was it, the exact point of time that you’ve been anticipating since you were that lost, shattered little girl he met all those summers ago.

This was your salvation. 

Something makes a sound in the room and your eyes linger on him a second longer before they drift to the source of such a pitiful whimper, to the figure that kneels with their head bowed and eyes screwed shut, trembling on the floor just past him at his feet. 

His crimson gaze follows yours, neck craning to glance down at the pathetic excuse of a woman that shakes terribly behind him like a rattled dog. 

The sound of your unwavering footsteps makes the figure look up frantically and your whole body stills, goosebumps princkling at you skin when you come face-to-face with one of the demons that has plagued your nightmares since that fateful night—one that instills a knot of dread to form in your stomach, twisting and churning your insides violently.

It is your aunt who kneels on the ground before you, her graying hair thin and wiry and not at all the same hue of brown that you remember from your youth. It frames her gaunt face, the skin around her eyes sunken in from all the years she spent in fear as guilt festered in her bowels.

Once you thought her beautiful with a face that was round and jovial, her enchanting eyes that caught the splendor of the sunlight in the summer, and a smile that promised nothing but love and warmth, but soon enough you saw that facade wane when the truth came to light. A truth of the horrors that her husband harbored in that godforsaken house of theirs, a truth that she was too cowardly to face. 

Now as she kneeled before you, whimpering and weeping with crystalline tears that smeared down her wrinkled, hollowed cheeks, all you saw was the reflection of her soul staring back at you—Weak. Craven. Spineless.  

Any fear you felt just moments before slowly ebbs into something darker, something more ominous and insidious as it maliciously seeps into your bones. There’s an unspoken itch that tickles at the back of your mind like a vindictive spirit whispering awful, terrible things in your ear.    

Your aunt doesn’t seem to recognize you, her brows furrowed in confusion and squinting in the dim lighting of the room to get a better look at you.

But how could she remember you? 

It has been over two decades since she last saw you, and now you stand before her a grown woman, so vastly different from any recollection she has of the small girl that once lived under her roof. 

To her, you look like any other stranger she’d meet on the street in town. 

But there’s something so familiar about you, something she can’t place. 

It’s unsettling how she can’t put a name to the face that stares down at her with an abhorrence that makes all the color drain from her face and the gnawing ache in the pit of her ribcage intensifies. It invokes memories laced with secrets that she has long since tried to forget, locking them away deep in the recesses of her mind.

Secrets that were buried with her husband—whatever was left of him—hoping that with his untimely passing that they would never resurface. 

The floorboards creak quietly and suddenly Remmick is standing behind you, slightly at your side, his breath fans across the nape of your neck and dragging heat along your jawline. He’s so close that you can feel the measured cadence of his chest heaving against your body with every breath he takes. 

His nostrils flare, filling with that compelling fragrance invading his mind—infiltrating, penetrating. 

You reeked of sin ready to be committed, of retribution yet to be reaped.

It clings to your skin like the finest of perfumes with the same veracity and allure as the blood that coursed through your veins. Just as potent, just as loud, and just as electrifying.

His eyes flutter shut, sensing it pulsate in the heavy thrumming of your nerves as his fingers caress up and down your arm lightly, tracing the path of it under your warm skin. 

With his breath in your ear, Remmick speaks, brushing his nose into your temple with almost tender affection. 

“That night when we met, you asked to be rid of the monsters that caused you harm. You only spoke of your uncle then, but I could hear your heart whispering another name, one last monster to be free of.”

It hits her then, hard and fast as if struck by a train running at a hundred miles an hour. 

Her eyes, now glossy and bloodshot, widened in horror as her mouth falls agape. 

Tears once again trickle down your aunt’s pale face, realizing what all of this was—of who you were and what you were going to do to her, her mind running amuck with the horrible possibilities.

This was no mere act of random violence bestowed on a stranger who was simply at the wrong place at the wrong time. 

No…time and patience had crafted this diabolical reunion, carefully and delicately with heinous consideration and all of it orchestrated by Remmick’s sadistic need to corrupt all that was good in this world and make it his. 

And he succeeded, seizing all of the anguish and rage and bitterness that dwelled in the abyss of your heart and manipulated it—manipulated you—with his deceitful promise of freedom, laced with honeyed words and kind smiles. 

But you were too blind to see it, influenced by the wickedness of his black tongue.  

She almost feels sorry for you for being easily tricked by this devilish cretin… almost, if it wasn’t for the fright that ran rampant within her.

Something small presses into your palm and you glance down to see Remmick slipping a box of matches into your hand, followed by the heavy metal handle of the oil lamp.

You glance at him briefly, but he doesn't say a word. 

He doesn’t need to, the depth of his profound, burning eyes tells you all that you need to know; of all that needs to be done and what you had to do to obtain it, and you feel the grip on the items in your grasp tightened. 

Remmick steps back, watching in reprehensible awe as you move fluidly towards the women, his red eyes glowing with nefarious intensity. 

His mouth waters, the thick, vulgar sludge running down the side of his mouth and down his chin but he makes no attempt to wipe it away.  

Your aunt scuffles back, knees tripping over the tattered hem of her dress with her hands up in front of her in a pleading gesture though no words leave her dry and cracked lips, unable to utter even a single word as absolute panic overwhelms her. 

It’s too late to beg anyway, too late to ask for your forgiveness. 

Twenty some years too late, you think ruefully.

Perhaps if she had ever reached out to you in an attempt to rectify what she had done and what she had failed to do, you could find it in your heart to absolve her of her passive sins. She was a woman oppressed by the hand that brought food to her table, indebted through marriage to a man who gave her a roof over her head and the clothes on her back. 

But she could have protected you from the detestable hands of her husband, and yet she didn’t. She allowed that evilness to thrive, allowed it to defile you.

She could only stare in absolute terror as you brought the lamp up to your lips, blowing out the flame and casting the room into shadows, replacing the reddish-orange glow of the lamplight with an eerie hue of blue and silver that drapes over the room.

She finally speaks, calling out your name. The sound of her heartbreaking voice implores you to reconsider, to let her live because she was your aunt, because you were family and she didn’t know any better. She was scared, just as you were, afraid of what her husband would do to her if she were to have interjected. 

She begs you to not be seduced by this devil and all of his false promises, but her pleas are futile. 

You ignore her excuses, just as she ignored all of your cries for help that left your throat raw and dry as your tiny body was desecrated by the fiend that kept you prisoner in that house.

Remmick’s heavy breathing behind you saturates the room as you doused her in the slick oil and light the match with a single flick against the striker strip. 

It does little to light the room and the flickering of the small flame creates shadows that dance across your face. 

Your aunt can't help but think that you look nothing like the little girl she once knew. 

You shared the same name, shared the same pretty features, but beyond the color of your eyes and hair, beyond the birthmarks she remembers, the woman who stands before her is unrecognizable. 

Once you were sweet, and kind, but all of that warmth that she knew you possessed was gone. 

And she was part of the reason why.

The realization of it makes her weep. 

Not because she knew this was the end of her, but because of all of the hurt she inflicted upon you had led you into finding refuge in the darkness, led you into his arms. 

Her eyes find yours and through despair that enrapts her, she musters enough strength not to look away, not daring cast her gaze to the match between your fingers even when you toss it onto her lap. 

Her resolve only lasts so long before her screams penetrate through the room.

The fire that started at her skirts ascended upwards quickly, violently and without hesitation, keen on destroying the last boogeyman that had ever haunted you. 

Her hands frantically try to swat the flames as if it will save her from this terrible fate, one that she had brought upon herself.

The sight of her brings you back to that night, back to when you witnessed your uncle’s demise, taking all of his sin and evil with him.

And just like that night, you simply watch as the flames take her, devouring her whole until there is nothing more of it to take.  

Eventually her flailing stops, as does the screams, and her body falls to the ground with a loud thud. 

The flames continue to grow, reaching out past her lifeless body and sprawling across the floorboards. They climb up the walls, feeding off of the dried out wood and engulfing anything that would satisfy its appetite—one that always burned, one that could never be sated.

Remmick’s hands are on you again, tighter this time and rougher, breaking you from the trance that the flames have placed you under with their deadly hex. 

He lulls your head back to rest on his shoulder, exposing your neck to him and breathes in the delicious aroma that emanates out of every one of your pores—of all the corruption and depravity and wickedness that floods through your veins like the most lethal of poisons, a product of the seed he had planted inside of you. 

This was his plan all along afterall, to fill your head with nothing but thoughts of him— his image burning in your mind until it was all consuming and replenishing the void in your chest with the lachrymose notion that one day the two of you would be reunited. 

That was why he waited so long before he made himself known to you again—through fleeting gazes that made you question your sanity, through the lingering of his scent that wafted in the cool, Mississippi breeze that drove you to the verge of madness—ensuring that you wouldn't forget him so that the yearning that festered inside of you didn’t diminish. That it only grew and grew and grew until it became an obsession you couldn’t break free of.

He’d be lying to himself if he said he didn’t find it amusing, your infatuation with him, because he too had his own sick fascination with you. 

In the beginning, Remmick’s bargain was just that: a bargain. 

You had something that he wanted, something he craved, and he was willing to linger unseen until he was able to collect what was owed. 

But the more he visited, the more he watched from the obscurity of the treeline that surrounded your home and saw how you pined for the same need for connection that had plagued him for centuries, the deeper his twisted affections grew for you.

Just like you, the time he spent abiding his time was maddening. 

For a creature of his nature, years passed by like hours, making all of the time he spent drifting through the world feel less excruciating, less unbearable. But even the most sensible of minds can lose themselves to the overwhelming spiral of despair that arises as they watch their loved ones perish to the cruel consequences of time, surrendering to the inevitable, over and over again. And Remmick was not far from falling headfirst into that spiral, so he needed to act fast should he lose that fight.

For far too long Remmick has roamed this earth in search of a companion, to find someone who would stay at his side and ease the ache that has cemented itself in his lonely soul. There have been whom Remmick saw promise in, others who’ve sought the same as he, but it never lasted. Some left willingly, others found the other half of their soul in men that weren’t Remmick, and others simply perished. 

Even now Remmick didn’t know if what he felt was genuine or if he was merely projectioning what his soul wanted onto you, but it didn’t matter to him… you were his now, completely and utterly his.

The thrum of your pulse beats against his thumb as he holds your jaw in his palm pulls him out of his wandering thoughts and he sighs with admiration at the surge of your vitality that it courses through your body. 

To him it was more than merely drinking from you, it was about forging a bond that would last in this lifetime and the next, sharing the most vulnerable and intimate parts of you with him, and he you. 

What he craved wasn’t power over you, or control, he didn’t even want your blood as sweet as it tasted, as tempting as it was.

No, what he wanted was your warmth, your depravity, your affection and devotion… he desired the music that your heart curated and sang only for him. 

It reminded him of a time before his turning, back when life was uncomplicated. Back when all he wanted was companionship.

And he found that in you, his fallen angel. His dark muse.   

“This is it, little dove,” he pants, breath scorching and burning hot, unlike the rest of him. 

You feel the scrape of his fangs brush along your pulsepoint dangerously and your breath hitches in your throat. 

“I need to hear you say it, that you want this,” he says, almost begging, almost as if not to you at all and only to silence the doubt that holds him back. He needs to hear the words fall from your lips, to prove that he’s deserving of this—deserving of you.

That’s what Remmick tells himself, trying to convince himself that he’s holding onto a shred of humanity that he still had left dwindling inside of him by offering you a choice in the matter—sure it was choice molded and influenced by his deceitful hand, but it was a choice nonetheless—and making you say it outloud made it tangible. Made it real. 

“Say it.”

“I want this,” you whisper, voice unwavering in your decision. Absolute. You look up at him, “I want you.” 

Remmick swears he sees starlight glimmering in your eyes, full of veneration and fondness and love and it’s exactly what he needed, that push forward.

Your eyelids flutter shut when he leans in, lips brushing ardently in a kiss reserved for the most reverent of lovers despite the blasphemy of it all, despite the sacrilege of it.  

And then he bites, sinking his fangs deep into the tender flesh of your throat and tasting the rush of your blood filling his mouth.

You wince, gasping at the painful pressure of where his teeth were embedded into you, his lips sealing around the wound as he drinks, swallowing hungrily at the metallic nectar. 

It makes him dizzy with exhilaration, his mind fogging over from the euphoria that courses through him. 

There’s an agonizing sting at first, but it’s not nearly as violent as you think it would be. 

You’d imagine Remmick ripping off ribbons of flesh from your throat and tearing your arteries to shreds like some brutish creature devouring its prey. 

He’s not greedily draining you with the intent to kill—he’s tasting every drop of blood that spills into his mouth, savoring the sanguine taste of you on his tongue and memorizing it. 

You aren’t a one-off meal that he’ll tear into and quickly discard. You are now his one prized conquest, marked by his bite. 

Remmick is surprisingly gentle in the way he cradles your cheek in one of his large hands while the other is wrapped around your waist, preventing you from stumbling over from the heavy weight of his body pressed securely against yours.  

A shiver runs through you, feeling the chill of death creeping up your arms like mist, up your chest and neck despite the heat of the fire that rages all around.

You know that you should be frightened knowing that death is right at your doorstep, waiting for you to take that final step through the threshold, but you aren't scared, not when it feels like this—a merciful pull into the darkness, slowly draining you until your body grows weaker and weaker the more he takes. .

Like death itself was comforting you, consoling you, encouraging you not to be afraid and tread into that darkness without fear of the unknown. Apologizing for all the pain you endured, but assuring that there would be no more suffering once you let it in. 

Let him in.

And you do, bearing every part of your soul to Remmick as he drinks. 

Tears form at the corners of your eyes, finally finding the peace you so desperately sought in this grim, dreadful world, washing over you like a Baptismal fountain.

Through the warm ichor, Remmick can see the life that you lived thus far. 

He sees your parents, both grinning ear-to-ear as they walk you up the steps of the church you all attended every Sunday and the hearty meals your mother had prepared after. He sees you standing at the edge of freshly dug up dirt, watching as the gravediggers lower their caskets into the ground. He sees the fireplace where you sat while your grandmother told you stories of her homeland and the origins of the traditions of your people and then the disgraceful excuse of a gravesite where they buried her, nothing more than a plank of wood with her name scratched into the grainy surface; the only thing your family could afford. He sees the last time you smiled before being ushered into your uncle’s house, ignorant to what you would experience at his hands. He sees himself in the threshold of the burning house behind him.

But he isn’t the only one who sees the lingering reflections of a time that have since passed.

Through the darkness that trickles into your vision, there are flashes of a life that don’t belong to you flickering behind your eyelids—a foreign land with vast green countrysides surrounded by treacherous waters, a small village with townsfolk that fill the air with laughter and music so touching you can feel it reverberate in your chest. A place where gods and spirits inhabited each stone, in every tree and in the lakes and rivers that flowed through the land, living side by side with the people who thrived there, undisturbed by marauders from across the sea who would eventually come.  

The rush of images dissipate shortly after drifting into your mind as the world around you is fading, and the sharp, thunderous drawl of Remmick’s bite dulls. 

He can feel it too, how your body slacks in his embrace with every second that passes. How the vigor of your blood’s song steadily begins to dim. 

His tongue runs along the wound of his making on your neck, leaving a thick line of saliva on the skin there and quickly replacing it with an amorous press of his lips.

You groan at the fatigue that infiltrates your mind, your body instinctively pushing away the urge to sever the thread that binds you to this existence. 

Your fingers find purchase on his thick arms, unconsciously trying to shove him off of you, but you have no strength to do so. 

“Don’t fight it,” he whispers into your hair, so soft, so reverent, like a prayer. “Think of it as falling asleep and when you wake, you’ll be anew.” He coos against your temple and places a kiss to your cold forehead, “I’ve got you. Let go.”

And you do, with one final exhale you let go.

Silence greets you. And blackness. The world around you is gone, having ebbed away into absolute nothingness. 

Growing up hearing the sermons from the preacher upon the pulpit, you’d thought death would be different, more dramatic. Blinding white light that leads to the pearly gates. Or of fire and brimstone that foretold the eternity torture that awaited you after a life of vice. Perhaps even of the muddled gray of a purgatory you’d never leave, condemning you to wander in uncertainty forever, but it wasn’t like that at all. 

Just blackness envelopes you and you feel weightless, like floating on the waters of the Mississippi River just before the sun rises above the horizon.

Time is meaningless in a place like this and you’re unsure of how long you’ve lingered here in death, straying mindlessly in that cold, dark void. Like the passing of seconds into centuries, like surviving through a never-ending winter before a long awaited spring emerges, blossoming into something wondrous and exhilarating.   

Finally, your eyes begin to open and the world around you is bold, vibrant with perfect clarity.  

There are colors and hues that are new to you now and with amazement you watch as the inferno dances around you in splendid destruction. 

You can see every flickering flame that burns deep into the walls and scorches the wood beneath it, like the brushstrokes of a painting of meticulous detail—so rich, so sharp, alive as if every shadow and streak of color had a soul within itself. 

Still in Remmick’s embrace, now cradled ardently in his arms as he carries you out of the burning wreckage of the house you can feel every stitch of his skin on yours, amplified. The once cold hands that held you now radiate a warmth that you never noticed before. 

The night birds and insects that chant their nocturnal melodies sing with sublime coherence. Even the sound of the leaves that sway gently in the night’s breeze sound as loud as the strumming of a blues guitar.

Your hand reaches up to caress his jawline, sharpe with the stubble that frames his chin. Despite the prickle beneath your fingers, the expanse of his skin feels velvety under your touch, taut and smooth like marble, sending electricity through your fingertips.

Remmick leans into the tender stroke of your knuckles along this cheek, trembling slightly as your nails rake down the column of his throat, feeling the hum of his blood dancing below with delight. 

Once outside, Remmick lays you down on the lawn with the crisp air nipping at your skin. The softness of the grass against your back makes you sigh, like laying on sheets of silk.

His mouth is on you suddenly, hot and slick and hungry. 

Your legs part, welcoming Remmick between them without hesitation and he moans when your hands cup his face, slanting your lips perfectly to deepen the kiss. 

You cling to him, causing Remmick to hiss at the sting of your nails clawing into the nape of his neck, creating crescent-shaped into his skin through the fabric of his collar. 

It spurs him on, how unaware you are of your new-found strength, and it stirs something dangerous in his gut. 

His tongue traces your bottom lip, desperately asking you to part for him—an invitation—and when you do, he licks into your mouth like a man starved. 

You can taste the remnants of the irony tang of your blood on this tongue and it eases a whine from your lips. 

Once it would have repulsed you but now it remedies a craving you’ve never experienced before, but only a little; only in the slightest of ways, in a way that teases you, in a way that demands more. 

Your head spins at the feeling of his hands on your body—fondling the swell of your breasts though the thin material of your nightgown and making your nipples pucker beneath his touch.

It has heat and wetness pooling between your legs and you chase the urge by lifting your hips upwards to grind against the hardening of his cock beneath the rough cotton of his trousers.

His tongue pushes deeper into your mouth, matching your eagerness, and he rocks back into you forcefully, enough to render another sound out of you which he does easily.

You should be ashamed at how pliable you are under his touch, at the pathetic and lewd moans that leave your mouth when his lips linger across your face, kissing and nipping at the skin of your jaw, down the expanse of your neck. 

He places searing, wet kisses on each collarbone and between the valley of your breasts as he slides lower and lower down your body. 

You arch into every kiss he lavishes on your clothed skin, desperately needing to feel all of him on you, to feel the heat that exudes off of his body bleed into you. You're so lost in his touch that you don’t even notice that one of his hands snakes under the hem of your nightgown, pushing it up and revealing the temptation of your flesh while the other tugs your underwear down your ankles until he maneuvers it off of you, throwing it aside carelessly.

You writhe against the damp grass, skin burning up. Like a fever you can’t break, kindled by the scorching trail of his tongue down your stomach, the weighted press of his body against yours, feeling the heat spread through your bloodstream and into every part of you from your head to your toes—igniting every cell with heightened pleasure.

Your mind spins haphazardly into a spiraling descent of hedonistic madness. Even the intensity that exudes from the dilapidated house that cries out for merciful release feels cool in comparison to his touch. 

The flames and smoke fades into a smeared mess of orange, red, and black until you don’t recognize it at all. It just becomes a part of the night, like the stars and moon above.    

You feel drunk off of him, mind blurring into enraptured grandeur. 

Remmick leans forward, nuzzling the side of your thigh with his nose as he catches your intoxicating scent and it racks a shudder up his spine when he breathes it in gluttonously. 

His name falls from your lips, full of want and desire, but he hushes your plea quietly.

It almost makes him laugh from the irony of it all—of how easily you traded one monster for another. 

He wonders if the thought ever crossed your mind or if the hatred you harbored in your heart for your uncle and aunt have blinded you of the fact.

It doesn’t matter now, not when he has you right here he wants you and Remmick isn’t going to let you slip through his fingers by revealing the epiphany he had. 

He’s going to indulge in all of the horrors you have hidden inside of you. Coddle it. Exploit it. Foster it.

“It’s alright dove,” he whispers, kissing your inner thigh before draping one over his lean shoulder, then the other, “it’ll all be alright, just gonna make you feel good, real good.” 

Another kiss, closer to the glistening of your cunt.

He shifts his gaze to yours, finding the natural hue of them now glowing a rich tinge of orange, the same shade as the flames that swelter behind the both of you as the house continues to burn in an endless inferno. 

It makes his heart falter at the sight of you, perfectly grotesque. 

Pushing up on your elbows, your mouth parts to object but whatever questionable demur you plan to say dies before it can even form and a drawn out moan replaces it as the sensation of Remmick flicking his tongue over your cunt suddenly overwhelms you. 

It renders you boneless, falling back amongst the grass while hot embers erupt across the sensitive flesh. Using the roughness of his tongue, he sluggishly drags it along the seam of your folds, tasting the wet ambrosia that lays between the sanctuary of your thighs, the only altar he’d ever kneel before. 

One of your hands finds refuge in his hair, fingers threading through the short, curled locks while the other grasps at his forearm for dear life, knuckles turning stark-white from strain as that wicked tongue teases you—slowly sliding over your dripping, heated slit and stroking over your clit in deliberately tedious licks. 

His large hands grip at your thighs firmly, holding you in place to ease the mindless gyrations of your hips towards his sinful mouth as he devours you—the wild, hungry way that he works his tongue against you, over you, inside of you.  

Remmick hums in content, feeling the thin strings of your resolve snapping one by one with every trawl of his devilish tongue against your flesh, unraveling a little more with each needy whine or ragged sigh you breathe out into the night. 

You shudder when he moves his mouth up to find that little bundle of nerves at the apex of your sex and captures it between his lips, flicking over it in slow, teasing manipulations, and you jerk, your body already nearly spasming and you dig your heels into the muscles of his back in a hopeless attempt to keep him rooted against you. 

He moves his mouth lower once more, hands moving around to cup the ample swell of your ass and pressing you even closer as he delves his tongue into the hot, wet depths of your pussy.

And fuck if the strangled cry that tore from your throat wasn’t the most retched, profane sound he’s ever heard, especially when it was accompanied by a violent tug at his hair that pushes his face deeper into your quivering cunt, sending his tongue plunging even further inside of you.

The swollen ache turns into burning and you feel your inner walls tighten, knowing the sensation of your impending orgasm creeping up your spine.

Remmick senses it too, feeling the same coil tightening in his abdomen, but he doesn’t relent in his attention. His moans meld with yours, matching it pitch for pitch and accompanying every sound you make with one of his own like a sordid melody. 

He wishes he could stay like this, tucked deliciously between your legs and drinking from your immaculate cunt until the sun rises beyond the horizon and for the rest of his infernal lifetime, especially as you grind herself against his face shamelessly and keening his name desperately despite the firm grip he had on your thighs, but he can’t ignore the almost painful throb of his hardening cock rubbing against his pants. 

The reverberation of his groans and whimpers make your thighs tremble against the sides of his head, but he doesn’t pay it any mind. His body rocks in sync with the roll of your hips, flowing in the same rhythmic cadence as you both become one through the tormenting ministrations of his mouth.

Never had a man or woman touched you like this, uncaring of how obscene he looks with his head buried between your legs. His hands, calloused and strong, message the delicate flesh of your thighs and ass in soothing motions. He places enough pressure to induce bruising to flourish beneath the supple skin and the pleasure that blossoms under his touch is inebriating. Addictive.

The grip you have on his arm trails up to thread your fingers through his, your nails digging deep into his palm to rouse another elongated moan from him.  

You smirk, satisfied at the sound you pull out of him, but the smugness is wiped clean off your face as the tightening pressure that had been building in your spine and lower belly intensifies, your mouth parting in a sequence of short, breathy sighs when it hits you.

It’s blinding and red-hot, a kaleidoscope of euphoria bursting from inside of you in a flash of liquid fire, and with a broken cry of Remmick’s name on your lips you cum into his eagerly awaiting mouth. 

He slurps at your sweet slickness as it floods his senses, flaring his nostrils to fully bask in the scent of you, and a low, guttural growl rips from deep within his chest. 

He licks and laps at your cunt, fervently catching every drop you offer him to not miss a single drop, not wanting to let any of it go to waste. Not on your thighs, not on the grass below, not even on his chin. No, he had to devour you thoroughly until there was nothing left for you to give. 

And god is his tongue relentless, repeating the same motions over your sensitive bud that has you squirming under his touch, trying hysterically to push him away but he keeps fighting against you, his tongue stroking incessantly and arduously into the sanctity of your cunt.  

You sit up suddenly, causing a glimmer of worry to flicker cross Remmick’s face when he looks up at you, but it quickly subsides when he sees the wanton glint in your glowing orange eyes.

A smirk spreads on his handsome face when you grab at him, pulling him toward you until your mouth clashes with his, lips slanting against mouth. His face is wet, and warm, and tangy sweet. And now as you kiss him, open-mouthed to allow your tongue to dance with his, all you can taste is herself. 

In a swift movement, Remmick pulls you into his lap, mouth never parting from yours as he squeezes and caresses the sweat-glistened skin of your thighs. He guides them to rock your sex against his, still fully clothed, but the friction of his cock through his pants surrenders a moan that seeps from your mouth into his, feeling his pent up desire grind against you. 

Your hands fall to the open collar of his shirt, fingers diligently tracing over the expanse of the exposed skin that lays beneath the fabric, beneath the golden chain that hangs from his neck.

Caressing the taut muscles at the juncture of his throat and chest, you palm the heated flesh and claim it with the drag of your nails down his pecs and then up again, leaving angry red scratches on his pale skin. 

He groans at the pain that arises from your marking—your nails now sharper than ever, sharp like the edge of a blade as they pierce the skin deep enough to cause damage. 

When you pull away, your eyes are drawn to the crimson flow of blood that oozes from the wounds you inflicted and he smiles.

He doesn’t have to say it because the enticement of the crimson ichor instinctively calls to you, whispering and screaming in equal measure to sate the new ache that gnaws and twists in the pit of your stomach. A hunger. One that you didn't know existed as your heightened senses emphasizes the thirst that leaves your throat dry. 

What was once an intrusive thought now becomes a craving, a need to quench the growing impulse to drink. It draws you in like a magnetic force, one that you can’t escape from, one that continues to invade your thoughts until it makes your head throb with excruciating agony. 

You can’t resist the lure, can’t fight the urge that beckons you with welcoming arms like the sweetest of songs. You lean forward, tongue flat against Remmick’s chest and lick the sticky substance up from the droplet at the bottom of his sternum up to the source of the wound at his collarbone. 

Remmick laughs when your body trembles when you taste him, the rich, warm liquid coating your tongue like the most divine of holy wines, but his tone is anything but degrading or mocking—its breathy and sincere, a quintessential jovial sound that teeters on hysteria. 

He laughs because now you are utterly and completely like him, a creature of his making. Corrupted. Perverted. Damned. 

Gently, he cradles the back of your neck and allows you to indulge in the taste of him, his blood, his soul, and watches through hooded eyes with triumph as you drink selfishly from him. 

It’s thick and sweet, igniting a fire that burns as it runs liquid hot down your throat. It's unlike anything you’ve ever sampled in your sad little life. Nothing tastes as delicious as this does, nothing could even compare to it. It engulfs all of your senses simultaneously, quickly soaking into every nerve-ending of your being.   

You groan when the sacred liquor of his body is eventually tapped out, but Remmick hushes you with another vulnerable laugh and places a lingering kiss to the crown of your head, his nose nesting tenderly into your hair. 

When you look up he kisses you again briefly, not as rough as before but you can taste the desire that imbues his lips. 

“There’ll be more of that later, dove,” he whispers, eyes tracing every detail of your disheveled expression, “but for now I need to fuck you good, need to feel that sweet pussy of yours around my cock as I make you scream my name so everyone knows who you belong to now.”

His vulgar words, mixed with the euphoria of his blood coursing through you, make you dizzy, drunk from pure delirium. 

You are his, forever and all eternity. 

The notion of being some unholy bride to this monstrous brute should have scared the living hell out of you, but after experiencing the thrill of his blood dancing in your belly and the absolute bliss of his mouth on your cunt, you couldn’t think of any other place you’d rather be. 

Heaven and hell be damned, you’d make whatever time you had with Remmick at his side your own paradise on earth. 

In a swift, seamless motion Remmick undoes the buttons of his trousers, hissing under his breath when his cock springs free from its confines.

You moan when he pushes his cock against your slick folds, gliding effortlessly due to the wetness between your thighs, and you lift your hips slightly, just enough for the tip to prod against your entrance. 

His hands fall to your hips, yours finding purchase on his broad shoulders to support your trembling body, already alight from the pleasure that ripples up your spine. 

Slowly, Remmick lowers you onto him and you sigh, feeling every pulsation of his thick, needy cock as you sink down inch by inch to take all of him. 

The measured push of him into the most sacred part of you is agonizing, maddening until he bottoms out fully, splitting you with a sadistically pleasurable burn. 

Your mouth falls agape at the sensation of him filling you completely, and he can’t refrain from grinning at the sight of your utterly blissed out expression. 

One of his hands loosens the grip he has on your hip, fingers creeping up from under the hem of your nightgown and fanning out to feel your velvety skin beneath his fingertips, pressing gently into the dip of your spine to press you closer to his body. 

His bright, glowing eyes find yours and Remmick pauses to take in your new appearance wholly. 

Any lines that once decorated your face have disappeared, leaving behind smooth, soft skin in its wake; like a moth breaking from its cocoon to reveal the splendors after a long awaited metamorphosis. 

Your blood-stained fangs peek through from your upper lip when you moan, elongated and razor-sharp. If you wanted you could rip out his throat, he thinks, and make a meal of him right then and there, feeding off his throat like a parched man would suck the nectar from a ripened, summer peach. 

His cock twitches at the image of you, mouth and chin saturated with the slick of his dark, red blood as it coagulates on your pretty face, your throat, and clothes—grotesquely painting you in his cruor and gore.

Your breath catches in your throat, nails digging painfully into his shoulders when he thrusts forcefully up into you, the violation quick and powerful. 

“Oh fuck, Remmick—” you moan, falling forward to press your forehead into the crook of his neck and place sloppy, lingering kisses to his damp skin. Your hot breath fans over his jugular, smelling the saccharine aroma of his pulse thrumming in his veins. 

He groans when your fangs scrape against his throat, teasing the skin dangerously and chases the fleeting sensation of implicit peril with another rough thrust.    

The grass beneath you is damp, causing your knees to slip from under your weight and spreading you unbearably wide so that when you meet his thrusts the tip of his cock prods against the spongy patch of muscle along your upper walls that musters a whine from you.

He feels it too, how you squeeze around him, and wraps his arms around your back to press you impossibly close to him, desperate to feel it again. Your tender nipples brush against his chest and the friction of it is almost too much to handle, but you don’t pull away, don’t push him off of you, and instead you rock your hips to match his pace. 

Quickly you both find your rhythm—harsh, almost cruel thrusts followed by the slow, merciful grinding of his hips meeting the sickly tender cadence of yours. 

The night air was filled with the sounds of your mingled, interwoven moans, muffled slightly as they spill into each other’s mouths, greedily swallowing every groan, whimper and sigh that you both make in shared pleasure.

Your thighs shake uncontrollably, your walls clenching around him in anticipation of your approaching climax, the coil tightening and tightening with every thrust of his powerful hips.

Remmick realizes just how close you were when you continue to pant and whine like a rabid dog in heat and your voice musically invades his ears. He eases his head back to gaze up at you and locks eyes with yours. You stare at him with heavy-lidded eyes, your pupils blown wide and your lips swollen from biting them as you move on top of him like the blasphemous goddess you are. 

One of his hands runs down between the apex of your thighs, pressing his thumb against your clit and rubs a slow, maddening circle over it, causing your hips stutter and your breath catch in the back of your throat.

He presses firmly at the bundle of nerves and reality slips away, begging you to give in. And you do, grabbing at the back of his neck while the other holds onto him hopelessly while your inner walls spasm around his thick cock and voice a desperate, strangled moan.

Remmick's eyes are drawn to the look of absolute elation that adorns your face, a look of awe, of pure amazement. It was like he just couldn’t tear his eyes from you, afraid that he’d miss something, anything, if he were to look away for even a moment. There was nothing in this ungodly world like watching your body respond to him, nothing like knowing that he was the one to pull these responses from you. 

And watching you reach that peak climax, watching you plunge headlong into the throes of this intense orgasm, prompts his own body to respond. His hips thrusts erratically even as one of his hands grasps at your shoulder, curling around it to hold your hips square against his as he pumps his hips violently, his cock twitching as he finally lets go, cumming hard inside of your hot, wet cunt that still grips him mercilessly. 

Remmick grunts as his pelvis jarrs against yours, pressing insistently against your clit with every thrust he gave. Your eyes screw shut and your whole body tenses just before you clench around him once more, throwing you into another intense orgasm. 

His glowing red eyes widen as he stares at you amorously, his mouth hanging open in utter rhapsody. A slow, sure grin stretches clear across his face as he watches your features convey a look of complete and perfect euphoria. 

You collapse on top of him when the initial high is over, your body laying limp against his as you continue to tremble and shake, burying your face into his neck and lazily nuzzle your nose against him, struggling to regain your breath.

He turns his head, pressing a kiss to your forehead and brings his hand up to gently brush your damp hair out of your sweat-soaked face, the other soothingly caresses up and down the length of your back. 

A sigh leaves your lips, your torrid breath fanning against the contour of his throat with every hot inhale and exhale you take, whispering his name. 

The night air is quiet as you and Remmick sit in each other’s embrace and the dull murmur of the crickets and cicadas slowly becoming louder as you ease back into the world, accompanied every so often by the sound of the house falling apart. 

The fire still rages, but it has pacified immensely since it first started. Planks of wood fall to the ground with a muffled thump and most of the fire has died out, now replaced with the smoldering of the thick, grayish smoke that billows into the night sky, muddying the color of it. 

It’s still beautiful, you think with your cheek resting against Remmick’s shoulder, bright eyes watching the smoke as it dances up towards the stars. 

Now after all that you’ve endured you finally allow yourself to breathe, knowing that everything that has ever haunted you is gone, that every monster has been vanquished. 

For once you can live without worry about what may come, you think with a silent chuckle. 

It wouldn’t have mattered if Remmick ended your life instead of turning you because even then he would’ve kept his promise. And that was all that mattered to you—that he kept his word, just as he said he would. And that alone brings you peace.   

It’s a while before he finally moves, shifting in little, anxious movements, and it’s enough for you to glance up at him, eyes scanning his face to find what troubles him. 

His eyes—still that ghoulish, dazzling shade of vermillion—are compelled to the horizon. 

“We need to get movin’,” he says, but you can hear the slight unease in his voice.

Turning your head, you look out to where his gaze remains and although you don’t see it, your blood tingles with astute awareness, knowing that something dangerous awaits should you linger here any longer. 

Though the night sky is still cloaked in shadows, you can see how out in the distance it leisurely changes from that dark, navy blueish-black into lighter hues of magenta and gold with your enhanced vision—bright and shimmering as the sun awakens from its overdue slumber.

Daybreak approaches. 

Seeing how Remmick reacts, you should be worried but you aren’t.

The worst of it all was behind you now and whatever the future had to offer was there for the taking.

Because with Remmick at your side, you were unstoppable. 

tagging: @eddiesvixen

[phantomgiggler]

Remmick BTS pt. 1

[phantomgiggler]

This picture has done so many things to me, I am speechless

not arguing with a vampire with cute fangs and big, round eyes. whatever you say, beautiful

[phantomgiggler]

HER FATHERS KILLER, HER HEARTS KEEPER.

part I, part II, part III.

summary: being the daughter of a vampire hunter is complicated enough especially when you’re sneaking out at night to be with the vampire you’re meant to hate — torn between loyalty and desire, caught in a dangerous game where every choice could cost you everything.

warnings: sexual content, explicit scenes, non-consensual undertones, coercion, manipulation, domestic tension, family conflict, pregnancy and forced pregnancy, power imbalance, emotional abuse, distress, threats of violence, threats of murder.

pairing: dark!remmick x reader

w/c: 12k+

DNI IF THE TAGS AFFECT YOU, YOU HAVE BEEN WANRED.

Your shoes were already ruined.

You tried not to look down, but you could feel it with every step—how the soft leather had soaked through, how the stitching was pulling loose from the soles, how something sticky was tugging faintly at your heels each time you lifted your foot. The hem of your dress had given up a half-mile ago. Now it dragged behind you like a flag in the dirt, pale blue fabric stained dark with mud and bent grass, torn where it had caught on brambles.

You hadn’t even wanted to come.

Not because you were afraid—though, now, deep in your chest, you could admit that maybe you were. But mostly because you had known from the start that you didn’t belong here. Not like this. Not in your good dress, with your hair pinned up neatly and your hands still smelling faintly of lavender soap. Not with a borrowed bow in your arms like it was a clutch purse, like you had to carry it because it would’ve been rude to say no.

“Just a quick look,” your father had said when the sky turned strange, his voice gruff but warm. “Thought you might like to see what my days are like, now that the weather’s cleared.”

You’d wanted to say no. You’d almost said it. But then he’d rested one of his heavy hands on your shoulder—careful, like he always was, like you were made of something fragile—and you’d only nodded instead.

Now you were ankle-deep in a part of the woods that didn’t even feel like woods anymore.

The trees here were too old, too tall. They bent inward like they were sharing secrets just above your head, their branches tangled like ribs, pressing in. The air beneath them was wrong—too still, too thick, with that sour-damp smell like mildew and closed-up cellars. No birdsong. No breeze. The only sound was your own footsteps and the squelch of earth pulling at them.

The light—if you could call it that—had stopped changing hours ago.

It hung in the trees like fog, tinted a strange kind of blue-lavender, like the sky couldn’t decide if it was night or not. There was no sun. Just a heavy, purplish glow that turned everything soft and dim around the edges. Not dark enough to be dangerous, but not light enough to feel safe. It felt like the world had paused, like time had sunk into the earth and left you wandering through the breath between two heartbeats.

And you were sweating. God, were you sweating.

You could feel a line of it slipping down your back beneath the stays of your corset, itching as it went. You’d pulled your gloves off half an hour ago, and your fingers looked out of place without them—narrow and flushed, your nails too clean for all this earth. You kept looking at the bow your father had slung over your shoulder before you guys had stepped off the path. It felt wrong in your hands. Too big. Too quiet. Like it was waiting for you to do something you didn’t understand.

“I don’t know how to shoot this,” you’d said earlier, your voice too light and sweet and soft.

Your father had smiled in that tired way he did sometimes. “Doesn’t matter if you shoot. Just need to hold it. Makes you less of a target.”

A target for what, he hadn’t said.

And you—foolishly, stupidly—hadn’t asked.

You thought you saw the path curve—just ahead, behind the long fingers of a willow that leaned too far into the trail, its tendrils brushing the ground like it was searching for something lost. Your father hadn’t said where the path led. He hadn’t spoken much at all since you passed the creek. His eyes stayed ahead, watchful—not worried, just focused, like he was trying to remember something half-forgotten.

You stepped over a cluster of roots, skirt catching in a low tangle of thorns again. They left little marks on the hem, snagging at the embroidery. You sighed softly and smoothed the fabric with your hand. And that’s when you noticed it.

The air had changed.

Not wind—there was no breeze, not even a ripple in the tall grass—but a kind of hush. Like the trees had paused mid-breath, like the world was listening.

“Papa?” you asked, gently, just behind him.

He lifted his hand without turning. A small motion, like asking for quiet—not out of fear, just... wanting to see something clearly before it slipped away.

And then the woods thinned.

The trees parted all at once, and the light turned strange—soft, pale, the color of a storm that never came. It painted the world in a faint wash of violet-blue, as if the sun had never quite risen and never would. At first, it was hard to tell what you were looking at. Everything was so still. But then you saw them—rooftops. Faint outlines of buildings sunk into the wild growth, their edges softened by time and vine.

A town. Or what was left of one.

There were no signs, no fences. Just the slow fade of wild woods into old pathways—grass overtaking cobblestones, ivy creeping up broken doorframes. The houses leaned gently, as if bowing to the years, not broken, just tired. The windows were open to the air, empty but not lifeless.

And at the far end—a church.

You didn’t realize you’d stopped walking until your father did too.

It stood quiet, worn white paint peeled to the wood, the steeple bent just enough to feel graceful in its fall. The cross at its top was half-broken, yes—but it didn’t look ruined. It looked weathered, like a memory. The front doors hung loose from their hinges, and the windows—tall, arched, bare—let in the violet sky like they’d been meant to.

It didn’t feel frightening.

Only... still. Like something left in peace.

“I don’t know what this place is,” you whispered. “It feels strange. Not bad—just...”

Your father glanced down at you, then toward the church again. He didn’t look alarmed, only quiet. The kind of quiet he wore when something touched a place in him he didn’t speak about often.

He placed his hand gently on your arm. “Stay here,” he said. “I just want a look around. I won’t be long.”

Your hand reached out without thinking, catching the sleeve of his coat. “Don’t go in without me,” you said, the words a little breathless. “Please.”

He hesitated, just for a second. Then he gave you that small, familiar look—the one that said he didn’t quite understand your worry, but he’d carry it for you anyway. He shrugged off his coat and wrapped it around your shoulders like a blanket.

“You’ll be alright,” he murmured, tucking the collar closer to your chin. “Just don’t stray too far. Not here.”

You nodded, though your chest felt tight in a way you couldn’t explain. It wasn’t fear. Not really. Just something quiet and strange and wide, like the kind of hush that comes before a snowfall.

You watched him go, his figure moving steady down the worn path, past the quiet buildings and the empty windows, toward the slanted church that waited at the town’s end like a sleeping thing.

You stood alone in the purple-tinted stillness, your hands tucked in the too-long sleeves, the bow loose and forgotten at your side. The air was warm and soft, full of the smell of dust and growing things. It didn’t feel haunted. It felt... paused.

Like something beautiful had been waiting here a long time to be remembered.

And above you, the sky stayed that same strange color—neither dusk nor dawn. A deep, endless twilight that made everything feel like a dream you weren’t sure you were meant to wake from.

You stayed where you were, just like he told you. Standing quiet, your fathers other spare coat wrapped around your shoulders, the hem of your dress catching in the grass when the breeze finally stirred. If it even was a breeze. It felt more like the town had exhaled. Long and low, like it had forgotten someone was listening.

You shifted your weight, glancing back at the path, then toward the church where your father had gone. The doors were still open. No sound came from within.

And then—

Movement.

Not from the church.

From the far end of the street, near a small house tucked behind what had once been a garden. It was the only one that didn’t look half-swallowed by the land. The shutters still clung to their windows, the porch hadn’t caved in, and the front door was crooked, but not broken. There were even wind chimes strung near the eaves—silent now, but still hanging, like someone had tied them there not too long ago.

From the shadow of that porch, a cat stepped out.

You blinked, surprised—not because it was there, but because it looked so... ordinary.

Gray, with white socks and a patch over one eye, its fur soft-looking even at a distance. Not starved. Not wild. It stretched its back in the warm light, tail high, and padded across the road with no urgency at all, like it walked this path every day.

It didn’t look at you, not at first.

It only moved with slow, sure steps, past the weeds growing between the cobblestones, past the hollow houses and the yawning windows. Then, halfway across the street, it paused.

And turned its head.

You found yourself taking a small step forward before you meant to.

The bow at your side shifted in your hand, light and awkward. You glanced at it, then back to the cat.

It blinked once. Slowly.

Then turned again, swishing its tail once behind it, and walked back toward the house. Not hurrying. Not calling for you. Just moving, like it expected you to follow.

You hesitated.

Only for a second.

The church still stood in its quiet lean, unmoving. Your father hadn’t come back out. You weren’t worried—not yet. But you were alone. And the house—that one house—felt... different. Not inviting, exactly. But alive. In a way nothing else in the town quite was.

You looked back at the cat.

It had stopped on the porch and was watching you again, one paw resting delicately on the step, tail curled neatly around its legs.

Waiting.

You looked once more toward the church.

Its silhouette stayed the same: quiet, still, folded into the soft horizon like it had been drawn there with a piece of charcoal. No sign of your father. No sound from inside. Just the sky above, holding steady in that odd not-evening hue—somewhere between violet and stormwater blue.

You turned your gaze back to the cat.

It had settled on the top step of the porch, tail curled neatly around its body like a ribbon. It didn’t blink when you met its eyes—just stared, unbothered, like it had all the time in the world and none of it belonged to you.

You walked slowly toward it, your skirt whispering through the tall grass that had overtaken the cobblestone path. Your boots caught once on a loose stone, but you didn’t stumble. One hand held the bow loosely at your side, the other clutching your father’s coat closed around your frame. It still carried the smell of tobacco and pine sap, and you breathed it in like a small kind of bravery.

The cat didn’t move.

Just watched, blinking slowly as you reached the bottom step.

You stopped there a moment. Let your eyes trace the curve of the porch rail, the lean of the ivy as it climbed in quiet spirals along the side of the house. The wood under your boots groaned softly as you stepped up, and the cat gave the barest flick of its tail.

“You’re not lost, are you?” you said quietly, crouching down a little. “You look like you know where you are.”

The cat tilted its head just a little.

You offered the ghost of a smile.

“I don’t. Not really.” You glanced back over your shoulder, down the path you’d come. The church still waited there at the end of the road, shadowed and distant. You swallowed. “My papa says not to wander. But he didn’t say anything about following a cat.”

As if in reply, the cat stood and slipped through the half-open door without a sound.

You hesitated.

Not because you were scared. Not really. It was just the feeling—the stillness of it all. Like this place had been waiting for you. Like the moment you stepped inside, it might close its hand around you and hold you in place for good.

But still, you followed.

The door opened just wide enough for you to slip in after it. The light inside was dim but soft, stretched through old lace curtains that filtered the sky into lavender and pearl. It painted everything in that same dream-haze as the world outside.

You stepped gently, boots pressing into old floorboards that sighed beneath your weight but didn’t protest. The air was warm. Clean. Carried that faded scent of dried herbs and cotton sun-bleached long ago. Your fingers brushed the edge of a side table as you passed—a bowl of smooth river stones sat in the center, their colors dulled by time but polished to a gentle shine.

The cat had already made itself at home.

It was curled on an armchair to the left, nestled deep in the cushion like it had always belonged there. One paw tucked under its chin. Eyes closed now. Content.

You smiled, soft and a little unsure, as you walked past it.

“You’re lucky,” you murmured, letting your voice fall to just above a whisper. “If I could curl up somewhere and sleep like that, I think I would too.”

The cat’s ear twitched, but it didn’t open its eyes.

You stood there for a long breath, your hands fisted gently into the sleeves of your father’s coat, the bow still resting awkwardly in the crook of your arm. Everything in this room was soft and still and careful. Like it was holding itself together so it wouldn’t startle you.

You didn’t sit. You didn’t move far.

You just stood in the middle of that little room where the air felt warmer than outside, where the walls felt thick with memory and quiet. Where a cat had waited on the porch like it knew you’d follow.

The cat’s purring was steady, its body warm under your fingertips as you gently stroked its fur. You hadn’t expected it, but the soothing hum of the cat’s contentment seemed to relax something inside you. The house, though old and worn, felt almost familiar in that moment. The soft, rhythmic purring made the world outside feel distant, almost like you were in a quiet bubble, away from the strange, unsettling nature of the woods and the things you couldn’t explain.

For a moment, you allowed yourself to forget. To breathe without the weight of worry. The cat’s presence, its warm body curled in the armchair, was simple and real. Something that could almost make you believe that not everything in the world was... strange. Something normal.

You ran your hand over its back again, slower this time, enjoying the peaceful moment. But as you did, a voice cut through the quiet—low, smooth, almost like it belonged in the room with you.

“He doesn’t usually take to new people.”

Your heart skipped a beat, and you froze.

The cat’s ears twitched at the sound of the voice, but it didn’t move from its spot. It seemed to know—just like you—that something had shifted in the room.

Your hand instinctively gripped the bow at your side, fingers tightening around the familiar wooden shape. Slowly, you stood, your body tensing as you turned toward the voice.

At the top of the stairs stood a man. His presence was almost too still, like he was a part of the shadows in the house, blending seamlessly into the atmosphere. His gaze locked onto you with a sharpness that sent a chill down your spine.

You took a step back without thinking, your heart racing in your chest. Your hand clenched tighter around the bow, as though it could offer some kind of defense against the unnerving calm that radiated from him.

His eyes never left you. They were dark, deep, and filled with something you couldn’t place. Something that made the hairs on the back of your neck stand up.

The silence between you two was thick, heavy. You wanted to say something, anything, but the words stuck in your throat. He wasn’t threatening, not exactly. But there was something about him—something about the way he stood there—that made you uneasy.

“Who are you?” you managed to ask, though your voice came out quieter than you intended. It sounded almost like an apology, a soft question rather than an accusation.

The man’s lips twitched at the corner, just slightly, as if he found the situation amusing. But his expression remained composed, unreadable.

“You’re a hunter’s daughter, ain’t you?” he asked, voice low and smooth, as if he were merely stating a fact.

Your stomach twisted at the mention of your father’s occupation. You hadn’t said anything about it, and yet he knew. A cold shiver ran down your spine. The bow felt heavier in your hands now, though it hadn’t changed weight.

“I—" you started, but the words caught in your throat again. How could he possibly know that? How could he know anything about you?

The man didn’t press for an answer. Instead, he stepped down the stairs slowly, the creak of the old wood beneath his feet cutting through the stillness. There was something deliberate about his movement, calculated, like he was measuring every step.

For a moment, you couldn’t move. You were rooted to the spot, every instinct telling you to leave, but your body wouldn’t obey.

“You didn’t answer my question,” you finally said, though it came out more as a statement than a challenge. “Who are you?”

The man stopped at the base of the stairs, not too far from you now. You could see him clearly—his dark, disheveled hair, the sharpness of his jaw, and the way his eyes studied you with an unsettling intensity.

“I’m Remmick,” he replied, his voice carrying the weight of something ancient, as if the name itself held meaning that went beyond just the sound of it.

You swallowed hard, still unsure whether you were in danger. Remmick. It meant nothing to you, but it did something to the air between you two. It made everything feel tighter, heavier.

You opened your mouth to ask something, but the words didn’t come. Instead, you found yourself staring at the cat again. It had resumed purring, now almost as though it was unconcerned with the man standing behind you.

“You were asking about him earlier,” Remmick said, his voice drawing your attention back to him. “He’s… particular. Doesn’t usually take to strangers.”

His eyes flicked to the cat, who lazily blinked in response, as if confirming the claim.

“I didn’t do anything,” you whispered, your voice quiet again, unsure of how to proceed. You felt like you were losing your grip on the situation.

Remmick's lips quirked again, this time into something closer to a smile—though it didn’t quite reach his eyes. "I didn’t say you did. But he’s... not as welcoming as you might think. Not for just anyone." There was a pause, his eyes still locked on yours. “But then, I suppose you’re not ‘just anyone,’ are you?”

You frowned, uncertain about his meaning. It felt as though he was dancing around something—something that wasn’t being said directly. You didn’t know what he was implying, but you didn’t like it.

“I should go,” you said suddenly, the words spilling out before you could stop them. Your pulse was racing again, faster now, as the anxiety took hold of you.

You stepped back, but as you did, you didn’t notice your father’s coat slipping off your shoulders. The fabric fell silently to the floor with a soft rustle, the heavy weight of it landing unnoticed in the dim room. But Remmick didn’t mention it. He didn’t even look at it. His eyes remained focused on you, a faint amusement still tugging at the corners of his mouth.

“You’re in a hurry,” he remarked, his voice quieter now, as though speaking more to himself than to you.

There was something in his tone—something that made you hesitate at the door. You didn’t understand it, but it made you feel like you were doing the wrong thing. Like you were leaving something important behind.

Despite the uncertainty pulling at you, you couldn’t stay any longer. You couldn’t be there with him.

With a final, hurried glance, you turned and moved toward the door, the weight of his gaze following you.

And as you stepped outside, the chill of the evening air hit you, but it was nothing compared to the cold you felt from leaving the house behind.

You left hurriedly, footsteps light but quick, your heart racing as you told yourself to put more distance between yourself and the man who still watched from the shadows.

You kept your head low, your steps quick and purposeful as you moved farther from the house. The air outside, even though thick with the weight of the sky, felt cooler, as though it was offering you a bit of relief from the tense knot in your chest. You kept walking, not daring to look back, feeling the heavy silence hanging between you and the stranger that now occupied your thoughts.

But then, as you rounded the corner of the old church, you froze.

Your father stood there, stepping out from the broken doorway of the church. His broad shoulders filled the frame of the entrance, his dark coat swaying slightly in the evening breeze. The sight of him, solid and familiar, made the breath you were holding catch in your throat. For a moment, you simply stared at him—eyes wide, heart beating a little too fast.

He didn’t seem to notice your startled reaction, his brow furrowing as he took a few steps toward you. “What’s wrong?” His voice was gentle, but there was an edge of concern, like he’d been looking for you.

You stood there, trying to steady yourself, but the encounter with Remmick was still fresh in your mind, the tension from the moment still clinging to your skin. You were out of breath—not from running, but from the panic, the unsettled feeling that you hadn’t been able to shake since you’d left that house. The weight of your father’s gaze made it harder to breathe.

“Just… just walked around,” you said, your voice soft but quick. It was a lie, but it was the only thing you could say that would make sense. You couldn't tell him what had really happened. You couldn’t explain the unease, the stranger, or the way that house felt too strange, too unfamiliar. You couldn’t risk him knowing.

He tilted his head slightly, studying you for a moment. “You’re out of breath,” he said, his voice still calm but with a flicker of worry in his eyes. “What’s going on, kid?”

You forced a smile, though it felt too tight, too practiced. You couldn't let him know the truth. You couldn’t tell him about the man you’d met, the way he'd spoken, the feeling that still lingered around you like smoke. You didn’t know what to think, what to believe, and you definitely didn’t want your father involved in any of it.

“I’m fine,” you said quickly, adjusting the bow in your hand as if it were the source of your anxiety. You wanted to change the subject, to distract him from the flush in your cheeks, the strange pounding in your chest. “I just got a little... tired. The air here, I guess.”

Your father didn’t look entirely convinced, but he didn’t press further. His eyes softened, a gentle understanding there despite his earlier concern. “I say we head back,” he murmured, stepping closer to you, the warmth of his presence almost soothing after the cold encounter with Remmick. “Let’s head home before it gets more dark.”

You nodded, relief flooding your chest at the thought of leaving the strange town, the eerie church, and the unsettling man behind. You didn’t know what would happen if your father found out the truth. But you weren’t ready to let him see you unsettled, not when you couldn’t even explain it yourself.

“Okay,” you said, forcing a breath that felt too shaky. “Let’s go home.” Your father nodded and placed a hand on your shoulder, giving you a comforting squeeze as you turned to walk away together, toward the path leading back through the woods. But as you moved, your heart was still racing, still unsure of what you’d left behind in that old house, in the shadow of the church.

And the last thing you heard before the world closed back to normal was the soft purring of the cat in your mind, still echoing in the back of your thoughts.

You didn’t mean to come back. Not here, not now, and definitely not in this dress—the one you chose because it made you feel like you might be someone else entirely. Someone who belonged somewhere better. But the coat… the coat was a different story. Your father’s coat, left behind in that crumbling house you swore you’d never step foot in again. Somehow, the weight of forgetting it gnawed at you all afternoon, pulling you farther away from the path you’d promised to follow.

So you walked. Past the cracked sidewalks, the hollowed-out shops swallowed by vines and dust, your footsteps muffled by years of silence. The familiar comfort of the cat was gone, too—no soft meow or flickering tail to guide you this time. Instead, the air felt thick, heavy, like the world was holding its breath, waiting for something.

You tried to ignore it, tried to convince yourself you just needed to grab the coat and leave. But every step forward twisted the knot in your stomach tighter, and the house at the end of the street looked less like a home and more like a grave.

You stopped just short of the porch, heart hammering in your chest, breath catching in your throat. The house was still—the broken windows like dark eyes watching you, the front door hanging slightly ajar as if inviting you in. You reached out to touch the chipped paint on the railing, your fingers trembling, the rough texture grounding you.

Then, faint but unmistakable, a sound—something wet and awful—slipped through the silence.

You froze, every nerve on fire. Your eyes flicked toward the side of the house, where the shadows pooled thick and black. You wanted to turn, to run away from whatever your mind was trying to imagine. But curiosity, cold and sharp, rooted you to the spot.

And then you saw him.

Remmick.

He was crouched low, his back bent over something—or someone—you couldn’t quite make out at first. The sickening sound grew louder, more desperate. A wet, tearing noise that didn’t belong in this quiet town.

You blinked, heart skidding to a stop as you realized the horror before you. He was biting, tearing at flesh with a brutal hunger that sent ice racing down your spine. The way his jaw moved was too fast, too mechanical—like a predator who had been waiting for this moment.

Your breath caught, lungs tightening. Panic surged, sharp and sudden, but your body refused to move. You pressed yourself tighter against the cold metal of the fence, trying to shrink into the shadows, praying he wouldn’t see you.

The figure beneath him writhed silently, muffled gasps barely audible over the pounding in your ears. You felt your skin crawl, your dress suddenly too thin, too fragile. The thought of your father’s coat, waiting inside, seemed almost laughable now.

Slowly, so slowly your legs felt like lead, you stepped back, every movement measured, careful. Your eyes never left Remmick, watching the way he tore into his victim with terrifying calm. You knew—knew—if he saw you, it would be the end of whatever sliver of safety you had left.

You swallowed hard, mouth dry, and inched backward, each step a silent prayer that you’d slip away unnoticed. The night pressed in around you, thick and suffocating, the town’s broken streets like a maze you had to navigate without making a sound.

You didn’t look back as you vanished down the cracked pavement, heart racing, breath ragged. The coat wasn’t worth it. Nothing was. Because some nightmares don’t stay hidden, and some truths are too terrible to face.

You left the house, the coat, and whatever dark hunger lived in that shadow behind you. And you ran.

You didn’t stop running until the trees thinned out and the old wooden gate at the edge of town creaked into view. Your breath tore from your lungs in ragged gasps, chest heaving beneath your bodice, sweat pooling beneath the collar of your dress. You could still hear it — that wet, awful noise — the slick sound of something being torn apart. His shoulders hunched low, jaw moving like a machine, blood pooling dark beneath him. You hadn’t meant to see it. You hadn’t even meant to stay long. Just the coat, and then gone.

But you’d seen him.

Remmick.

And now your legs were lead and your heart wouldn’t stop stammering and your stomach had curled so tight it hurt to breathe.

You stumbled past the last fence, up the dry path, across the patch of cracked ground that passed for a yard. The porch creaked as your foot hit the first step—and that was when the door opened.

Your father stepped out into the golden spill of lamplight. His shirt sleeves were rolled past his elbows, suspenders hanging slack against his hips, jaw clenched so tight it made the muscle twitch. He didn’t speak at first. Just looked at you like he wasn’t sure you were real.

Then, flat and sharp as a whip crack. “Girl, where the hell’ve you been?”

You froze halfway up the steps, skirts clinging to your legs, breath too loud in your ears.

His voice dropped a little, quieter but heavier for it. “You leavin’ this house dressed like a bellflower and comin’ back lookin’ like you been chased through the woods by a pack o’ dogs.” He squinted, stepping closer. “And I been standin’ here goin’ half mad thinkin’ you were face-down in a ditch somewhere. You better start talkin’, and fast.”

Your mouth opened. Nothing came out at first.

“I went for a jog,” you said, voice thin, too cheerful, far too late to be believable.

Your father blinked. “A jog,” he repeated, real slow, like he was testing the word out for the first time. “You went for a jog.”

“Yes, sir.”

“In a dress.”

“Yes, sir.”

He stared at you. “Since when do you jog?”

“Well,” you said, pausing like you had to think about it, “technically, I’d call it… brisk walking. With passion. Very determined walking.”

His brows drew together. “In shoes that ain’t meant for nothin’ but sittin’ pretty in church.”

“They held up,” you said, glancing down at them. “Mostly. One of ‘em squeaks now. Adds character.”

He didn’t laugh. Not even a twitch.

He folded his arms. “You been gone over an hour. You looked me square in the eye not five hours ago and said you were stayin’ in for the evening.”

“I was,” you said. “But then I remembered I needed the air. And then… well. The air just kept goin’.”

“You tryin’ to be clever with me?”

“No, sir,” you said, swallowing. “Just stupid.”

That cracked something in his face — not a smile, not quite, but something eased. Only a little. He shook his head, exhaling through his nose, stepping down to meet you at the bottom of the stairs. His voice dipped lower. “Listen to me now, and I mean it — if you saw anything unusual out there, you tell me. You understand?”

You met his eyes, barely.

“I’m serious, girl. I know this town. You think it’s dead, but it ain’t empty. You see somethin’ that don’t sit right, you come tell me. I ain’t askin’ for poetry. Just truth.”

You hesitated. He caught it.

“Don’t you lie to me now,” he said, quiet. “You ain’t got the stomach for it.”

You forced a breath through your teeth and gave a smile that didn’t reach your eyes. “Saw a squirrel,” you said, nodding like it was the most normal thing in the world. “Big one. Looked like he had a grudge.”

He squinted. “A squirrel.”

“Mean as sin.”

“A joggin’ squirrel with a bad attitude.”

“Out-of-towner,” you said. “Didn’t have the local manners.”

He closed his eyes for a second like he was praying for patience. You didn’t move.

When he looked at you again, the anger was still there, but something else had taken its place too — weariness, worry, that particular kind of fear only a parent carries.

He let out a breath. “Get inside,” he muttered. “Before I say somethin’ I can’t take back.” You nodded and followed him in, the screen door creaking shut behind you.

You didn’t mention Remmick. Didn’t mention the body. Didn’t mention the way something in your chest had twisted with a sick sort of grief — not just fear for your father, but fear for him, too. Like some small, foolish part of you didn’t want him to die, didn’t want your father to go hunt him down, even after what you’d seen.

That part stayed quiet.

You left your shoes by the door and your secrets on the porch.

The church was a cavern of shadows and silence beneath the thick night. Outside, the world was drowned in darkness, but inside, the flicker of moonlight threw kaleidoscopes of stained glass colors across the ancient wood and cracked stone floor. The air smelled faintly of old paper and cold stone, and a soft draft whispered through the cracks in the windows, carrying the faint rustle of leaves from the outside.

You knelt there, alone, in the vast quiet, the heavy wooden pew pressing against your knees. Your hands were clenched so tightly that your knuckles ached, fingers interwoven as though trying to hold yourself together. Your dress rustled faintly with every breath, the fabric cool and rough beneath your palms.

The weight of everything you’d kept inside—the lies, the shame, the fear—felt heavier in this place. The silence seemed to press in on you, demanding confession and penance, yet you found no relief. You whispered prayers—half-pleas, half-accusations—into the darkness, your voice so low it was almost swallowed by the stillness.

Forgive me, you breathed, cheeks burning in the moonlight. Forgive me for lying to him. Forgive me for the things I can’t say out loud. For the thoughts I hide.

For two weeks, the lie had settled like a stone in your gut, twisting tighter each day. You hadn’t meant to deceive your father, but the truth was a thing too wild and terrible to speak. You’d told him you went out for a jog—two weeks ago, almost like a casual thing—and ever since, the lie had clung to you like a shadow.

Your mind flickered with images you wished you could unsee. Nights spent tossed in restless sleep, chased through tangled woods by his dark silhouette. Dreams that shifted and morphed, sometimes terrifying, sometimes aching with a strange, unwelcome longing. The last few were the worst—dreams where you felt his hands on you, rough and sure, and you woke drenched in cold sweat, heart pounding like a trapped bird.

You forced your eyes closed, biting back the flood of shame. The quiet was all you wanted now. To be swallowed in the silence, far from the world and its cruelties.

Then came the knock. Three sharp, deliberate taps echoing off the cold stone walls and the wooden pews, breaking the stillness like a breath held too long. The sound made your skin prickle, but you didn’t move. You kept your eyes tightly shut, not daring to look behind you, as if turning around would summon whatever was waiting.

Your hands were clasped tightly in front of you, knuckles white beneath the flickering candlelight. You murmured your prayers, voice low and steady, but the words tangled in your throat. The cold church air wrapped around you, settling heavy and thick, pressing down like a weight on your chest. Your heart hammered, a wild thing trapped beneath your ribs, pounding louder with every passing second.

“Come in,” you said quietly, barely more than a breath, but firm enough to will the door to open. You didn’t need to turn around to know it had. The air shifted suddenly, colder still, as though the shadows themselves had moved closer. You stayed where you were, knees pressed to the wooden floor, hands folded tight.

You tried to force your thoughts back to the prayer, tried to pour all your fear and shame into those quiet words, but your mind kept wandering—back to the things you’d seen, the lies you’d told your father, the guilt that burned deep inside. Your lips moved silently, but the faith you’d once felt seemed to slip away with every breath.

Then, something settled beside you. It was a presence you could feel more than see—a heavy weight in the pew, a warmth that didn’t belong in this cold, empty place. Your body stiffened, muscles tensing as if to flee, but you stayed rooted to the spot, frozen by something you couldn’t explain.

You didn’t turn. You didn’t want to. Your eyes stayed closed, the candlelight flickering softly against your lashes. Your breath hitched and caught, mouth suddenly dry and thick with the taste of iron and fear.

The weight beside you shifted slightly, just enough for you to feel the heat of a gaze burning through you—intense, sharp, impossible to ignore. It was as if the very air pressed closer to your skin, the silence stretched taut around your beating heart.

Slowly, reluctantly, you cracked open your eyes, blinking against the darkness, and turned your head just enough to see him.

There he was—Remmick. Sitting beside you in the dim, quiet church, calm and still, watching.

His eyes caught the faint glow of candlelight, dark and unyielding, steady and cold. The hard planes of his face were sharp against the soft shadows, lips pressed into a thin line that held no hint of warmth or welcome.

Your heart stuttered. Every part of you screamed to get up, to run, but your limbs felt like they’d been turned to stone. Fear, shame, confusion, and something deeper twisted in your gut. You hadn’t wanted to see him again, not like this, not alone in the quiet hours when no one else was around.

You thought you were safe here. You thought you were alone.

But that look in his eyes told you otherwise.

You jerked upright so fast it was like the floor beneath you had shifted, and your eyes snapped open wide, shining bright in the dim candlelight. Your breath hitched sharply, and you stumbled backward, the rough wood scraping under your skirts. Your fingers curled tight around the edge of the pew for balance, heart pounding like a drum in your chest. The chill in the church seemed to press down harder, filling your lungs with cold, stale air that tasted faintly of dust and old prayers.

You could feel him moving beside you, rising from the pew with a slow, deliberate grace that made every hair on your skin stand on end. His silhouette stretched tall in the flickering light, the faint glow catching on the sharp angles of his face, casting shadows that twisted like dark secrets. You didn’t dare meet his eyes—not yet—because even in the quiet, you could sense the weight of his gaze, like a coal burning straight through the fog of your panic.

When his voice finally broke the silence, it was low and smooth, carrying a drawl thick as molasses but laced with something colder than the night outside. “You done forgot your coat,” he said, slow and steady, his words falling like heavy drops. “The one you come back lookin’ for… 'bout two weeks ago now.”

Your throat tightened, your pulse pounding so loud you were sure he could hear it. You swallowed hard, trying to steady your voice, but it came out a breathless whisper, “I… I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.” Your eyes flicked away, desperate to find safety in the flicker of candlelight rather than the unblinking dark of his stare.

But he didn’t shift or blink. His gaze stayed pinned on you like iron hooks. “Don’t waste breath on lies,” he said, voice low, almost amused in a way that made your skin crawl. “I seen what you saw. That night. You thought you could slip away without me knowin’, but I know.” The quiet in the church grew heavier, as if his words themselves pulled the shadows closer around you.

You felt the cold seep deeper into your bones. There was no room for denial here—not anymore. The memory of that terrible sight, the awful, wet sounds, the raw hunger in his movements—it rose up like a sickness in your chest. Your lips trembled, but no sound came. You wanted to scream, to run, but the floorboards beneath you felt rooted, as if they’d grown roots and tangled around your feet.

He took a step closer, slow and purposeful, the faint creak of the pew under his weight breaking the silence. The air seemed to grow colder still, the candle flame flickering in protest. “You thought you was safe,” he murmured, the drawl thickening with a dangerous edge. “Thought I wouldn’t notice you there, watchin’, hidin’ behind that trembling heart of yours.” His eyes glinted in the dim light, dark and sharp, watching every flicker of fear, every faltering breath.

Your whole body trembled now, a mix of terror and something else—a strange, unwelcome pull you couldn’t explain. You wanted to hate him. You wanted to turn and run from this dark truth you’d buried so deep. But the weight of his gaze was a chain, binding you to the spot, freezing the air between you both.

“You ain’t safe,” he said, voice dropping to a whisper that wrapped itself around your skin like a cold wind. “Not in this town. Not anywhere close to me.”

The candle flame sputtered, casting long, crawling shadows that seemed to reach for you. You swallowed again, mouth dry and thick with the taste of fear. His presence filled the space, heavy and dark, and in that moment you knew you weren’t just a frightened girl hiding in an empty church—you were someone caught in the quiet hunger of something far older and colder than you ever dared imagine.

You stared at him, disbelief and fear twisting your stomach into tight knots. “You’ve been watchin’ me?” Your voice cracked, sharp with both defiance and disbelief. “My daddy’d have your head for what you are if I told him a single word.” The words slipped out before you could stop them, bitter and raw. Your eyes narrowed, daring him to laugh it off, or deny it. You weren’t sure which reaction would scare you more.

And then he did laugh—slow, dark, like a low rumble rolling through the cold church. It wasn’t the warm laughter of a friend or lover, but something colder, sharper, edged with something dangerous.

“Your daddy’s got no idea what’s been prowlin’ round these parts,” he said, voice thick with that drawl, the words slow and deliberate. “I been near enough to hear you when your windows are cracked open at night.” He took a step closer, the floorboards groaning beneath him, his presence swallowing the space between you. “When you think you’re safe and alone, moanin’ my name like you’re callin’ for salvation. When you clench your thighs tight, fightin’ somethin’ you don’t wanna admit… You reckon I don’t see all that from the shadows?”

Your breath caught—sharp, quick, trembling. You wanted to pull away, to slam the heavy wooden doors of the church behind him and lock yourself inside forever. But something in the way he spoke, like he knew every secret you hid from the world, made your skin crawl and your heart ache in ways you couldn’t understand.

“No,” you whispered, voice barely steady. “No, I ain’t like that.” But the words felt hollow even as they left your lips.

He smiled again, slow and crooked, eyes dark and unblinking. “You don’t get to lie to yourself, darlin’. Not when you’re lookin’ like that.” His voice dropped lower, almost a purr, thick with meaning you dared not unravel. “I been watchin’, waitin’—knowin’ you ain’t just scared of me, but what I am. What you could be, if you dared to let it in.”

The candlelight flickered, casting long shadows across his face—half in darkness, half in light. You could see the hunger in his eyes, the quiet promise of something wild and dangerous lurking just beneath that calm surface. Your body trembled, torn between fear and a strange, aching pull you refused to name.

“Don’t tell me you think you’re safe from me,” he murmured, voice like velvet dipped in ice. “Not here, not now, not ever.”

You swallowed hard, your heart pounding so loud you thought he might hear it. You wanted to scream, to run, to beg him to leave—but your feet felt rooted to the floor, your voice caught in a web of shame and terror and something you couldn’t quite grasp.

“I haven’t told a soul,” you said finally, voice breaking. “I swear on everything… I won’t.”

He leaned in closer, breath warm against your cheek. “I know.” His words were a quiet promise and a warning all at once. “And I ain’t lettin’ you hide no more.”

You stood frozen, lips parted like you might deny him again, but no sound came. There was something in his voice—low and rough, like gravel dragged slow across velvet—that rooted you there, spine locked, breath shallow.

Behind you, the air thickened. His presence coiled close, just shy of touching, but you could feel it all the same—heat, breath, the heavy pull of him. Every inch of you was trembling, not from cold, but from the unbearable awareness of how close he was. How your body reacted before your mind could protest.

Your eyes stayed locked on the altar ahead, flickering candlelight casting its glow like some holy warning. But you weren’t thinking about prayer anymore.

“You can’t show up like this,” you whispered, though your voice sounded weak even to your own ears. “This place ain’t for you.”

He laughed, soft and mean, like he knew the lie behind your words better than you did. “This place?” he echoed, stepping forward. “This place was built for sinners, darlin’. Not saints. And I ain’t the only one crawlin’ in here needin’ forgiveness.”

You didn’t answer. Couldn't. The scent of him—earth, smoke, iron—slipped into your lungs like sin made breathable.

“You think hidin’ in a church makes you clean?” he murmured, close now, his breath grazing your jaw, making you flinch like you’d been branded. “You think kneelin’ in the dark makes you innocent?”

“I am innocent,” you hissed, though your voice wavered, and your pulse betrayed you—hammering against your throat like a warning bell.

“You were,” he said, and that one word cracked something inside you. “Till you saw what you saw. Till you watched me tear that being apart and didn’t run. Till you started dreamin’ about me.”

Your breath caught. You hated that he was right.

“I didn’t mean to—” you started, but his gaze pinned you before you could finish.

“You did.” He tilted his head, eyes dragging down your throat, over your shaking hands. “Some part of you wanted to. Still does.”

You hated the heat blooming beneath your skin, hated the way your legs felt unsteady. But most of all, you hated how your body leaned toward him—despite everything, because of everything.

“Don’t look at me like that,” you whispered, not sure who you were begging—him, or yourself.

“Like what?” he said, voice low, amused. “Like you’re mine?”

You squeezed your eyes shut, as if darkness could keep him out. But his words pressed deeper, slipping under your skin, planting roots in the soft, secret places you never let anyone touch.

“I ain’t gonna hurt you,” he said, voice gentler now, though it still held that dangerous edge. “Not unless you ask me to.”

And somehow that was worse.

Because you didn’t trust yourself not to ask.

Not with the way your heart was thudding. Not with the heat pooling in your stomach. Not with the hunger he spoke of—your hunger—burning just beneath your skin.

You opened your mouth, but no prayer came.

Never in a million years would you have believed this—him—could take root inside you. That in just a few weeks’ time, you’d be sleeping beside the man who haunted your dreams. That you'd be living for him. Breathing for him.

And the worst part?

You wouldn't even regret it.

You’ve been doing this for months now—slipping away just as the last light dies, sneaking behind your daddy’s back through the gnarly woods that reek of rot and damp earth. The trees close in tight, branches clawing at your skin and clothes like they’re warning you to turn back. It’s scary, sure—but there’s a thrill too, knowing on the other side of those twisted paths waits Remmick.

Now, you’re here with him. His hands are firm on your skin, pulling you close, but your mind drifts away—back to the woods, to the creaking floorboards at home, to the lie you’re living. You think about how long you’ve been sneaking out, how your daddy probably has no idea where you vanish each night. How reckless you’ve been.

The quiet between you hums with something sharp and urgent, but it’s easy to get lost in your own head. Then, just as you start to slip away into your thoughts again, Remmick’s hand lands with a soft slap on your hip—a reminder. The moment snaps back, and it’s only you and him, right here, right now.

His hand cups your cheek, his thumb stroking the curve of your jaw, forcing you to meet his dark, intense gaze. "Eyes on me, darlin'," he commands, his voice a low, possessive rumble that vibrates through your very core. "Focus on me only."

He waits until your gaze is fully locked on his, until the swirling thoughts of home and deceit seem to momentarily recede from your eyes. Only then does he resume the deliberate thrusts that have your body aching and your breath catching in your throat. The sheets beneath you bunch and twist with your movements, the only sound besides your ragged breaths and his low grunts of satisfaction.

His other hand snakes down, his fingers tracing the slick heat between your legs, teasing and tormenting until a whimper escapes your lips. He watches your reaction, a predatory gleam in his eyes, as he continues his slow, agonizing pace. You try to focus on the sensation, on the way his body fills yours, on the raw, undeniable pleasure that threatens to consume you.

He leans down, his lips brushing against your ear. "Forget everything else," he murmurs, his breath hot against your skin. "There's only this." And then his teeth graze your neck, sending a jolt of pure sensation through you, momentarily eclipsing the guilt that gnaws at the edges of your desire.

The graze of his teeth sharpens, becoming a deliberate nip that pulls a gasp from your lips. He lingers there, his breath ghosting over the sensitive skin, before his mouth trails lower, leaving a wet path down the curve of your neck towards your collarbone. You arch beneath him, your hands clutching at his shoulders, the need building with each slow, deliberate movement of his hips.

His fingers, still slick with your arousal, delve deeper, finding the most sensitive nub and stroking it with a practiced rhythm that sends shivers of pure sensation through you. You cry out, your head thrashing against the pillow, the carefully constructed walls of your control beginning to crumble.

"That's it, darlin'," he murmurs against your skin, his voice thick with lust. "Feel it. Feel only this."

He picks up the pace, his thrusts becoming deeper, more insistent. You meet his gaze, your eyes glazed with desire, and see the raw hunger mirrored in his. There's a primal intensity in his movements, a possessiveness that borders on brutal, and yet… it ignites a fire within you that you never knew existed.

His mouth returns to yours, his kiss a savage claiming. His tongue plunges deep, mirroring the insistent rhythm of his body inside you. You taste him, wild and untamed, and the guilt that usually gnaws at you is momentarily drowned out by the overwhelming tide of sensation.

He shifts, his hands sliding beneath your hips, lifting you to meet his thrusts with a deeper, more visceral connection. You can feel the hard ridge of his erection pressing against your core, each stroke sending waves of heat radiating through your body. You cry out again, your voice raw with need, the sound swallowed by his hungry kiss.

The tension coils tighter and tighter within you, a frantic knot of pleasure that threatens to unravel completely. You cling to him, your body slick with sweat, your senses overwhelmed by the feel of his skin against yours, the scent of his arousal, the taste of his kiss.

He senses your release, his movements becoming more urgent, more frantic. He whispers your name, a rough, guttural sound that echoes the primal rhythm of your bodies entwined. And then, the world explodes. A wave of pure, unadulterated pleasure washes over you, shattering the last vestiges of your control. You cry out, your body shuddering around his, your senses consumed by the intense release.

He holds you tight, his body shuddering against yours as he follows you over the edge. You cling to him, your breath coming in ragged gasps, the only sound in the dimly lit shack the frantic beating of your hearts.

His arms are still around you, holding you close in the low light of his bedroom. The sheets are tangled beneath you, and the air is thick with heat and something softer, quieter now. You listen to his breathing — heavy, slowing — the sound of it filling the room like a storm that just passed.

Your body’s still humming, but your mind’s already slipping away.

The bed creaks faintly as he shifts, pulling you tighter, like he can feel the distance in you. His skin is warm against yours, his fingers tracing lazy lines along your spine. But your thoughts drift — to the woods, to the way your boots scraped over roots and leaves as you ran here, the light almost gone. To your daddy, sitting in his chair back home, probably still waiting up with that quiet knowing look he wears when he doesn’t say a word but feels everything.

Remmick presses a kiss to your shoulder, then higher, along the curve of your neck. You don’t flinch, but you don’t lean into it either.

He feels it. You know he does.

“You good?” he asks, voice low against your skin.

You nod, slow. “Yeah.”

But you aren’t.

He waits a beat. Then, when you don’t say more, he brings his hand up and gives you a soft, playful slap on the cheek — enough to snap your attention back to him, to now. His eyes catch yours, unreadable in the dimness.

“Stay with me,” he says.

You swallow and try to smile, but the woods are still in your head. And your daddy’s voice, the one that never needed to be loud to make you feel small, echoes somewhere just beneath your ribs.

His arms are still wrapped around you when the silence starts to press in. The room is steeped in night — heavy curtains drawn, the only light a sliver of moon cutting across the warped floorboards. The heat between your bodies is starting to fade, leaving behind the stickiness of sweat, of blood, of breathless gasps swallowed in secret.

You shift against him, slow and quiet, but his grip doesn’t loosen. Not at first. When it finally does, it’s reluctant. A release not given, but tolerated.

You slip from the bed like a girl sneaking from a coffin, dragging the sheet up with you, wrapping it tight around your body even though there’s no real modesty left between you. You don’t speak. You never do, after.

Your bare feet hit the cold floor. The old wood moans beneath you, and you flinch — not from the sound, but from knowing he’s still watching. You can feel it. That gaze. Heavy. Burning.

Behind you, Remmick shifts. The bed creaks under his weight, the mattress sighing like it’s tired of holding him. You hear the soft, deliberate slide of him dressing — pants first, then the worn leather belt. He moves slow, like he’s buying time. Or maybe savoring it. Savoring you.

You crouch to find your drawers where they were kicked away earlier, near the leg of the nightstand. You bend to pick them up, and that’s when his voice breaks the silence — soft, feeling like something dead whispering in your ear. “Why d’you always run from me after?”

You don’t answer. You pull on your drawers and reach for your shift, laid over the back of the chair like it’s waiting to judge you.

He stands behind you now. You don’t need to turn — the weight of him is all around, like fog off the graveyard, clinging to skin and bone. You try not to look at the mirror on the wall, cracked at the edges. He never casts back.

“You think I don’t see how you look at me?” he says, closer now, his breath brushing the damp skin of your neck. “Like you hate yourself for wantin’ me. Like you’re scared of what I am but keep comin’ back anyway.”

You button your dress with trembling fingers, your throat dry. He doesn’t touch you. Not yet. But you can feel the way he wants to.

“You don’t get it, do you?” His voice stays soft — too soft. “I ain’t just fuckin’ you. I’m keepin’ you. Bit by bit. Night after night. You can lie to your daddy all you want, pretend you’re still his good girl, but you’re mine now. In ways you don’t even understand yet.”

You finally turn. He’s standing just behind you, shirtless still, his pants slung low on his hips, the belt hanging undone like a threat. His eyes gleam in the low light — not red, not glowing. Just wrong. Too deep, too black, like something ancient lives behind them.

“I let you leave,” he says, almost tender. “Ain’t that sweet of me? You walk back through them woods every night, thinkin’ you got a choice. Thinkin’ you’re strong enough to stay away. But you always come back.”

You swallow. “This isn’t—”

He cuts you off by stepping closer, forcing your back against the wall with nothing more than his presence. His hand lifts, slow, and he cups your cheek like he’s handling a vintage doll, his thumb stroking just under your eye.

“You think I couldn’t keep you here?” he whispers. “You think I ain’t strong enough to drag you down into the root cellar and bolt the door shut and keep you there ‘til you beg me to never let you leave again?”

You stare at him, wide-eyed, breath shaking in your chest.

“But I don’t,” he says, voice almost sad. “Because I want you to choose me. I want you to wake up in your daddy’s house with his prayers in your ears and still feel me inside you. I want you sittin’ at his Sunday table with me dripping down between your legs and my name caught in your throat.”

The room is silent again. Still.

Then, slowly, his expression darkens. Shifts.

“You smell like runnin’,” he says, the words curling out of his mouth like smoke. “Like you’re thinkin’ of leavin’ and never comin’ back.”

You don’t speak. You can’t.

He leans in, mouth at your ear. “You do that, and I will come for you. I’ll drag you from your daddy’s arms and make you watch me bleed him dry. I’ll leave his body hangin’ from the church steeple and put a ring on your finger before the sun rises.”

You’re shaking now, tears caught at the corners of your eyes — not from fear. Not just from fear.

Because you know something awful and true. Part of you wants him to. Part of you wants to stop pretending.

You gather your things with slow, shaking hands and back toward the door. He doesn’t follow. Just stands there, watching, always watching.

And as you slip out into the cold, moon-bitten dark — the wind carrying the smell of moss and smoke and something rotting deep in the trees — you already know you’ll come back.

Because you’re his. Even if you hate it. Even if it kills you.

You should’ve known.

You should’ve known when your monthly didn’t come — not the first time, and not the second. Nearly two full moons passed now, and still no blood. Nothing but that hollow, twisting ache deep in your belly. Like your body’s been holding its breath, waiting to tell you what your heart already knows.

You’ve been late before. Once. Maybe twice. But never like this. Not with the way your stomach turns every morning before the sun even breaks, your head light, mouth full of spit and nothing sweet. You wake up gagging some days, clutching your chest like that’ll keep the sickness down.

At first you told yourself it was nerves — the stress of sneaking through those woods, lying to your daddy, the weight of Remmick’s hands and his words clinging to your skin long after you left his bed.

But now? Now there’s no more lying. Not to yourself.

You stand hunched over the basin, breath shallow, eyes hollow in the chipped little mirror above the washstand. Your nightgown clings to your back with sweat, and your hair sticks to your neck from tossing all night, dreaming of hands and teeth and things growing where they shouldn’t.

You press a hand low over your stomach. There’s no bump. Not yet. But it don’t matter. You feel it.

Something’s wrong inside you. Or something’s already taken root.

Your chest tightens. It ain’t just a bastard child. It’s his. Remmick’s. A vampire’s. And your daddy… your daddy would kill you for this. No. He’d kill him. Then you. Maybe not in that order.

You turn away from the mirror, eyes burning. You shouldn’t have kept going back. Should’ve stopped the first time, when his mouth was on your neck and your heart was screaming louder than your breath. But he touched you like he’d die without it. Like you were something sacred and spoiled all at once. And every time you swore it was the last, you found yourself running through those trees again — like you were bewitched.

Maybe you were.

Outside your door, the floor creaks. You freeze.

Your daddy’s up. You can smell the smoke from his pipe — cloves and ash, bitter and thick. The sound of the front room chair groaning under his weight follows, slow and familiar. You know he’s just sitting there, listening, like he always does. Waiting for lies he won’t ask for but will see plain on your face.

You swallow hard. Because you ain’t no maiden anymore— that was certain months ago. And now something unnatural is growing in your belly.

Two weeks after, you left the house like usual.

No dinner, no goodnight. Just the click of the back door easing shut behind you and your boots moving fast across the dirt, swallowing the woods whole with each breathless step. You hadn’t seen Remmick in almost two weeks. Not really. You’d drawn the curtains tight, bolted the windows, let candle stubs burn down to nubs just to avoid the faintest flicker of him finding a way in.

You’d avoided even thinking about him.

But the sickness in the mornings wouldn’t stop. The twisting in your stomach. The missing blood. You counted the days again and again like beads on a rosary, praying they’d add up to anything else. But they never did. Every calculation pointed to the same answer.

And it was his.

You clutched your coat tighter around you as the trees pulled in close, your breath fogging the cold, damp air. The woods felt different tonight—watchful, almost. Like the trees themselves knew something was coming.

His house came into view through the dark. Same as always—crooked chimney, shuttered windows, ivy strangling the porch. You ran to it like something was chasing you.

You didn’t knock. Just pushed the door open and stumbled inside.

He was sitting in that old armchair near the fire, the light casting long shadows across his face. He didn’t look surprised to see you.

His eyes flicked up. That same bottomless black.

“Didn’t think you’d come back,” he said, voice slow and syrup-thick. “Thought maybe you were tryin’ to pretend I was just a fever dream.” You didn’t speak at first. Your hands shook as you closed the door behind you, heart pounding so loud it hurt.

“I’m pregnant,” you said.

The words dropped like lead. No soft preamble. No hesitation. Remmick didn’t move. Not for a long moment.

Then he stood. It was slow. Precise. Like a predator uncoiling.

He stepped toward you, each step so quiet it didn’t feel real. And when he reached you, he didn’t touch you right away. Just stood close enough that his presence swallowed you whole.

His eyes searched yours, and something behind them shifted. Something deep and furious and holy in its devotion. “You’re carryin’ my child,” he murmured.

It wasn’t a question.

You nodded. Barely.

His hand rose to cup your face, his thumb brushing the corner of your mouth. “You came all this way to tell me?”

You pulled your face back. “I don’t want it.”

The room went still.

The warmth bled out of the fire. The shadows deepened.

“What?” he said, voice a low rasp.

“I can’t—Remmick, I can’t have this baby. I can’t raise a vampire’s child while livin’ under my daddy’s roof. He’ll know. He’ll—he’ll kill me. He’ll kill you.”

Something inside him snapped.

His grip tightened—not enough to hurt, but enough to scare. Enough to remind you what he was.

“You think I’d let that old bastard lay a hand on you?” he hissed, the softness gone now. “You think I’d let anyone touch you or what’s mine?”

You shook your head, tears burning hot behind your eyes. “Please, just listen—”

“No,” he said, louder. “You listen.”

He turned away, dragging a hand down his face like he was trying to hold himself together.

“You came to me,” he muttered. “All them nights, you came to me. I didn’t force you. I didn’t take nothin’ that wasn’t offered. And now you wanna act like this baby is some kinda mistake?”

He looked back at you, something wild behind his eyes now.

“I should drag you back to that cellar and keep you there ‘til this child’s born. You think I wouldn’t? You think I won’t?”

Your breath caught in your throat.

He stepped forward again, slow and furious.

“You love your daddy?” he asked, voice dangerous and low.

Your eyes widened. “Remmick—”

“I said, do you love him?”

You nodded, shaking. “Yes. Please don’t—”

“Then you’ll keep this baby,” he said, final. “You’ll carry it. You’ll bring it into this world. Or I will put him in the ground and make you watch me do it.”

Tears slipped down your cheeks now, silent and fast.

He moved close again, gentling for the first time in minutes. His hand came back to your face, his thumb wiping a tear. “You don’t gotta be scared of me, sugar. I’ll protect you. I’ll protect our child. Ain’t nobody gonna hurt either of you. Not while I’m breathin’.”

You didn’t speak. You couldn’t.

You were trapped between the life you’d always known and the dark, magnetic force of him—a thing that was never fully alive, but more real than anything else you’d ever touched.

Remmick pulled you to him and held you there, your face pressed against his chest, his voice like a curse whispered in prayer.

“You’re mine,” he said. “And now they’ll all know it.”

And as the fire popped low behind you and the trees howled just outside the walls, you knew—one way or another, you weren’t leaving this.

Not anymore.

[phantomgiggler]

As if It’s Heaven’s Gate

one-shot

Remmick x fem!reader

summary: You take a job as a live-in nurse for the town’s most infamous recluse—Remmick, the strange, soft-spoken man hidden away in a rotting Victorian farmhouse no one dares approach. Locals warn you not to touch him. Not to linger after dark. But when you meet him, he’s all big eyes and broken manners, trembling hands and gold chain glinting at his throat. Touch-starved, tender, and ruinously ancient. He flinches when you reach for him—and sobs when you don’t. You drop to your knees, and he forgets the taste of blood. He’s already yours before you ever put your mouth on him.

wc: 8.5k

a/n: holy 2k followers batman!! I wanna thank everyone for the outpouring of love and support my work has gotten over the last month, truly insane, still processing, gonna release something soon as a massive thank you <333 based off this post, I'm sure I'm not the first but I haven't come across any fic of reader going down on Remmick yet and I have a great need to suck that man's dick until his stomach caves in like a Capri-sun (someone revoke my internet access) so here we are. Thank you to @ddlydevotion for finding my photo refs. Dedicated to Sam @matrixfangs for not only beta reading this but also requesting I incorporate Jack's cross tattoo into one of my fics!! title from the song too sweet by hozier.

warnings: vampirism, oral sex (m!receiving), d/s dynamic, begging, spit kink, hair pulling, praise kink, humiliation kink (soft), drool, overstimulation, ruined man behavior, touch starvation, religious imagery, cross kink?, control kink, sub!remmick, somniloquy, emotional degradation (tender), slight dacryphilia, mildly unhinged reader, dark romance, southern gothic atmosphere, implied violence, implied murder (offscreen)

I am doing away with my tag list because it's getting a little long so I recommend turning on notifications if you don't wanna miss when I post c:

likes, comments, and reblogs always appreciated, enjoy!!

The bus wheezed like it was exhaling its last breath, sputtering to a stop in the middle of nowhere. Dust kicked up around its wheels as the brakes hissed and the door creaked open with a reluctant sigh.

You stepped off into the heat—that heavy, wet Southern heat that sticks to your skin like tacky glue, curling into your clothes and dragging its teeth across the back of your neck.

The sun hung fat and merciless in a sky bleached bone-white, cicadas crying loud enough to shake the treetops. Sweat bloomed across your collarbone before your boots even hit the dirt.

It wasn’t real pavement, not out here. Just cracked-red earth, dry and crumbling, veined with weeds and the roots of things too stubborn to die. The main road—if you could call it that—was lined with rusted fence posts, bowed under the weight of creeping kudzu and wire that hadn’t held anything in years.

The town itself looked like it had been forgotten in a drawer: sun-wilted storefronts with paint peeling off in strips, glass windows clouded with grime, and a gas station that hadn’t changed its prices since Prohibition.

A man with no teeth watched you from a bench outside a bait shop. A girl gnawed a peach in the shade of a feed store awning, juice dripping down her wrist as she stared without blinking.

No one smiled. No one welcomed you. Just silence and the shrill, electric whine of summer bugs, loud as a curse.

You adjusted your grip on the suitcase handle—leather, secondhand, the clasp a little loose—and stepped forward, your boots crunching on gravel as the bus hissed again and pulled away behind you. The sudden stillness in its absence made your ears ring. Somewhere down the road, a dog barked once, then went quiet.

The driver who’d agreed to take you the last few miles was late. Or not coming. You checked the watch on your wrist—scratched crystal, the hour hand a little jittery—and waited. The skin on your shoulders prickled. Not from the heat. From the eyes.

They were still staring.

A woman in a gingham dress crossed herself. Didn’t stop walking. Didn’t look at you twice.

Then a voice—cracked with age and smoke, coming from just over your shoulder—broke the thick, humid quiet: “That house got ghosts in it.”

You turned. It was the man from the bench, leaning forward now, elbows on his knees, eyes milky with cataracts. He spat to the side, aimed like he’d done it a thousand times before.

“He don’t come to town. Don’t let him touch you, honey.”

Before you could ask what the hell that meant, the groan of old suspension and rattling chains cut through the air.

A pickup truck, wheezing like the bus, pulled up in a cloud of red dust. Faded forest green with rust eating away the sides and a crooked license plate hanging on by one bolt. The man driving it looked as old as the truck—tan leather skin, yellowed shirt, a straw hat pulled low.

He didn’t say your name. Just nodded once. Like he already knew.

You climbed in beside him, the vinyl seat burning hot through your skirt. Neither of you spoke. The ride out of town was long and winding, lined with cypress trees and fields that had gone to seed. Every now and then, the man would spit out the window. You watched the land unravel into nothing—just swaying grass, rusted scarecrows, and buzzards perched on telephone wires.

Then, after what felt like forever, the truck crested a hill.

And there it was.

The house.

Aging Victorian farmhouse, two stories tall, white paint weathered to the color of bone. Porch bowed in the middle like a snapped spine. Shutters hanging off their hinges. The front door was so dark it looked like a hole punched through the front of the house. Vines crept up the sides like veins, crawling toward the chimneys and windows like they wanted to choke it. Or hold it down.

The iron gates at the front were rusted and tall, still latched shut. You could make out glass-paned windows that looked hollow, staring out at the road like eyes that hadn’t blinked in years.

The man parked, killed the engine, and didn’t move. You stepped out. Shut the door behind you. He didn’t offer to help with the suitcase. Just lit a cigarette, slow and deliberate.

“He sleeps durin’ the day. House is yours ‘til sundown. Don’t linger on the porch.”

You waited for more.

He didn’t offer it.

He put the truck in gear and reversed down the dirt road without another word, vanishing behind the veil of oak and kudzu until there was nothing but eerie birdsong and your own breath.

The wind kicked up. Dry. Hot. Mean. The house creaked—just once. Like it had been holding its breath too.

And then…the front door groaned open.

The open door breathed out a draft of air—cool and heavy, smelling of cedarwood, old paper, and something vaguely sweet, like dried flowers pressed between book pages. It curled around your ankles like mist.

You stepped forward. The porch groaned beneath your feet, boards soft with age, and for one heart-pounding moment you thought the whole thing might give. But it held. Just barely. The screen door had been ripped clean off its hinges long ago. The wooden door itself was open wide now, dark as pitch inside.

You crossed the threshold. The world behind you dropped away like a curtain falling shut.

The house swallowed sound. Swallowed light. It was dim and old in the way caves are old—cooler than it had any right to be, shadows pooling like ink in the corners. Lace curtains yellowed with age hung limp at the windows. The wallpaper had peeled back in strips, revealing ribs of rotting wood beneath. A hallway stretched long ahead of you, lined with crooked picture frames and closed doors.

Your hand skimmed the wall, trying to find your balance. The place felt like it was holding its breath.

Then you saw him.

He stepped out of the parlor like he wasn’t used to being seen, like he expected to vanish the moment your eyes landed on him.

Remmick.

And he was…nothing like you expected.

Not some grizzled recluse with wild hair and yellow teeth, not a hissing, skeletal shut-in like the townsfolk seemed to imagine. No. He was—

Broad.

His shoulders were built like a man who used to work with his hands, chest thick under the open collar of a blue-and-white pinstriped button-up, the sleeves messily rolled to his elbows. Beneath it, a threadbare white wife-beater clung to his torso like second skin. His jeans were dark, faded, worn at the knees, and he was barefoot—toes pale, dust smudged across the tops of his feet, like he hadn’t stepped outside in years.

His hair was short and messy, soft-looking, brown with uneven bangs that fell just above his brows in a way that felt almost boyish, almost accidental. Not styled. Just…unbothered. Untamed. Like he’d dragged his fingers through it and given up halfway.

And then his eyes.

Blue. Too blue. Not sky-blue. Not ocean-blue. The blue of cracked porcelain. The kind of blue that shouldn’t exist in nature. They looked almost glassy, as if someone had painted them on too carefully.

You didn’t know that they were artificial, not yet, like a predator blending in with its surroundings to fool the naive prey. That the real eyes were red as flame and waiting underneath.

But even so, you felt it.

Something inhuman. Something primordial.

You didn’t know what you were seeing. But you knew it wasn’t just a man and yet—you weren’t scared.

He froze when he saw you. Like he’d walked into a memory.

His mouth parted slightly. His hands hung at his sides, rough-knuckled, long-fingered. One of them twitched, just once, like he meant to lift it—and then stopped. Like the very thought of touching was…too much.

His voice came slow, thick. Raspy from disuse. “Evenin’.”

You blinked. “Hi.”

That same hand moved to scratch the back of his neck—awkward, almost boyish. He ducked his head slightly, eyes flitting away from yours. His lips pressed together like he wasn’t sure whether or not to smile, and then decided against it.

“I, uh…I didn’t expect you so soon.”

There was a tremble in his voice, barely there beneath the deep drawl. But it was there. Not nervous. Not quite. Just…unused. He sounded like someone who didn’t speak unless he had to. Someone who had been silent for too long.

You stepped forward, instinctive. He flinched.

It was subtle—just a twitch of his shoulder, the stiffening of his posture, a faint shift backward—but your body caught it. Your eyes caught it. His eyes never left you.

“I’m your nurse,” you said softly, giving your name, your voice feather-light.

He nodded. Still didn’t move closer.

There was a thin gold chain around his neck, peeking out from beneath his collar. It caught the faint light from the window and glinted, just for a second, brushing against the pale hollow of his throat when he leaned forward slightly. Like it had weight. Like it mattered.

You took a breath, trying to read him. He was watching you the way a starving man watches a feast. Not greedy. Not desperate.

Haunted.

Like he was talking to someone who no longer walked this mortal coil.

“Where should I…?” you asked, fingers curling slightly around the strap of your bag.

He startled. “Oh. Right. Room’s upstairs. I, uh—” he hesitated, scratched at his forearm where the button-up had slipped back just far enough to reveal the edge of a vein that looked darker than it should—“I ain’t had company in a while.”

“How long?” you asked.

He blinked at you. Like the question hadn’t occurred to him before.

Then, just as softly, with a note of old sorrow so quiet you nearly missed it, he answered:

“Too long.”

He turned, shoulders shifting beneath the thin cotton of his shirt, and motioned for you to follow. He didn’t offer to carry your bag. Not out of rudeness—it was something else. A hesitation that clung to him like sweat in the air.

The hallway creaked under your steps, your boots heavy against the worn floorboards. His bare feet moved near-silent, just the soft pad of skin on old wood. Dust stirred where he passed, curling like smoke in his wake. You watched the muscles move beneath his shirt—the way the thin material clung to his back, the curve of his shoulders, the faint outline of his spine shifting when he turned a corner. You could almost imagine him once being a laborer, maybe a carpenter, with those thick forearms and that sunken posture—like he hadn’t stood tall in years.

He didn’t look back at you until he reached the stairs.

“They’re steep,” he warned, voice low, accent thickening just a touch like the words were sticking to his tongue. “House wasn’t built for comfort. Not anymore.”

You followed him anyway.

The staircase was narrow and curved, wood darkened by age and use. The banister wobbled when you touched it. His hand hovered near the wall as he climbed, but he didn’t steady himself on anything—as if he was afraid to touch the house too long.

The landing opened into a hallway lit only by a single cracked window. Dust motes danced in the beam of sunlight, and Remmick avoided it completely, skirting the edge like a shadow. You didn’t think much of it. Just heat, maybe. Or habit.

He stopped in front of a door at the far end. It was plain—faded green paint, iron handle gone dull with rust. He opened it for you but didn’t step inside.

“Room’s clean,” he said, still not meeting your eyes. “Did it myself this mornin’.”

You peered in.

Small, but tidy. The bed was old but made, white sheets tucked tight. There was a vanity with a tarnished mirror, a small closet door that hung slightly crooked, and a bedside table with a worn oil lamp and what looked like a book left behind years ago. A hand towel had been folded and left on the pillow.

“You didn’t have to do that,” you murmured.

“I did,” he said simply. Then, quieter: “Didn’t want you thinkin’ I’d leave it…unfit.”

He stood there, barefoot and awkward, hands half-curled at his sides like he didn’t know what to do with them. His bangs had fallen deeper over his eyes, hiding them. But you saw the shape of them behind the strands—wide, almost deer-like.

He looked like he didn’t know whether to apologize for being alive or thank you for showing up.

You stepped inside. Set your bag down. When you turned to speak again, he was already halfway down the hall.

He hadn’t made a sound.

Later, after you’d unpacked and washed your face in the cracked porcelain basin, you made your way down to the kitchen, following the faint clatter of dishware. You paused at the doorway.

He stood at the sink, back to you, sleeves rolled higher now—his forearms dusted in pale hair, thick with muscle, the veins just barely raised under the skin. The gold chain shifted at his throat as he rinsed out an old tin mug. He didn’t seem to notice you.

The light from the window cut across the floor, a bright bar of late-afternoon sun. It stopped just inches from where he stood, and he didn’t cross it. His toes curled against the edge like it was a line he couldn’t breach.

You finally spoke. “Do you want any help?”

He jumped.

Not violently—just a twitch. His shoulders drew in, spine straightening, as if your voice had reached into him and plucked something loose.

Then he slowly turned. His eyes—still too blue—met yours, and for a second you thought he looked guilty. Like he’d been caught doing something shameful.

“No,” he said, swallowing. “But…thank you.”

You stepped forward anyway.

He froze. Again.

“I’m just getting a glass,” you said, brushing past him, your fingers grazing the inside of his forearm by accident—just a whisper of skin against skin.

He flinched. Actually flinched. Not hard. Not violently. But enough to feel like a blow. You pulled back, brows furrowing.

“I didn’t mean to—”

“It’s fine,” he said quickly, voice hushed and low and cracking like dry wood underfoot. “You ain’t done nothin’ wrong.”

You turned your head, studied him.

“Do you not like to be touched?”

A pause.

He looked down at the floor. His hands opened and closed once.

“I just…ain’t used to it, is all.”

Not used to it. Not anymore. Not in a long, long time.

You felt something tighten in your chest then, strange and aching. A tether drawing taut. You didn’t know what had happened to him. Why the town feared him. Why the sunlight seemed to singe the air around him. Why his voice trembled when you spoke too softly.

But you did know this:

He was alone.

And he had been alone for a very, very long time.

The glass was cloudy. Not dirty—just old, like everything else in this house. When you turned the tap, the pipes groaned in protest before surrendering a stream of lukewarm water. You sipped, then leaned against the counter, your eyes sliding back to him.

Remmick hadn’t moved.

Still by the sink, shoulder just shy of that stripe of sunlight, arms stiff at his sides like he didn’t know how to stand. The water dripped from the mug he held. A single droplet clung to the edge of his knuckle and then slid down, curling over his wrist.

He stared at the floor. At your boots. At anything except you.

“You live here alone?” you asked.

His head tilted slightly, as though the question had startled him. He nodded.

“For how long?”

A beat.

“…Long.”

He didn’t elaborate. Just that one syllable, spoken like a stone dropped into a well. No echo. No follow-up.

You took another sip. “Locals said you don’t like company.”

His lip twitched—almost a smile, but not quite. It was more like…a ghost of a smirk, something he might’ve worn naturally once, long ago, before it fell out of practice.

“I reckon they said worse’n that.”

“They said not to let you touch me.”

That made him flinch for real.

A sharp intake of breath, his spine straightening, knuckles whitening around the tin cup. He didn’t look at you. Didn’t speak. But the shame bled off him like heat, pouring into the space between you until the air turned too thick to breathe.

You waited.

And when he still didn’t say anything, you set your glass down with a quiet clink and asked gently:

“Why would they say that?”

He looked at you then.

Really looked.

Eyes wide. Blue. Too blue. Glassy in the way that porcelain is glassy—shiny and fragile and false. A color that didn’t feel real, not on a living thing. His brow was furrowed like the question pained him.

“…They scared,” he said softly. “Always been. But fear makes folks say things that ain’t...whole.”

“Is it not true?”

His throat bobbed. That thin gold chain moved with the motion, catching what little light the room offered. His jaw tensed, a tick pulsing just beneath the skin. When he finally spoke, it was so quiet you almost missed it.

“I don’t hurt people who don’t deserve it.”

He said it like it was a rule, not a defense. Something sacred. Something self-imposed and unshakable.

“I didn’t think you did,” you murmured.

That made him pause. Head tilted again. Studying you like you were a puzzle with too many pieces.

“Then why’d you come?”

You gave a small shrug. “They said you needed help.”

“And you believed ‘em?”

“I believe you now.”

That silenced him.

He set the tin mug down gently, almost reverently. The sound was soft. Barely there. Like he’d learned to be careful with his strength. Or maybe he was just scared of breaking things.

“I ain’t had a nurse before,” he said. “Didn’t think I needed one.”

“Well,” you said, tone light, “I’m here now.”

Another pause.

He nodded, still not smiling. Just…accepting. Resigned. Like he’d already decided you were temporary.

A flicker of something passed behind his eyes then. Regret. Fear. Hunger. You couldn’t tell. But it made you step closer. And again—he moved back. Just a step. Not far. Not fast. But enough.

Like your nearness singed. You didn’t take it personally. You were starting to understand: it wasn’t you he didn’t trust. It was himself.

“Can I ask your name?” you said, after a beat.

He blinked. Then, slowly, he answered:

“…Remmick.”

You repeated it once, soft. Let it settle. His breath hitched. And just for a second—less than a breath, less than a blink—his eyes flashed red.

Bright. Brief. Burning.

Gone just as fast.

You didn’t say anything. You weren’t even sure you’d seen it. But he turned away like he had something to hide.

“I’ll, uh…be out on the porch. If you need me.” His voice cracked again. “Dinner’s in the oven.”

“Remmick.”

He stilled.

“Thank you.”

His hand touched the doorframe. Just the tips of his fingers. Then he left without looking back, the gold chain glinting once over the curve of his collarbone as he slipped into the shadows again.

You didn’t know what you’d just seen. But you knew you weren’t afraid. Not of him. And not of whatever was buried beneath those woeful eyes.

The dining room was crooked.

The long table—mahogany once, now dulled and water-stained—sat slightly uneven, legs warped from heat and time. One chair at the end had been worn smooth with use. The others were still draped in white sheets, untouched, forgotten. The chandelier above was dust-choked, only one bulb flickering faintly. Shadows wavered across the ceiling like they were alive.

Remmick was already seated when you stepped in, spine stiff, hands folded neatly in his lap. Not touching the silverware. Not even looking at the plate in front of him. A modest meal—roasted potatoes, black-eyed peas, cornbread—steamed in a careful arrangement across two plates, though yours was a little fuller.

He’d set it out like it was a ritual. Like it mattered. His eyes jumped to yours the moment you crossed the threshold. That same stare—wide, dark in the low light, too big for his face—gave him the look of something puppyish, soft in a way that didn’t match the rest of him.

“I hope it’s alright,” he said quickly, words too fast, too eager. “I cooked it this mornin’. Tried to keep it warm without dryin’ it out.”

You slid into the chair across from him. “It smells good.”

His shoulders relaxed a fraction, like a wire had gone slack. “Ain’t had much reason to cook for two.”

You took a bite, slowly. It was simple—salt, butter, heat. No herbs. No flair. But it was made with care. You could taste that.

Across from you, Remmick didn’t eat. He watched you instead.

You didn’t comment on it at first, but when you finally glanced up, fork paused midair, he looked away too quickly. A flicker of red threatened behind his lashes—gone before you could be sure.

“You’re not hungry?” you asked gently.

He hesitated. “Not for that.”

You blinked.

He flinched. “I mean—nothin’ wrong with it. I just—I don’t eat much. Not lately.”

You let it go. For now.

The silence that followed wasn’t hostile, but it wasn’t easy either. It strained under its own weight. Not tension between you, but the kind that comes when someone’s forgotten how to be in a room with another person. He kept shifting in his seat—shoulders tight, hands flexing slightly in his lap, like he had to remind himself to stay still.

You tried again.

“So…you’ve lived here a long time?”

He nodded. “Since before the war.”

“Which one?”

His lips twitched. “Exactly.”

You huffed a soft laugh. “Do you ever leave?”

Another long pause. He looked down at the table, fingers tracing the edge of a scratch in the wood.

“I used to,” he said. “Town was smaller then. Or maybe it just felt that way.”

“You don’t go anymore?”

“I scare folks.” He said it plainly. No self-pity. Just fact. “And I don’t…do well in the sun.”

You watched the way he said it—carefully. Intentionally vague. Like he was testing how much he could say without scaring you off.

“I noticed,” you murmured.

His eyes lifted again. In the dim lighting, they looked almost black, shadows swallowing all the unnatural blue. The wide shape of them gave him a look so innocent it was disarming—a big-eyed, vulnerable softness, like a boy too shy to ask for what he needed.

“I’m not scared of you,” you added.

He swallowed hard. The gold chain at his collarbone shifted.

“You should be,” he said softly. “But I’m glad you’re not.”

The food sat cooling between you.

You noticed he kept glancing at your hands—how they moved, how they curled around your fork, how they pressed briefly to your chest when you swallowed water. He didn’t leer. Didn’t ogle. But he watched with the intensity of someone who’d gone without touch so long, he’d forgotten what warmth looked like.

“Do you miss it?” you asked.

He looked up sharply. “Miss what?”

“Conversation. Company.”

He blinked like you’d hit him.

“Yes,” he said. Just that. No hesitation. Voice cracking around the edge.

Then, quieter:

“I try not to. But yes.”

You sat with that for a beat.

“I could talk more,” you offered, a faint smile tugging at your mouth. “Or less. If you’d rather quiet.”

He shook his head, too fast. “No—no, I like it. I…I like your voice.”

You blinked. Your cheeks went warm.

He blinked too, startled at himself. “Shit—I mean—not like that. Just. It’s nice. I ain’t heard anything like it in…”

He trailed off. His ears had gone pink.

You laughed gently. “You’re a little out of practice, huh?”

“I’m fuckin’ terrible,” he muttered, half to himself. Then, with a glance at you: “Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” you said. “It’s nice. You’re…nice.”

He stared at you like he didn’t know what to do with that word. And then, without warning, a loud creak echoed from somewhere deeper in the house. The pipes moaned. The lights flickered.

You jumped.

Remmick didn’t move. But the red flashed again in his eyes—just for a blink, just enough to raise the hairs on your arms.

“Old house,” he murmured.

“Right.”

But he was staring down the hallway now, like he heard something you couldn’t. His jaw clenched. One hand curled tight against his knee, as if fighting the urge to stand.

“Is it safe?” you asked, your voice dipping instinctively into something wary.

His eyes cut to yours.

And something about the way he looked at you then—those big, dark, wide eyes still soft as a dog’s, still scared to ask too much—made your breath catch.

“With me?” he said.

A beat.

Then, softer:

“Always.”

The house changed at night.

It didn’t creak. It breathed—slow and hollow, like the walls had lungs of their own. The old wood carried footsteps in strange directions. Voices turned inward. Time unspooled.

You lay in bed, still dressed, still wired, the heat slick on the back of your neck. The lamp on your bedside table cast a low, amber glow across the ceiling. Somewhere outside, a whippoorwill called once and went quiet.

The room smelled like lavender soap and old cotton. The fan in the corner ticked every fifth rotation. You hadn’t seen Remmick since dinner.

He hadn’t said goodnight. Not that you blamed him.

He’d looked like he wanted to linger. Like his legs didn’t quite want to carry him away. But something in him—something knotted deep—had yanked him back into the dark, like a leash.

Still, you thought of him as you lay there. The way his eyes kept dropping to your hands. The way his voice cracked when he spoke too kindly. The way he watched you like he hadn’t watched another soul in decades—and didn’t know if he was allowed to.

You didn’t mean to doze. But the silence folded over you like a sheet.

And then—

You heard it.

Low. Fragile. Muffled.

A sound curling up through the floorboards.

You blinked awake, heart ticking faster, every hair on your arms rising before your mind even caught up. You sat up slowly. The fan ticked again.

And again, that sound.

A moan.

Male. Soft. Throaty.

Followed by something rougher. Shaped by a tongue and a mouth. Words.

You slid from the bed, bare feet ghosting over the cool floor. Pressed your palm to the wall. Leaned close.

The voice—Remmick’s voice—was speaking. But not English. Something old. It came in broken fragments. Whispered. Half-strangled. And aching.

“A chuisle…mo chuisle, mo chroí…”

(My pulse…my pulse, my heart…)

The wood under your fingers thrummed.

“Táid mo lámha ag crith…Dia, tá brón orm…”

(My hands are shaking…God, I’m sorry…)

A sound followed—wet. Guttural. Like he’d tried to breathe through a sob and swallowed it.

You stepped back, heart rabbiting, heat pooling low in your belly—not from fear, but from something else.

The need in that voice. The loneliness. The way the words clung to his throat like they hurt coming out.

And then—

A moan. Sharp. Broken open.

“Lig dom é a mhothú… lig dom tú a mhothú…”

(Let me feel it…let me feel you…)

You were rooted to the floor, bare toes curling against the wood as something bloomed low in your abdomen—hot and needy and shameful in its intensity. Your thighs pressed together before you even realized you’d done it.

He sounded desperate. Not sexual—not entirely. But starved. Ragged.

Destroyed.

Like he was begging for something he didn’t think he deserved to have, not even in sleep.

“Tá tú anseo…tá tú fíor…ná fág mé…”

(You’re here…you’re real…don’t leave me…)

The words were choked now. Slurred. Drenched in a broken kind of longing. You didn’t mean to press your palm flat against the wall. Didn’t mean to close your eyes.

Didn’t mean to whisper: “I’m here.”

But you did.

And somehow, the sounds stopped. Not abruptly. Just…slowed. Faded.

As if he'd heard you.

As if, wherever he was in that dream, the presence of you at the wall soothed something raw and ancient inside him.

The air stilled. No more moaning. No more whispers. Only quiet. You stood there for a moment longer, breath shallow, chest tight. Then turned back to the bed.

And as you crawled beneath the covers, something inside you whispered—

He wasn’t dreaming of just anyone. He was dreaming of you.

You didn’t sleep long.

When you woke again, the air was different. Thicker.

Your body was heavy with it, sunk into the mattress, heart drumming in your ears like you were already in motion. The fan had stopped ticking. The lamp had gone out. A soft glow slanted in through the hallway—a light left on downstairs, maybe. Or—

No.

Someone had turned it on.

You sat up slowly. The floorboards creaked outside your door. Once. Twice. A pause. Then a knock. Soft. Barely there.

Your stomach flipped.

“Yeah?” you called, voice still sleep-rough, soft enough that he could ignore it if he needed to.

But he didn’t. The door opened a crack. And there he was.

Remmick.

Still barefoot.

Still dressed the same—pinstriped button-up wrinkled from sleep, sleeves rolled to the elbows, suspenders hanging loose at his sides. His hair was mussed now, falling harder into his face, and his chest rose and fell beneath the thin white wife-beater like he’d climbed stairs too fast. Or hadn’t been breathing right since sundown.

He didn’t cross the threshold. Not at first.

He stood there like a man unsure of his place in the world—a broad shadow outlined in gold from the hallway light, wide-eyed and fidgeting, arms at his sides like he didn’t trust himself to lift them.

“Sorry,” he said, voice raw. “Didn’t mean to wake you.”

“You didn’t.”

He hesitated.

Then: “Can I…?”

He didn’t finish the sentence. But his eyes flicked toward the inside of the room—dark and private and unthreatening—and you understood.

You nodded once. “Yeah.”

He stepped in.

Carefully. Like the floor might bite him.

The door shut behind him with a click that echoed louder than it should have. He stood near the dresser, eyes darting—not in panic, but like he was looking for something to anchor himself to. His fingers worried the hem of his sleeve. His shoulders were hunched, defensive, vulnerable despite the width of them.

His eyes—dark in this light, wide and glassy—looked almost wet. Puppyish. Devastating.

“I heard you,” you said quietly. “Last night.”

He stiffened.

“I didn’t mean to,” you added. “I just…couldn’t sleep.”

His jaw flexed. His throat bobbed. He didn’t look at you.

“You were speaking in another language.”

“Gaelic,” he muttered, almost like he was ashamed of it. “From…before.”

“Before what?”

He didn’t answer. Instead, he stepped closer. His hand twitched at his side.

“I didn’t know I was talkin’,” he said. “I don’t—usually.”

“You sounded upset.”

“I was.”

You waited.

Then, just above a whisper:

“I was dreamin’ of you.”

The room tilted. Your breath caught.

He raised his eyes then—still that soft, drowning dark, still wide like he wasn’t sure if he was allowed to say your name, let alone admit this.

“I know it ain’t right,” he murmured, voice hoarse, almost breaking. “But I’ve been here so long. Been quiet so long. And then you—” His breath hitched. “You come in here like you’re made of light. Like you belong. And I don’t know what to do with that.”

You stood slowly.

He didn’t move. He watched you with that same broken hunger, like he’d already decided you were too good for him, but couldn’t stop himself from needing you anyway.

“You’re shaking,” you said.

He glanced down. His hands were trembling. You stepped closer. He didn’t flinch this time.

But he didn’t touch you either. Just stood there—shoulders tight, breath shallow, like if he touched you, you’d vanish.

“I ain’t touched anyone in so long,” he whispered. “And I keep thinkin’ about what they said. About me. About my hands. That I ruin things.”

You reached up, slowly, brushing your fingertips just above his collarbone—where the thin gold chain clung to his skin.

He gasped like it burned. You didn’t pull away.

“You didn’t ruin this.”

His eyes fluttered shut. His lip trembled. A sound caught in his throat—half a sob, half a moan—as he leaned forward, forehead just barely grazing yours.

“Tell me not to,” he whispered. “Tell me to leave, and I will. But if you don’t—if you don’t say it—I swear to God, I’m gonna fall to my knees.”

The air between you crackled.

And his voice dropped, Irish blooming up from the roots of him like something ancient and helpless:

“Cuir do lámha orm…ná tabhair uaim thú…”

(Put your hands on me…don’t take yourself away from me…)

You didn’t speak at first. Didn’t move either.

Just breathed—slow and even, like you were the calm center of a storm, and he was every desperate gust of wind trying to press against your skin.

Remmick stood there, trembling. Not from fear. From need. It curled off him like steam, thick and desperate, clinging to the air between you. His pupils were wide, swallowing the color of his irises until they looked nearly black, and his lips parted like he wanted to say more, to beg, to confess—but didn’t know how to start.

You reached for him.

He gasped—actually gasped—when your fingers slid up the open placket of his button-up, brushing the edge of his white ribbed wife-beater. You felt the tremor through him, all the way down. His chest was warm and solid, rising and falling like he was trying not to pant.

Your hands smoothed over his shoulders, palms splaying against the thick muscle hidden beneath soft cotton. And then, softly—gently, like it was a kindness—you pushed him.

He let you.

Without resistance, without question, he backed up until the backs of his knees hit the edge of the bed, and then he sank down like he didn’t know how to carry his own weight anymore. He sat there, breath shallow, eyes wide and wet and locked on you like you were the moon and he hadn’t seen the sky in a hundred years.

You stood between his knees. Tilted his chin up with just two fingers under his jaw.

“Hands to yourself,” you ordered, soft yet firm.

His breath hitched. His fingers dug into the comforter on either side of him, white-knuckled and obedient.

You watched the way he fought his own instinct—fought it like it pained him. He wanted to touch you. God, did he want to. It rolled off him in waves. His thighs were tense, knees spread wide, shirt wrinkled where your hands had touched him. He looked wrecked already.

“Y-you sure?” he asked, voice cracking like shaky glass under the burgeoning weight of desperation.

“I didn’t ask for your hands,” you said. “Not yet.”

His throat bobbed. The gold chain swayed at the base of his throat as he nodded—once, sharp, frantic.

“Okay,” he breathed. “Okay, I—yeah, I can do that. I’ll be good.”

You smiled, slow and soft and wicked.

“I know you will.”

He whimpered. Actually whimpered. A soft, strangled sound pulled from the depths of him, one he didn’t seem prepared for.

His hair had fallen over his brow again, mussed and curling faintly with sweat at his temples. You brushed it back, deliberately slow. He didn’t lean into the touch—he melted under it. His lashes fluttered. His lips parted.

“You’ve really gone this long?” you murmured, thumb stroking the sharp line of his trembling cheekbone.

His voice was barely audible.

“Thirteen hundred years.”

You blinked. He looked away, ashamed.

“I feed when I have to,” he said, “but touch? Mouths? Skin? That kinda closeness?” He shook his head, jaw tight. “Not since—fuck. Before the plague hit London.”

You stared at him, stunned.

“You’re starved.”

He looked back at you with those wide, dark, pleading eyes, red bleeding into his pupils like a fresh laceration, like a man who's learned to lick his wounds clean in silence finally cracking open wide and letting you see the most vulnerable parts of him.

“I’m starvin’.”

You nodded, slow and understanding, letting your hand fall away from his face.

“Then sit still, Remmick,” you murmured, hushed, like you were afraid to shatter the silence. “And let me feed you.”

His breath shuddered out of him like you’d punched it from his lungs. His hands curled tighter in the sheets. His voice was hoarse, shaking, with the faintest Irish crack as he whispered:

“A ghrá…táim i do lámha…”

(My love…I’m in your hands…)

You stayed standing between his knees, just looking at him, because even if you didn't know what those words meant, you could feel them carve into your soul like a brand.

And Remmick—God help him—let you. Didn’t dare breathe too deep, didn’t dare move a single muscle. He was shaking with it. With restraint. With want. With that terrible, ancient hunger not just for blood, but for closeness, for skin-on-skin, for the obscene luxury of being touched.

Your fingers reached for him. He twitched.

Not in fear. In anticipation. His lips parted, a fine strand of spit hanging off one corner, catching in the gold glow of the hallway light behind you. It glistened, trailing down toward his chin before pooling at the dip beneath his lower lip—thick, warm, a little foamy, and wholly instinctual. His breath came in short, shallow bursts now, as if his body was preparing for something it didn’t fully understand.

You slid his suspenders off the broad slope of his shoulders first, snapping one against his pec, feeling arousal pool into your cunt like molten hot lava when he whimpers at the pleasant sting of it, letting the thin scraps of fabric fall down beside his hips.

Then you undid the first button of his shirt. Then the next. And the next. Slow. Deliberate. Never breaking eye contact.

Remmick’s eyes were huge in the dark—dark and shiny, wide like a dog waiting to be called forward, like he’d sink his teeth into the floor just for a word from you. Sweat pearled at his temples. His thighs spread slightly wider beneath you as the shirt parted open.

His chest was beautiful. Scarred, but beautiful—pale muscle threaded with faint blue veins, the sort that spoke of long nights and longer hunger. His skin was cool beneath your fingertips, though you could feel the heat roiling beneath it, just under the surface.

But what drew your eye—what made you pause—was the tattoo.

On his left ribcage, inked into him like a brand, was a budded cross—old, faded, the lines a little blurred from age but unmistakable. A Christian cross, yes—but older, rougher, like it had been carved into him by a trembling hand in candlelight.

You stared.

He followed your gaze, and his throat worked, the motion making his chain jump slightly against his collarbones.

“I got that when I still thought it’d save me,” he whispered, voice tight.

You dropped to your knees. He whimpered.

No contact yet—just the sound of your body lowering between his thighs, the shift in the room, the weight of your presence pressing into the cradle of his hips. He tipped his head back against the edge of the bed, more thick drool sliding from the corner of his mouth, breath now shallow, frantic, like he was trying not to choke on his own spit.

You leaned forward. Pressed your mouth to the edge of the cross.

He hissed.

You kissed it. Then licked—tongue flattening over the cool ink, tracing it reverently, slowly. He trembled beneath you like a man being sanctified and defiled all at once.

The irony rolled off your tongue with every stroke.

A man like this—older than gunpowder, older than the books that tried to define him—wearing a cross close to his heart like it still meant salvation.

You dragged your lips lower.

Down his ribs. Over the ridges of muscle. To the soft trail of hair starting just below his navel—a dark, fine line that disappeared beneath the waistband of his jeans.

You licked that too. Just once. Teasing.

Following the path slowly, like you were on your knees at an altar, taking your time with worship. His happy trail twitched under your tongue.

Above you, Remmick made a noise that wasn’t a moan or a sob but something shattered between the two.

More drool slipped from his lips now—foamy, thick, sliding down his chin, catching on the curve of his neck and the edge of that trembling gold chain. He didn’t wipe it. Couldn’t. You’d told him not to touch.

His voice broke apart.

“I c-can’t take it,” he choked. “I swear to God, I’m gonna come just from you lookin’ at me like that—just from that tongue—fuck, darlin’, please.”

You looked up at him.

Still on your knees. Still reverent. And said, with quiet finality, “Good.”

You reached for his belt.

His breath caught—sharply, like the sound a deer makes when it hears the snap of a twig too close behind it. But he didn’t move. Didn’t flinch. Just stared down at you with those wide, wet eyes, black in the low light, pupils blown to the edge. His chest rose and fell like he was sprinting through mud.

The leather was worn, soft from age and use, the buckle cool in your fingers.

You took your time.

Slowly, purposefully, you undid the clasp, the soft clink of metal loud in the hush of the room. He whimpered, his thighs tensing beneath you, and more drool spilled from the corner of his mouth—thick, glistening, sliding down his chin

“Stay still,” you reminded him, voice silk-wrapped steel.

He nodded, a jerky, miserable little movement, and you swore his lower lip quivered. You dragged the zipper down, each tooth catching slightly, the sound sharp and intimate.

And then—finally—you pulled him free.

Your breath hitched.

He was hard. Painfully so. Flushed deep red at the tip, already leaking, the slit glossy and wet. He twitched in your hand, a thick vein pulsing along the underside, and his thighs quivered like he could barely keep himself grounded.

“Jesus,” you whispered.

Remmick gave a breathless, broken laugh, chin tilted back as he struggled not to move. His hands were fists in the sheets now, white-knuckled, his gold chain trembling across his throat with every shallow breath.

“I—fuck, I’m sorry,” he gasped. “I can’t stop—fuck, it’s so much—”

You looked up at him as you gave him the first stroke.

Just one.

Slow.

Base to tip, twisting your palm, watching his mouth fall open wider—thick drool spilling freely now, down his neck, dampening the edge of his shirt. He looked utterly destroyed already.

“Does it feel good?” you asked, your voice soft, cruel with how gently you said it.

He nodded frantically.

“Use your words.”

His head lolled forward. His voice was wrecked. “Feels like heaven,” he groaned. “Oh God, sugar, I cain’t—I cain’t believe—”

You didn’t let him finish.

You leaned forward, licking up the length of him, tongue flat, slow, letting his taste settle warm and heavy on your tongue—salt and skin and something a little coppery, something distinctly him, something old. He sobbed. Actually sobbed, chest hiccuping, thighs jerking just slightly before he caught himself and moaned through clenched teeth.

Your mouth wrapped around the head. He cried out.

No words now. Just a strangled sound ripped from his throat, and more drool frothed at the corners of his lips. He looked dazed—eyes rolling back, lashes fluttering. His hips bucked once—a reflex—and immediately stilled like he was terrified to move again without permission.

You pulled back just enough to speak, saliva stringing between your lips and his flushed cock.

“I told you,” you whispered. “Hands to yourself.”

His voice came out wrecked, breathless.

“Yes, ma’am.”

Then your mouth was back on him.

You took him deeper this time—slow, tight suction, twisting your wrist around what you couldn’t take yet—and the way he howled, you’d have thought he’d been starved in every way a man could be. Which, of course, he had. Thirteen hundred years of this. Denied. Suppressed. Begged away.

His thighs trembled. His belly tensed. And still he didn’t move. Didn’t touch. Didn’t dare.

You sucked harder.

He broke.

“Fuck—fuck, I’m gonna—darlin’, I—I can’t—oh, please, please, I’m so sorry—”

He was crying.

Not just drool now—actual tears, shining in his lashes, streaking down his flushed face as you sucked him through it, as he jerked and shook and whimpered out your name like it was a hymn.

He came with a sob, hips barely stuttering forward as his whole body went taut, his cock pulsing against your tongue, spilling hot down your throat in waves, thick and heavy and so much you almost gagged on it.

He was loud.

Pathetic.

Perfect.

When you finally pulled off, he was slumped forward—a wrecked, shivering mess, his lips bitten red and his chain soaked through with spit and sweat. His chest heaved. His thighs twitched.

You sat back on your heels, wiped your mouth slowly.

“Still with me?” you asked.

He nodded, weakly. “I ain’t ever lettin’ you leave.”

He collapsed.

Not fell—melted. Like every bone in him had turned to syrup and grief, his body slumping forward, catching on the edge of the bed before slipping down to the floor.

Boneless.

His cheek pressed to the old wood, hair clinging to his forehead, the buttons of his half-undone shirt twisted beneath him. He was drenched—sweat slicked across his chest and ribs, his pale skin kissed pink from effort, a shine of drool still slicking his chin, clinging to the corners of his mouth like foam. His gold chain was crooked now, stuck against the sweat-damp hollow of his throat.

You rose slowly to your knees, then leaned forward—not to comfort him, not yet—but to press your lips to that chain.

Right at the dip of his collarbones. He gasped. Like it burned. Like your mouth was fire and he’d been craving the flame.

His eyes fluttered open—glass-wet, dazed, the whites shot red, his lips trembling from overstimulation. He looked wrecked. Used. Holy.

And still. Still, he tried.

One shaking hand rose, dragging along the edge of your thigh—hesitant, aching, reverent. His fingers brushed your hip like he was praying through it.

“Lemme touch you,” he breathed. “Please. Let me—wanna make you feel good—want your taste on my tongue, sugar, please—”

You caught his wrist mid-rise. Firm. Final. His breath hitched. His mouth parted. But he didn’t resist. Didn’t fight. You leaned in close, until your mouth was at his ear, and whispered—

“You don’t get to yet.”

His eyes fluttered. His breath caught.

“You’re gonna learn to wait.”

A tremble rolled through him, from head to toe. His hand fell away, limp at his side. And then he nodded.

Small. Shaky. Utterly obedient.

“Yes, ma’am,” he breathed. “I’ll wait. I’ll wait, I swear.”

You ran your fingers through his hair, gently now, and he whimpered at the touch.

“Look at you,” you murmured.

He did. Glassy-eyed. Pathetic. So fucking into it.

His tongue darted out across his lower lip, catching more of the drool clinging there, and he looked at you like he’d fall on his knees all over again if you so much as told him to.

“Did I do good?” he asked, voice so small, so needy it nearly broke something open in your chest.

You smiled.

And whispered, “You were perfect.”

He didn’t get up. Didn’t even try.

Just curled in beside your legs like a dog, bare chest heaving, forehead pressed to your knee, as if your body alone could tether him to the earth. His arms folded in at his chest, drawn tight like he didn’t trust them not to reach for you again.

You stayed still. Let him have it. Let him exist in the aftermath—his breath still catching, his sweat-soaked hair plastered to his brow, drool drying tacky at the corners of his mouth, his jeans half undone around his hips, completely forgotten. He looked small down there, despite the size of him. Small and wrecked.

He murmured against your thigh—words so soft you almost missed them, lips brushing the fabric of your skirt like a confession:

“Didn’t know it could feel like that…”

You glanced down.

His eyes were closed, lashes wet. His lips parted as he pressed the side of his face closer to your leg, as if nearness was the only thing keeping him from coming apart again.

“Didn’t know I could feel like that.”

You stroked his hair gently. He shivered.

“I ain’t been held like this since…” He swallowed. “Since before.”

You waited. Then, with a sigh that hitched in his throat, he said:

“Before I stopped bein’ a man and started bein’ a thing.”

Your fingers paused at his temple.

But he nuzzled into your knee like he hadn’t said something awful. Like he hadn’t peeled that truth out of himself and bled it onto your lap.

“I remember what it was like,” he whispered. “Before I turned. Before the hunger. Before all that silence got in me and stayed.”

Another pause.

“I used to think about what it’d be like, y’know? Fallin’ apart for someone. Just crackin’ open. Bein’ touched like I was human.”

He sighed again.

“Didn’t think it’d ever happen.”

Your hand returned to his hair, soft strokes over the messy bangs sticking to his forehead.

He let out a low, contented whine.

“Felt you on my tongue before I ever tasted you,” he breathed, voice thick and syrup-slow. “In my dreams. In my fuckin’ bones.”

His fingers brushed the floor. Not reaching. Just hovering.

“Tell me you won’t go,” he whispered.

You didn’t say anything. But you didn’t move. And that was enough.

He breathed deep then, nose brushing your thigh, the gold chain glinting dully in the light. His body slackened further, weight pooling against you like he meant to stay right there forever—a crumpled thing collared in sweat, salt, and shame, held together only by the sound of your breath and the soft drag of your fingers through his hair.

“I’m ruined now,” he said sleepily. “You know that, don’t you?”

You smiled faintly.

“Good.”

He whimpered again. A sound so low and lovely it curled down your spine and planted itself deep in your stomach.

And then he sighed—the sound of someone finally coming home—and nuzzled in deeper at your thigh.

[phantomgiggler]

His Masterpiece - One Shot

Remmick x fem!reader

summary: In which Remmick has an idea to paint a masterpiece and gives you a necklace in thie filthiest way possible (i.e fucking your tits)

wc: 1.2K

a/n: First Remmick fic and kind of nervous! Quite frankly this was just written as a need for some titty fucking with Remmick, but there's a bit of softness here, but mainly all filth. @spikedfearn mentioned it and I just ran with it. S/O to @eternalstrigoii for beta-ing. warnings: (18+) MDNI, vampirism, monster fucking, titty fucking, all porn no plot, spit kink, hair pulling if you squint , drool, pillow riding, cum play, pearl necklace, slight biting, breast play, possesive!Remmick

Likes, comments, and reblogs are always appreciated!

ADULT CONTENT UNDER THE CUT

When he suddenly leaves your cunt clenching around nothing, you whine at the emptiness. You begin to protest, but his voice, thick and dripping with desire, cuts through the silence first. 

“I want you on your knees, baby.” He lightly smacks your thigh and steps off the bed to stand. His cock hanging hard and wet between his thighs. It’s enough to make your mouth water and a part of you hopes he’s about to fuck your throat. You immediately begin to sit up on your knees, admittedly a little wobbly from how well he had been fucking you up until that point. “Remmick, what - “ 

“You think I didn’t notice earlier when you left more than a few buttons undone on your dress, hm? Leavin’ just a little peek of those pretty tits to tease me?” 

Okay, so he did notice. You can’t help but duck your head down in shyness.

“Nu-uh, chin up. Let me see ‘em.” 

He’s standing over you now, cock in hand and lazily stroking himself. Just the sight of him before you is enough to make your clit throb and a burning heat pulse between your thighs. You’re not even the least bit upset that he stopped fucking you, because seeing him like this; the want and need in his red-rimmed eyes, his fangs half-exposed, is pleasure enough. To be this wanted is all you’ve ever dreamed of. 

You proudly present your bare tits and tilt your head to look up at him. He looks down at you, his mouth slightly open with a sly subtle grin. You notice a small string of drool pooling that’s halfway down his chin. He groans. “Come here,” he says, but it comes out more like a groan, like he’s in pain every second he’s not touching you. 

He steps forward and a firm hand comes behind your neck. He tilts your head up before bending down and meeting you with a punishing kiss that takes your breath away. He pulls away but not before giving your bottom lip a sharp nip that makes you squeak. You feel the sensation of his bite between your legs which makes you grind against the bunched bed sheets. He reaches behind you to grab the pillow and folds it in half. “Sit up for me, sweetheart,” he murmurs. 

You oblige him and he guides you to widen your legs enough for him to slip the pillow between them. The slight pressure into your aching cunt is delicious and it’s difficult for you to not start grinding into it, to chase the high you were so close to reaching before he decided he wanted to play with you. He must see your frustration because he gives your forehead a quick peck. “Oh you still gonna get yours, don’t you worry about that.” 

What he does next though sends you nearly over the edge. He closes his mouth for just a moment and it looks like he’s trying to concentrate on what he’s tasting, but he smiles a wicked, devilish smirk and lets all the drool and saliva he’d been building up fall down from his lips and drip right in between your breasts. It’s not cold, but you shiver at the sensation. He steps away to admire what he’s done to you. It’s like he’s taking in a painting in a museum, if that painting was also a meal he wanted to devour. You can’t help but grind into the pillow now, and a small moan escapes you as you hold his gaze while you move your hips like you would if you were riding him. 

He growls before stepping forward and guiding his length to sit between the crevice of your tits.

Oh. 

Oh.

“Hold them together for me, love.” His typical twang is replaced by his Irish lilt and you can’t help but smile. You love it when he lets the mask slip. When you get a glimpse at the man underneath the monster. When you’ve managed to make him lose his senses. 

You hold your breasts together tight around his hot cock as he begins to move, slipping in and out between them. His precum leaks onto the swell of your breasts and finds its place among the spit that’s been smeared by his movements. You look down at the head of him peeking through your bust which makes you start to ride the pillow between your legs harder. The sight of him is so deliciously dirty and this act of pure unadulterated filth the two of you are engaged in is not lost on you. You would’ve never dreamed of doing something like this with anyone else, but he’s managed to drag you down deep into depravity.

He’s long enough that you can easily bend your head down and quickly lick the tip before it disappears again. You take a page from his book and spit, letting your own liquid fall down your chin and settle in between your tits and onto the head of his cock. He releases a deep throaty moan and begins to quicken his pace, but still maintaining a steady rhythm. 

He has a one hand grip on your left shoulder to steady himself and you sneak an open mouthed kiss to the top of his hand, continuing your ministrations onto the pillow while he uses the crevice between your tits to get himself off.

“That’s it,” he hums. “That’s fuckin’ it…” He punctuates his words with thrusts, his breath growing ragged with the effort of chasing his own pleasure. 

You whine, the grinding onto the pillow has brought you to the brink of climax. You’re so close, but there’s just something keeping you from falling over the edge. It’s maddening. But Remmick knows what you need without you having to ask. His free hand comes to cover your right breast and palm it, squeezing it roughly, but not so rough as to cause undo pain. You cry out with the new sensation that has somehow sent a direct line of pleasure directly to your center. It’s like he’s touching your clit but yet he couldn’t be farther from it. You gasp his name which makes his movements become jerky and uneven. He was close. 

“I’m about to give that pretty little neck of yours a necklace,” he snarls. “You ready for it?” 

All you can do is nod as he continues to squeeze your breast and let his thumb run across your hardened nipple which sends you into bliss. Your climax hits you like waves, first a blinding light and then smaller bursts. You feel his cock tighten and twitch before painting your chest in ropes of his release. 

He pulls out and away from your chest and presses his fingers lightly to your skin, making sure to spread his cum across your chest from collarbone to collarbone. He is the painter and you are his canvas. 

“Hmm, what should I call you?” he muses. “Call me?” Your orgasm has left you dumb.

“Darlin’ from where I’m standing, you’re a goddamn masterpiece deservin’ of a proper name.” 

A beat of silence hangs between you, but it’s anything from uncomfortable. He steps forward to lean down and press his forehead to yours. “I’ve got it,” he whispers. “Mine. I’ll call you mine.”

[phantomgiggler]

Oh, I already saw it 3 times this month👀 Oliver can get it

I love that Remmick is a confirmed muncher in this fanfic community