Archive of Our Own

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It’s raining. The world is coming down around you, even more than the ceiling of this seventeenth-century house. Breathing, living walls that sigh and moan. Red, weathered trim acts like running veins in a ravenous body. Windows that look in like eyes; mirrors that cast shadows that shouldn’t be. When the pipes shift, it sounds like bones cracking. Joints popping.

‘It’s only for a little while, just until we’re settled.’

Your Aunt’s voice comes through in silent memory as thunder cracks and lightning strobes in fast, electric blinks. Blood rushes in your ears, fueled by a need that’s fast becoming hopeless.

‘Once the hospice workers arrive, you can leave… like you always do.’

Something in the walls rattles, and you imagine pot-bellied rats, gone fat on the rubbish the previous family had left behind. The state of decay the house has been in would have attracted a whole host of vermin, those of which you assume are still scuttling above your head and below your feet.

Paisley drapery reminds you of the old wallpaper at your Grandmothers - of that summer when she’d died, leaving you locked in that old sewing room - so you’ve pulled the drapes back behind golden twine and settled on watching the wet, trailing shadows instead. Doll-sized rivers reflecting on the floor, four-poster bed and lumpy covers crumpled around your thighs. It washes your bare skin like the paint of sunny-side waves on the smooth ocean floor.

Every breath comes out weak and strangled because despite the rain and the locks - the thick walls and solid oak paneling - you can’t stand the idea of something in this house listening to you try and fuck yourself into sleep.

Sleep means an orgasm. Sleep is also preceded by hazy endorphins or benzo pills, but those have already been snatched up by your Uncle weeks ago so it’s your fingers that’ll do the job the chemicals usually would have.

‘Run away. Leave your poor Mummy to die all alone. It’s what you always wanted. Isn’t it?!’

The rain beyond the bare window turns on its side.

Storm won’t last forever, but right now it feels like it’s been raging endlessly and forever it’ll rage on. You blink back the sting of flashing lights, moaning daringly as the thunder reverberates through the glass panes. The slip and slide of your fingers churn precise and firm over the hood of your clit, sometimes dipping down to gather a sheen of moisture… sometimes trading tacky friction for something so smooth you can nearly pretend it’s someone’s tongue.

‘Selfish, spiteful bitch…’

She won’t go away. Cutting, venomous words whittle away your fragile arousal.

You keep going through the first haunting memories only because the idea of lying awake in this house seems less appealing than masturbating for the sake of it… but there’s no point now. That ache isn’t going away anytime soon.

You go still, lying there with your naked chest moving like a hummingbird; fingers limp between your soft thighs. You’re barely wet, and the sour feeling in your stomach is overpowering any and all desire to see yourself through to the end. The voices just won’t let you go…

Pipes creak, and thunder booms and your heart skips a short beat.

Over the hard peaks of your breasts, you stare at the glowing window as the rain pours, ignoring the blanket where the staring doll sits motionless. This house is wrong. It’s alive, or it’s haunted. Something this old doesn’t remain empty, with or without people and critters. The leavings of the family before yours doesn’t help matters… the doll showing up in places it shouldn’t be doesn’t bode well either.

The hate in this house… you can feel it. It’s old, but it’s got new loathing to rekindle what was left to die out so you’re not surprised that every day makes you more anxious than the one previous.

These people that call themselves family only need you until the paid nurses arrive but you know it’s more than that. Your Aunt especially gets off on verballing lashing someone… anyone that’ll react, and you can’t help but feel worthless after a dose of her vitriol. Your uncle needs your pill bottles and someone to complain to. He needs to numb himself because if not you figure he’d up and blow his brains out. Still, those pills were yours...

Your Mum doesn’t need you because she’ll be dead in a few months and she never loved you anyway… yet here you are. Tied to this family like a part of you feels deserving of all the bull shite. It’s a headache for another night; another lifetime. Four more weeks with two already under your belt and it already feels like this house will be your tomb.

The storm shifts again, slamming pellets of fat raindrops on the glass until you can barely feel the fast stutter of your beating heart. Your body wants what you've given up on. It wants to come undone and shudder with pleasure, but your mind just won’t let it.

No orgasm tonight.

No way you’ll finish with that cunt’s voice in your head.

“I hate them…” you say to the house - the walls and the storm, “Hate them all.”

A sound like leather luggage toppling over cuts through the stormy rattle and you sit up - naked and wide-eyed - to find your carry on empty on the floor. A lone purple sock on the rug.

The convex backing on the luggage wobbles against the wood flooring and Egyptian rug patterns; teetering unnaturally. Wandering eyes. Secret passages… eye holes in the walls...

You think about the man in the foyer with your Uncle. That old lawyer playing billiards with the whiskey tumbler and pull the sheets up, covering your free hanging breasts and open thighs.

“Hello?” You call; the same decibel as the rain.

Nothing. Not even the walls creak. That was to be expected though.

If Mr. Lawyer with his violating eyes were watching you through some secret port in the wall, he wouldn’t reply. The spirits… if that’s what they are, don’t speak up. It could be the rats, but they don’t say a word either, so you sit there on the ornate bed and stare at the suitcase as it slows and stops moving.

After four cracks of thunder and several flashes of lightning, you relax back into the mattress and allow the blanket to drop across your stomach.

“This will happen… we’ve no meds for another four weeks. Shadows might jump, and you’ll think there are eyes in the wall, but we’re not crazy,” you speak the words as though to some other part of you - the anxiety usually hidden behind meds and creature comforts breathes awake, “... we can handle the paranoia and the fear…”

In a dull voice, you mumble, “The vibrator would have been smart to bring, though. That was dumb of us…”

Despite reassurances that sleep won’t come and you’ll merely lie awake, watching the patterns on the ceiling dance in your insomnia, you sleep. At some point, the night and the storm take you under. That hum of static ordinary to thunder and old house wiring lulls you asleep.

Those disturbingly real dreams have been coming the past few nights, but in the morning you lay in bed as the memory of hands rubbing down your stomach leaves you feeling tormented. Phantom touches linger on your breasts, pulling your nipples taut until just the brush of air stings them.

The day brings more rain and more snarling insults from your half blind Aunt. Each verbal jab is followed by short orders - your drunken Uncle sloshing whiskey about the house as he pursues his wife at the heels. Always mumbling. He’s another reminder of why you can’t sleep and why every day makes you feel less comfortable in your own skin.

You change bedpans, sheets and scrub the rug your Mum had messed on in the night, feeling empty.

Afternoon tea is spent in your designated room with the door locked and a fight going on downstairs. When the house settles into hateful silence, you give your Mum a sponge bath while the record player spins gently in the corner room. As usual, she says nothing even though she’s fully capable of it still.

“It’s three,” you tell her, to which she merely turns her head to the side, ignoring you as an added insult.

During your time in hospice care, you’ve seen the way people change when death hangs over their head. A mean-spirited bitch could wake up one day and suddenly begin repenting her perceived transgressions, writing letters to wronged loved ones and trying their best to be the person they were supposed to be. Your Mum has attempted no such thing, and by now you suspect she never will.

You pull up a chair to her bedside. The stool grates on the floorboards as the rain outside keeps hammering down, almost whispering through the walls. You sterilize your hands, snap on gloves, prep the needle and tip up her injections. Clear solution fills the syringe basin slowly. A little, tiny air bubble floats to the top, and the thought crosses your mind to push the plunger clear, fill it back up with air and kill her… one harmless bubble floating towards her brain. Perhaps it would pop in her lungs or her heart. She’d die quickly instead of the suffering that awaits her.

It’d be mercy.

You stare at the little bubble, waiting for it to float to the trench near the needle and give it a squirt; sending it out and leaving nothing but pure uncut morphine behind. There’s not a single sound from the dying woman in the elegant hospital bed, surrounded by furnishings she owns but doesn’t appreciate. You wait until her eyelashes flutter and her vitals steady. The pain is beckoned away by chemical workers…

If only you were so lucky.

You feel that skinny edge of resentment unfold, knowing her brother in law has your medicine - your pills.

“Don’t have too much fun,” you mutter as she falls into a painless sleep.

Thunder booms and the walls seemingly walk with you as you wander the house, rattling picture frames beset with old varnish, backlit by sconces and imported cherry wood paneling. For a second you see a double shadow behind your solemn reflection, but the trick of the eye disappears with a blink. It’s claustrophobia brought on by the narrow hallways. That’s all.

You need your meds…

Another night passes with little sleep.

This time you dream of pelt like chest hair under your fingers. Porcelain kisses down your throat and warmly baked clay humming across your tight nipples. You wake with an ache - the ghost of hands on your naked skin - and feel even more frustrated by your worthless body. The blanket you draped over the doll is on the floor, having slipped off in the night. The morbid thing stares at you like it knows; judging. It’s leaking into your subconscious mind, dabbling with your sexual frustration and so you take it by the middle and shove it in the closet.

Another day passes. More curses, snarky aggressions and hospice duties to a woman who hates you.

Some days you think about murder in terms of euthanasia and other days you feel nothing but the subtle and drastic effects four years of valium dependency is wrecking on your body now that you’re without.

One night you have your dinner in your room, away from your family of strangers and watch the rain sluice down the glass from a small reading table. The meat is dry and bland - the wine sweet but tasteless. The orgasm you try to pull out of your body doesn’t come, and so you attain sleep the same way you did before; odd and without transition… but you dream… fuck, do you ever dream...

There’s a man in your room.

He’s hunched forward and staggeringly tall; half coated in shadows. Somehow - by that hazy dream logic - you know he owns the same hands that’ve been stroking you mercilessly in other, more hazy dreams. He’s been seeking you in your sleep, but how and why? - you can’t be sure.

This time you’ve woken from one of those dreams within a dream and something about it feels real even though it can’t be.

It isn’t.

Rain tumbles in its endless little rivulets across the glass window, contouring the towering, thin length of your stranger. The sight of him makes your lower belly flutter. All the unreleased tension you’ve equally built and tried to banish only heightening at the view of hard muscles under thin dirty cotton. He drops something long, black and weighty to the floor, crawling across the bed like a humanoid gytrash - a furry, mythical hound of the moors - until you can make out the smooth contours of a blank, childlike mask.

The doll comes alive as a man once again.

Those hard, warm kisses from your other dreams… same man - same mask. Same cracked visage like your own fragile psyche on the break. He’s the doll that stares like it’s waiting for the snap, covered with a woolen cardigan and suspenders.

Dream freedom allows you free reign of your desires with none of the hangups reality shackles you with. Your insides clench with want - so you take. Fuck the eerie mask and what it says about you… you need him - need something.

There are no rules here, and so you raise your fingers up and thread them through the dense fur over his chest, pulling at what you can and raking your nails through the rest. Vibrations rattle your palms like the thunder does the walls and when he begins tearing your robe open, grunting and lashing as if he’s shredding meat from a carcass in starvation, you kick away the covers, gasp greedily and attack his trousers with relish.

Sometimes, a dream can turn out just right - sometimes your brain can give you a taste without distorting what is good into something rotten. His fingers crush a breast, but you burst out with hoarse laughter and arch into the bolt of thick pleasure, relishing the intensity and passion. Animal lust and preternatural dance.

You think about all the nightmares you’ve had - even the uncomfortable sexualized ones that leave you aroused and disgusted - and fling your nameless man back over the bed. He bounces back, arms tucked in and wrists lifted to hold the mask in place. His breath hitches.

Odd, you think for a second before tugging his shirt from the half-undone pants and raked your hands through acres of dark hair until you hit tight nipples and dig your nails in.

He says your name in a voice like a child's; disturbing.

It’s primal and unlike what you’d have the courage to do while awake, but an urge possesses you and he goes down willingly; struggling with weak little sounds of excitement. You blink as lightning flashes, feeling oddly awake.

It’s a dream within a dream, and those always bear a taste of reality. It’s nothing.

You pause, watch his chest heave under your palms and shove him into the mattress, forcing a masculine rumble from him this time, wanting to squeeze any trace of innocence out of him. You grin as he gasps like a man again, rocking yourself over a long hard line that's unmistakably cock and say something bordering on vile and insane.

The stranger nods, and with each rapid jerk of his mask, you grow further emboldened. His eyes gleam wet and full. Broken vessels red around intelligent, studious pupils blown wide in pleasure.

Here, asleep and dreaming, you’re more sensitive.

The wavering, jittery motion of your hips elicit glowing beacons of pleasure that grow more dense and heavy with each pass. Long fingers dent your hips, pulling you down so hard your heartbeat pounds between your thighs. You shudder out an orgasm unique to sleep; perhaps more than the pleasure found in a dream… maybe real enough that when you wake, you’ll feel mildly satisfied.

There’s a hazy recollection of being rocked firmly by hands unafraid of leaving behind bruises. Cum-soaked cotton wets your folds, hot and then immediately chills. Scattered memories of being tied back up in your silk robe and fondled for an unknown amount of time as the storm wets the world outside, but soon you fade away; consciousness retreating and your body oddly satisfied.

The timer resets after your wet dream. Your body feels cleansed even though the hang of withdrawal follows you like a bad smell. Day after day brings the same, but the frustration takes two solid days to come creeping back.

Yelling. Insults. Bedpans. Cleaning… morphine…

… ignored thoughts of ending her pain. Sometimes you spend half an hour in your bed, wondering how easy it would be to fill up a syringe with several doses of drugs and let her go in her sleep.

By the fourth night, you find yourself awake, hips digging into your pillow shamelessly but even though your heart races and you’re on edge, once you think you’re about to come, nothing happens. Even with the sheets kicked to the end of the bed, rubbing your clit in frantic motions, clutching a breast while desperately trying to bring yourself some state of entropy - you beg for ‘him.’ The storm that’s been raging is at a lull, but the walls rattle like there's thunder shaking the house and… you hear something…

Between your thighs, your fingers halt, your heart races but your breath holds steady, and you listen. There had been a sound eerily close to a wheeze - a high tone, like your own moan - but not yours. For minutes you wait… for half an hour you lay there as still as a corpse, believing something will leak forth from the walls and crawl over your prone form to claw your heart from your ribs.

Nothing comes.

No sounds.

You don’t try again for a climax until the next night when you hear the same sound again, catching another of the same thin moan even under the dense splattering of rain outside.

Someone is with you. Something. It could be a ghost… or it could be your Uncle - the thought of which doesn’t seem possible. He may be a drunk, but he’s not an abuser. Thoughts run wild through your mind before you settle on the one that makes the most sense. You’re going stir crazy. Just hearing things. It’s been over three weeks without your meds, and while the side effects you think you’re experiencing are rare, they do happen. It’s happening now.

Just shy of two in the morning, you pull on your robe, gather your remaining frustration and start fingering the many grooves of the hand carved wood moulding; searching.

You look beneath the paintings, ignoring some of their uncanny expressions and vaguely threatening scenes but find no peepholes. There are cast iron vent grates, but the bolts that hold them into the reinforced wood bearing are grown in like roots. The mirror standing from floor to ceiling on the wall facing the window is equally stuck in the house like an eye looking inwards.

The muffled slide of something substantial sounds behind you. The dark, open door of your bathroom looks as inviting as an open grave. There’s no way your feet will take you closer than you are now.

Thunk.

You jerk, clutching the sash around your waist and watch shadows shift in the black doorway. Your mind - it’s just your mind playing tricks. The paranoia and anxiety are coming back, and even though it’s an old house that expands and contracts with the cold and the wet like a breathing thing, you can’t stop your mind from running wild with ghost stories and thrillers.

On the cusp of panic, you pull at the hair on the side of your head, hissing against the sting and pulse but refuse to be the victim any longer. You want back what was taken from you. It’s as simple as that.

You make your way out your room - mission and a vague plan of action in mind - a shadow follows you from the bathroom.

You head out your room and down the hallway.

Every footstep sounds doubled as if there’s two of you, each secondary pad of feet just a few seconds later than the last. You pause, and it ceases with you. There’s something wrong with the flooring… with the supports… with your head.

The mirror hanging on the wall a few feet down the corridor looks uninviting; like a hub separating the different organs of the house. It’s not because you think something will be standing with you in that mirror - something that shouldn’t - that you don’t look into it, it’s just that you need your resolve for this. If you’re going to take back your stolen pills, you’ll need to pretend your face is firm and unwavering, not sunken and panicked. Unhinged, you think, stopping at the maze-carved door to your Aunt and Uncle's converted master bedroom.

You raise your fist, but can’t bring yourself to knock. Before you, your hand clenches and loosens, trembling and wavering until you feel a gasp of terror run up your gut. Your fist becomes a latch over your mouth, keeping in the gushing hysteria as a panic attack come upon you with fervor.

It’s only so bad because you’ve avoided them for years. The fear had been but a memory that in of itself had shifted into something of a hazy dream, but it’s here now, and when you feel something shuffle near your shoulder, you turn and run.

You run down the hallway as if you can fly faster than your terror but the brain stays with you no matter how fast you race down the stairs or how hard you hit the front door. It’s locked, or in your nettle-stung state of panic, you can’t get it open.

Something bumps your backside - a hand in your hair, and you shrink.

“... pepper… mothballs-” you whisper, inhaling through your nose. The five senses. You’re not trapped inside yourself - you are not going to die. There is no one after you but yourself.

“-varnish… firewood, sweat, some-something… whiskey.”

You scrape your fingers under your eyes, blinking away thick, sticky tears and lick your teeth, “... mint.”

Heart racing, you finally look behind you. There’s nothing there but, “Stairs, carpet… banister, paintings, table, books… liquor cabinet…” It’s not a liquor cabinet, but suddenly you feel mindful enough to get back up on your feet and pad weakly towards the billiard room. You whisper the objects that you pass by, sensing your chest begin to thud evenly and the raw, unadulterated panic start to subside.

Outside the house, the rain starts to pick up again, but it’s not soothing anymore. The distant rumble of thunder reminds you of the sounds this house can make and all that’s left unseen in something so old and gargantuan.

The meadow-hued billiard table is cluttered with ashtrays, stuffed with crushed cigars. Empty tumblers stand between uncut balls and a lone triangle. You blink and flip the switch. The lights flicker, catching darkness out the side of your eye - the shape of a man - but when you turn on a dime, there’s nothing there.

“... green, cherry wood, whiskey… we’re okay - we’re fine.”

Two glasses of whiskey go down easy - the burn soothing when prior you’d felt nothing but your own mounting horror. The house sighs and sounds around you, but you pour yourself another glass and down it like water. By the fourth glass, your cheeks run hot, and your skin feels coated in scratchy, warm wool. You set the tumbler down, turn unsteadily and find the outline of a man at the end of the billiard table with a cue held in both hands across his thighs.

“Hello…” you blurt out softly.

You blink, brows furrowing and swirl your tongue around your teeth until the stain of whiskey is half gone, and you’re sure you’re drunk.

“What are you doing in here?” Still sober enough to string words together, but sloshed sufficiently to forget that he’s not supposed to be here. For a moment your mind wanders, and then you laugh abruptly, clutching the whiskey bottle by the neck and gesture with the base towards the nameless intruder.

“I see - no, no… I get it. Withdrawals, and now booze. I’m…” you frown, turning the bottle under your hooded gaze until thunder muffles through the skin of the house, bringing you back to a time when you Father was alive, and the nostalgia of youth made you oblivious to his drinking.

“Bed. Time,” he says in the voice of an innocent little child, but that’s not right...

You’re dreaming again.

That’s all.

It’s happened before, and even though you feel awake and intoxicated, there’s no mistaking it when the man steps around the table, cue braced against his thighs with large, sinewy hands clutching base and the tapered end, exposing the contours of a spider-cracked mask.

“I don’t have a bedtime,” you smile drunkenly, uncapping the whiskey to drown yourself in more burning gold. “Fuck, you’re huge…”

So much taller than you’d dreamt him before. His high shoulders surround a hanging neck that drops down further the closer he gets; bent towards the floor by the time his body heat engulfs your front. Way more than six feet tall… perhaps a foot taller than yourself.

“Playtime?”

Lust coils in your belly along with the hot slosh of booze and with your tongue wetting liquor-puffed lips, you set the bottle down and take a step closer. He wheezes, glassy eyes studying you in silence. Body heat absorbs into your alcohol heated bloodstream, proving you’re drunk and dreaming.

Watching the longing flood his red-splattered orbs, you bite your lower lip and push four fingers down between cotton and trouser, “... yeah, playtime.”

His mask cocks to the side, shaking in conjunction with the rise and fall of his chest - the tremble of his stomach making the back of your fingers feel like weapons. This is another good one - another good dream that’ll help the next week seem less miserable.

You’re less intense this time, though.

In this dream you’re slow and hesitant, gasping when he snaps the cue against the billiard table before grabbing your face in one hot, sweaty palm. He jerks your face upwards, making your vision scatter as if you are positively, genuinely drunk and not just dreaming.

Warm porcelain lips bruise your own, pressing so hard your teeth break the thin inside flesh of your lip. Rich iron floods your tongue, and you whisper ‘blood’ to yourself before running your tongue sloppily over the smooth surface, taking away a coating of soot and moan at the taste of something bitterly human. It’s too real and yet not real enough.

He nudges your mouth in the frenzied imitation of a kiss, forcing himself deeper until the mask nicks your bare teeth and you wince away, feeling a mild ache of pain that pulls you into a brief state of sobriety. Fingers dent in your jawline, pulling you back in place - teeth clicking porcelain - while his other hand grabs your neck and holds you in place. It’s brutal and mystifying, but you groan and twist your wrist until your palm is flat on his abdomen and slide south until coarse pubic hair tickles your fingers.

Lightning coats the floor out the corner of your eye as you slip a button free, tackle one suspender clip and jerk another button open.

“Brahms. Say it - say it…” he dips into a hard, inelegant rasp. The mask dampens the growl but sends it in all directions. You say it wrong the first time and the second, muttering endlessly while he snarls his name against the mask nudging your lips into purple bruises.

Your fingers hit the swell of hot cock, and his hand squeezes, pulling his name from your lips like a dying breath, “Brahms…”

His name and your touch send him into a shaking frenzy - a tangle of limbs and fingers gripping into the yielding skin of your rear, your thigh. He staggers, lifting your half onto the billiard table before more of that sweet dream anarchy fuels you like the alcohol that’s toppled and leaking on the greenery. You plant a bare heel into his chest and kick him backward.

Brahms buckles, hitting the floor on his knees and with a harder shove, you sent him on his back; pants undone and eyes staring wild from the hole within the expressionless mask.

Laughing, breathless and overcome with the beautiful consequence-free sequence of a dream, you shrug out of your robe and pull free your hair from its bun, dropping to your knees around his waist with a naked grin and blood swimming behind your teeth. He tries to take your wrists in his palms, but while he’s a man brimming with strength rivaling the wind and rain that beats the house, you pin him down on the floor effortlessly and pant his name again.

“Brahms… do you like me, Brahms?”

The mask jerks in an unmistakable yes; alabaster chin bumping the low hang of a workman’s tank and a swath of thick chest hair. He puffs weak whines that collect behind the mask, tricking you into hesitation but only for a second.

No consequences, you remind yourself and release one of his wrists to pushed a hand down over his throat. The large, rough hand you leave unpinned remains stuck to the floor as your fingers curl around arteries. His hairy throat bobs under your palm.

You run through physical sensation like a mantra. Your heavy heart. Rug on knees - skin on skin. The heat of his stomach that crawls up through your drenched folds and further inside. You categorize a thousand more sensations and hold him as still as a quivering mass of bone and muscle can be held silent.

“You’ve been bad, though.”

Brahms swallows and nods; agreeing.

“Touching me… watching me-“ he trembles as you whisper on a boat of liquor, “you’re not a child. Not a doll… nothing I don’t want you to be.”

You smile as his fingers curl. The hand unbound makes a move but doesn’t grab or pinch, just slides across the rug and flattens over his chest, digging into the material over his heart.

“... and you want to fuck me so bad, don’t you?”

Two nods and Brahms dares to grip your wrist with the fingers around his throat, clenching but holding instead of yanking himself free. Be weak for me, you think in a haze and start pulling up his shirt like you had before. The bulge in his throat rubs your palm with each nervous swallow. The idea of something like him, a manifestation of all your pent up sexual desires with a taste of untested dominance, brings out something primal in you. You squeeze until that odd lilt stutter of his runs into a growl beset with a ragged male groan and pet the length of his arching torso all the way down to the dip in his hips. He’s perfectly crafted - brain conjuring the best thing aside from valium and some sleep.

You kneel back over his thighs, taking the undone trousers with you until the blurry outline of pale stretching flesh swings free over dark curls.

Musk hits your nose. Sweat. Testosterone. Cum. Cock and hot surging blood.

The world outside howls as you dip down and run a tongue up his cock, tasting the salty tang of skin, bulging vein and up further to where the flavor is cloying. Brahms head thunks the floor, hitting wood while there’s carpet under your knees and dark, brushed hair under your hands.

“I’m a good boy…” he growls, banging twin fists into the floor; masked face twisting back and forth and hips surging upwards. “Mummy said so.”

“Mummy was wrong,” you whisper hotly over the flared head of the flavored cock and pull the head into your mouth, sucking… tongue cupping and dragging and reaching into the slit that leaks more salt and tang.

Where the thunder batters your ears and his haggard sounds end, you don’t know for sure. It doesn’t matter as you slip your hand down, tipping his cock up against the web of your palm and fill your mouth and throat with him. His hips bounce, eager and restless; knowing nothing about how deep you can take him or how hungry you’ve become. Brahms - the conjured man - rakes his nails through the carpet, scratches wood flooring and spreads his thighs with a choked, little sound.

“No. Good boy…” that tiny, childish voice...

You pull your lips back, rake your teeth up the rigid root until the soft bulge of his cockhead snags on your bottom grooves. One swirling lick pulls away precum and lays him out flat on the floor again.

“Only bad boys get to fuck bad girls, Brahms,” you whisper against the tip of his cock, give the head a kissing suck and lift up until you can feel his cock erecting between drenched folds and puffy, needy flesh. His eyes stare into you, cutting through your drunken, heedless gaze enough that you pause for a second and wonder…

He watches, and you smile away a disturbing sense of realism. The paintings glare as you flatten a hand down on his stomach, pluck up the dense flesh of long cock and lift it - grazing your clit and resting the head right where you-

The dream fantasy dies as Brahms snatches up your hips as fast a bolt of lightning. He thrust upwards and yanks you down; stabbing you until a shock of pain follows the pleasure that burns up into your throat. Your eyes water as he shoves you flush over his lap, latching his fingers in the crook of your elbow and meat of your hip.

A tear slips over your cheek at the intensity. The rain hammers the house until it sounds like a monsoon and with the weakest gasp, you begin to tremble. Fear and panic lift their ugly heads as Brahms pulls at your arm and hip, walking powerful, unforgiving hands up your naked body until he’s holding your face in his hands and pulling you down to his depths; his shoulders lifted off the floor.

Hard porcelain kisses hurt your lips as his lengthy cock triggers your heart beat in a place you’ve never felt it before. He’s damaged you, and you’re not dreaming, and if you are then it’s a nightmare because…

“Oh-” you quiver, holding his wrists as he imitates kisses and begins rocking his hips upwards, “... please.”

You beg and sob and tremble but you don’t fight him even though you should, even though you could. He knows it too and fucks up into you deeper; hips churning faster and higher. Flashes of lightning play over one side of his mask. Blood-clotted eyes widen with each hungry, passionate kiss of hot glaze. It hurts, but it’s good. The motions too deep - too painfully real. He’s too real.

“Stop,” you finally beg, but shake your head until your lips fall to the side of the mask. You didn’t mean it - not really. Brahms knows it too and digs his thumbs into your cheeks, making your teeth ache, and rolls you over into the floor. Not a single centimeter of him leaving your body on the turn. He pins you by cock and upper body strength, eye socks of white holding wild, feral eyes that stare into a soul you’d thought you’d lost, but was there the whole time; waiting.

“You-you’re real,” you tremble, crying in thin rivers around the curve of his hands, “... you can’t be.”

There’s some other reason for it. Maybe it’s not a dream. You’re crazy is all - mad like your sister and your Mum and every other terrible person that shares your genes but even that grounding thought fades away as Brahms pulls his cock back and thrusts it in until you hiccup and moan. Your body welcomes him with sucking muscles and the soft squelch of wetness.

“Mine,” he seethes hauntingly, breath leaking around the cuff of his mask, filtering through the shag of dark beard until you can smell the sour scent of old blood and internal mechanisms. Your insides clench, quiver and wet each piston of his cock until the glide is so smooth and his thrusts so hard and fast you drop your grip from his wrists and lay back like a ragdoll as he fucks several years of ignored lust into a satisfied mess of fleshy appreciation.

“... yes,” you swallow, “harder.”

“Har- der. HARDER!”

Brahms fucks you until your heart swells behind your ribs and rises into your throat with each trembling wheeze. He snarls like a gytrash lusting for blood and knocks your teeth with another kiss; hips slapping between your thighs with harsh, relentless claps like the thunder outside.

Rain beats in your ears - his sounds of pleasure, at times, a mimicry of your own before they run ragged and torn. Monstrous.

He strokes a thumb over the polished well of tears under one eye and falls over you; pressing you solid against the floor. Breathing becomes a thing unattainable, but he lets one side of your face go, finds your swollen clit with tear-drenched fingers and - as if he’s been watching you rub it for weeks now - churns the nerve endings so expertly your eyes rolls back like in death.

You hitch out the last bit of air in your lungs, feel the dizzying sensation of a real, full-bodied orgasm build behind your navel and watch him watch you as darkness chips away your peripherals.

The outside world and inside world meld, filling the space surrounding you and Brahms until you swear the rain is burning your skin as you cum; fingers in the greasy curls sticking over the mask… urging him by the back of the head to lay more hard kisses on your lips. The sensation burns and goes fat with puffy muscles that push and pull as Brahms fucks you and rubs you and cums inside you…

The hazy transition from sleep to waking comes on slower this time. The rain is but a weak drizzle in the flat blue of morning sun coming through the window. Your robe is tied messily around your waist, and as your eyes focus, you realize that the twin blotches of cherry and grape are your bruised knees.

Everything hurts. Head. Finger joints and wrists. The headache behind your eyes throbs while your back stiffens with pulled muscles. The worst of it is your jostled insides that tighten and make you whimper as your slip from the bed.

Nausea follows you into the bathroom where the darkness evaporates with the flick of the light switch. The hunched figure in the corner goes unnoticed as you weakly go about your morning ritual of the toilet, brushing teeth and showering.

Cum trails you with each action. You wipe away the fluids before flushing the toilet - it runs down your inner thighs as you clean out the sour tang of if from your mouth and in the shower you hunch and wince as you finger the rest from yourself. You’re not crazy… but what happened last night was.

The whiskey hangover has robbed you of any pleasant side effects from getting so thoroughly fucked in the billiard room, but beyond the churning of your stomach and the pain inside your skull, you’re oddly satisfied.

One long day passes and then another. Each night you lay awake and wait, not touching yourself but waiting nonetheless. It doesn’t help that you’re sore from Brahms’ frantic and unhinged affections.

By the third day, you realize he’s been following you. Now you know what he smells like and every now and then you’ll get a whiff of him and pause, understanding that what you’d thought were your footsteps actually end a second too late to be just your own. He’s around always. He’s waiting.

There’s a sense of zen in knowing that he won’t come unless you want him too… or unless Brahms determines he’s welcome. Odd to think that a man lives in the walls of this house, let alone one that has the decency to keep his distance for the most part… unless he’s buried to the hilt in your cunt. Brahms loses that restraint when he’s lost inside you it would seem.

In one week the hospice workers will arrive, and you’ll have no reason to stay unless your Mum has a moment of clarity. You’ve been talking to her more honestly while cleaning her, tending to her needs and keeping her comfortable.

Fours days after your night in the billiard room with Brahms, you lean over your Mum’s bedside after tucking in the fresh sheets and smile sadly, “I hate you… but it’s just because I love you so much.”

She says nothing, just turns her head away as you prep her medicine and set the record player to something soft and gentle. Her blood pressure is high, so it’s Chopin over Beethoven today.

At first, the words are so quiet you barely hear them over the ebb of orchestral harmony - so rasping. It reminds you of a dead thing but then you lean in and your Mum turns to you with a weak glare, barely sparing the needle in your hand a glimmer of recognition

“... I heard you, moaning like a whore. Heard you downstairs. Heavens only knows-” she wheezes and you start feeling sick to your stomach, “... disgusting. Letting the devil in like some harlot… you disgusting, stupid-”

Out of nowhere, you slap her. Finally snapping.

The crack of it makes your ears pop, and you only realize you’d been crying when you wipe them off your hot cheeks, disbelieving and shocked at yourself. The woman in her deathbed snarls, glaring with wet eyes. Your hands shake while injecting her dose of morphine - your arms shake while putting everything away and your whole body rocks once you’re outside in the hallway with only yourself and possibly Brahms. Probably, Brahms...

That night you eat from a packet of salty chips, staring at all corners of your room with frenzied, paranoid eyes. The beginnings of a panic attack finally follows up with you. You can feel that cold trickle of mental dysmorphia. Your mind wanders, riding a road of wet muck towards a cleave of land that ends in a plunging cliff - it races so far you start thinking of the pill bottle your Uncle has. You think about the booze he mixes with your medicine and the Lawyer that comes over every so often to indulge with him while playing billiard ball in the room where Brahms soaked himself over every square inch of you.

His stains still linger, but the thought of him and his cock plunging within you isn’t what sends you into a panic - it’s the realization that your only friend is an obsessed man hiding in the walls.

There's nothing to lose by barging into your Aunt’s master suite, shaking your Uncle out of a stupor and demanding your pills back. They couldn’t loathe you any more than they already do. There’s no loss - no reason to sit in this four-poster bed and prey your heart doesn’t stop suddenly.

No hesitation.

Thunder rips through the walls in an endless storm as you walk purposefully down the hallways. The picture frames bounce against the sepia-stained wallpaper as if Brahms is following close beside you. You stop at the maze-carved door for the second time that week, feel anger make you jittery and bang the door until your fist bruises.

“Stop it!” Your Aunt hisses above the white noise of rain, jerking the door open in a dressing gown and reading glasses, “if you wake your Mum now, I swear to Christ I’ll-”

“Where-where’s my valium?!” The tremble in your voice is not a good sign. “Uncle Byron has them and-and-and I want them back. I need them… give them back. NOW!”

She stares at you, shocked; startled silent. Perhaps, she’s not seen you like this before, but the stunned expression doesn’t last. Her lips thin until they’re nothing but a white line on her face - eyes cut down like an arrowhead. She shoves her palm into your sternum, thrusting you back out into the hallway and snarls like a rabid cat.

“How dare you?! You little shit - accusing my husband of thievery. Of being some drug-addled loony!?”

The erratic tempo of your heart skyrockets, filling your throat until you can’t even defend yourself but with a stutter.

“You’re the one who's lost her marbles - you and that man you’re sneaking in here during the nights! Just like your selfish little sister. With that damning letter your poor Mum received - putting a bullet in her head! Just like you to put me through this accusation… just disgusting. You’re torturing her you know?! - And now you see fit to torture me! Me!”

“I’m not-” you try, feeling light-headed. Another push of bony, mean knuckles sends you back against the wall; raised trim and engraved lower paneling digging into your backside and lower spine.

“For all I know you’ve been giving him those pills. Drugging him. Fucking him… you slut-”

Unsure of where it comes from, you snarl and shove her aside. She falls on weak knees into the dark hallway and says something that dies halfway through. The scuffle that fades down the pitch corridor doesn’t register because your brain needs one thing; wants one thing. One thing that will solve the rest of those messy troubles and that’s your pills. This house is hate - this family is hate. Hate. Hate. HATE!

Someone shadows you - Brahms - but you walk into the room with your robe askew and your chest aching, unable to think outside of the hazy, dull look on your Uncle’s face as he sits up in bed. A slow creeping expression of horror pulls at the wrinkles branching under his eyes. The downturned oval his mouth makes - as if he’s looking at a monster - is oddly satisfying after being pushed around like a weak-minded child.

“Where are they?” You demand of him.

There’s no asking.

He flounders for a moment and then turns in bed, pulling open the unoiled bedside table. The rattle of pill bottles and booze makes you want to throttle him for dumbing himself down instead of standing up for himself. Maybe he’s a victim like any other, but he’s a passive abuser in the same skin, and you waste no time in marching to his side. You snatch your pills from his hand before he can offer them up. The bottle is half full… it's half of a three-month prescription. The bastard ate over sixty of them in the past three weeks.

“...w-what about Margaret?” He asks; weak and doped.

“She’s fine-” you bite and then swallow, clutching your pills until a little wave of relief calms you down, “...I didn’t mean to push her, but I can’t stand it any-”

“What’d you do to her, boy?”

You freeze.

Damp, hot breath hits the back of your neck, scattering the downy hairs that curl outside your messy bun. It’s Brahms; cloying with lust. Wet, warm fingers press into the bare patch of your shoulder where your robe has slid down, and for a second you feel nothing but an acute animal urge of unknown origin run through your body. Fight or flight or freeze.

You can’t move.

“Who are you?” Your Uncle demands in a voice addled by alcohol and benzodiazepines, but the fingers only glide up and around the front of your throat. The hard, lukewarm surface of his mask bumps the shell of your ear, more hot breath gushes down around your neck and back.

The tacky stick of his palm makes your heart palpitate. Still in bed - still misty-eyed - your Uncle blinks and frowns.

“Brahms…” you whisper; throat tight.

Another second and your heart will just up and-

Thunder booms between your ears, defibrillating your heart rhythm back to a smooth race just as the wet, sticky hand envelopes your throat; thumb and forefinger touching. His hands, you think, remembering them on your face and breasts and churning purposefully over your clit.

“I ha’ ate them too.” His voice is high pitched at first, but quickly dips into that monstrous, ripping growl, sending a thrill between the stale panic attack until you can’t stand it anymore and let yourself tremble.

“Don’t be afraid. I’ll handle them - I’ll kill them all.” The hard surface pressed to the side of your face displaces his voice, but it’s lust-drenched and full of promise.

Snorting, erratic inhales soak down your spine, warming the smooth spider-webbed material pressed to your cheek. You shiver and squeeze your eyes shut.

“... you can’t,” you whisper and then suck in a hard breath as Brahms' hand tightens around your throat proving he can and he will.

Blood fumes hit your nostrils as his finger joints schlick tightly together. Rain hammers the windows beyond the drawn curtains. Thunder cracks and the lights flicker. His hand squeezes hard and then loosens, and you drop your pill bottle to the floor and pull furiously at the unmoving grip around your throat.

The room breathes as you breathe.

This is no dream either. There never were any...

Your Uncle’s brows pull up in confusion. Something shifts in his watery eyes because his mouth thins and his legs turn over the side but Brahms' hand around your neck yanks you close; coveting. From the darkness of your peripherals, he swings a long wrought iron rod, cutting through the air and bashing your Uncle’s face half open. You blink as blood droplets splatter across your neck and chin; dribbling hot down your throat.

Uncle Byron slides to the floor, gripping the bedspread as they go down with him to the rug. Lightning breaks through the skinny separation of drapery, painting a hard white line over the crumpled body of drugs and alcohol.

Brahms arm - still wielding the red-oiled bar of iron - slides around you, hugging you close.

“Stay here. Stay with me. Or I’ll kill your Mummy too…”

Your Mum’s face crosses your mind's eye, but the thought of her becoming hollow and empty is much less a threat than he thinks it is. Under his forearms, your chest rattles; hyperventilating. Any more stimulation and you’ll fall under. The idea of sinking into oblivion now, in his arms, would -

He wheezes - growling exhales of hot, moist breath - and twists his hand off your throat until your breast weighs in his palm. The hard pinch of his fingers scissoring over your nipple stops you half-dead. You recall mornings waking up to sore breasts and sharp, pebbled tips… so raw that even your silk bra had done nothing for the pain.

Confirmation.

He’s been playing with you while you sleep, following you during the day and fucked you like an animal until you couldn’t get him off you - out of you.

“STAY! Stay...”

He roars against your face, then begs in a high tone, and you twitch, joints locking up and nod. Your cheek sticks to the hard surface of his mask. His head windes forward, unyielding chin bumping your shoulder and mashes a blood-dried hand to the other side of your jaw, turning you towards him. Those orbs beset in the hollow eyes sockets of alabaster shift wetly, scattered with busted blood vessels and stinging sweat and something in your chest warms with longing; affection. He turns you slowly inside his arms, shuddering as your fingers raise up over his dusted collar bones, thumbs pushed into dense muscle.

He’s splattered with blood. Several skinny rivers of black red run down the dusty porcelain like the rain on your window pane.

Eyes of the house.

Window to the soul.

You blink and feel blood pull at your neck in dried layers as you tip your head back and lean up. Brahms searches your eyes with a thirsty passion and hunches down on set shoulders and a long firm neck.

You kiss him. Pills on the floor; forgotten… and slide an arm around the back of his neck, dragging him down and down and further until the bed hits your spine and everything becomes crystal clear.

You’re crazy.