The Spirit of Ravenshom House

Chapter 1: Habits Could Drive You Crazy

Daphne could still hear the screams from her dreams. Hollow, screeching banshees, inhumane ghouls weeping in the lone night, just sounds nothing to atone them to. They echoed inside her mind as she craned her neck and wiped her eyes, as if shaking off the skeletal hands that had called for her in the nightmare.

Sweat dripped from the sides of her forehead like water dripping from the edges of an overflowing fountain. The night's sleep had tired her even more than the night's party. Her head thrummed and ached from last night's festivities. It hadn't been too much to drink, not at all. Not even now when a thousand invisible knives were plunging and unplunging through her skull's thick exterior. And yet they hadn't helped her from seeing the ghosts in her sleep.

Beside her Jerry slept like the dead buried beneath the earth. He was on his stomach shirtless and cute-faced. His bare back gleamed sweaty and his snores sounded far away through the pounding inside her head. They were tangled in an extremely long quilt, mercilessly cold on the ground. The room was swept clean, no remnants of their lives present anymore. Only she, him and the quilt that hugged him and she almost felt jealous, jealous of a quilt.

She let her fingers write over his skin, letters and words she didn't care to acknowledge, letting her mind drift through the early morning haze. She leaned over him and her body reacted almost convulsively, aching all over, as if she had been hit by a landmine. Maybe she had had too much to drink, or maybe too little to eat. The party though small by volume had grown beyond any of their control, just like they had wanted it to. Drinks passed around and food barely left the kitchen. The hungry few who wanted to get out of dancing between swirling bodies and shattering music had found their way to the kitchen sink to eat in peace.

Her eyes once again fell over the man that she had loved and cherished for almost four years and she couldn't help it. Her body still suffering from the after effects of an evening well spent in bouts of cheap alcohol and dimming lights leaned over painfully to kiss the tender skin below his neck.

The man did not flinch and taking it a challenge she began working her way down planting kisses, forming an inverted S on his back. The groan was slow and reverberated her lips which was now touching the lower back right above his boxer lines.

He turned his head towards her with the wolfish sideways grin she always adored and pulled her in to him with his right hand. His left hand was still tucked underneath his head beneath dark curls that looked wild and tender. "Morning", he murmured rubbing his nose against her and she knew she needed him, now.

Her hand found its way down slipping beneath the thin material of his briefs, finding what she required. "Morning", she squeezed. That was all he needed.

He jumped her pulling her underneath him, his black hair falling to his eyes. She writhed down trying to get closer to his body as he pulled her hands apart and around him. Her hands met each other on the nape of his back and clutched pulling him down onto her. He sucked onto the right side of her neck, munching on her flesh and she closed her eyes, crinkling at the corners. His beard thick and rough tickled her shoulder and she moaned biting down her tongue. That seemed to work for him because he pulled her even closer which she thought wasn't possible. How much closer could they get?

Her legs were wrapped around him, her head arched back and her spine up in the air. She was a scarf wrapped around him and he was holding onto her like it was a wintry night where he was out in the cold, left naked. He needed her, like sustenance, like air.

The thrust came quick and rattled her. Her eyes flew open for a minute but found him smiling at her and finding solace once again closed back. Slow, like the start of a sole drum beat the push came and she grabbed onto his neck feeling him, all of him inside her. And remembering, she kissed him, his mouth swallowing her, sure to leave her lips swollen red. He smelled of rotted tequila and spring roses and she smiled at the memory of his habit of spraying himself with ladies deodorant wherever he went. Habits could make you chuckle. Habits could drive you crazy.

The beat now was insistent and she could feel the storm rolling inside her. Her nerves were igniting and her brain was erupting in pain but she didn't care. She could feel herself melting as he pushed into her, the ecstasy filling her up inside replacing the hollowness of the restless sleep. She licked his shoulder slow and light kissing after it, leaving traces of her on him. He was hers, always.

When she couldn't hold it anymore she let out a moan tightening herself around his bulk and he grunted in response falling onto her breasts. Lying his head beneath, he wriggled as she panted.

"I do all the work and you breathe as if you just ran a marathon".

"Won a marathon", she bit onto his bicep and he screamed right into her ear.

"Now that's a good morning", he winked at her.

She eased back onto the pillow feeling him as he slipped out to fall beside her. His hand clasped hers and she rolled to lie half on him. Her chin touched his shoulder and his left thigh weighed on her knee. They were in each other, no reminders of ghosts or nightmares anymore. She breathed closing her eyes.

"Who is gonna clean up", she asked, her eyes refusing to open. She wasn't even sure if there were others in the apartment sleeping off, too drunk to reach their respective abodes.

She could feel him laugh, "Now what kind of tenants would we be if we didn't gift our landlord for the kindness he showed us the past two years", he rubbed his cheek against her forehead and she breathed him in like her own personalized scent. "He can walk around and clean up all he wants without any of us in his way now."

Mr. Berry, the landlord had nothing sweet in him as his name suggested. He was stone faced and a bit disturbing, having worried them at various points of their lives in the apartment. Residing just right across from them he would go through their mails, peep through their windows and would even stop them to make complaints of things that they hadn't the slightest clue of. One time he shouted at them for blaring Satan music from their room when in fact that night they had slept in early both of them having early work the day next. They even doubted that he sniffed through their belongings having a secret spare key to the apartment.

Many a times Daphne had come home to find little things rearranged. The pencil she had kept on the table would be placed on the side table near her bed. The towel she had thrown over the chair haphazardly would be folded neatly on the couch. Little things that didn't make sense, creeping up on you enough to get you anxious, unsettled. She had good enough memory to know she hadn't done it and Jerry barely paid attention to where things were to rearrange them.

"Serves him right'', she said with an air of justness. Mr. Berry could move around gizmos or hang devilish goat horns on the wall for all she cared. After all, today they were moving out of the apartment; out the city to the suburbs. Out from one life to another.