Moonstruck ⟡ HS

00

"The Feds again?" He inquires as his thinning wrists are harshly grabbed, secured with a set of thick handcuffs like his ankles were, and he didn't even pay attention to them, but kept his focus on the mundane officer with the grossest mustache he had ever laid eyes on. "Y'know, I'm startin' to think they've got a crush on me or somethin'—"

"Move your feet, kid."

"Hey, Prickles," He begins as he walks down the pathway, getting no reaction from the officer as he holds on to his arm with digging fingertips, "You heard Rock Me Like A Hurricane before, right? It's pretty good, isn't it? Germ didn't like my rendition too much—"

"Styles, you've got two seconds to shut your trap, or else you're going back to solitary."

"Pigs." He scoffs under his breath, letting his eyes roll as he's walked to the booths of telephones and empty stools, something he hasn't seen in a while, and as the officers guide him to the booth of his visitor's choosing, he gets shoved on to the metal stool and lets his eyes widen when seeing who was sat on the other side of the glass.

Shock only resides within him for a split second, but once it passes, his smirk remains coy and infamous as it curves along his lips, devilish in every way possible. He looks up and down at the familiar face sat before him, noticing a mask shielding her fear, because even a glass wall and more prison guards than he can count doesn't sooth her worry—and it shouldn't, he thinks to himself with a chuckle. With a strained grasp, he reaches for the phone, connected to a cord in the wall, and as he presses it to his ear, he carefully as she mimics him and places the phone beside her ear.

A shaken breath is the first thing he hears come from her side of the glass, an exhale of somewhat, and he lets his eyes shutter, his mind grazing over the idea of having someone else's breath fan against his skin. He loses himself, the sound of her breath sends him into an internalized frenzy, but he gathers himself, swallowing thickly while holding on to the phone tighter, he opens his eyes again to stare back into her blue ones.

"What a lovely surprise, this is." He smiles, though it's not returned. "Hi, Alice."

"Where is she, Harry?"

"Where is who?"

"Don't fucking—" Her words get cut with water filling her eyes, he is numb to her emotions as he watches her cry, but he listens closely, he hears her heavy, shuddering breath and remembers how it used to feel against his cheek, when he got so close, he could feel the fear radiating like the sun. "—I'm not here to play with you, Harry. Where is—"

"Why not?" He whines into the phone with a pout to his lips, "Al, it's been so long since I've played a good game, and no one in this shit-hole knows how to play like you do—" His words get cut off with a heavy sigh coming from her end, his eyes follow the tears that stream down her cheeks like horses in a race, wondering which will fall into her lap first, but she wipes them with the back of her hand and his shoulders slump.

"Where the fuck is Josephine?" Alice asks him with a grit to her voice, clenching her teeth to keep her composure, though in his game, the crack is what it's all about. "It's been a month, Harry. I-If she's dead in a ditch somewhere, just say it—"

"Now," He begins with his brows clenched inward, the phone pressed to his ear, and he looks at her as if she was the dumbest moron on the planet, "why in the world would I kill kitten?"

"Because you're a fucking psychopath! That's why!" Alice exclaims with a frantic smile, as if she was losing her sanity like he already had, though the emotion seeping through her pores was not something they had in common. "You're stuck in here, Harry. You're never getting out and if Josephine is alive like you claim she is, you'll never see her again—"

"You don't know that." He says with a calming sense of attitude that sent her spine straightening, "She loves me very much."

"She's dead, you idiot." Alice deadpans and his face drops into a look of annoyance, "No one has seen her in a month and you, the town murder, was the last person to see her alive—"

"Is that what they're calling me now?" He asks and revives his smirk, tapping his fingers against the ledge his arms are leaned on in front of him, "The town murder?"

"Get fucked, Harry—where's Josephine?" Alice inquires, and he can sense it's the last time she will ask him this, because like the Feds, that was the million dollar question—where is Josephine Smith? Every field has been dug through, the trenches and the lakes have been searched through and through, and yet, the town sweetheart, Josephine Smith, was still missing while he sat to rot in prison.

"Y'know, if there was some way I could get outta here, I could help look for her—" He suggests with a small shrug to his shoulders, and like he set out to do, he watches Alice Wilson sit before him and crack. The only difference between then and now as the glass wall, keeping him from reaching for her to use her own shards of sanity against her.

"You think this is funny?"

"No, I think fart jokes and Sam Kinison is funny—"

"You know, I think if you didn't know where Josephine was and loved her so much, you would be a bit more worried that no one can fucking find her—" Alice snaps, narrowing her watery eyes with a sniffle to her nose, he isn't impressed. "—but here you are, as cool as a goddamn cucumber while making a fucking joke of this! You don't even care, and you don't love her, because you killed her—"

"What's the date today?"

". . . what?"

"The date—what is it?"

"I don't . . ." She begins with a confused head shake, jogging her memory until the date is remembered, "it's the ninth. The ninth of September—why do you need to know?" His lips curl upwards when Alice's words process through his mind, and with her brows inched inward with tension, he glances back to her.

"Well, aren't you going to wish me a happy birthday?"

"You deserve no happiness, Harry, you're . . ." She stops, shaking her head with a faint breath that he wishes was her last, "you're a goddamn monster."

"Nice seein' you too, Alice."

As he goes to hang up the phone, he hears her call after him, through the phone and then through the glass, and while he stands up from the stool, he's roughly grabbed by the guards. Her pleads and cries drown out with every step he takes back into the narrow hallways, on the familiar trek back to the cells where he will be left to live, breath, and daydream about Josephine Smith.