Empath (The Secret Hotel #1)

Chapter Four

Chapter Four

 

That night, the only way I thought I’d ever get to sleep was if I watched the least sexy documentary that I could find.

My and Michelle’s work day ended at nearly three AM, after we’d tucked in the last sheet into the last bed and set the last industrial washing machine with the last load. Finally I crawled into bed, and every bit of my attention was on the things I’d seen and heard while on the job. Drawn-out moans and powerful, rhythmic thuds echoed between my ears, even if the house was silent aside from the occasional creak and groan of old floorboards. I had absorbed all of it, even if it wasn’t mine to take.

I wasn’t above touching myself. It’d been a while since I’d had anything that even closely resembled satisfying sex, and sex was awkward and scary. I didn’t want anyone to see my belly, or the stretch marks and dimples in my thighs. If I closed my eyes, though, I could pretend I had a supermodel’s body. Maybe I had a perfect silhouette like Jazz, or maybe I was a painting like Liv, or even as petite and willowy as Michelle.

If I imagined that, I didn’t even need to fantasize about someone else pleasuring me. That was a body I’d be more than happy to devote my attention to.

But the room was dark and unfamiliar to me. It felt like the shadows, as dense as smoke, were watching me. I wasn’t comfortable enough to satisfy any itch. I couldn’t even attempt it, not when I was terrified that somehow, in some strange way, someone in the house would find out. The sheets were cold against my legs and I swore the threads weren’t soaking up any of my body heat. Just like the bathroom, there was so little evidence of me here, and it felt like I had to buff out all the sharp new edges to make myself a comfortable, soft niche.

The heavy silence amplified every noise of the creaky house and the wind outside my window, and I couldn’t take it anymore. I pulled my laptop from its paisley carrying case beside my bed and opened up. Even if I wasn’t a religious person at all, I would watch the most profoundly zealous documentary there was. Anything to dampen the coals under my skin and firmly deter any sexy thoughts, sort of like smelling something rotting in order to ruin an appetite.

The pale, piercing glow of my screen was the only light, aside from the UV streetlights that flooded through my cracked blinds. As my laptop started up and thought all about its many programs and lives, I heard the telltale, “Hey,” at my door.

Sky had come to meow at my room. I called him in just like before, and despite how incredulous he was at my choice of entertainment for the evening, he sat with me. We exchanged snarky comments as we watched a documentary on religious cults together.

I chanced glimpses of him. His skin and clothes didn’t even reflect the pale glow from my laptop. The light didn’t sit on his face, but instead illuminated that he wasn’t quite tangible, and that he had no shadow to cast.

He had no weight or mass, so when he shifted, the mattress didn’t shift with him. But against my leg and my arm, he radiated a wintry chill. He wasn’t simply the absence of heat—I swore he sucked the very warmth from my body.  The whole right side of my body was nearly numb by the end of the film.

I was still very much afraid of him, and afraid that he’d make me sick, that I’d need to be cleansed right away despite how the other members of the hotel didn’t seem too worried at all—including Michelle. But, more and more, I was discovering that I didn’t want to be afraid of him.

When I finally fell asleep at nearly six in the morning, I was trying to imagine what the light from my laptop would look like against the swell of his lips and the strong bridge of his nose if he had been alive, and what it would be like to actually feel his body heat radiating off of him.