The Deathly Kiss

Five

Watching Ivan eat with a fork was like watching a wolf play frisbee. He ate neatly and quietly but finished the whole plate clean. Pops doused his with salt and Jane and him began a small bickering about his sodium intake.

She was taking a sip of her lemonade when she noticed. A fuzz. A little blur in the corner of her vision. She froze and then slowly turned her head in its direction. She clenched her hand in a fist. She didn't realize she had broken skin with her nails until Ivan reached out and grabbed her hand.

The dark shadow-figure stretched and thrashed. Jane felt a wave of nausea overtake her. This was new. This was different than she'd ever seen. One moment Ivan's grabbing her hand, then the tea kettle is flying across the room past her head and right into the wall nearby the table, and next everything goes dark.

She wakes god-knows-how-long later in her bed, Pop's sitting beside her reading a newspaper.

"Looks who's up. Hey Janey..." His eyes show concern and she can tell he has been worrying from how worn the edges of the newspaper were from his fingers handling the pages.

"Hello...What happened?"

"You fainted. Like a classic damsel. Pretty sure some rat got in or something...a bird maybe? Freaked out and sent the kettle flying. Only thing I can think of. Ivan carried you up here to sleep it off. You haven't been taking care of yourself."

"I'm sorry for the scare."

"Do you feel alright now?" She nodded.

"I feel fine. I promise."

Pop's folded up his paper and stood up from the wooden chair with a groan.

"Don't get old, Jane." 

"Pops?"

"Yes?"

"You seem...different recently. Happy? You know it's ok if...You can tell me if you met someone."

"There's nothin' to tell. Your grandma was the only one for me in this life. I know nana would kick me in the head if I kept up the sorry act I was...I'm just glad you're home and safe."

They smiled at one another and he shuffled off.

She breathed a sigh of relief.

What they hell was that thing? It was sinister. It was powerful too. And It probably wasn't Ivan unless he's decided to try and get them too scared to stay on the property. Could he have even done something like that? I mean maybe...She couldn't write it off just yet though. She didn't want to believe he'd do that.

She thinks of his handsome face and his dark eyes and how his shoulders look as he works. She thinks of the smell of blood, but most of all she thinks of feeling him hold her. She wonders why she feels this connection to him. She rarely has ever even had a crush in her life, but now she is obsessing over a guy who could literally devour her whole. Maybe she was fucked in the head from all this ghost bullshit but it felt like there had to be more to it. Even now she felt a tug, like she needed to find him out there.

He clearly wasn't able to get into the house before...Now it was different. He needed to be invited in. Vampire? Demon? Suddenly he could come inside and she's seeing shadow people?

What was he?

She felt the hairs on her neck stand on end. 

She felt watched; half expecting round two with the shadow that'd been downstairs when she noticed a dark sillouette in the corner on her ceiling...It was Ivan. She just knew it was, though she couldn't make out any of the features.