Host of Sheets (shyan)

Chp 5. Double Exposure

Shane came to slowly to the feel of smooth sheets against his bare skin. Sunlight trickled through the curtains. Everything felt luxurious and he stretched with a pleased noise in his throat, rolling over onto his side.

His bare toes brushed a calf. He lifted his head from the pillow, blinking sluggishly. There was a person in front of him... Ned? Sound asleep, loose-limbed, last night's black eye already prominent. Shane stared at him for a long moment, before rolling over onto his other side to see Ariel. A coworker he'd barely spoken two words to, his coworker's wife, and him, lying between them.

Shane rolled over onto his back and stared up at the ceiling. He didn't remember last night well, but he knew he was still weak, and that people made him stronger. Marks, he'd called them.

Ned and Ariel.

His first marks.

They were still living, more's the pity- he could see their chests rise and fall, both of them disheveled in their tangled sheets. He wasn't strong enough to truly take them, not until he rebuilt his altar. They would wake up in a day or two, none the worse for wear.

But fucking them had been enjoyable anyway.

He slid out of bed, not bothering to be quiet. He wouldn't wake them. He wrapped their expensive sheets around his shoulders, letting them flutter after him as he made his way barefoot through their house, looking for his clothes.

Shane caught a glimpse of himself in a full-length mirror in the living room. He looked a wreck, dark red circles underlining his eyes, skin pale and wan. The cut on his chest was mostly scabbed over, but with a dark black substance that hurt to poke at.

This wasn't a mental break, he knew it wasn't, not with how everyone else was treating him last night; like he was a god of their tiny kingdom. It was exactly like it'd been before, but easier. He spent years trying to gather power and influence the first time around, but this time, after several centuries, it seemed easier to pull people into his sway.

And see? Those were not his thoughts. Those were the thoughts of a dead man that Shane knew intimately. That Shane was, essentially.

Shane rocked back on forth on his feet in front of the mirror. The edges of him blended and blurred, like a double exposure. Himself, but something extra. It- he'd- grown more powerful after the party, Shane could feel it in his gut.

He suddenly laughed, a short humorless bark, and lifted the sheet to let it fall over his head, the cool cotton brushing his cheeks as it draped over his body. He closed his eyes. There. Now he really was a ghost boy. He smiled, a little bitterly.

He could feel the...thing inside him. It wasn't like he'd imagined- had he really thought about it before, though? It was a whispery sort of feeling, like a breeze on the inside, tickling at his heart and lungs like sheets on a laundry cord.

The little he had thought about being possessed, he had figured it was supposed to be a little bit like clocking out, something else taking over entirely. Or maybe being trapped in your brain, while something else ran your body. This... wasn't either of those things. He was distinctly Shane Madej, and also... distinctly someone else. Their thoughts blended and blurred together, alternated and took turns.

It was a little bit like being sick, was the closest metaphor he could come up with. He was there, but not really at full capacity, and if he tried to concentrate, force his own will through, he just wore down faster. And sleeping was the easiest thing to do, but when he slept, he woke up in strange places, having done strange things.