Villains ➵ bill skarsgård a.u.

twenty three

“Jumper, you always say that but you never actually do it.” Georgie scolds. “So anyway, ‘Rianne, How did that go down?” she inquired, tracing her fingers through the line of dusty books surrounding us.

“I was fucking terrified.” I heaved, going back to the moment I stared at the empty void under my bed. And the empty void staring back at me like it was talking to me in some way I couldn't comprehend, silent and eternal. Like it was inviting me closer to the dark. It wasn't the fear of obscurity that scared me the most; it was the putrid smell and the same feeling I got staring at the pitch black corridors of the hospital. The fear that something would reach out from the dark and suck me in and kill me, and last night those petty horrors became reality. The way his hands reached out to me and grabbed my face; I swore to God I was only dreaming. Nonetheless when I'm dreaming, despite the utter terror of the monsters presenting themselves to me; there's always this feeling of safety and assurance that I won't die. But right there and then I was bare, unprotected from the man emerging under my bed frame like the monster in my dream, his eyes burning holes into my face.

I counted the hours before I fell asleep earlier, and I thought of nothing but the stranger sleeping on my floor, and the endless ways he could kill me in my sleep. Perhaps that was an overreaction; but it has only been one night. And later on as the sun sinks, I would have to go back to my room and endure the bees whispering at the back of my head.

“I could just imagine.” Jumper shakes her head in disbelief.

And right then and there my feet froze, my heart skipping a beat from the empty chair in front of the table, no traces of anyone ever being there. The dust untouched, the spiderwebs under the chair undisturbed. He's gone.

“Adrianne.” Georgie calls behind me, her cold hand latching onto the sleeve of my sweater to bring me back to reality but I wasn't going anywhere.

He’s fucking gone and I don’t know where he is. My stomach knots in hysteria, my knees quivering and finally giving up as my feet slid across the floors, my buttocks crashing onto the cold marble. “Adrianne!” Georgie exclaims, getting a hold of my arm in the attempt to catch me but it was too late, my legs were already sprawled out the floors..

“He’s gone.” I croaked, gaze burning against the wooden table the longer I tried to take in his absence. Only earlier he was still warning me about the people I my school and how I shouldn't trust anybody. Where has he gone? Did he go home when I specifically told him not to? Jesus fucking Christ, what if Aunt Mary and Uncle Ron found him? They would freak out and call the cops, and then Ericka and Ella will find out. What if he just left without saying anything? What if he went back into the hospital and got tired waiting for me? Did he happen to bump into one of my cousins? Did he think I wasn't going back? The questions all went to me simultaneously, my head alienated of answers to any of them. Why am I even worrying? I shouldn't. I was the one who feared him all night. I was the one who favored the idea of abandoning him here and never going back. Ever since he came up, I had been praying for him to vanish like so and now that my quiet afflictions have been answered a part of me can't help but wonder.

“Well, where could he possibly go?” Georgie crouched down next to me, “He doesn't know the school, does he?”

Of course he doesn't. The last time I checked he told me he hadn't been to a school ever. Not that I believed it completely, but he should at least feel a little at risk venturing a place he had never been in before. But then again, he could've been homeless for longer than I thought, he stayed in a fucking haunted hospital after all, what more could harm him in a school full of snakes? “I-I told him to stay here and wait for me, but now he's gone.”

Jumper’s warm breath blew through the messy strands of my hair, putting a hand onto my shoulder as well and swatting down the floor, placing down the stacks of paper on her lap. “Could've left.” She shrugged absentmindedly with a pout. “Did you give him money?”