Ai, Andāteikā; UndertakerXReader

Chapter Two: Bête Noire

  I ran (well, more "limped." I hit that sink pretty hard, and already felt a large bruise forming on my side.) over to embrace him, and he held me tightly. At first I felt really warm and fuzzy on the inside because of the intensity of the hug, but when I looked up at him, I saw he was angling me toward the corner, and looking back over his shoulder with wide and fearful eyes. His normally glowing, tan face was flushed and pale, and he was biting his lip so hard, blood droplets were forming under his teeth.

        "Hey, Eric, what's-"

        He clamped his hand down on my mouth roughly. My eyes widened, and I whimpered behind his calloused palm. He either didn't notice or ignored me, because he kept on listening for something, then seemed to satisfy himself of some suspicion. He lowered me to the ground so that I was sitting on my knees with my back to the corner, and he was kneeling on the ground with his back to the door, almost like a shield.

        A shield... from what? What could be making him so afraid that he would try to protect me? I thought with a mounting anxiety.

        "Eric-" I squeaked, but he cut me off.

        "Ruth, I need you to listen to me," he hissed in my ear. "Something has gone wrong. And I know you have a lot of questions, but I need you to be quiet and let me talk." He was staring straight into my eyes, which were now huge. I gazed back up at him and nodded, my chest tightening with unease. He glanced toward the door again before leaning back toward me, his mouth close to my ear.

        "Something happened with Bordeaux," he rasped, his eyes still flicking back occasionally. "I don't know what happened or why he's acting this way, but when I came in this morning..." He stopped and pressed a hand to his mouth. I turned toward his face, alarmed. His eyes were squeezed shut and his body was trembling. I put my arms around his chest and clung to him, deeply afraid of whatever had caused so much fear in this strong, seemingly unshakable man. I looked over his shoulder, and through the metal bars I glimpsed a shadow in the kitchen door. My muscles tensed up and I was tapping him fervently in the chest when he moaned one last thing in my ear.

        "He killed them," and started to sob. My breath caught in my throat. I held him at arms length and stared at this person who could not be Eric, a stranger that was crumpled and crying and terrified of something that was coming toward us, slowly, and with a limp.

        I grasped his shoulders and shook him roughly, trying to get him back to senses.

        "Eric. Eric. Eric!" tears were streaming down my face as the shadow got closer. It was right next to the door frame, now, and I started to sob along with Eric.

        "He went insane, Ruth. He just started screaming and stabbed them with that knife. He wouldn't stop. There was so much blood..." I saw was looking right through me, not really seeing me, and I began to cry harder. He started to rock back and forth, and I jerked his shoulders again, laboring for his attention.

        "Eric!" I was whispering as loud as I could without catching the shadow's notice. "Eric, he's behind you. He's behind you!" I hissed. This made him come back. His sobs cut off abruptly as he shoved me farther down behind him and whipped his head around. His face paled and his lips parted, tears forming in the corners of his eyes. All at once, everything went dead silent. The shadow was now fully in the room, and we could hear it's heavy, grating panting along with a single, quiet drip. I started to tremble and wept silently into Eric's lap, since he scrunched me down and out of sight. I could hear Eric swallow, and I sat there in dread of what I assumed was Bordeaux, mind finally snapped.

        Bordeaux was never a kind person. I had never seen him be any form pleasant to anyone except our boss, some of the richer costumers, and whatever poor woman he was trying to get in bed with- although, I had heard he was abusive to even his mistresses at times. Plus, there were all the horrible rumors that seem to surround people like him. I heard that he hit some little kid on the street for teasing him, was secretly addicted to opium, strangled the strays that came near his street, and other things like that. He was pretty abusive to myself as well, though he hardly ever hit me. He slapped me across the mouth once when I insulted his then-lover, even though I ended up being right about her when he woke up one morning to find that she had left him without a note. Along with half of his money and several valuables.   Another time, one of the part-time workers thought it would be funny to see if he could make the baker angry, and started to jokingly taunt him. I hid behind a counter, apprehensive of Bordeaux's temper. When the teasing didn't work, he began to explicitly mock him and his love life, and started to comment on how not even his mother could love such a brute. Bordeaux pinned him to the wall with one hand and started punching him in the face and stomach. He would've seriously injured him had it not been for Eric's intervention.

        And here he was, standing six feet away from us, completely snapped. I couldn't see him, but I could still hear his ragged breathing, heavy and slow, as if he had just done something that required a lot of energy and effort.

        ...Like murdering someone...

        I gulped in Eric's lap, still completely still. We all sat this way for a few minutes, with everything completely still and silent excepting the empty and fill of our lungs and the pump of our hearts, normally so quiet and frail. Now they sounded like bass drums being perpetually struck in an empty room.