Ominous, Part 1 by K.V. Rose

8

Eden

“Get it over with.”I know he’s savoring all four of his wins. Three pins and the final match by points, I think he would’ve had the pin if he hadn’t been so tired. Even though I knew it would add another question to the tally, I still couldn’t stop from standing in the bleachers, and while I didn’t clap like the Trafalgar parents around me, my smile made him reflect one back to me as the ref held up his arm, again.

I waited while he showered, the aftermath of the tournament no less busy than the duration of it. People mopping down mats, rolling them up, chairs carried back to classrooms, wrappers picked up from around the edges of the gym. I felt I should do something, but no one asked me to help out, and the boys from both the home and away teams seemed to have it under control.

I watched Eli interact with his teammates. His coach seems to quietly adore him, the coach’s wife too, with glasses just like her husband’s. She hugged Eli close, and he towered over her, giving her a squeeze back. Not for the first time, I thought about his mom.

His teammates seem to regard him with awe, and he’s the quietest in the group, but he’s the clear leader by the way everyone pivots toward him after a match, at the end of the tournament, before they got on the mat, anything at all, it’s like they’re looking at him to decide which step they should take next. Asking silent permission. Submission.

What would it feel like, I wondered more than once, to take control of someone like Eli? Does he ever let it happen?

Now, behind the wheel of his car, smelling like soap and the sea, his hair damp from the shower he had in the locker room while I read Chaucer from my backpack, he’s smiling like a cat, the faintest dimple showing in his cheek.

The day has gotten grayer, and as he pulls through the high iron gates of Trafalgar, I see a crack of lightning fork violently down from the sky, the boom of thunder seconds later. I think of Mom at the trailer, Sebastian on the road, and I slip my phone from my back pocket, waiting for Eli to ask the first of his four questions.

Mom: Are you still going to your friend’s house?

Me: Yeah, is it raining there?

Eli turns up the music at the same time he increases the speed on his windshield wipers, cool air from the vents clearing the smoggy glass when he turns right at the light outside of the school.

Mom: A little. We’re keeping an eye on tornado warnings. Be careful. What time will you be home?

I bite my lip, bouncing my knee as I glance at Eli. He’d told me to stay the night with him, but I can’t do that. It was a joke, anyway. Besides, tomorrow I have to work, and I shouldn’t be considering a sleepover.

Before I text Mom back, there’s a loud ringing through his speakers. I jump with the sound, and Eli glances at his dashboard. I see his eyes narrow, but surprising me, he answers the call.

“Hey.” His tone is dull and subdued.

My heart feels like it’s going to fly out of my chest, and I don’t even know why.

“How did it go?” The voice through the speakers is cheerful. Deep and male and attractive.

Eli’s grip tightens on the shifter. “Great.” His tone is clipped.

I frown, dropping my eyes to my phone screen, which has gone dim.

The person on the other line laughs, but it sounds a little tired. “Just great?”

Eli takes his time replying as he drives. Thunder booms outside of the confines of his luxury vehicle. “Yep.”

Why are you being so rude? I don’t even know who it is, but he’s older, I think, maybe… it’s his dad? My pulse decides to hammer harder against my ribcage.

The man clears his throat. “You’re headed to the vigil, right?”

I blink down at my phone, my limbs stiffening. Vigil?

Eli gives a sexy, disrespectful half-laugh, half-scoff. “Sure.” It doesn’t sound like he’s telling the truth.

“Dominic will really appreciate it, you know. His family too.”

Eli says nothing to this. I peek at him from my side of the car, and I see his full lips are pressed tight together.

“Well, call me if you need me, okay?”

“Yep.”

“Love you, son.”

Shit, it is his dad.

“Bye.” Eli ends the call, and music fills the interior of the car again.

I look back down at my phone, questions spinning in my mind. I read Mom’s text again, about what time I’ll be home. She’s let me go to sleepovers with Amanda, hang out late, encouraged me to, even, to get out of my own head.

But that was all before what happened at Shoreside. Besides, Eli’s got a vigil to attend. I didn’t see that coming.

Me: How late can I stay out? I ask it, even knowing I might have to be dropped off earlier. Because… vigil. I think of the purpose of one. It comes from a Latin word we learned just last week. Vigilia. Wakefulness. To keep watch. For whom?

Her: You have work tomorrow, how about 11?

I exhale a little, like I thought she might actually say I should stay over, and I wanted an excuse not to.

Me: Okay, thanks.

“You done over there?”

I look up as I click off my phone screen, flipping it to rest on my thigh, my palm over the bright green case on the back where I clack my lime green nails.

“What was that about?”

“I think it’s my turn to ask questions.” His voice has a teasing edge, but he doesn’t look at me.

I glance at the road, having no idea where we’re going. This is a nice part of Raleigh, with wide, freshly paved streets, yards like estates and houses more like mansions set far back off the road. “A vigil?” I press. “Who is it for?”

“An old friend.”

I squirm a little in my seat. “An old friend?”

“That’s what I said.”

I narrow my eyes at him, and watch as he glances at me, smirking a little. “A close friend?”

He sighs, shaking his head as he leans back in his seat. “A girl I used to fuck.”

My blood runs cold with his bluntness. I feel a little shaky and I grip my phone so hard, my palm starts to sweat. “A girl you used to… I think you should elaborate.”

“I don’t think I should.”

My stomach flips. “Where are you taking me?”

He huffs the smallest laugh. “Are you nervous, Eden?”

I don’t really know the answer to that, so I just blurt out, “Is she dead?”

He shrugs. “I don’t know.”

“What?” My nerves raise my voice an octave as I sit up straighter in his seat. “What’s the vigil for? Tell me now.”

“It’s for a friend of mine who went missing. A long time ago. Could be dead, could be alive.” He says it all so blasé, like he doesn’t care either way. Then he just changes the subject. “I’m really tired, you know. Pretty sore, too. I’d really like a massage, but—”

“I’m not giving you a massage.” The offense in my tone is only partly real as I glance at the lines of his biceps and squeeze my thighs together. What would it feel like, to touch his skin?

“But since I don’t think I could talk you into that, can we start now?” He continues speaking like I didn’t interrupt him, but he’s smiling again, eyes on the road.

I drop the vigil. He gave me an answer. Maybe I don’t want to know more. There are things I don’t speak of, and ignorance truly can be bliss.

“You have a question?” I counter, seeing Eli rubbing his thumb over his chin before he drops his hand back to the shifter. I’m glad the A/C is blasting to keep the windshield clear from fog. It helps keep my sweating at bay.

“How do you think I see you?”

I tip my head, catching his eye as I ball my free hand into a fist, my bag on the floorboard at my feet. I kick it, just a little, shifting it onto its side. “Really? That’s your question?” I don’t know what I expected. My favorite song, worst memory, maybe how I see him. But how does he see me? I’m not sure how to answer, mainly because I have no idea. I could be a project, a challenge, something to poke and prod because he’s bored.

Blue gum flashes between his teeth as he brings his eyes back to the road. “Yes.” He sounds very smug, like he knows it’s a difficult thing to answer. “That’s my question.”

I lean my head against the leather seat, staring at the rain splattering the windshield, oddly enough going up instead of down, almost as if it’s dispersing away from the glass and out of his line of sight. Like it’s easier to see through. Vaguely, I recall Sebastian putting something on my windshield before, he claimed it would repel rain. It was two years ago, when I first started driving and he wasn’t so… messed up. Maybe he was then, too. He just hid it better.

I wonder if Eli applied the repellent himself or if someone did it for him.

“I don’t know.” As I say the words, I know they’re a cop out, but trying to imagine how he views me makes me feel uncomfortable, which is probably why he asked. “Obviously you don’t think I’m boring yet, or I wouldn’t be in the car with you right now.”

“Okay, so that’s how I don’t see you…” He trails off and I want to smack the grin off of his face when our eyes briefly connect, more thunder rumbling outside, rain coming down in sheets. The wind feels as if it might blow the car off the road, but Eli seems to have no problem managing it. He isn’t egotistical about it, either, the way he keeps a low speed, plenty of space between him and the bright red brake lights in front of us.

“Now get your fine ass back in here.” Those words I pretended to loathe echo in my head.

I feel myself growing warmer, but I still speak, clearing my throat before I do. “You think I’m attractive.” I can’t say any other word. “Hot” or “sexy” or “cute” would sound juvenile and Eli seems to be anything but that. My palms are sweaty, but if I just focus on the back-and-forth track of the windshield wipers, I can get this question over with. “Shy.” I think of how he commented on my blushing. Then other voices seem to intrude, voices that aren’t his. “Maybe naïve. Socially inept.” I can’t seem to stop spilling out negative, self-deprecating adjectives, all from my own brain. “A hermit. Clumsy. Not very good at makeup.” I laugh, but I loathe myself for it. “I sweat too much. Lame, because I just spent an entire day watching you wrestle, and I don’t even know you.” I don’t want him to stop me, and he doesn’t. He’s silent, music playing beneath the roar of the storm, but I can’t make out the words, and I don’t care. It’s like now I’ve started, I can’t really stop. “You probably think I’m easy to manipulate and that’s why you’re doing it, and maybe I’m just some pet project, a mouse to play with until you get bored and squish me between your fingers.” The image plays in my head, and I feel sick. Not physically. Just, of myself. Like if I could get out of this car and go back to my room and do my homework and keep myself small and—

“Are you done?”

His voice is jarring, the coldness of his tone bringing me back to right now, here, in this moment at a blurry stoplight.

I turn my head to see him staring right back at me, expression blank.

“Yes.” I whisper the word, disgusted with myself.

The light changes to green, and I see it out of the corner of my eye, our gazes still locked, but he doesn’t move. Not at first. Then, slowly, the muscles in his forearms twitch, then jump, and he’s shifting gears, driving through the intersection as he turns his head away from me.

“What’s the darkest thought you’ve ever had?”

I don’t know if I’m gutted he didn’t say anything about my answer to his first question, or giddy with relief. The feeling is hard to parse, the way it’s a physical ache in my stomach. I leave it in the past and when I speak again, it’s with a false note of I’m fine.

“The darkest thought I’ve ever had about someone else, or…” Myself, is what I don’t say. I think I want to counter his question with a question, so I feel more in control.

His fingers tighten almost imperceptibly on the wheel, but I see the way his knuckles blanch. For some reason, it’s like I’ve won something, and I have no idea what it is.

“Yourself.” It sounds as if he’s unsure. As if he really hadn’t thought about it and would’ve liked me to answer both. I wonder if he’ll waste his next question on asking me about my worst thoughts on other people.

But I’m a little distracted with the worst thought I’ve ever had about myself, beneath the way I tore me down just moments ago. I have a more morbid thought, one I know will distract him from all of my own insecurities I just vomited up for him to dissect.

Still, I’m reluctant to share it. I want to go with something easier to stomach. To deflect, I say, “You tell me first.”

He smiles. “That’s not how this game is going to go.”

“It is if you want an answer.”

“God, you are fucking stubborn.” It sounds kind of like a compliment, the way he says it. But before I can respond, he keeps talking. “I won’t tell you the worst, but I’ll give you something better. Something I did when I was a kid.”

I’m eager for the insight because I can’t imagine Eli as a child. I assume he’s eighteen, based on the script tattoo on his arm I still haven’t been able to read, and I briefly wonder if I’m older than him. I turned eighteen September seventh, earlier this month. But it seems like we’ve skipped right past ages and into something far more intense.

Eli glances at me. His grip loosens then tightens on the wheel, and I stare at his rings while he speaks. “I almost drowned my neighbor.”

I’m not sure what I expected to hear, but if he was trying to throw me off, he succeeded. My mind is kind of blank, and I blink a few times, like clearing my vision will give me room to dissect his words. All I can come up with is a strangled sort of, “Excuse me?”

He lifts one shoulder up in a lazy shrug, eyes back on the road. “I was a bad kid.” He says it without any emotion. “It was a long time ago. It was a birthday party. I just… pushed him.” He glances my way once. “He’s okay, though. He was in diapers. I think they helped buoyed him a second so his mom could save him. So, come on. Tell me your worst thought about yourself, I promise I won’t judge you.”

In diapers. Jesus Christ. I think of asking all kinds of things about the incident, but I know he won’t answer me.

It takes me a minute to speak, but suddenly, my morbid answer doesn’t seem so… terrible. Or, perhaps, it simply seems like he’d understand. I clear my throat again, and I stare straight ahead, at the storm, as I speak. “My parents watched a lot of crime shows when I was growing up.” I lump Reece in with my parents, so I don’t have to explain they’re divorced, and I don’t have to field a question about my dad. There’s not much to say about him, and I like to say as little as possible where he’s concerned. “I kind of became obsessed with CSI.” I never missed an episode, and I was never scared. Not once. Not until I got older, anyway, and Sebastian’s friend happened. Before that, I imagined being a crime scene investigator. I fantasized about it all the time. Got on forums and message boards from the family computer as a kid, pretending to be older and smarter than I was, skirting around adults playing amateur detective about local, small town crimes.

I take a breath as we make a turn into a subdivision. The worst thought about myself has nothing to do with an abandoned dream job.

Focusing on the here, the now, giving myself a moment, I take in the neighborhood. The homes are enormous, and for a second, shrinking into Eli’s passenger seat, I forget about the question and my answer. Spaced far apart, built high up on hills, every driveway angled upward, these really are mansions. Stone and brick, gray and brown and red, minimum three-car garages attached to each one.

Can Eli see I don’t belong here?

I turn my head to find him staring at me as the wind picks up, knocking the rain sideways, even with the repellant I think Eli has on his car. “Go on.”

I want to ask where we are, but I don’t. Best to get this over with. We’ll be halfway done.

“Anyway, I always thought the reenactments of the murders were fascinating.” I stare out my window, taking in the sheer enormity of the homes. Trees dot the landscape, forests in the backyards, the road winding up and up and up. “I was kind of obsessed with the mind of a violent criminal. But it was never them I empathized with. Instead…” I trail off, my mind frantic for a lie.

I can’t say this out loud.

Eli is quiet. More mansions, circular driveways, stone columns. What the hell have I started? My mind blanks out on any alternative, any way I could spin this into something else.

“I meant it. I swear I won’t judge you.” Eli’s words are hushed, spoken softly. I wouldn’t believe him; except I think I hear something underneath his statement. Something darker. Hidden. Play in the shadows with me.

I squeeze my eyes shut tight, still facing away from him. What if we never come back into the light?

I take a deep breath and a risk as I open my eyes. “I always wondered what it would be like, having sex with a man who killed me at the end of it.” I hurry over the last sentence, and I don’t dare look at Eli. I can’t.

Is this too dark for you? My heart seems to stutter violently in my chest.

Seconds tick past.

Eli says nothing.

Jesus.

Even my eyes feel hot, and I force myself to keep my shoulders back as I wait. If I curl in on myself, hunch over and retreat, he might not believe me. Some people enjoy flaunting their depravity, talking loudly about the underside of humanity. I saw it in the forums, too. I think, though, the most twisted among us speak in whispers.

Still, I can’t help but wonder if I’ve misjudged him. Is he going to turn around right here, right now, take me back home? Will he tell everyone he knows at Trafalgar how insane I am? Did I mistake our connection, thinking it was something deeper than it is? We don’t really know each other. This could be just like at Shoreside. Just like with Nic.

The thoughts come too fast. I should’ve known better. I gave him a weakness to exploit.

This was a mistake.

I’m about to twist in my seat and tell him I can get a ride home when he finally breaks the silence, still coasting through the wooded, magical subdivision.

“How would he kill you?”

I blink a few times, relaxing the vise grip I have on my phone, unsure if I’ve heard him correctly with all the blood thumping around in my brain. But I play the words back in my head. “How would he kill you?”

Relief spreads through my limbs along with a healthy dose of fear as we drive in the middle of the storm. I can barely speak, my throat so dry, but I manage to ask, “Is that your third question?”

Eli sighs, a sound of surrender. “Fuck.” The word is flustered. I think of last night, when he texted me just that, and a flush of warmth spans from my thighs upward, to my core. “I guess.” He hates it, giving up another question to join his second, but he really wants to know.

The fact he wants it so much, it makes it easier to just say it, out loud, the fucked-up fantasy in my head. Don’t run now.

“He’d press his hand over my mouth, my nose… as he, you know… while we’re having sex.” I have to clear my throat, and my voice is hoarse as I keep going, but I don’t stop. “I’d… suffocate, I guess.”

Eli’s words sound rough, like he’s having a hard time speaking, too. “Is that all? It’s just… like that, in your head?”

It’s never so simple inside my head. “Maybe he…” I trail off, sure I’m about to go too far now.

“Tell me. I want to know.”

My entire body grows incredibly hot. I cough a little, for something to do with my mouth that isn’t spouting off all of these insane truths that should be locked away. “Maybe he’d have to… hit me. Or punch me, so I… stop fighting—”

“You’re trying to get away? Defend yourself?”

I give him these questions, because I can’t think clearly about limits when we’re prying into the darkest recesses of my brain. “It’s only human nature.”

“He punches you.” Eli says it slowly, like he’s clarifying. Like he really wants this all to play out inside his mind, too.

“Yes.” My word is whispered, barely a breath.

“Do you like it? Does it hurt? Is it the pain you enjoy?”

So many questions, so many lines, but my mind is racing and my heart, too; I don’t keep track. “Yes. To all of it. Yes.”

“So, he’s keeping you pinned down while he assaults you and stops you from breathing?”

I think of what I wanted last night. Eli all over me. The ways I wonder how it would feel. “He’d use his body weight to keep me still. Yeah.” I still don’t look at him, even as he turns left, into a driveway. Up and up, then Eli spins his car around, and we’re reversing, until the world grows dark.

He reaches for something attached to his visor, and a garage door comes down, trapping us inside.

I finally face him, sure he can’t see the extent of my nervousness in the darkness.

Suddenly, no longer in motion, I don’t want to talk about what I just said. I silently hope he’ll let it go like the first answer I gave him.

“Is this your house?” I glance at the two spaces beside him. This place is nothing like a garage I’ve ever been inside. It’s clean. There’s not much beyond a black Tesla, a green and yellow riding mower, and what looks like tires and car tools on a built-in shelving system behind Eli’s car.

He has one hand still clenched tight around the wheel, the other holding onto the shifter in a grip that looks painful, fingers digging in with such force I see the way his hand is turning red, veins straining against his skin.

His eyes gleam from the lights of his dashboard. “Ghost”by Halsey is playing from his speakers, and my thoughts snag on my own surprise. I didn’t expect it would be a song he’d listen to, but it’s playing from his phone’s connection.

I realize his jaw is clenched as he stares at me, and I suddenly don’t know what to do with my hands, my mouth, or where I should look or if I should get out or…

“If I don’t turn my car off, we’re going to die in here. I have one more question and you better answer it fucking fast, or they’ll find us just like this.” He jerks his chin, indicating the interior of his car.

“No,” I correct him, unwavering, ignoring his theatrical threat. “You asked two more questions after your third. I gave you a bonus.” A few actually, that I couldn’t count, and I only mean to tease him, but my tone is all wrong, not light, and neither of us smile.

He presses his lips together and doesn’t look away from me. For once, I don’t look away either.

The song loops again, and I didn’t realize he had it on repeat. I don’t know if he realized it.

As the chorus comes on, I glance in the side view mirror.

I see exhaust fumes in the glow of his red taillights.

“Eli.” I could reach for the door handle. It opens easily. I know that from the first night he gave me a ride. It would take nothing for me to get out, to walk through the door which I assume leads into his house, or else out the door on my side of the garage, which probably opens up to the yard.

I’m not trapped in here.

But I don’t move.

It’s probably my imagination, but I’m suddenly overcome with a wave of exhaustion, and even my pulse, always frantic like a hummingbird, drops to something far slower.

“Are you scared to die?” The same quality of restraint is in his words when he asks the question anyway, ignoring my protest completely.

I take a deep breath, tearing my gaze away from the red-tinted smoke curling up behind his car.

Meeting his eye, I reach across the center console, and I see it, the moment before I get to what I’m after. His lips part, his breath hitches, and he thinks I’m going to touch him.

It was anticipation in his eyes.

Maybe a little fear. I imagine grabbing his throat, twisting the choker, the leather cutting into his skin. A rush fills my veins. My nerves seem to subside.

But I simply press the button on his car, killing the engine.

The purr and the music drops, wrapping us in silence.

Still close to him, the console digging into my ribs, my face inches from his, I repeat, “You already used all of your questions.” I start to lean back in my seat, retracting my hand, when he grabs my wrist.

A shudder runs through me, his fingers cold on my hot skin.

I freeze, and now it’s my turn to be afraid.

“All those things you think I think about you?”

I clench my teeth with his reference to the first question. I don’t want to ever speak of it again. I liked how he didn’t comment on it, and I don’t want him to start now. But he doesn’t give me a choice.

He closes the space between us, leaning down so we’re eye level.

I want to pull back. I want to yank my arm from his grip, but I don’t think I could, and I don’t even try.

“Only the first one was true.”

Then he releases me as suddenly as he grabbed me, straightening in his seat and opening his door after he swipes his phone and his keys from the console.

“Are you scared to die?”

For a moment, the question echoing in my head, I can’t move, my limbs heavy and my mind numb. But he comes around to my side and opens my door, offering me his hand.

It’s what I need to think again.

I don’t take his offer, but I get out of the car, his arm still braced on the door, bringing us close to one another. I have to look up at him, a smirk on his face, but I don’t feel intimidated.

“Fuck.”

“How would he kill you?”

“Only the first one was true.”

He didn’t judge me. And before I can stop myself, when I know I should just leave it alone, I say, “If you didn’t know, I think you’re attractive too.”

He stares at me a moment longer. Then his smile pulls wider, becomes more genuine, and he drops his hand, stepping back, shaking his head with the smallest laugh.

He might’ve been asking the questions, but I feel like, in this moment, I won the game.