undisturbed.
“Silly, you’re just being silly, Megan! What are you doing ? Just what the hell do you think you’re doing?”
Philip stopped in the very center of his large, probably too ornate, sitting room, the sound of Megan Wright’s voice stopping him in the middle of his tantrum. For a moment, he felt completely ridiculous, as if she had somehow opened his massive front doors and was watching his spiral into childish unhappiness. He even went so far as to stop and look for her, but found that there was nobody there but himself.
So what then? Had he made it up? Did he want her to be with him so badly that he was hearing her voice inside of his head? He would have thought it was very possible; it wasn’t like he hadn’t descended into his own kind of madness before and he did not doubt that he would do so again. But if that was the case, why was he hearing her say things like that?
If he were going to make up an internal dialogue, he would have thought he’d make up something that put him in a favorable light. Or at least something that was about him! He didn’t know, it was possible that what he was hearing was about him, but it was difficult to tell. Especially since it wasn’t real, he reminded himself, and that was a major roadblock in terms of him being able to understand her thought process.
“ Just go back, won’t you?! Seriously, Megan, just because you’ve always wanted to see the inside of that house doesn’t mean you should actually do this. Because you shouldn’t. You definitely shouldn’t do this. You should turn around and go HOME!”
Just when he almost had himself convinced that he really had made it up, that maybe his lack of feeding combined with the few stiff drinks he had downed in such a short amount of time had brought on some momentary psychosis, there it was again. The voice of that Megan Wright, blaring inside of his head so loudly that he actually winced.
Hearing it this time, he was almost sure that he wasn’t making it up, after all. Because the voice didn’t sound like him. The way it spoke, the way she spoke, wasn’t the same kind of cadence his voice would have assigned her. It was a voice all her own and for some reason it was playing like a radio in his brain.
He hadn’t meant to tune in, but now that he had, he was entirely fascinated. It was probably an unfair advantage, seeing as he highly doubted that she knew he could hear her now, but he found that he didn’t really care all that much. He wanted her, now more than ever, and if hearing her internal struggle might help him to win her in the end, well then so be it.
He had never been accused of being a saint, not even when he was alive. He was a predator if he was anything at all, and at the moment, he felt like he was on the hunt. On the hunt for something other than food, but still on the hunt, and all of his senses had come alive, blaring at him in Technicolor.
She was coming to him. She had gone all the way home, from the sounds of it, and then stalled. He wondered if she had ever even made it inside of her apartment. Had she let herself inside and then trudged right back out again? Had she even made it inside of whatever shitty little building she was holed up in at all (he wasn’t sure how, but for some reason he was totally sure that the place she lived was some anonymous shithole that nobody chose when given a better option)?
Somehow, he thought not. He could see her now within his mind’s eye. He could see her pacing back and forth in front of her graffiti-ridden apartment building, torn in two as to what her next course of action should be. She wanted to go inside and pour herself a big ol’ glass of something.
She wanted to run back to that strange man who was not a man at all, to take him up on his arrogant offer. By the sound of it, she had decided on the latter. Or
Learning to Kill: Stories