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 Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2014 8:26 pm
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The Sound In the Night
She could not sleep for it some nights. The sound felt as though it would swallow her whole, devour her, absorb her until she was nothing more than a fragment of its dissonant melody. The creeple in her dorm had said it must be a forgotten wind's howling or an eerie rustle of tree branches. But she had grown up in the forest - these noises were a young warder's milk and bread. Hollandaise knew every breath that sighed through a tree's delicate, branching hair, every creaking, aching groan of a limb giving way under the weight of a too-cruel winter. She knew.
These noises were different. They sounded... anticipatory. Hollandaise shivered under her coverlet, the fabric suddenly feeling far too thin.
Shadowplay
She thought, on darker nights, that a shadow would detach itself from the gloom and follow her round and round and round - like her own shadow, but more purposeful. Unsettling. But she could never really see it. It flickered on the edges of her vision, a shapeless thing that stayed in the dark corners of the night. Paranoid delusions, she told herself, unease prickling along the thin skin of her arms. Hollandaise felt very, very cold.
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Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2014 8:46 pm
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Shadowplay
Whenever Holly walked near the deepest shadows, Van was there, padding from one to the other. If she looked, he'd close his eyes, relying on scent and smell to know where she was, trying to keep his mouth shut so his gleaming teeth didn't alert her. It was really hard. He really wanted to smile.
It was true that her apprehension didn't smell as good as the sweat and blood of a traditionally living creature might, but feeling her discomfort made his skin shiver with delight.
The Stolen Object
Van was in a hurry. He didn't know how much time he'd have before Holly returned; he had knocked things out of place, left them strewn on the floor, and regrettably at least one cloth item was shredded to pieces.
He took his prize away, inhaling its scent. His smile curled into a sincerely wicked shape that distorted his entire face: now he could track her scent almost anywhere.
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Posted: Wed Oct 08, 2014 8:47 am
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Shadowplay
The shadows, those dark spaces that used to remind her of home, seemed oddly... occupied now. They were not safe spaces, and while Hollandaise still stood in them, still as trees, still as statues, she found herself standing in light more and more often.
The Stolen Object
When she returned to her room, she spent long moments simply standing there, her arms wrapped tightly around her middle. Her eyes stung - if it had been a simple matter of movement, or small things neatly missing, she would have suspected Deszeld's penchant for taking things, for branding things as hers.
This was not Deszeld.
With small, precise motions, she set her room back to rights. Each object was placed back carefully, as if touching it too much would shatter it into a thousand pieces. She felt like a stranger in her own room. Her fingers reached for her plant and dropped. Hollandaise was too afraid to gleam any of the strange residuals her cactus might have felt. Once everything was back in place, she shivered, swallowed thickly, and bolted out of the room that didn't feel quite hers anymore.
Worry
She changed the locks on her door. She did not enter a room alone anymore (when she could help it). Hollandaise watched the shadows behind her and sometimes, she swore she caught the gleam of teeth in those dark depths.
Maybe she was going crazy.
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Posted: Wed Oct 08, 2014 1:57 pm
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Worry
In lore, praying sincerely would help against Van's pack. As creatures of halloween, then, what was left to Holly? He was incessant, he hadn't joined any clubs yet and he was hardly popular since he had only just started to make friends and mostly he rubbed everyone the wrong way.
Normally friendly, and goofy, Van was nothing like that right now. He didn't care about locks, didn't care about her safety or her well-being. He was hunting. Mostly, he kept away when there was anyone nearby who might notice him. The more time passed, however, the more he grew confident-- if someone's senses seemed weaker than his, if they moved slower, if he had an escape route, he would stalk her anyway. Even in the company of others.
Just to let her know that he was there. Always with her.
Avoidance
With the object he'd stolen from her room, Van was perfectly happy to follow her to the other dorm room, to follow her to the empty dorm room, to find her under the dusty sheet and under anything at all. In fact, when she chose the empty room, Van raked his claws down the door in the middle of the night, leaving wood shavings all over the floor.
The messages
At first, they would be simple enough. Pieces of scrap paper slipped into her room, pasted against windows where she would see them, notes passed to her by unrelated students.
The content was harmless enough, never signed. "I see you!" "Hello, you" "Don't worry about walking home alone tonight"
They got worse, as time progressed. Scratched into doors, painted onto walls with grime or blood: Deszeld thinks you are hers, Can you hear me breathing? I can hear every sound you make
Give in, Holly. I will come for you.
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Posted: Thu Oct 09, 2014 2:27 pm
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Messages
The first couple of letters she'd puzzled over, but simply figured someone was playing a joke. Hollandaise laughed, asked around, and then tossed them. She supposed they could be mistaken. Who would send her things?
As they continued, she felt a chill nestle in the pit of her stomach. The tone shifted, darkened, threatened to pull her down into the shadows that it called home. Her long fingers tore them into very small pieces, small enough that not even one letter fit on each scrap.
She burned them.
When the first one appeared on her wall, she did not let herself cry. Instead, she curled into a very small, very frightened ball and stared at the wall unblinking. After a while, she got up and began to scrub. Hollandaise did not know what else to do. So she scrubbed, and she scrubbed again, and she tried not to read the words, tried not to look for teeth that gleamed in the shadows.
And when her door bore scratches - always only on the inside - she hung fabric over them and ignored the way the torn wood felt underneath her trembling palms.
Sleep
She stopped sleeping. Circles grew under her eyes like a seeping rot. She was lost - there was nothing like this in her sheltered forest, no lecture she could think of that would explain, fix, stop this. Her hands shook, her steps wavered, and Hollandaise did not know what to do.
Night
She let herself cry. She cried for Aisha and lost friendship. She cried for things she did not know how to fix. She cried for the way Deszeld said she was hers and she didn't know how to react. And she cried for herself.
Notes
Hollandaise left a note pinned to her door, and another to her bed and another tucked in the corner of her window. Her normally precise handwriting shook and the letters sprawled across the paper like drunken revelers.
Please Stop
why are you doing this?
please don't
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Posted: Mon Oct 13, 2014 12:55 pm
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Posted: Mon Oct 13, 2014 1:12 pm
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Messages
For the last one, for hte one on her door, Van had been there to see it. He had relished her pain, because it meant he was winning. The sweet, goofy student who was loathe to break rules had been swallowed whole by his natural instincts to hunt, to win.
He would hunt Holly until his last breath.
sleep
Van found that the closer he got to winning, the less he needed to sleep. He was awake almost all hours of the day, napping now and again when he really needed it.
Because he no longer needed to sleep, he had all this extra time to seal the deal.
Night
The crying both excited and distressed him, when he heard it. Distressed, because some part of him mourned for the student and her inevitable death, death as all things would die, though really because she was also a creature of Halloween it would not be anytime soon nor would it be permanent, he suspected.
As far as the rest of him was concerned, tears were one of the last steps before she was utterly broken.
Notes
Van actually did answer, in his heavy black ink, uneven letters scrawled; it looked like he was perpetually in a hurry.
to win, holly
If she just told him he had won, that was enough. He was the best at hunting, that was all he wanted, all he needed. That he could have hunted her until she was driven mad, until his teeth closed around her throat and her heart beat faster until he severed the jugular in her neck and-- no, no, not the right type, not the kind whose blood would spill hot into his mouth.
The thought made his skin p***k in excitement.
Class
Van wasn't entirely sure, at first. Sure he should be seen in the light, by others.
That was until he realized he'd won so thoroughly that it didn't even matter. She couldn't say anything. Deszeld might call Holly hers, but Van felt in that moment that his jaws were around her neck in the dark, or in the light. During the day, while she tried to sleep. No matter where she went.
He just wanted to win.
Notes
Just say the word was all it said.
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