Getting to Know Her Better

Getting to Know Her Better

         “I want to climb inside your skin,” Olivia told him, stirring him from peacefully thinking of nothing as he reveled in their lovers embrace. “Just to get closer to you. Just to get to know you better.”

         He shivered at her breath in his ear. He almost couldn’t take how tantalizing this woman was.  He’d been so lucky to finally land a date with her, and now they’d been seeing each other for a couple weeks. Possessed of a practically unworldly loveliness and grace, she was unlike any woman he’d known before. He didn’t even mind her over-the-top romantic statement.

         Snuggled up against his shoulder, her hand on his chest, over his heart, she started to tell him a story.

         “When I was a child, there was a little wooded area behind our house. I used to be really afraid of it. My mom told me I’d be swinging in the backyard, then suddenly I’d dash inside, panting and afraid. I’d say I heard voices whispering to me from that little wooded area beyond the yard. This was when I was about four or five.”

         Matt chuckled indulgently, and rubbed his new girl’s back.

         “But when I was ten,” Olivia continued, “I stopped being afraid of that area altogether. Part of it was I was emboldened by being a ‘big kid now’. I had friends over sometimes, and they’d want to go walk between the trees, and I couldn’t really tell them I was too chicken to go with them, could I?”

         Matt chuckled again, his hand still stroking rhythmically up and down her back. “No, I guess you couldn’t.”

         “So I’d take them through,” Olivia went on, somewhat to Matt’s surprise. He really didn’t expect this to be such a long story. He thought this moment would be mostly them soaking in a golden silence. “But I tried to do it fast. Still, I got over my fear enough that when my parents were splitting up and fighting all the time...I’d escape to that place in desperation, to be alone and sometimes cry.”

         Yes, this made for odd pillow talk to say the least, although Matt figured it was kind of touching she wanted to open up to him like this. Still, he wondered if he was an asshole for wanting her to stop. She was totally ruining the mood.

         It only got worse.

         “I was out there on the day my mother started the house on fire then shot herself.”

         Matt shuddered, and scrambled for something to say.

         “Oh, my god, did that really happen to you? I know you told me your mom died, but-- god, I am so--”

         She cut off his attempt at expressing his shock and sympathy, and carried on with her story. “When they tried to take me away, take me to my dad’s place, I ran back to my little haven in the trees. I don’t even know why. Perhaps because I just desperately wanted to run from what had happened...but I also wanted something familiar.”

         “I-- I get that,” Matt stammered, gripping her shoulder and giving it a reassuring squeeze. He didn’t really get it, but maybe it was the right thing to say? He was sympathetic, he just wanted her to turn her thoughts to happier things. Why was she being so depressing in what was suppose to be their heavenly afterglow?

          A bit of a chill seemed to hit him as soon as she broke contact with his body, sitting up, covers clutched up under her chin. He watched her with trepidation.

         “You don’t understand what it’s like to be spoken to by them,” Olivia said, her voice barely above a whisper, with a quake from an emotion he couldn't name. "It’s like they’re in your head, Matt. Like they’re communicating with you telepathically. But they don’t really deal in minds. They deal in souls.” She’d been looking straight forward, but now she looked back to him, as if for his reaction.

         He reacted by feeling pretty damn worried and creeped out. “Uhhhh...who’s this, now?” What the hell was she talking about?

         “The spirits in the woods. That little wooded area.” Bizarrely, her voice had gone perfectly casual with that, the most cuckoo thing she’d uttered so far. Matt felt an intense discomfort prickle his spine, even as he burst out with a guffaw.

         “C’mon, Olivia, what are you trying to do here?” He reached out a hand toward her. When the tips of his fingers skimmed the lump of her arm under the covers, she glanced down at that hand like it was totally alien to her.

         “Am I scaring you, Matt?” she asked, a grin tugging at the corner of her mouth.

         “Why the hell would I be afraid?” he returned, pulling back his hand and bending his arm up so he was touching the pillow underneath his head. “I should start a pillow fight with you just for that.” He raised and lowered his eyebrows playfully, attempting to ignore the weird vibes he was getting from this situation.

         There was a sudden thump against his bedroom window that made him jump. Olivia saw and laughed coldly before rising from the bed, baring herself to him once more. She went to the window, and moved the thick drapes aside. The light that peaked into the room reminded Matt that this had been his little afternoon delight between classes. At some point, he’d started thinking it was night. Peculiar.

         “It’s a crow,” Olivia informed him, looking out the window and down at the ground. “Now I wonder how that happened. He must have flown straight into your window, poor guy.”

         Matt laughed. “Sucker.” He was ready to put all this behind them. He didn’t really know what Olivia had been up to, but that bird hitting the window had been his jolt back to reality. Well, that, or looking at Olivia’s back, the way she was now. If he had goosebumps now, it was for a completely different reason.

         However, when Olivia turned around, his mood, likewise, did again. She had tears in her eyes.

         “That’s a shame,” she murmured, before rejoining him in bed.

         “What is?” Matt asked doubtfully, gaping at her as she came to sit astride his lap, on top of the blankets.

         “The bird,” she replied, in an odd, distracted way. “Anyway, where was I? Ah, yes. They spoke to me, in their terrible, profound voices, in my head. They told me it was going to be okay, because they could teach me a trick.”

         She was only playing some sort of game with him. He could only imagine what sort of  ‘trick’ she was talking about. He eagerly waited to find out, as she leaned forward to bury her face against the crook of his neck.

         “They told me it didn’t matter if my soul was dead. I could still get by. I could still experience feelings, have dreams, goals walk around with a light in my eyes. All I would have to do is take the souls of others. Consume them. Suck them out through their mouths. Chew them down like food.”          

         Matt had a powerful urge to knot his fingers in Olivia’s hair, and yank her head up from its resting place, get her suddenly...ominous feeling breath off of his neck. He felt like he might throw up. He didn’t understand the state of panic rising within him. He just knew that, after all that time spent watching his gorgeous classmate Olivia and pining for her, now he only wanted to be as far away from her as possible. He tried to squirm to get her off, instead of simply pulling on her hair and shoving her off.  He’d never hurt a female before, and was reluctant to start now, but additionally...he found that he just couldn’t move. Couldn’t lift his arms...nothing. And there was a weight on his chest that felt much heavier than Olivia’s 120-pound or so frame.

         He thought he heard a crow caw outside his window.

         Olivia’s head snapped up, and she stared him right in the eye. Her eyes seemed duller than before.

         “Dead. Dead from what I'd done. To stop their fighting. I’d killed the one I must have inherently known they’d wanted dead. She’d been paranoid about me hearing the voices when I was small, you see...”

         “Olivia!” he exclaimed, only ashamed for a heartbeat that her name came out as a yelp. “Olivia, get off me, let me up!”

         “I don’t want to crawl inside your skin, Matt,” she told him tenderly. “I want to remove something from inside your skin. From deep down in the core of you. I want to put it under my skin.” She kissed him then, her mouth open. Into it he began to scream a primal scream of abject torment.

The End