There was a rise of anger, like Aiden wanted to be mad, but couldn’t quite get there. Sure, he didn't expect to get chocked out by the man's dick, but he didn't mind as much with Fowler being so damn sexy tonight.

And Aiden began moving on his own, no longer needing a hand to guide or force him, and took the man inch by inch into his mouth. In and out. Slow and quick.

Fowler slowed his hips.

Aiden tongued the man's tip, dipping into that small hole to lick up droplets of pre-cum and pumping Fowler's shaft with an unyielding grip. It was probably not as sexy as he would've liked thanks to the looming fog of inebriation, but enough to draw a hum of pleasure from above.

Wisps of ragged breaths meeting with fervent sounds of amusement, and Fowler’s impatient hips met Aiden's mouth half-way.

Fingers walked down his spine teasingly. Each fingertip perfectly tracing Aiden's tattoos and sliding in between his ass cheeks. The heat in the air touched his asshole, making it twitch beneath cold, hungry strokes opening him wide.

And without warning, those fingers pushed in.

The sudden thrust jerked Aiden's body away instinctively, but Fowler kept him close and where his mouth was more useful.

Now, it was hard to concentrate; Fowler's fingers writhed around, stretching from the inside and fucking his ass with the pressure of hips, creating the slick sound of skin smacking together. Sweat and pre-cum dampened his thighs, and his knees nearly gave out under the impact of Fowler's knuckles bouncing off his ass.

Muffled cries and heavy inhales, the bed creaking and somewhere came a growl—an odd noise for Fowler to make.

Tiny flames flickered to life under the surface of his skin, flushing his body with a heat he hoped to God Fowler was feeling too, because he needed those fingers pulled out and replaced.

So, without words, he let Fowler know how badly he needed it and lifted his hips higher. His stiff cock dropped clear spots into the sheets, damn near reaching his limit. And Fowler was close too, giving silent signs: the swelling of his dick and his leg muscles tightening.

A hand returned to the back of Aiden's head and locked onto a chunk of his hair, bringing him closer to sobriety in fear Fowler was going to yank some out.

The urge to move away was pressing, but at the first sign of resistance, Fowler forced Aiden back into rhythm, using that unnatural strength to keep the tempo.

He moaned, begging wordlessly and praying Fowler wouldn't mistake his pleas for more as a signal to stop. Yet, something told him—perhaps the iron grip or skillful fingers flicking deep places—that Fowler wouldn’t stop even if Aiden begged him too.

Finally, he was fucked to his limit, and Fowler slammed his fingers in one last time, keeping them tucked deep. With his hips still in motion, Aiden bathed the sheets and pumped out what remained. Following his climax, Fowler shoved Aiden to the root of his dick, pressing his face into muscles and hair, and force-feeding a river of cum down his throat. Hot, bitter drinks reached Aiden's stomach in heavy doses, so much so it threatened to come out his nose.

Eyes rolling back, Aiden drank until Fowler pulled out and painted his face with the remaining collection of messy, white streams. And Aiden took the cumshot with an open mouth and stillness.

Then, a light flashed, a camera clicked.

And Aiden was shoved off the bed.

The nightstand rattled when he hit the corner, and Aiden hissed in pain, sitting on the floor half-blind and half-sober. “What the fuck, asshole!?”

No response.

Aiden, blinded by dancing spots and shadows, looked up and touched the bed where Fowler sat.

Nothing but cold sheets.

“….Fowler?”

In the room, he heard something, a particular sound—the crawling of cockroaches.

He used the comforter to wipe the cum off his face, and when he opened his eyes past the residue, he saw something: two pinpricks of light peering at him from the corner of the ceiling.

Leaning forward, Aiden stared, cocking his head and squinting his eyes, peering past the camera-made circles.

Something shifted.

His heart skipped.

A figure, a shadow or lines of a hallucination with long limbs, creeping above the door. Still watching, it moved out into the hallway with a spider-like grace and a slow creak. And Aiden was left in silence.

A sliver of something—fear or humor—found a home in the hollows of his mind.

Somewhere in the house, there was shifting—someone looking for something and music started playing.

Aiden jumped.

The thrashing of metal-sharp lyrics tore through every hallway and room with enough volume to piss off the neighbors for sure.

“Fowler!” His voice barely broke the music.

A voice in his head—his, he assumed—told him to stop being a little bitch and stand. And he did so, exhaling an irritated groan.

The man was testing his patience.

As quickly as he could manage without falling over, Aiden stood and left the room. He walked out into the hallway, looking down a stretch of floor and walls seemingly longer than he remembered. Or was it the drugs and liquor sending their final few waves of dizzying sensations through him?

Just the drugs, just the drinks.

At the bottom of the steps, darkness and music waited. The spots from Fowler’s camera fled, now replaced with a sea of shadow-waves.

Nervousness tapped at his temples, and he inhaled—a breath that was interrupted by someone moving past the stairway and into the living room.

“Fowler?” He called.

Nothing.

“Stop trying to fucking scare me.”

It took that very sentence to pull himself together. Just Fowler being an asshole.

Aiden moved downstairs, stopping at the last step and looking into the dark living room, seeing nothing but small colors measuring the sound of music on their system.

“Okay, Fowler,” He reached for the light switch. “Quit fucking arou—”

The room came alive.

And he saw red.

Fowler laid on the coffee table, unmoving and drenched in blood, small drops falling into pools of the deepest-crimson. His head leaned off to the side, an impossible angle for any human, dangling from a struggling chunk of flesh and muscle after being torn open, ripped into as if by a beast searching for the perfect bite to seek something good.

Milky eyes stained red stared off into the darkness of the hallway, and Fowler’s mouth hung open in a final attempt to scream for Aiden—for help. Beyond those bruised and cut lips were the gaps of missing teeth, pulled free and tossed around the room carelessly.

Aiden gagged, choking on a scream stuck in his throat and fighting his instinct to vomit. He covered his mouth to stop the rancid smell of bodily fluids, but the scent flourished. And he saw blood on his hands.

Dried and sticky splotches covered, not only his hands but all over his nearly-naked body; hands prints and finger-tip traces, drawing red lines over his thighs and chest, his arms and neck. He tasted it on his lips, felt it on his tongue, and he screamed. And another, and several more.

Horrified, he tumbled backward onto the hardwood, sobbing and gasping as the hyperventilation clawed at his lungs and up this throat. He screamed again, matching the roar of melody from the music playing, and tried to stand.

He slipped on something wet.

And fell back.

He froze and looked up.

What he saw couldn't register with a single sane thought, a nightmare given the ability to breathe and smile. Too wide, too pointed, too red.

Another scream rose, louder and more desperate than the others.

Aiden tried to back away, crab-walking and scrambling for the door, but an iron grip snatched him by the hair and pulled him onto his toes like a marionette, kicking and screaming.

“NO! NO! Stop!! Someone!!!” A vocalist screamed with him.

Forced to stare into the living room where his boyfriend bled out, Aiden fought the painful titling of his head, slow and foreboding. The stranger dug nails into the flesh of his shoulder and latched onto his collarbone after sinking skin-deep.

Sobbing and screaming, Aiden shivered when the form held him in place and sniffed up his exposed neck, licking wet trails up to his ear.

“Don’t, Plea—AHH!” Aiden’s words were overcome by a flow of red, of blood pouring from the depths of his mouth when his jugular vein was severed, bitten into, and his neck torn open.

A spasm of pain, seizures of fear, and his body going into shock.

Aiden’s heart cried out when he no longer could, threatening to stop with the tearing of his flesh and the loss of his blood.

Then, nothing.

A curtain of black dropped over his consciousness, silencing everything but the ringing in his ears.

He heard someone, a voice telling him to sleep.

The ringing dulled, eventually stopped.

And there was no more pain.

Here in the darkness,

Out in the moonlight.

This wonderful feeling,

That just feels so damn right.

You try to fight it.

Run and deny it.

Our sweet little, shadowy paradise.

He whistled.

Some melody carried throughout a century.

A song born from memories—his only memories.

Lyrics bathed in blood, a tune skinned off the bones of someone he once was.

A sort of Jazz groove, a smooth sound slipping rhapsodically off his tongue, giving life to a series of chants crafted in an era of glittering metropolis gambles, handmade whiskey, and young ladies gleaming with gold and greed.

He hummed, sang, whistled, tapped his fingers to the beat of it whenever the bodies went pale—whenever he finished.

Pike unlocked his jaw from the boy’s neck, sucking up the last of his soul and breathing in the smell of blood and death in the air as if it were the first time. With a tongue far too long to be anything other than a demon, he licked up the last taste trickling from the wide gash centered in a blossom of open flesh.

Soon the red hunger waned, fading in a euphoric sensation sent through his body like the shiver of satisfaction from a lover after sex. The world sharpened, regaining color lost in bloodlust and the sounds of dulling hearts, drying lungs, and the flow of red faded from his senses as if he were just as human as the corpse in his arms.

It seemed the neighbors noticed the blaring music and screaming; their lights flashed on then off again when they realized something terrible might be happening.

Oh, was something happening.

Tenderly, he lifted the boy’s head and stroked his face with a bloodied thumb. “Sorry about tonight.”

The corpse stayed silent in Pike’s embrace, crying final tears and watching the darkness with dead eyes. He smirked, carrying the boy with him into the living room and tossing him over the body of his dead boyfriend.

He sauntered over to the stereo, skipping a few tracks before settling on a more romantic song sung by a girl and joined by a male backup who screamed every other lyric. Cocking his head toward the two bodies, Pike grinned.

“How about we set the mood?”

The corpses said nothing and Pike rejoined them at the coffee table, crouching beside them with the mystery song still playing in his head despite the young woman crying out her lyrics in the background. 

He opened the boy’s mouth, curiously examining each one of his teeth and picked out the perfect one, tearing it free in a rip of gum and vein. Holding it up, Pike made sure it was free of any imperfections, and once pleased, he stood and glanced down at both bodies.

“Better kiss and make-up, boys. No use going to bed angry.”

And he left.

Pike stepped outside, locking the door behind him and making his way to the street.

The night was wet from an earlier shower of rain and lingering with the smell of malice in the mists. Of strange happenings and little terrors crawling through this unsuspecting city.

Shadows clung to him like weeping children, seeking his attention and speaking to him by asking favors with the promise of blood. Tempting, but it was far more amusing to ignore them, to let them—and whoever was responsible— know that he was out of their control. 

Several blocks away, Pike reached his parked car, an old piece of shit he’d grown fond of, and got in. The interior smelled of rotting flesh, old pizza boxes, and other miscellaneous scents mixed with a well-expired pine-tree hanging from the mirror. The backseat was unusable, being taken over by piles of clothes, jewelry, and whatever else he plucked from the homes of his victims.

On the passenger seat, lying on a spare shirt, crumbled mail, and someone’s wallet, Pike reached for his phone when it started vibrating.

Without looking, he knew.

Jesse.

"What's up, cream-pie?" With the phone to his ear, Pike stared into the mirror, picking out the flesh from his teeth, his mouth splitting open at the corners, extending to his temples.

“H-Hey...” Jesse’s soft, mouse-voice answered, obviously bothered by the nickname. “Are you…almost done? I’ve got three deliveries ready and a lot of carry-outs. And some lady won't stop calling for a refund."

“Just finished.” Pike spat a piece of flesh onto the floor, feeling the hunger rising with every word he heard on the other end of the call. “On my way.”

His human didn’t answer, and Pike hung up, tossing his phone—or whomever it belonged to—back onto the seat.

At times—for a few seconds of eternity—the red hunger asked for more, and Pike fought the pulsing need of his teeth as secondary voices rose from the depths of his soul in a fury of starvation and desire. The light of his human eyes cracked, attempting to shatter like glass and reveal the true nature of his plight.

Yet, he always pushed them back, breathing in control and taming inner demons.

Satisfied, Pike reached into the center console and removed a jar hiding within.

Glass stained with old blood and rot gleamed under the glow of streetlights and inside gathered hundreds of teeth. He added two more and closed the lid.

Pike looked over the glass and sat back, sucking the blood from his fingertips in a distant remembrance of victims stretching over a century and tore off the hat he’d been wearing.

That miserable shit had no fucking style, but Jesse might enjoy it, so Pike added it to the backseat collection.

At that moment, several police cars sped past, sirens cutting through quiet darkness. And following behind the rush of cars was a large, windowless van rolling slowly through the mists.

Pike watched them in the rearview mirror, his eyes losing their red and peering with permanent dots of dark-light as each car turned the corner, heading for the home of his victims.

He snorted with laughter and drove off in the opposite direction.