Filed To Story: Pretty Poisoned Novel by Elle Mitchell
“I told you not to follow me home,” I tell Fake Luca, even though I’m happy to see him. “And I don’t know, probably. I really miss you.”
“This isn’t your home, though. Or is it?”
“It’s not a home at all; it’s a place where monsters go when they need rest.”
“But you’re not a monster, you’re an angel.”
“What if I am? I think they want me to become one and I think it’s working.”
“Then I’ll fix you again like you fixed me,” he says. “It’ll be fine.”
“That’s a nice idea,” I say, closing my eyes as he rinses my hair. “You’d have to come back for me for it to work, though.”
“What are you so worried about?” he asks. “You’ve seen real monsters before. And that monster out there he’s just a man, Teag.”
“A dangerous one.”
“Yeah, but at the end of the day, we all want something. You want freedom”
“I want you. I want my best friend. Fuck freedom.”
“He has to want something else, too, Teagan. He wrote a love note on your arm.”
I scoff before turning to face him, tracing the ‘T’ on his chest with my fingertips. “I think we’re the only two people in the world who would think that’s what that was.”
“Maybe,” he says. “Or maybe he just needs a sweet, soft kitten to curl up in his lap, too.”
My heart sinks, thinking of Declan again. I picture myself melting into him, wearing just his t-shirt, on a hotel balcony in Reno. I look down, squeezing my eyes shut, and try to push the image out of my mind.
“Yeah, I don’t think that” I start, but when I open my eyes, he’s gone again. “ worked so well last time.”
Sighing, I turn off the water and step out of the shower. I wring out my hair and then dry off, tying a towel around my body before stepping out into the main room.
The shades are drawn again, so that must mean he’s awake. The room smells like coffee, too. I inhale deeply, scanning the area. Bone Saw is in the kitchen, his back facing me while he leans against the counter. He grabs a mug from in front of him and I freeze, watching his head tilt back slightly as heI can only assumedrinks from it before setting it back down.
“Holy shit! You just drank coffee. I knew you had to be a coffee drinker.”
He pulls the mask back down over his face and, without turning, shakes his head. “Teagan ”
I cross the kitchen and stop directly behind him, wrapping my arms around his waist. “Do it again,” I tell him. “Drink coffee with your mouth like a human. I promise I won’t look.”
“I thought we already sufficiently established that I have a mouth,” he says. “I don’t understand the fixation.”
“Oral fixation is very common among us humans,” I say.
“That’s something entirely different, Teagan.”
“Are you going to drink it or not?”
“No,” he says. “Not in front of you.”
He reaches into a cabinet just to his left, pulls out an identical coffee mug, and fills it before shrugging me off and walking toward the door.
“Do you have any almond milk?” I ask.
“What do you think?”
I think I’m in a multimillion-dollar home with no fucking food in itthat’s what I think. I pick up the coffee mug from the counter and take a drink.
Bone Saw reappears with a paper bag that smells like eggs and sets it down on the counter.
“Is that food?!” I ask. “Where did it come from?”
“Not DoorDash,” he says.
“Aww, is it some sort of hunger relief program? Feeding America: Creepy Off-Grid Masked Serial Killers Chapter?” I open one of the biodegradable plastic take-out containers. “Oh, sweetburritos! That’s nice of them.”
I pick up half of the massive burrito and take a bite.
I notice Bone Saw facing the other way, his shoulders shaking with laughter again.
“You’re laughing again, aren’t you? Just go ahead and do it; it’ll be less weird.”
Eventually, he turns back and grabs the other container from the bag in one hand and the coffee in the other. “You should put some clothes on. I’m going upstairs.”
“Can I see your room?” I ask.
“I don’t have a room. There are three more bedrooms upstairs, but this”
“This isn’t a home, I know. You’ve said that already. Can I see it?”
“You can look upstairs, and then go back downstairs,” he says.
I speed walk toward the staircase ahead of him, scarfing down the rest of the burrito on my way up. Both the staircase and the landing have cable wire instead of wooden posts as a guard railevery drunk girl’s worst nightmare. I pass a sparsely furnished open loft, two bedrooms identical to the one downstairs, both seemingly untouched, and then come to a third one.
This room is also identical; it’s clean, the bed is made with the same dark linens, and there aren’t any windows. But there’s a shelf lined with books and a computer with three monitors set upall currently dark and powered off. And beside the bed sits a copy of The Count of Monte Cristo with a bookmark about two-thirds of the way through.
And there’s one more differencethis room has an attached bathroom. I step inside and inhale deeply, immediately hit with the same piney scent of the cologne I noticed on his skin last night. The floormat is still wet when I step onto it, and condensation runs down the shower door. There’s a razor and a toothbrush next to the sink. I pick up the latter and run my thumb over the bristles. They’re still wet, too.
“I told you.”
I almost jump. I look up into the mirror and see Luca standing behind me in its reflection. “Told me what?”
“He drinks coffee, wears cologne when pretty girls come over, and brushes his teeth. He’s just a man, Teagan.”
“Get out,” Bone Saw growls. I drop the toothbrush as he grabs me by my arm. “This is not what I meant.”
“I’m sorry,” I tell him. “I didn’t mean to.”
He sighs, releasing me. “Who were you talking to?”
“I don’t think you want me to answer that,” I say. “I have some medicationsat homethat I need. I see things that aren’t there sometimes.”
“Still?”
“Yeah ”
“Can you tell the difference? Between what’s real and what isn’t?”
“I think so. It just makes me feel safe. I’m lonely.”
“Were you taking these medications when you spent half a week in bed in a dark room?”
I nod.
New Book: Returned To Make Them Pay
On her wedding anniversary, Alicia is drugged and stumbles into the wrong room—straight into the arms of the powerful Caden Ward, a man rumored never to touch women. Their night of passion shocks even him, especially when he discovers she’s still a virgin after two years of marriage to Joshua Yates.