Ennui

Ennui

Silver strands of the moon wove themselves through the windows in the kitchen. The inside of the house was eerily silent, that it almost seemed like it was supposed to have broken down some time ago.

A man stood in the middle of it all, as if he were a part of the silence. He, standing with a kitchen knife in his hand, took a moment to examine the interior of the house before he headed away from the window he had broken through.

He walked as if the house was his. The steps that he took didn’t stop the half-settled darkness from clinging to his body lovingly. His shadow extended down the wooden floor. The pale light from the outside quickly faded when he passed a small closet, and began his way upstairs.

The stairs creaked dangerously under his feet. The man cast his bright amber eyes down. They seemed to blend into the darkness. There was a moment of silent consideration, then the man continued to climb the stairway, this time more lightly and carefully.

The silence was even richer upstairs. Even though there was no physical sound, the house seemed to hum lowly in anticipation and knowledge.

There were only three doors down the hallway. The man stood at the top of the staircase and cocked his head to the side. He listened for a long moment, then began to walk to the door that was closest to him.

He reached out with a black-gloved hand. The round doorknob turned in his hand. Without even a hint of hesitation, he let the door open.

In the room was a woman, sitting on her bed with a flashlight and a stack of papers. Before the man could read what was written on them, she rolled up the papers and set it down on the bed sheet. Looking up, she examined the man and the knife with a pair of black eyes.

“I heard you downstairs,” she said flatly.

“Hm,” the man responded, and ran a fingertip along the blade of the kitchen knife. “I was trying to be silent.” He twisted his lips into a smile.

Nodding, the woman shone the flashlight on the man. The man didn’t move, although his left eye twitched. For a long time, they simply gazed at each other. The woman then moved her eyes down to the knife again. Grinning faintly, she glanced up.

“You have yellow eyes,” she noted, breaking the silence.

The man shrugged, and began to slowly advance to the woman. “It’s your flashlight,” he replied. About a foot from the bed, he stopped in mid-step. His eyes narrowed slightly, his irises gleaming. “You aren’t shaking.”

With a tilted smile on her face, the woman stood up from her bed. She raised a hand and scratched the back of her neck. “I really have nothing to do. And I don’t mind if I die. Not really.”

Putting his heel on the ground first, the man padded forward until he stood right in front of the woman. He raised his knife and placed the tip of the blade on the woman’s cheek. The man raised an eyebrow. “You really think so?”

A spark of interest blossomed in the woman’s eyes. She tilted her head to the left, and nodded.

A thin trail of blood raced down her cheek, as the man leaned forward and pushed the knife in a millimeter. “I’m going to carve out the flesh here,” he murmured sweetly, the corners of his lips going up. Slowly, he pulled out the knife, directed it at the opposite cheek, and drew a small circle three times. “And here.”

“Go on,” the woman said, her eyes curving softly in a smile.

“And I’ll pull out your eyes while you’re still alive,” the man continued. He moved the blade down and tapped it against the woman’s lips. “If I cut out your tongue, you’ll either bleed to death, or,” he paused, and glanced at the woman.

“Or?” she inquired, her eyes smiling even more.

“The tongue will roll back into your throat and you’ll suffocate,” the man concluded.

“I didn’t know that,” the woman responded.

Lowering his eyes back to the tip of his knife, the man nodded absently. “Not a lot of people do. They just think they’re going to die of shock.”

The woman nodded back at him, and tapped her foot against the floor. Her eyes slowly lost their light of interest. “What now?” at last, she asked.

Cocking his head to the side, the man frowned to himself. “I guess I kill you.”

Opening her mouth slightly, the woman raised a finger to stop him. “Just a second. Did you dye your hair? It’s really pale.”

The man drummed his thumb on the plastic handle of the kitchen knife. “Not really. It’s natural.”

“Did you ever cut it?”

Shaking his head, the man drew red lines on the woman’s forehead with the knife, before he came to a pause on the right eyebrow. “When I was young, once.”

“Okay. Wait. Can I see your knife?”

“I don’t mind,” the man said and turned the knife around in his hand two times slowly. The woman’s eyes traveled along the blade that reflected the faint light from the flashlight.

“Where did you get it?”

“A house with a family of five,” he shrugged, and aimed the tip of the blade at the woman’s eyes again. A shadow of contemplation dawned on her face. After a moment of thinking, she snapped her fingers.

“So you’re the necrophiliac serial murderer. You’re intriguing.”

Making a soft hum of agreement in his throat, the man lowered his knife and shoved it deeply into the woman’s stomach. He rotated the blade twice, then pulled it out just as swiftly.

The woman clenched her teeth, squinting, and winced. Contrary to her face, when she glanced up, her eyes were flat. “You said that you were going to carve out my cheeks,” she muttered. She pressed her palm to her stomach and glanced at the blood that now coated her hand.

“Change of plans,” the man responded, taking his mouth off of the blade that he had been licking clean, in order to talk.

Watching the man polish the blade again, the woman sat down on the bed and laced her fingers together. “So, how long until I die?”

The man silently took a seat beside the woman. Immediately, droplets of blood began to fall onto the white bed. The tips of his nearly white, blond hair were colored red with blood. “About three to five minutes. Depends,” he said in response.

Beaming, the woman angled the flashlight so that it illuminated both of them, and turned to face the man. “Then we’ve got a plenty of time to talk.”

“Indeed,” the man replied, his eyes twinkling with delightful interest, and placed the clean knife beside him. “I’m Heath Grey.”

“Wiska Lu. It sounds like a V, but it’s actually a W.”

The man leaned back in a relaxed posture. Dark shadows danced on his face.

“You know, I was wondering all along; what’s on that paper you were reading?”