Page 52 of Hollow

He tilts his head back and glares up at me. His eyes could cut through steel.

“I think you have it the other way around,” he says. His voice is gravelly and rough and stirs something primal inside me.

“Perhaps we’ve both been staring at each other,” I say to him. I crouch down so that I’m at his level. I can’t see him much better because of the shadows he’s in, but the energy just radiates off of him. Dark and wicked and all the things I love, all the things I’ve neglected.

“What’s your name?” I ask.

He puts the pipe to his mouth and inhales. He lets the smoke fall out slowly, his eyes locked on mine. “Abe,” he says eventually.

“No last name?”

“Don’t need one here.”

“Well, I’m Ichabod Crane,” I tell him.

“Ichabod,” he says through a cough, his dark eyes becoming heavy-lidded. “You don’t hear that name too often.”

“You can call me Crane,” I tell him. “If it pleases you.”

And if you want to please me, you can call me Daddy.

“What would please me is if you got the fuck out of my face and left me alone.”

I grin at him. “That’s a nasty mouth you’ve got there. Care to put it to good use?”

He lets out a low growl and attempts to get up and perhaps tackle or punch me, but the drug has him in its grip. I merely push back on his rock-hard shoulders until he’s against the wall.

“You’re new at this, aren’t you, pretty boy?” I say, leaning into him. I’m straddling him now, my knees planted on either side of his hips. He gnashes his teeth together like a rabid dog, but his movements are too slow. “A pretty little animal who doesn’t know his limits.”

“Fuck you,” he snarls.

I just give him a half-smile.

“I’ll tell you what, Abe,” I say to him. “I’ll leave you alone, and you can continue to smoke yourself into a stupor, but answer me this one question.”

He lets out a raspy growl as an answer.

“Are you in any danger?” I ask gravely.

He goes quiet at that, blinks at me like he doesn’t really see me. I know questioning people when they’re high isn’t the best way to get information, but I can’t help myself. Something in me wants to find the threads that are barely holding him together and unravel him.

“Why do you say that?” he manages to say thickly.

“Because I see it in you,” I tell him. “I see many things in you. I know you’re running away from someone. Something, perhaps? And that you’re having a hard time finding peace, thinking that death and danger are lurking around every corner. It doesn’t have to be that way.”

He watches me for a second, his eyes growing heavy. “It is that way.”

Hmmm. I shouldn’t be surprised he’s not giving up his secrets to a stranger. Against my better judgment, I reach out and grab his hand and try to read him.

His eyes go wide as they stare into mine, big black pools that I’m drowning in, and I feel so much all at once. Fear, anger, shame, and something dark and terrifying, enough that I almost let go. But try as I might, I can’t see into his mind, can’t see his memories. I can only feel him and all he’s going through. It is a lot.

“What are you looking at?” he asks me, swiping his hand out of mine in a clumsy manner.

“Truth,” I tell him. “What are you looking for?”

He wiggles his jaw back and forth, his breathing becoming more labored, but remains quiet.

I don’t think I’ll get anything else from him tonight.