Page 65 of Hollow

Brom

Darkness.

For a moment, I only see darkness. Hot. Putrid. Oozing. Black nothing. Black everything.

There’s a flame in my heart, dark fire. It consumes all, eats everything, leaves nothing.

Destroy her, the voice inside my head says, malevolence dripping with its every word.

Fuck her.

Capture her and fuck her.

Defile her.

Listen to her beg for mercy.

Make her take your seed.

Destroy him.

Drill a hole in his eyes with your cock.

Fuck his brains until they’re coming out his ears.

“Brom,” my father chides from beside me. His voice is fearful. He’s always sounded afraid when he talks to me, but tonight, it trembles with it. It’s enough to pull myself out of the black ooze, to separate from the thing I fear is inside me.

The other man.

The other me?

I look down at my hand. I’m gripping a knife. So tight my knuckles look dusted in snow.

I glance around.

No one is paying attention to me.

Everyone is paying attention to me.

Kat looks flabbergasted. Her mouth open. She’s upset with her mother. She’s been upset the whole night. Because of me and not because of me.

“What do you mean I’m going to live on campus?” Kat says, her voice high and brimming with confusion. She’s been operating at this level ever since I reappeared.

Reappeared.

As if I’m a magic trick.

Here in one hand, then appearing in the other. A coin behind the ear when there was nothing before. A rabbit in a hat.

Someone has been doing magic on me. The Sisters. It has to be. It’s always them. Even before I left Sleepy Hollow, I knew it was them.

But is that why I left? Did I leave Sleepy Hollow because of them?

Or was it something else?

Someone else?

My heart pangs with shame. Then lust. Then something like love but softer and more innocent, like the love you throw around as a child. With abandon, to anyone, anything, not caring where it lands.