Page 23 of The Sins That Bleed

Misery Loves Company

RAI

I ’m embarrassed to admit that I took multiple photos of the red rose bouquet I’d been delivered yesterday.

I took the selfie I sent to Valeska, but I ended up taking pictures of them placed in different spots in my apartment. They looked good wherever I put them. That’s the thing with flowers, they make any space they’re in pretty.

I’ve always loved flowers, but not many people think to get them for men, and it’s not something I broadcast. Not that there are many people in my life that would have a reason to get me some anyway.

The first thing I did was inhale the lovely scent deep into my lungs.

Somehow, they were tinged with a cherry edge.

That’s what broke through my initial confusion over why I was being handed thirteen red roses, wrapped in black paper and tied with a silky red ribbon. When I looked at the card, I wondered if it was Valeska’s writing, since the elegant scrawl looked like it would belong to her.

Roses are red,

Violets are blue,

You hide it well,

But I see you.

She continues to surprise me, as if she knows so much more about me than she possibly can after only meeting me a handful of times.

It crosses my mind that she’s probably got a file on me, considering she was the one who sought me out.

I wouldn’t say I like her, but she has managed to get a foot in the door behind the fortress I’d built to keep her out.

My hatred toward her is abating, microscopically.

I’m itching at the thought of her and the other photo she sent me, the one that’s now saved in an album on my phone for her.

It’s like I’m experiencing withdrawals and need my next fix.

I’ve never been in a position where someone has this much control over me and I’m struggling to convince myself that I hate it.

She was in a pretty bad state the other night and a million questions swirl in my mind as to how it’s even possible she is still alive right now. I ignore the surge of relief that flows through me when I think about her being okay, the picture I have of her in the bath proof she’s not dead.

There was something about the way she looked though, the contrast from the one she’d previously sent. The first one had been meant to tease and call to my desire, but the second one was softer.

Unguarded. That’s how she looked.

I contemplate sending her a text but think better of it.

No point dancing with the devil only to be burned.

I finish eating my dinner of packet noodles—quick and easy after a long day.

There’d been an incident at the holding facility last night where we were keeping our suspects.

The report stated that they’d been screaming for the guards to let them out, that they would tell us anything we wanted to know.

When Nico and I first heard the news and were asked to get over there as soon as we could, we couldn’t wrap our heads around why now. We’d pushed, deprived, and bartered with them, and they hadn’t budged. Suddenly, they’re ready to sing.

When we got to the facility, it was on complete lockdown. Nobody going in or out without a full pat-down and security check. Nico and I were escorted to the medical wing and threw each other confused looks; it was weird.

All three men had been restrained to beds, not only by the wrists but their ankles and middles. That wasn’t the strangest part of the picture we walked into, though.

They looked like corpses .

If it wasn’t for the heart monitors filling the room with a steady beeping sound, I would have thought them all dead.

Their skin was sallow and tinged with a sickly yellow, as if they were putrefied, every vein trying to bubble to the surface.

Their faces were sunken in, each bone and contour protruding as if they’d been starved for months.

But it was the look in their eyes that had been the most disturbing.

Blood vessels had burst, causing the entire whites of their eyes to be erased, pupils blown wide and irises barely visible. Whatever had happened, it had done a real number on these men.

Before we began questioning them, they all spoke over each other. “We will give you any information you want. Names, addresses, times, anything. Just don’t make us go back to our cells, please .”

They were scared shitless. Part of me revelled in it, that they’d finally had a taste of what they’d put all of their victims through, the rest of me fought hard to supress a shiver rolling down my spine.

They looked haunted, and I knew exactly what that felt like.

When I’d asked what time it happened, it crossed my mind that it was awfully close to my incident in the bathroom at work.

Weird things have been happening ever since Valeska walked into my life.

We arranged to get them over to our building, to get their confessions officially recorded, but they needed one more night in the hospital wing to get their fluids back up. After we’d left them, we were debriefed on what went down.

All three men claimed to have been visited by a demonic spirit. It started with the sound of scratching. At first they thought it was mice or cockroaches, but then it got louder and sharper. Like nails down a chalkboard.

They recalled the lights going out down the hall, one by one, as the entity lingered in the darkness, a low hum echoing off the walls. They claimed to see extended limbs in the depths of that darkness, too many to be human.

Then the buzzing started up, faint at first and then growing louder, like there were millions of flies coming down the hall towards them.

One of them thought they’d managed to attack the démon, but they’d been flailing in the dark and was pumped full of drugs when telling the story, so not exactly trustworthy.

All the more reason to get their statements when they have clearer heads.

We’d watched the security footage in hopes that we would see what they had, but aside from a few flickers, there was nothing. I’d asked if they could have been tampered with, but the guards had been there all night, and the one showing us the video shared that the flicker is normal.

My gut instinct was telling me something more insidious was going on here.

The picture they painted was straight out of a horror movie; Nico will be having nightmares tonight. The reminder makes me pick up my phone and fire a text over to him.

Rai: Make sure you keep the lights on tonight and put your favourite lo-fi music on. I’m only one floor away if you need me to stay the night, just say the word, brother.

Nico: Thanks, princess, so far so good.

I’ll keep you posted if that changes!

Thank you for checking in with me.

Love you x

Rai: Love you too x

I smile to myself at the exchange; we’ve been better at letting each other in more since my confession in the car. The chances are high that he will ask me to stay over tonight. I ignore the pang that goes through me as I think about Valeska turning up in my apartment and me not here.

She’ll have to message me like a normal person. I snort; there’s nothing normal about that woman.

I flick the button to put my phone on loud for when Nico’s call for help comes in, and clean up my dinner.

I take my time methodically cleaning my cutlery and bowl, wiping down the sink and the worktops.

A routine so familiar to me that I don’t even have to think about what comes next.

The tension eases out of me, calmness settling into my core and I start to feel like myself again.

Once I’ve finished getting the apartment in shape, I head into the shower to do the same to my body.

I strip off my clothes and it’s like I’m stripping off the events of the day.

Steam swirls throughout the room and I watch as the heart with a V reappears on the bathroom mirror.

I can’t bring myself to clean it. It helps me forget about finding her in my shower.

I confess, I’ve redrawn it to stop it disappearing entirely.

I get in, the shower no longer containing traces of Valeska’s gruesome injury after I scrubbed it for over an hour. There’d had been so much dry blood, and I still can’t wrap my head around that night.

Valeska had snuck out of my apartment in the early hours of the morning after I fell asleep. I woke up to an empty bed, and I hate to admit that it pissed me off, as if we could have had some domesticated morning where I made her breakfast in bed to help her recover after she’d been impaled .

I scoff at myself as I scrub my face, hair, and skin clean. I’m such a fucking fool and I’ve been wracking my brain trying to understand how I ended up in this position. I’m trying to go with the flow and not think too hard about it, but it doesn’t make sense.

She doesn’t make sense.

I’m wrapping myself in a towel as my phone pings. My heart picks up speed in hopes Valeska has messaged me, but it’s Nico so my heartrate stays elevated for a different reason. I pick it up and unlock it, reading the message from my partner asking me to come and stay.

I fire a reply off to him to say I’ll be with him in five minutes, flicking it back on silent and rushing through my nighttime routine.

I don’t want to leave him waiting too long.

I throw on some grey sweatpants and a T-shirt, slipping on some socks, my grey cardigan with white daisies embroidered over it, and my slippers to head up in.

I grab my phone, the book off my nightstand, and my reading glasses. I have everything I need and leave my apartment. I’m locking it when a thought pops into my head.

I should leave a note for her.

It catches me off guard. Since when did I go from wanting to take all of my hatred out on her, to wanting to leave her a note to explain where I’d gone? Probably somewhere in my shower when my only thought was saving her, not even wanting to think about the melancholy her death would bring.

I wouldn’t have been able to hate her after that.