Milk

Her shoes slowly clicked against the marble floor. The elegant corridor was all but empty, as every few paces she would spot an old painting. Paintings of odd, strange, and peculiar things.

As usual, the golden French doors in front of her opened onto a grand ballroom. Tall windows reached the ceiling from the ground, and were decorated with red velvet curtains. The curtains themselves had a filigree design, full of rich detail.

And, as usual, in the center would be an elegant white couch with floral patterns sitting next to a grand and sleek piano. In front of the couch would be a small, wooden, white table with two steaming cups of honey tea.

Somewhere, faint in the background was music playing. A slow melancholy tune coming from the piano.

She had been here many times before, and she was sure that it wouldn’t be the last.

Suddenly she looked towards the couch, and there would be a boy sitting there. A very beautiful boy. He smiled at her, and asked,

“Would you like me to play?” He gestured to the cello case in his lap.

And she would always look to his cello case, which was always a tad bit too big. She’d gaze at the blood smearing downwards from the twisted legs and arms that stuck outwards from the case, which would always be barely open…just a small creak.

And somewhere, in the back of her mind, would be a small, gentle voice urging her to give into her curiosity.

“No thank you,” She’d say, before turning back to stare at the cello case.

The pale fingers of the boy's victim were delicate and slightly curled in. She enjoyed staring at them and believing that those hands were the ones that used to play the dusty piano by the boy. Perhaps they belonged to a small girl.

But what really caught her interest, was the thorns.

All over the petit victim's body, were thorns. Dark, black, withering thorns with maggots crawling in and out of them at a delightfully slow pace.'It's so beautiful.' She would always remark to herself.

But boy would always catch her staring, and in turn would always smile at her. A smile that was always a tad too wide for his ghastly, white face.

She stared at the smile, as it seemed to swallow her whole.

And she screamed.

---

Ofelia woke up to the sound of the shower running. She was curled up on her side with her head resting on her right arm, facing away from the shower doors. Her matted brown hair stuck to her forehead as the water coming from the showerhead tickled her naked hips. She bit her chapped bottom lip and looked up behind her arm before laying back down and sighing.

“I need to stop falling asleep here.”

She laid there for a few more minutes; listening to the sound of thousands of water droplets taping down on the floor, before slowly getting up and slumping over her legs. That’s when she noticed how pink the water was.

Immediately, her hand flew up to her nose. It was met with a warm, coppery liquid.

After she had dried herself off and taken care of her bleeding nose, Ofelia got dressed quickly and drove to work. It was already nine, and her boss would not be particularly happy. Ofelia sneered at the thought of the old hag yelling at her again, and accelerated the car; passing by the local high school while doing so. She looked over at the school and saw a couple of kids wandering about wearing sports uniforms. Ofelia snorted, remembering how she used to get up early on a Saturday just for volleyball practice.

“Idiots.” She said as the feeling of a million crawling spiders encircled her legs.

--

Beatrice looked up at the tree just as the last of her friends went on home from tennis practice. Her uniform of black and gold (her school colours) was slightly damp with sweat. The thing in the tree smiled.

“Hello B.”

Her eyes remained unfazed, “Hello Boy With Antlers.”

The Boy With Antlers stared at Beatrice with a look of fake happiness, “Oh I’m so glad you remembered me!”

Beatrice shifted her weight from foot to foot, carefully gripping the worn-out tennis racket in her hands. Being around The Boy With Antlers made her nervous, especially when she couldn’t tell whether he was naked or not.

The Boy With Antlers stared at her, studying her motions, finally he said, “I didn’t see you last night…or the night before that…or the one before that…I missed you B.”

Beatrice avoided eye contact, she hated how he called her ‘B’ it was as if he was implying something else…

Without taking her eyes off her white shoes she answered, “I didn’t go to sleep last night…”

The Boy With Antlers seemed surprised by this, “Why? We missed you, The Bees missed you too.” Suddenly he was in front of her, tapping her gently on the nose.

Beatrice flinched, she still had bee stings all over her back from the last dream she had…

Before she could answer The Boy With Antlers grabbed her pink earlobe and inspected it closely, placing her bright long red hair behind her ears.

“Your earrings,” he remarked, “Are very nice.” He almost seemed to want to lick one of them off, “It would be a shame if you were to lose them.”

Beatrice narrowed her eyes as The Boy With Antlers sauntered back with a wicked smile on his face. And then Beatrice blinked, and he disappeared.

From behind her, the honking of a car could be heard, and she spun around to be met with her mother’s Cadillac. She rubbed her eyes and blinked a couple of times, making sure that he was truly gone. She then quickly shuffled her way back while fingering the small amethyst buds on her earlobe.

Her mother greeted her calmly before driving off towards home, Beatrice stared blankly out the window, gazing at the countless monochrome houses. There was one house that always caught her eye…a blue one with a small pathway of stones in front of it. But whenever she asked her mother or one of her friends about it; they would stare at her with looks of confusion and tell her that there was no such house.

Beatrice wishes they were right.

--

Ben washed the rest of the blood away from his mother’s wounds before wrapping it up in gauze. His mother looked down at him with swollen eyes.

“Adam.” Ben looked up at her,

“Adam, please get me my pills.”

Ben quietly nodded before getting up and heading for the bathroom and quickly grabbing the white bottle before he had a chance to see something in the mirror. He came back to his mother flipping through the channels.

“Mother,” he handed them to her,

“Ah, thank you Adam.”

Ben curled his toes, “My name is Ben, Mother.”

His mother looked over to him, eyes marked with confusion, “What did you say, Adam?”

Ben sighed before shaking his head and leaving to go down the corridor. Adam was his father, or maybe his brother, Ben can’t remember anymore.

But 'Adam' wasn't the only thing this mother called him. No, there was James, Mark, Aaron, and (his personal favourite) Octavius.

Ben took to his small kitchen and grabbed a water bottle that was sitting on the counter by the window, only to hiss in pain and re-treat his hand. If you knew Ben, he would have told you that that damn bottle had to have been at least 100 degrees.

He gave up looking for anything to parch his thirst and headed to his living room.

Carefully he sat down on the couch and turned on the television. He watched a bit of Spanish soap opera before somebody said something,

“YoU knoW SHe’s goIng TO dIe.”

Ben looked over to his right to see Pan. Pan, as usual, was sitting neatly on his couch sipping something out of an elegant, but broken, tea cup. His (or her, Ben didn’t know) hair was always damp and dripping water all over the carpet as well as his clothes.

Ben looked to the television to see that Pan was referring to the pregnant woman on screen.

“Why?” he prompted.

Pan locked eyes with him and smiled, “Her chILd iS of tHe DEViL.”

Ben stared into empty eye sockets and suddenly felt nervous. Pan wasn’t talking about the woman on screen. He turned back to the television, “Go away.”

Silence.

Ben wanted to peek, just to see if he really did go away. But every time he tried to, something, anything would move from out of the corner of his eye. Finally Ben looked over the couch to his left to see the font door opened.

He got up slowly, and walked over to the doorway. He stared at the grey, cloudy sky before staring at the small line of stones that lead to his house. Something caught his eye, and he bent down to look at it.

It was a small purple earring.