The main thing that Tate didn’t want, seemed to be exactly what had happened. He had scared Violet. Or, more accurately, infantata had scared her. But to be fair, he scared Tate as well. Ever since he was a little boy, the monster didn’t sit quite right with him. Of course, now that he was dead, he held little power over the blond. But sometimes, when he was skulking in the basement and wasn’t expecting it, infantata would move something from across the room and Tate would find himself a bit on edge.
However, that wasn’t what had him biting his nails raw. No. It was those words that Violet had screamed at him. I never want to see you again! Considering the fact that he was dead and confined to these dammed walls, the likelihood of Violet having to see him again was incredibly high. Not to mention, Dr. Harmon was still giving him therapy sessions. But those fucking words… They left him empty. Emptier than death had left him. And they wouldn’t stop looping around in his head, like an old record. Sometimes it skipped and sometimes it sounded distorted with torment. Yet the memory stayed fresh in his mind.
He hadn’t seen the teenage girl for exactly two days since it happened. Or, at least, they hadn’t talked. He, however, had seen her only a few hours ago. Hidden by the only advantage that came with having his corpse rotting six feet under the ground, he had sat on her desk, watching as she worked on homework. His dark eyes had stayed fixed on her, observing her every move. From the way her eyebrows barely pulled into a little frown as she wrote, all the way to the pale, untainted bit of her skin that he could see, peeking out from underneath the bottom of her shirt.
His obsession with her had become unhealthy.
But even though he knew it and could feel it winding it’s thorns into his mind, Tate couldn’t stop intoxicating himself with her presence. So, he found himself pretending to knock on the door. He had planned it perfectly, knowing that she had just descended the stairs and would be passing the front door. Knocking lightly, he stuffed his hands in his pockets, waiting for her to open it.
After a solid forty eight hours of sleep deprivation and a steady stream of thoughts plaguing her mind, Violet was starting to feel as though she fit the part of insane. With nails bitten down to the nub, eyes wide and riddled with veins, inflamed crescents pressed into the flesh of her palms — the effects of anxiety, lack of rest, and curling her fingers into too tight fists. She certainly resembled some of her father’s psychiatric patients.
She had spent the majority of these forty eight hours in the same position: sitting upright, limbs stiff, a textbook cradled between her boney fingers and a blank expression plastered across her features. The bed beneath her, sheets now rumpled, had been a haven of sorts for most of that time. At least, when she wasn’t ghosting her way through the crowd at school and attempting to steer clear of Leah, who sought more answers than Violet could offer for the inexplicably horrific incident that had taken place in the Harmon’s basement, courtesy of the Langdon boy.
There was far too much to consider, mainly that ghastly thing that had come within mere inches of shredding her face to bits with it’s talons and which may have been chalked up to insomnia-induced hallucinations, if Leah hadn’t seen it, too.
Violet needed a distraction from her thoughts. Needed one before she really fucking lost it. And so, still looking crazy as ever, she urged herself to move. The fifteen year old would carefully push away from the faux comfort of the bed, sliding off and onto her feet. Her legs felt weak. A frown permeated the blankness of her face as she stretched for a brief moment, a satisfying crack resounding as she popped her spine. She even sighed a little as she regained feeling in her legs.
Taking the stairs two at a time shaved off a good few seconds from her time as she descended to the first floor of the residence. There, a knock at the front door drew her attention and led her astray from her path to the kitchen. With her arms drawn in closely to her sides, making sure that the light cotton fabric of her sweater fell over her freshly carved wrists appropriately, she crossed the threshold to peer through the peephole. The sight of that familiar blonde mop of hair at the opposite end sent her heart plummeting into her stomach in a fit of nerves and relief, and other foreign feelings she couldn’t quite place.
“What are you doing here, Tate? Dad’s just left town, he can’t see you until at least Friday.” She voiced softly, her cherubic face peeking at him through the crack between the door and frame.
Pete & The Pirates - Blood Gets Thin
She behaves like she’s on fire
On her tip-toes reach up higher
And if the doctor can’t do tricks
You can use your normal fix
I’m still figuring out how to function after the day I’ve just had… I don’t know. Ask me again tomorrow night, concerned Anon.
.
… Just tell her that you sell coke. Get her to the basement and I’ll take it from there.
Trust me. I’m just gonna scare her a bit. Promise.
Far fetched, but she may just be even dumber than she looks. It’s at least worth a try, if you really think it’ll get her off my back.
Alright, I trust you.
