#michael x mallory
“Where do you go, little witch? Where do you go that I cannot follow?” Michael whispers, conspiratorial.
Mallory doesn’t flinch at the heat of his breath on her petal pale cheek, nor the touch of his fingers as he tucks her hair behind the shell of her ear. Her eyes water though, a sure sign that she’s listening.
He feels a hint of sympathy for the creature. She’s been like this for weeks, unspeaking and unmoving, completely catatonic.
Her mind had snapped after Cordelia had given her back her memories. After she’d watched, wide eyed, as he’d slaughtered the witch bitches—her tenuous sense of self dissolving like spun sugar in the rain.
He licks a tear from her cheek and feels a stab of disappointment that it doesn’t taste sweet.
A sigh. His thumb strokes over her rosebud mouth without his permission, cataloguing the slight rasp of her chapped lips.
Such a small sign of self-neglect.
He frowns, silently vowing that he’ll take better care of her.
He’s already posed her with loving attention, propping her body against the plush pillows on the bed in her golden cage—the finest The Cooperative’s money could buy. And he’d woven the stasis spell around her himself.
She’s his sleeping beauty; never wasting, never aging, hands folded innocently on her chest.
What a lie.
She’s a spider disguised as bird droppings, left among the garbage of humanity.
I think you’re made for that world, Mallory.
Pique or perhaps whimsy has him skimming his fingers down to the delicate column of her throat—unblemished, pure lily white. He shivers, saliva flooding his mouth.
A squeeze of his hand—a twitch, really—and bruises would bloom across her flesh. Brown and purple wildflowers clenched in a sweating fist.
“I picked them for you Grandma!”
He wonders, would Mallory like his gift? Would she display them proudly? Ask for more?
Michael blinks and releases her, leaning back in the chair that he’s positioned at her bedside.
He’ll stay here as long as he has to. He has all the time in the world, after all. One of these days she’ll slip up and let him past the gates of the maze she’s building inside her head.
“Little witch, little witch, let me in.”
