~The Beast~

The pair were laying on the living room floor, their heads brushing against each other as they faced opposite directions. Bethany was dressed in a baggy rock tee and ripped black jeans. Her lips were painted purple, her eyeliner dark and heavy, purple eyeshadow covering her lids. Teigan found himself in khakis and a striped knit turtleneck, his old black framed glasses on the bridge of his nose.

"Do you feel different?" she asked, her voice echoing against the walls of the house.

"Hmm." He pushed his glasses up with his finger. "Yes, I think so."

"Really?"

"Yes . . . I feel insane."

She rolled onto her stomach with a giggle. "Me too."

He craned his neck to look at her. "I appreciate the gesture. It was a nice . . . experiment."

Beth took the glasses off his face and tried them on. The oddly shaped frames failed at obscuring her beauty. She rested her head in her hand, gazing down at him. "If it makes you feel any better, this librarian look suits you."

He laughed, trying to mask his blush. "You're just saying that because you like all things book related."

"You're right. My fantasy is meeting my soulmate in a library, getting married in a library and having book children the size of encyclopedias."

"Book children? So is the librarian part book or are you saying that you're -"

She flicked his forehead. "Don't question me!"

The last three weeks had blended together for Teigan. He had spent them with Bethany playing even more board games, listening to even more rock music, and doing crazy things out of boredom like improvising recipes in the kitchen at midnight, having treasure hunts in the forest, and dressing up opposite to what they were comfortable in. Most of the shenanigans had come from Bethany's head but Teigan was quickly following suit to let her see his less serious side.

During the course of those three weeks the two of them had caught portions of the news talking about the two of them. The head detective came out at a conference and shared that they thought Bethany knew who the Beast was and had stayed her kidnapping to run away. They speculated that this was so if she was spotted with him, she wouldn't be imprisoned as an accomplice to his crimes. While Teigan knew she saw these stories, she never said anything and so he followed her lead.

"Oh, by the way, I made you a new playlist." He sat up, pulling his phone from his pocket to show her. "I found a band that makes music that sounds like the song you liked from yesterday."

"This should be good then. Why don't you get your speaker so we can listen while we make lunch? I'm starved."

Carina had been going out more. He didn't mind it having all the stuff he had put her through. Asking her to stick around even though she did every single other aspect of her job perfectly seemed obsessive. As long as there were groceries in the house they could fend for themselves.

"Okay. I'll be back." He took the steps two at a time, humming the notes to the first song on the playlist. He hoped she would like it.

The speaker sat on the edge of his nightstand. A notification went off on his laptop. The screen was flipped up as he had been talking with the interested buyers for the house in the morning. With a flutter in his chest, he pulled his desk chair up to the screen. The notification had come directly from the listing site. The interested buyers had put up an offer.

This was it. This was what he had been waiting for this entire time.

It was a goal achieved but somehow, not a victory.

He could try and bargain with them. Their offer was kind of low and he knew the house was worth more. But his intention of selling the house wasn't to make some money and downsize. It was to free Bethany the first chance he got. It would be selfish of him to risk her chance at freedom even in the slightest degree.

Besides, the house might be perceived as beautiful, it might have astoundingly high ceilings, perfectly furnished floors, marble countertops, and whatever else people drooled over when it came to houses - but it was haunted. Not by the ghosts that dragged you by your feet when you were trying to sleep but the kind that only lived in your memories. It was the echoes of his mother's screams that traveled down the halls, it was the footprints his father's muddy boots left on the floor after spending a night at the bar, it was goosebumps that would make him shiver when the room beneath the staircase was cleaned up and free of the one person who made the house good - Bethany.

The house was worth nothing.

He accepted it before he could change his mind.

Teigan closed his eyes and took a deep breath. It would be a drastic mood change to announce this to Beth. He hoped she wouldn't start jumping up and down for joy - at least, not until he was out of the room.

A bed of mist filled the air around him. He stood, dread building up in his chest as he knew what it meant. Walking around the mist, he closed the door to his room, leaving it open just a crack. Soon, the woman appeared in her full form.

She wore jeans for the first time he had ever seen. Her shirt was plain and gray, her shoes worn out slip-ons. It was so casual that he almost questioned who was in front of him.

"Hello," she spoke. He noticed there were bags under eyes, her skin not so radiant as it was before.

He scratched his head. "Uh . . . hey. You're not . . . dressed as usual."

She looked him up and down. He had forgotten his own questionable outfit selection. "Neither are you." She walked over to his desk and fell into his seat. He was distressed with how comfortable she was making herself in his own room but decided to leave it be. In the end, it didn't matter. He didn't have the same urge to fight with her as he used to.

"I'm tired of pretending to be some other worldly being. I'm no 'witch' as you like to call me." Though her speech was deprecating, her posture remained strong and her gaze intense. "But that's besides the point."

"What is the point, exactly?"

"In a hurry now, are we?" He followed her gaze through the crack of the door and down the stairs. "Am I cutting into date night?"

He averted his gaze to the speaker in his hand. "You know it's not like that."

She spun around in the chair, leaning back and gazing up at the ceiling. "I do but do you?"

"What are you talking about?" He sat down on his bed with his head in his hands. He felt himself growing annoyed. Had she paid him a visit to patronize him? Hadn't she done enough of that already?

"You are utterly infatuated with her." She tilted her head, giving him an expression of pity. "Or maybe even in love. You know how unfair that is, right?"

He stared at her.

"There's no life here with you. You are bound to hide forever. You can't ask her to give up everything. Frankly, I don't even think she would. She'd be crazy too."

He ran his hands over his pants, his leg bobbing up and down. It unsettled him that she was voicing thoughts that constantly swam around the back of his mind.

"All the more reason for you to break the curse."

With the odds of doing so against him, he didn't see it ever happening.

Teigan felt something heavy settle onto his chest. He felt the spiderwebs that had been cleared away reappear with more stamina, he felt his throat closing up, and his eyes water. "I would never tell her."

He felt the witch's gaze burning into him. "What?"

He took a breath and he swore that he audibly heard his heart crack through the middle.

"I would never tell her I love her . . . I'd be making a fool out of myself."

The witch stood up and placed a hand on his shoulder. The gesture was cold, not an action of pity but of dominance. "As long as you understand."

With the creak of the floorboards, she had disappeared. He placed his head in his hands and squeezed his eyes shut, feeling like the biggest idiot in the world.

He loved her.

He could never have her.

Teigan felt heavy as he descended the steps. Bethany was obviously stacking ingredients on the counter with a chipper smile that grew when she saw him coming. Then it faltered.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing." He tucked his hands into the pockets of the pants and forced himself to stop frowning. "It's good news. Very good news."

She raised an eyebrow at him. "Okay . . ."

"I have accepted an offer on the house. I purchased a new place a few days ago so you could be out of here in a matter of days." He kept his tone level for the illusion of neutrality. Instead, it came out sounding like he was reading his lines off of a teleprompter.

Bethany nearly dropped the bag of produce she was holding. Her eyes looked everywhere except for his.

"Oh. Just like that?"

"Just like that."

She perched herself on one of the kitchen stools and picked at the black nail polish on her fingers. He didn't know what to do with himself or how to fill the silence that was invading the previously playful air.

"Is it weird . . ." She trailed off, shaking her head and then burying it in her hands. "Is it weird I'm kind of shocked? I knew the day would eventually come and I had wanted it too."

He didn't want to hear it. He couldn't. If she said one kind thing to him, one hint of a phrase that suggested she could possibly feel a morsel of the same way he did, it would only make the chasm forming in his chest deeper.

"Now that's it here -"

He flicked on the speaker to its maximum value and pressed play on the first song he could. The guitar drowned out the rest of her sentence.

"Lunch isn't going to make itself."

He kept his gaze fixed on the ingredients. The thought pounded in his head to the rhythm of the drums in the rock song.

I can never have her.

~The Hunter~

"Bethany Rodriguez, a young college student from Brooklyn, New York was once thought to be the victim of a hostage situation turned kidnapping by none other than the infamous Beast. However, as more evidence has come to light, police theorize that Bethany might actually be a runaway and an accomplice to the crimes of the most wanted criminal in the city."

He changed the channel, tuning into the more gossip based news show. Big surprise, they were covering the same topic. Weeks later and the media still hadn't dropped it.

"I think we have a modern Bonnie and Clyde thing going on," the tan woman said, pointing her pen at her co-hosts seated around the table. "And I'm not gonna lie . . . it's kind of romantic." She bit her pen as the rest of the women broke into squeals and protests.

"Just think about it! She faked a whole kidnapping to be with him! He must be something special . . . " She winked at the co-star to her left as the self proclaimed 'level headed' host suggested that perhaps Mrs.Rodriguez's claims that it was all real was the result of her being easily manipulated in her 'vulnerable state.' Bethany would have hated to hear her mother's substance abuse issues were leaked last week.

Grayson shook his head with a scoff. "Idiots. I live in a city filled with idiots."

He checked one more news channel. This one was replaying a clip of the head of the NYPD addressing the situation. A reporter in the crowd asked if Bethany was wanted.

The answer was no but it didn't stop Grayson from feeling sick to his stomach. He thought he would hurl into his mother's ugly clay vase when the head Detective on the case - Brendan - stepped up to the mic to answer general questions about the investigation. It was pointless considering he refused to answer more than half of the things asked.

Grayson thought about how he had threatened him to keep his nose out of the case. He wondered if he liked that Bethany was being painted as the bad guy or if any activity on the case was bad to him. Most importantly, he wanted to know if anyone else knew of the stakes he had in this that caused him to act out how he did. Was anyone else in the police department helping to cover for him?

The digital clock on the cable told him it was 5:00 am. He should have been asleep, not watching news reruns. He didn't see the point in going to bed for an hour and a half so he headed to his room to get dressed for the day.

The lack of sleep wasn't a careless mistake he made by getting wrapped up in other things. It was much more purposeful than he would have liked to admit. He was outrunning his demons. Everytime he closed his eyes, he grew expectant of a nightmare. He had already had tons of Bethany being killed in front of him by the Beast. Besides, the more exhausted he felt the less likely he was to do something stupid with the pent up indignation.

He was too fatigued to pick fights with anyone at school, too fatigued to disrespect his parents, too fatigued to cry, too fatigued to harass Detective Brendan, and too fatigued to lose his will to carry on. So far, operating on autopilot was his saving grace. He would hold onto it for as long as he could for he knew that it wouldn't last long. Soon, he would snapback . . .

Or just plain snap.