The Girl at The Window

1 - They always say that when you make a lifestyle change, like losing weight, giving up alcohol and quitting compulsive masturbation that you have to do it for yourself. George staunchly opposed this. They also say that when you don’t do it for yourself, then you won’t stick to it. George’s stubbornness rendered this point moot.

He had always been a little on the large side. As he grew older he became a lot on the large side, then a little on the extra-large side, then a lot on the extra-large side… and well, you get the picture. Shortly after his sixteenth birthday, he was taken into the doctor’s office and told ungracefully by the asshole who called himself Doctor Lovejoy (George liked to think of him as Doctor ‘Lovesdick’) that he was as fat “As a baby elephant”.

George had always known he was fat, and he had always known that he was getting fatter, but it was something that never really concerned him. His parents and his older brother were also fat, and his hobbies were video games, movies, reading and playing D&D, and these didn’t require muscles and extreme cardiovascular fitness.

What did concern him were the taunts, at first they started out harmless enough, when they were only little kids they could call him ‘Georgie Porgie’, and they would chant at him in the playground as he passed:
“Georgie Porgie, Puddin’ and Pie,
Kissed the girls and made them cry,
When the boys came out to play
Georgie Porgie ran away”

Of course Georgie was forever arrogant and just thought of this as lazy taunting. As he and the kids turned into teenagers, the taunting got even lazier, where they would just simply call him ‘Fat fuck’ or Fat mess’, or ‘Jabba the Gutt’.

For some reason, Dr. Lovesdicks’ comment went right through him though. He felt his face burn red like it did when he was called a name, or when he was out of breath after walking up the stairs. Tears began to well in his eyes and he quickly looked down at his feet. His fat thighs and dirty old trainers doubled and tripled and a single tear fell onto his jeans. The doctor continued to talk, yammering on about heart disease and diabetes and all sorts of diseases.

George had the mind-set of all teenagers who had never experienced great illness, in that he felt that these things would never and could never happen to him. All of these warnings went well over his head; he just tried to burn holes through the sterile white tile floor with his eyes and became embroiled in his own thoughts, as he always did when someone made the truth apparent to him.

I’m not that fat, and even if I am, why does it matter? It’s no one’s business; I can be huge if I want to! I like it, and I don’t even need to get laid, I can just watch porn on my laptop, it’s handier, besides…

Who could find him attractive? He blushed again with shame and looked up at the doctor. He was still going on about triple bypasses and bed sores but George could see something in his eyes. His eyes showed something dark, like he was looking down on him, it was borderline revulsion. The doctor’s mouth was curved up in a slight grin as he paused between each statement for emphasis.

George had a blissfully clear image of him grabbing the pen from Lovedick’s hand and ramming it into his eye socket, and drawing a smiley face on the surface of his brain. His shame turned to rage and his cheeks burned with anger now. George was too timid to say anything though. When he was taunted at school or on the street he would just put his head down with his cheeks burning, and walk briskly on, thinking about the things he would do if his balls were as big as the rest of him.

This incident wasn’t what made him change, but it was what set the idea of change into his head. He had never really considered that he could attempt to lose weight, he just figured it was something that was just there, and that he just had to put up with while he went about his business playing video games until his head hurt. Now his mind was slowly realising that he could exact a change. There was one more incident that was the straw that broke the camel’s back, so to speak.

It happened a few weeks after his shameful encounter with the good doctor. George always walked home along because none of the small handful of friends he had at school lived on the same street as him. After climbing off the bus at the stop near his street, he had a ten minute walk to his house which always left him breathless, sweaty and eager for a snack. George usually considered this enough exercise for the day anyway, because why would anyone want to do any more than that?

There was a time when he was a pudgy child and his dad was watching football on the television. As his portly father raised a beer in his meaty hand, George tugged on his shirt sleeve and asked him,
“Daddy, why do those men run around so much and keep so fit?”
His father managed to peel his attention away from the TV long enough to tell him,
“Because they get paid a fucking fortune to.”
George’s mother then called from the kitchen,
“Don’t swear in front of George, honey.”

George’s father had stated his opinion as if it was a cold hard truth, as irrefutable as the fact that the sky us up, grass is green and dog shit smells. Young and impressionable Georgie decided to take it as so, and adopted it into his mantra of exercise avoidance and weight loss. But anyway, where were we?

George began the long trek home from the bus stop, which to most people would be nothing but which to George would be something he dreaded all day. He always had a fear that someone would pass him when he was red faced and panting for breath and they would laugh at him, but it rarely ever happened. It never occurred to him that this was one of the various signs that he was ashamed of his weight, but he was of course too in denial to even consider this possibility.

The street was boring, simply a straight road with houses on either sides. All of the houses were basically identical in appearance, whitewashed and pebble-dashed, two story semi-detached, boring as hell. George walked looking straight ahead of him, daydreaming about whatever video game he was going to play when he got home, when he passed the one house on the street which was the exception to the rule.

It was a weird house, it sat on its own, unattached to both houses on either sides and for as long as George could remember it had a ‘For Sale’ sign in the garden outside it. The house itself didn’t look abandoned or dilapidated; it just looked like it hadn’t been occupied in a very long time. The whitewash had faded to a grey, with yellow tinges in places, and most of the pebble-dashing had fallen off and been swept up by whoever attempted to at least half maintain the house. None of the windows were smashed, but the frames of them were brown and rotting and the windows were grimy with dirt and moss, making it look as though the windows were eyes with cataracts. The fence bordering the garden had been rebuilt recently, but was still falling into disarray, the white posts turning rotten yellow and sticking out in every direction like jagged teeth.

The path up the garden was cracked and weeds poked up through it, but the garden itself was relatively tidy. It was filled with ugly weeds, strangling the grass in some places and completely smothering it in others, but at least they were trimmed short. George always got a weird sense of foreboding when he passed the house, and generally turned away from it. Since he passed it almost every day, he knew it well, and he always just put down this sense of foreboding to the fact the house was basically abandoned, and he watched far too many horror films late at night. When he looked at the house, all he could think of was films like The Amityville Horror and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

For some reason he felt differently today, and he would think this was a great decision to make, right up until just before the end. Rather than adamantly turning away from the house which leered at him like a senile old man, he sneaked a glance at it. The for sale sign still stood rotting at the bottom of the garden, as if someone would ever consider making the effort to buy and fix this slowly decaying mausoleum of bricks and mortar.

He smirked to himself at this thought, but just as he did he could have sworn he saw movement in one of the windows. He stopped walking.

Don’t you dare look; you didn’t see anything, keep on walking Georgie.

But it was too late, he looked. What he saw gave him a feeling that he’d never felt before, it was like mixing icy fear with intense happiness in one potent cocktail, and he felt a little drunk. His pulse was quickening and he was faintly aware that he was getting hard. The hairs on the back of his neck were prickling up and he felt icy cold. In one of the top window (what he assumed was a bedroom) was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. Clad in a modest floral dress, she had icy cold blue eyes that sparkled like sapphires in the afternoon sunlight. Her skin was pale and perfect like a porcelain doll, and she had long flowing blonde hair which hung carelessly, yet perfectly past her cheeks as she looked out into the distance dreamily.

She hadn’t seen George yet, and he didn’t know how long he stood there staring at her. He felt something which seemed beyond lust or simple attraction. George felt that he was maybe falling in love.

Which was impossible right? I mean, I’ve never even met her or talked to her, how can I love her?

But somewhere deep down he knew it was possible, and that this was just fine and dandy with him. The girl glanced down at him while he was lost in these thoughts, and then she destroyed them in a way so much simpler than the schoolyard taunts he received, but which seemed so much darker. She looked at him, their eyes met for a wonderful second and George felt so elated that he thought he might lift of his feet and fly up to the window, but then her passive dreamlike expression changed to a look of disgust. Somewhere in the back of his mind George made a note of how beautiful she looked even when wearing such an ugly expression.

George felt himself and his heart plummeting into cold depths again, but he was a glutton for punishment and he kept watching her. Her disgust ended and she broke into a malicious smile and began to laugh, but there was no mistake that she was laughing at him, especially because she was pointing, that helped a great deal to make it especially obvious.

He couldn’t hear her laughing but he imagined that it would be a beautiful sound, he lost his feeling of icy fear and unadulterated joy and felt the usual shame burning at him, his cheeks blazed crimson and he looked at his feet. Tears welled into his eyes and he broke into a run without looking back up at the girl in the window.

This was the first time he had run since he was a little kid, but he paid no attention to it. It was good; it got him away from her. The more distance the better. The first girl he had ever loved and she had scorned him already.

Don’t be so melodramatic, you know why she laughed, you know why she was disgusted, fix it.

The voice in his head, the voice we all hear when there’s no one else around to bother, spoke much more firmly and clearer than it ever had. George’s lungs burned as he ran and he felt like his veins were pumping battery acid around his body, but he had an epiphany of sorts.

He wasn’t ashamed of his weight, but the girl he had saw was disgusted and amused by it (he had taken this view of her actions and would never consider any other explanation for them) so maybe if he lost it, she would like him, maybe even love him like he loved her. He no longer had any doubts he was already in love. Or at least what teenagers would think of as ‘love’, that bizarre combination of lust and the desire to be lusted after.

He closed his eyes and pumped his legs harder, his belly and man breasts bounced and jostled in rhythm as he pounded the pavement. If I can get thin then she wouldn’t laugh, maybe she would smile and wave at me, maybe she would open that rotting window just a crack and call out to me… Maybe she would open the front door and lead me up to her room, and…

He ran harder; he ran all the way past his house without realising, he eventually stopped to vomit. He hunched over with his hands on his knees, and vomited onto the pavement. No one was around to see but he wouldn’t have cared anyway. He then collapsed to the ground, exhausted, his lungs burning like they had been aerated by white hot nails, and his fat body covered in sweat, it staining his clothes.

But he felt great, he felt elated. This was the first time he had felt truly happy since he got the new Call of Duty game for his Xbox. This was true joy without sitting in front of a television or a book. His body was swimming with endorphins and he loved it.

Exercise would become the first thing George had ever been addicted too that wasn’t bad for his health, self-confidence, or social life. Not that he had ever been addicted to anything really bad, like drugs, smoking, or stealing, merely things like World of Warcraft or whatever other game he happened to be playing. Exercise would also be the last thing he ever became addicted to, good or bad.

2 - Thus began George’s love affair with exercise, though ‘love affair’ isn’t really an accurate way to describe it. It was more like a compulsive desire to become more attractive to one particular member of the opposite sex rather than any desire to better himself. At first he could only run short distances before he felt like he needed to pass out or vomit, and he would always do it under cover of darkness. He told himself this was because night time was a more convenient time for him to go running, even though winter was closing in and temperatures at night time were close to freezing. The real reason was of course that he was embarrassed to be seen running during the day.

He would always make his route pass the house, but he hadn’t seen the girl since the first ‘meeting’ that started his frantic exercising. When he ran past the house at night, he would occasionally see a light on in the room, but he never saw any sign of her. Whenever he walked to and from school each day, he never saw her at the window like he did on that first day. The weeks passed and the weight dropped off him at a considerable rate, and he had also begun to change his eating habits in an attempt to speed up the process.

It had become a stubborn addiction and his parents were beginning to worry about him, though he saw this as them just being jealous because of his weight loss and drive. It had never crossed his mind to tell them or anyone else about the house or about the girl, he almost felt worried in a strange way, that someone would steal her away from him. His parents forced him go see Doctor Lovesdick again to see if there was anything wrong with him. The doctor smirked at him when he walked into the room and said,
“I see you’ve been listening to me Georgie, you’re getting to be not so pudgy anymore.”
George thought about how he would love to wipe that smirk off his face, but said nothing.

The doctor continued to talk in his usual condescending tone,
“But… you’ve been losing weight an unhealthy rate and you’re lucky you haven’t done your body some serious damage, I would recommend that you eat more and exercise a bit less.”
George simply said,
“No.”
“What do you mean, ‘no?’”
“I’ll exercise as much as I want to; you can’t tell me what to do.”
The doctor leaned back in his chair and uttered a low laugh; he then spoke again, even more condescending than before.
“I can’t make you do what I tell you, but I’m your doctor, I know what’s best for you. You should listen to me if you want to lose weight-“
George cut him off; he was feeling rage than wasn’t like him. He was used to feeling angry when he was spoken too like that, because he of course thought he knew what was best for him, but this was seeing completely red.

He felt like a thin red film had come over his thoughts and if he hadn’t of at least tried to contain the anger, there was no doubt that he would have punched the doctor right in the nose and smashed those stupid little glasses that he wore right into his eyes.
“You don’t know what’s best for me, I’ll exercise as much as I want and I’ll lose weight on my own terms! I don’t even…”

…Want to lose weight; I just want her to love me like I love her. He trailed off and his mind finished the sentence for him. His rage quickly diffused. How could he love her? The more he thought it the more ridiculous it seemed again, and besides, he hadn’t even seen her since that day. For all he knew he could have imagined seeing it. The sign outside the house still said it was for sale and still looked unoccupied.

George left the office without another word and the doctor looked after him, shocked into silence. On the bus journey home, George’s mind continued to swim with conflicting thoughts. If he had imagined it, how come he saw the light on in the room sometimes and how come he always had a strange sensation of being watched?

I could have imagined both, maybe all this exercise and under eating is having some effect on my brain. Something isn’t right here; I’ve been changing and not just because I’ve been losing weight.

This was the closest George ever came to avoiding the chain of events which was hurtling towards him like a runaway train. As he stepped off the bus and walked down the street, with his thoughts buzzing around in his head like a swarm of flies, he began to make a decision. The girl wasn’t real, and even if she was, she was bad news. He was losing a lot of weight and this was great, this was better than great, it was fucking fantastic. But he needed to do it for himself and he could apply his stubbornness to this and lose his weight in a safe and lasting way, for himself. He could better himself for himself.

Then he walked past the house again, and there she was. This time she was looking for him. She smiled shyly at him and gracefully gave him a small wave. George could have sworn that his jaw hit the ground and his heart went so high it was in danger of getting sucked into the engine of a passing plane. This time however, he didn’t feel sheer joy; he felt a strange sense of slavish devotion and selfishness.
She’s mine.

George didn’t notice, but when he thought this; the girl’s eyes flashed a deep crimson for just a second and then returned to the beautiful sapphire colour. The girl smiled, even bigger this time, with a hint of malevolence and greed showing as she bared her teeth. Anyone who saw this would have felt a chill run down their spine, and felt the hairs on the back of their necks stand up. Not George, his eyes had glassed over, like his brain had decided that it would be a good time to go out for lunch.

The girl laughed, and George heard it in his head, it was a harsh and raspy laugh, like the sound of cockroaches scuttling but to him it was enchanting. She brought a single finger to her lips and shushed him as if he had been talking (he hadn’t been, only thinking…) and her words echoed in his head even though her lips weren’t even moving.

I’m your little secret Georgie, don’t tell a soul about me.

This method of communication seemed entirely normal to George, and his mind was so far away from his body that he didn’t notice his skin breaking out in goose bumps and a shiver pass through his entire body. He also didn’t notice that he was slowly getting hard again. The girl snapped her fingers and George came back to himself. All her of her previous pleasantness was gone, George realised with dread that she was wearing the same grimace she did the first time he ever saw her.

She laughed and it was a dark sound, and this time George heard how malevolent it was, it was the noise of the bones of a cheap Halloween skeleton rattling, it was the sound that echoed from an ancient crypt when you pried open the moss covered door. George urinated himself and stood frozen in a slowly growing puddle of his own piss until she spoke again. The words bounced off the insides of his skull and made his brain want to shrink and recoil.

Run fat boy, run. Get out of my sight.

George didn’t really run, he fled.

3 - George ran and ran, but this time he made it a few miles past his house before he had to stop and vomit from overexertion. Once he reached the end of the street his feet kept pounding the ground until it turned from pavement to soft earth as he tore between the trees of the small forest that separated his street from the rest of the town. He had become half the man he used to be, quite literally. The weight had been falling off him and it was clear now that underneath all the pounds, he was a handsome young man. He had a well-defined jawline and strong facial features, and his huge stomach and man breasts were slowly disappearing. His legs were becoming pure muscle from all of the exercise, and he would soon start visiting the gym to tone up the rest of him.

In the back of his mind, this was for him. The rest of his mind said this was for her and that everything he would ever do was for her. The eggs of insanity had been laid in his mind, and they would soon hatch, and awful creatures would crawl out. Like tiny scorpions, they would bite and sting and drive him mad, bending him to her will. Anyone watching these events unfold would assume he was just madly in love, even George thought this was the case. The human mind can be selective in what it remembers, and George was experiencing a sort of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in his own mind. When he thought back to their last meeting with her, he just remembered the way her delicate hands waved and shushed him, he just remembered her beautiful smile, and her angelic voice, forgetting that she never spoke aloud and seemed to be able to speak in his head.

She also hadn’t really needed to tell him not to tell anyone, the thought had never crossed his mind. He didn’t want to share the idea of her existence or share her beauty with anyone else. Once he caught his breath and got his energy back after his sprint, he went home. Entering through the back door, he saw his parents sitting in the kitchen and they tried to ask him how things went at the doctors. He ignored them and stalked upstairs to his room. His mother and father exchanged worried glances but didn’t follow him upstairs or try to talk to him. They would always wish that they did.

George kept running, further and further, and eventually he started going to the gym. The weight kept falling off him and he began to build up muscle, but he became extremely withdrawn. Despite all the compliments and the extra attention (mostly female) due to his new appearance, he stayed in his own shell and would routinely ignore people if they tried to talk to him. His parents were worried sick and they were worried for his sanity, but no amount of pushing or prodding or even shouting at him could make him go to the doctors or to a psychiatrist. His school barely cared because his was still doing his work and was still handing in his homework, so as far as they were concerned, he was fine.

He saw the girl every day now, either when he walked or ran past her house, or when she came to him in his dreams. Though they were more like nightmares, she would show him terrible things, tell him to do terrible things, and when he would wake up he would forget all about it. He would remember how beautiful she was, her voice, the time she almost kissed him but then he woke up just before their lips touched.

She never spoke aloud to him, it was always in his head, and she never came any closer to him that standing at the window. One time he walked up the garden path and tried to enter the house. He was about to raise his hand to turn the door knob when she became to scream like a banshee in his head. The sound was so loud he could have sworn his skull was shaking, it felt like his head was going to explode and scatter tiny flecks of his grey matter all over the peeling paint of the front door. He fell to his knees and screamed in agony.

Petunia Crow was an elderly lady who lived across the street, and just so happened to pry her eyes away from her stories on the TV for just long enough to see George on his knees, screaming at nothing. She either didn’t notice the girl at the window, with her eyes blazing red and her teeth large and sharp like daggers visible as she threw open her mouth in rage and surprise, or she just couldn’t see her.

The girl stopped screaming and the agony in George’s head receded to a strange vibrating ringing that made him feel like a church bell that had just been struck. This experience was to George like when the proud owner of a new puppy rubs its nose in its own urine to teach it not to pee on the carpet. It was a lesson in obedience.

4 - As time passed, George grew closer to the perfect physique that he (or was it she?) desired. The girl’s at school weren’t ignoring him or looking at him in disgust any more. He was getting attention that made all the other boys at school green with envy. Though in his current state George was either ignoring it or didn’t notice, it was impossible to know which. It wasn’t something he considered anyway, all moments of his life except for the time he spent with her either in his dreams or as he passed by the house on his running sessions were a grey blur of nothing.

Despite this, he tried not to sleep. Even though it made her so angry he would always try to stay awake. The dreams were both beautiful and horrible, but the horrible edge to them was taking over. Even though he had all but succumbed to her in the very depths of his mind he was aware of what was happening, and was aware of how her hold over him was getting stronger, like every minute he slept caused the vice grip of insanity to close tighter around his mind. The scorpions were hatched now, and they were growing. His hold on himself was slipping away.

Tonight, one last time, he tried to fight her hold and stay awake. It was a losing battle, he was absolutely exhausted and his eye lids felt so heavy he thought they might crush his eyeballs into jelly. He closed his eyes. He opened them again. He closed them; he opened them, slower this time. Finally they closed and that was it, they were as good as sewn shut until he would eventually wake up.

When they eventually opened at around 7:29am GMT, give or take a minute or two (his clock was pretty accurate but not one hundred per cent) he wasn’t really George anymore. She was in his head every second now, whispering seductively, not into his ear but right into his mind. George was compelled to listen. She kept repeating one thing over and over, like it was a prayer, or some sort of mantra, she would say nothing else and George felt compelled to obey, just to silence her if nothing else.

Surrender.
Surrender.
Surrender.

5 - George got ready for and left for school more through unconscious repetition than actually engaging his brain. His brain was too busy trying to fight her away, but it was almost impossible. It felt as though he was torn in two, with one part of his mind showing slavish devotion and the other part of it giving out staunch opposition. It was no comfort that the opposing half of his not inconsiderable mind seemed to be the voice of survival.

Run, run from her before it’s too late!

At which point she and the other half of him would begin to chime in a ghostly chorus.
You’ve run enough, surrender, surrender, surrender…

If his mind didn’t feel worked to full capacity he could probably imagine both sides of his mind, along with her, as tiny soldiers battling across his left and right brain. They were leaving the surface scorched and pocked with mortar fire that didn’t look unlike the stings from the tiny scorpions of insanity, that were breeding and polluting his mind with venom like there was no tomorrow. Maybe for George there wouldn’t be. What if he surrendered? It didn’t bear thinking about.

And so here he was, sitting in English class while the teacher droned and while he zoned so far out of the room and his mind that he looked mentally retarded. The army of his survival instinct were sustaining heavy casualties and were about to sound a retreat. She and her slave had tamed the scorpions and now had soldiers mounted on them. George’s brain felt like it was being used as a pin cushion and it throbbed wildly and painfully, leaving small white and black spots dirtying his vision.

He walked to lunch on auto pilot and ate nothing. He was unaware that he hadn’t eaten in a week. His bones were threatening to tear through his skin like in a really awful skateboarding accident, and the appreciative looks from the girls had turned again to disgust and pity but for a completely opposite reason. The irony was lost on George, as was almost everything that was happening around him.

He was watching the battle across his brain. When he shook his head he could see the soldiers tumbling and screaming in terror as an earthquake surged across the battlefield. Don’t think this is flowery language describing insanity, this is what George actually would swear was happening. He would swear he was watching this futile war from above, powerless to do anything but shake things up every now and then.

So yes, he had finally gone insane. It was like something dropping a stone into a pool of water the ripples grew bigger and bigger as he watched the battle more and more intently and his body drifted round like some sort of rejected Terminator endoskeleton, with bones jutting out rather than solid steel. When the ripples reached the survival troops, they turned and began to scream and laugh wildly. Then small fights broke up between them, which ended with them piling on each other and tearing each other up and eating the left overs. The queen and her scorpions razed what was left of his brain and picked off the survivors.

And then that was it. He surrendered.
This isn’t so bad is it? She teased.
“This isn’t so bad, is it?” He said aloud. The entire bus full of his schoolmates looked at him they all felt the hairs on the back of their necks stand up. He stepped off the bus on auto pilot, his destination already chosen for him.

You should come and see me George.
“I should go see her.”

When he got to the house, she wasn’t at her window. George’s heart sank so low that he felt instantly suicidal, until he saw something amazing. The door was open. She wanted him to come inside! Finally they would meet face to face and he would get to feel her body, taste her lips, he and she could finally…

Come to me George.

“Oh god yes!” he broke into a run, right through the door (his face cringing in anticipation in case she screamed again) and he pounded up the rotting old stairs, his feet almost crashing through the dead old wood. Reaching the landing, he slowed to a walk with his heart thundering and his mouth dry with nerves. At the end of the hallway he could see the room, and there she was. The door was open and she was leaning against the door frame, smiling at him. Her beauty dazzled him; a brief urge came over him to tear out his eyeballs. She was so perfect it almost hurt; it was like his brain couldn’t understand it. She wore that same summer dress that she did the day he first saw her.

The entire house was bare and still looked like it hadn’t been occupied in at least a decade, but George was blind to this. All he could see was her, standing in her doorway, waiting for him. The sun broke through the clouds outside her window and it illuminated her from behind, and he shielded his eyes against the light. When he opened them he was in the room, standing inches away from her. George’s frantic breathing clouded in front of him, and he didn’t notice that there was no breath clouding in front of her.

She whispered in his head, and as she did, stepped forward to kiss him. Her lips were icy cold and stuck to him like he had kissed an icicle.

You’re mine.

He closed his eyes and the world went blank with lust and passion. He ran his hands all over her, not noticing she stayed perfectly immobile. He ran his hand along her cheek and up into her hair, it felt smooth like silk. Then his hand touched something wet and stringy. He ran his hand further and he felt it break through something that felt like cardboard, and touched something spongy and rough. Vomit rose up through his throat and he swallowed it back down, he recoiled in disgust and heard a sick slurping sound as his hand parted from whatever it was he had just touched.

He opened his eyes, her eyes were welling with tears but it had little effect on him. His skin was pale and waxy, just like hers. It hadn’t dawned on him yet that he should probably be getting the hell out of there. He was numb, and not just because the temperature was plummeting.

George slowly looked down at his hand. It was covered in slimy congealed blood that looked like strawberry jelly, and there were tiny flecks of bone and brain in it, like marshmallows, but George didn’t really feel hungry enough to eat it. His stomach churned like a washing machine and the taste of bile clung to his throat. She stepped backwards towards the window, sobbing quietly, speaking only in his head.

You hate me, why don’t you love me?

George felt like his brain had been caught in a bear trap and responded without thinking, “I do love you, I swear I do.”
She turned away to him and faced the window, revealing to him what it was he felt earlier. There was a hole in the back of her head; it was a gaping wound like it had been bludgeoned by a hammer. Thick red blood was oozing slowly, and through chunks of cracked pure white skull, he could see her brain, with a large chunk missing. It was like she was a living anatomy lesson.

Run you skinny bastard!

This voice was that of his survival instinct, it seemed it wasn’t completely defeated just yet; he turned on his heels and made for the door. It slammed shut in his face and he heard it lock (was the lock there when he came in?). He heard the floor boards creak right behind him and felt her cold breath on his ear, it smelled like an open sewer. He turned around slowly; his bowels letting themselves go as he did.

She was there, inches away from him again. This time all her beauty was gone. She wasn’t the banshee that Petunia Crow had seen, and would remember until she died not so peacefully during a nightmare a few days after. This time she was a corpse, a walking talking corpse. Her skin looked like it was made of wax and it was running and rotting off her face like someone had held a blowtorch too close to her. All of her teeth on the right side of her face were blackened and visible through the gaping hole where her cheek should have been, making it look like she was grinning maliciously. Her eyes were no longer blue but were a dull milky grey and were bulging out of her bony eye sockets. The once beautiful silver blonde hair was a filthy matted straw colour, and a foul stench filled the room.

Do you still love me?

She cackled aloud and it was a dry and terrible sound, George thought he could hear the bones grinding against each other in her chest. He vomited violently over his shoes. The damage that the overexertion had done to his body was clear from the small pools of crimson mixing in with his lunch and breakfast.

She stepped forward and pressed her lips to his like she wanted to kiss him. He tried to struggle but her long bony fingers gripped his arms with amazing strength and pinned them to his sides. Her bones pricked through his skin and his blood ran in rivets over her bones and flesh. What was left of her lips worked over his mouth and he felt her skin peel onto his face as she did. His nose was full of the rotting meat smell and the room swayed around him. His vision began to fade to black and he closed his eyes to avoid seeing her rotting irises staring into his soul. Her mouth found his tongue.

You’re mine.

She bit right through it like it was made of nothing. George tried to scream but choked and gargled as his mouth filled with blood. She pulled her lips away and spat his tongue across the room; it hit the rotting floor boards with a wet smacking sound. The world faded in and out from razor sharp clarity to a feeling like he was watching everything from a thousand miles away. His own blood was flowing over her lips and dribbling from the hole in her cheek, he watched this incredulously, as if his brain was refusing to believe what was happening. His body sagged as the blood cascaded from the fleshy stump that he used to use to eat and talk with. She dug her bony claws deeper into his flesh and held him up, her fingers sinking into his flesh as if it was butter and scraping off his bones. George heard this sound with astounding clarity but couldn’t feel the pain. She leaned in again and tore his upper lip off, exposing his faintly yellow teeth and transforming his face into a grotesque and bloody grin.

George kept on screaming and gurgling and the blood bubbled in his mouth, dripping to the floor and joining the growing puddle which was already soaking into the rotten wood. She leaned in and kissed him tenderly, drinking his blood, then she ran her lips across his cheek and down his throat. She inhaled deeply and tore a gaping hole through his throat. His breath exhaled in a feeble whistling noise and everything ended.

6 - There was a new house for sale on the street, but this one wouldn’t remain unoccupied for what seemed like an eternity and left to rot to nothing. It was the one that George had grown up in, and had eaten his breakfast in, the last day he was ever seen. Once George went to visit her, he was never seen again, and what very little remained of his body was never found.

George’s family moved out a few weeks after, apparently the memories of him were too painful and they decided a fresh start would be easiest. Not that George was a model son in the last few months and weeks of his life, in fact he was a complete bastard, worse than any teenager normally is. But parental love is a strong thing and his parents were naturally, absolutely distraught.

The house didn’t remain empty for long. Unlike her house, it was a damn fine house and was going at a rock bottom price, and so Jane’s family moved in a few weeks after George’s left. They moved from across the country and hadn’t heard anything about the story behind George’s strange behaviour and mysterious disappearance. Jane was around the same age as George, and was also as fat as a baby elephant. It seemed like the childhood obesity crisis was not exaggerated. She went to the same school as George and walked the same journey to and from after getting off the bus. She also had the habit of puffing and panting her way home and eating a ‘snack’ when she got home.

One day she was passing that same house, the one where George’s blood probably still stained the floorboards slightly red. She had always made a point of never looking at the house, because abandoned houses were just plain creepy and her classmates had told her spooky stories about it.

They say the last owner murdered himself.

They say that’s where George is, and he lives there now and is crazy and he eats the rats and shit.

They say there’s a meth lab underneath it, run by Martians.
Jane didn’t believe a word of it. But this time she did sneak a peek at the house, and she could have sworn her heart was going to explode, first in terror, and then in delight. Standing at the upstairs bedroom window was the most perfectly handsome guy she had ever seen. He looked even better than Edward from Twilight. He was gazing off into the distance dramatically and he looked so perfect and she wanted to…

She started to blush. He looked down at her, his face going from deep in thought to impassive. Eventually it crept from impassive to outright disgust, and then he exploded into silent derisive laughter. There was no mistaking it was at her expensive. She burned with shame and tears stung her eyes, and she fled as fast as her fat little legs could carry her.

The boy stayed at the window, watching after her. Run fatty, run. He thought bitterly. It was amazing really that she didn’t notice his lack of tongue as he laughed, or that his throat was ripped right out and was oozing thick blood and gangrene. It was also incredible she didn’t see the deep wounds and bite marks all over his body.

Love is blind, I guess.

George chuckled to himself. It was a dark and hollow sound, like bones grinding together.