Invisible Monsters

by H L Macfarlane

  “It wasn’t that bad, not really,” she lied. “It wasn’t as high a drop as it seemed. My legs are gonna be bruised, probably, but the worst of the damage is to my arm. Can’t believe I fell on my arm,” she added on with a self-deprecating laugh. “I didn’t even try to roll out of the fall. It’s not like me at all.”

  “You’re damn right it’s not like you.”

  Poppy stared at Fred. There was something about his inscrutable expression that made her realise he was onto…something. Remembering Dorian’s threat, she tried to desperately trawl through her thick, slow brain for an excuse that would placate him.

  She couldn’t have him work something out, after all. Despite Frederick Sampson being, well, Frederick Sampson, Poppy wouldn’t willingly wish a fate of being devoured by monsters on him.

  She didn’t wish it for anyone at all.

  And yet Poppy herself would have to sentence half of the people currently in this very room with her – people who were worrying over her, no less – to death.

  Then she remembered what seemed like a throwaway comment on Dorian’s behalf and froze.

  My kind would pay handsomely just for your legs, he had said.

  Did he mean that literally? Poppy worried, deeply disturbed. Am I condemning the people in this room not just to death but to a slow, torturous one? Will they be conscious when monsters rip off their limbs? Will they –

  “Poppy?”

  Poppy looked at Rachelle with blind eyes. She realised she hadn’t responded to Fred’s statement, either. She’d simply gotten lost in her own horrified thoughts and grown paler and paler.

  “I’m sorry,” she choked out. “I’m in a lot of pain right now. I’m going to go to bed – can I explain everything in the morning?”

  “Of course, Poppy!” Casey and Rachelle said in unison. “We’ll help you to –”

  “I’ll help her,” Nate interrupted, sliding a shoulder under Poppy’s arm as he spoke and helping her to her feet. “Come on, guys, give us some space. Go have fun. Morph’s okay; just leave her alone.”

  Poppy turned her head slightly to see Casey and Rachelle watch her leave with worried expressions on their faces. Andrew looked like he was at a complete and utter loss for what to do. And there was Fred, frowning at Poppy like he always did.

  Except it somehow wasn’t the same frown. Something had changed.

  Everything had changed.

  “Looks like you could actually do with your namesake, Morph,” Nate joked somewhat nervously as he walked Poppy down the dormitory corridor and through the door to the executive board bedrooms. “Speaking of, did that Kapros guy give you any painkillers? You sure you don’t need to go to a hospital? You look really pale.”

  “That’s more from the shock of falling,” she said. “I don’t fall, remember? My pride has been well and truly shaken.”

  But Nate didn’t look convinced. “Is your arm broken?”

  Poppy shook her head. “I thought it was, but it wasn’t. I think I must have ripped it open on a karabiner or something. Under that I’m not even sure I have a sprain. It’s a miracle, really.”

  “You sure you’re not a real superhero, Morph? Indestructible Girl – the girl who never dies!”

  She winced at how accurate Nate’s comment was, though he assumed it was in pain.

  “Okay, I get it, time for bed,” he murmured as he hurried Poppy into her bedroom. He let out a low whistle when he saw the interior. “And here was me thinking the twin room I’m sharing with Rich was pretty nice. This is hotel nice. And you have an en suite?! Lucky.”

  “Nice choice of words, Nate,” Poppy joked as she looked at the white linen of the bed and then her own, bloodied clothes. She decided against sitting on it.

  Nate glanced at the bed, too, but with a completely different intent. “When you feel better remember to invite me round for a sleepover,” he said flirtatiously. It was an outrageous comment – as outrageous as Dorian’s bedroom comment had been two hours before.

  Even thinking about Dorian made Poppy feel disgusting. How could she have even entertained the idea of possibly sleeping with him whilst the club was staying in his slaughterhouse?

  She gave Nate a small smile. “When I’m better for sure,” she said, knowing that she never would be, and that she could never sleep with Nate again. She couldn’t have any proper relationships with the people in the club again. Not when she was sending half of them to their doom.

  But in order to save the other half Poppy would have to continue acting like nothing was wrong. Which meant she had to brush off today’s incident like usual – like it was nothing.

  And so she walked over to Nate and hugged him, allowing him to ruffle her now disgustingly messed up ponytail, even though Poppy was fairly certain it had blood in it.

  “Take care, Morph,” Nate said as he left her room, wearing an expression that very much suggested he wanted to stay to make sure she really was fine.

  When he was gone, Poppy struggled out of her clothes and flung both them and herself in the shower, scrubbing at the fabric, her skin and her hair with a furious intent. She wanted all traces of her blood gone. It was difficult, since she had to keep her injured, wrapped up arm dry, but Poppy – being stubborn as usual – persevered.

  Discovering upon leaving the shower that there was a large, white, fluffy bathrobe neatly folded on a shelf below the sink, Poppy dried herself off and buried herself in the robe before collapsing onto her bed.

  She spied her phone where she had abandoned it on the bedside cabinet; grabbing it she discovered that it was barely seven in the evening. And that she had no phone signal.

  Which means I can’t contact anyone for help even if I was willing to risk it, Poppy thought ruefully. Something told her that nobody else’s phone was liable to be working, either, and that Dorian probably had the only operational one. It wouldn’t be surprising to Poppy at all if that was a deliberate move on Dorian’s part.

  He was probably the one responsible for our first booking getting completely fucked up, she realised suddenly. Otherwise we’d have never come here.

  It wasn’t a pleasant thought, being aware of how much Dorian had manipulated her before she’d even heard his painfully beautiful voice over the phone.

  “I don’t want to think,” Poppy mumbled into her pillow. “No thoughts. An empty head. Just go to sleep…”

  She repeated the words like some kind of mantra until she eventually realised she was falling asleep. Poppy was vaguely aware of Rachelle knocking on her door and peeking her head round the door some time later, then Casey doing the same thing. Even later, Andrew knocked on her door and called her name out in question. It was the only thing that nearly got her out of bed, but Poppy merely sunk deeper into the duvet and ignored Andrew too.

  When Poppy woke up properly it was close to two in the morning. She was exhausted; wondering what had woken her she realised she could hear someone moving about in the corridor outside. Immediately worried that it was, for whatever horrible reason, Dorian, Poppy crept out of bed and inched her door open, wondering what was going on.

  But it wasn’t Dorian. At first Poppy wasn’t even sure who it was. But then she heard the person begin to mutter.

  “Bitch thinks she can ignore me just like that, huh? Boat guy is so much better. Slut. We’ll see who she thinks is better…”

  Poppy immediately recognised the voice as belonging to one of the third year club members, Ross Bridges. After Casey had admitted to both her and Rachelle that Ross had been creeping her out lately, Poppy had taken to watching him closely during socials and, sure enough, he was constantly watching her younger friend. Poppy hadn’t wanted to let him come on the trip but since Ross had technically not done anything wrong, she couldn’t stop him.

  I should have prevented him from coming, Poppy thought regretfully as she watched Ross stalk down the corridor towards what she could only assume was Casey’s room. She wondered if he was drunk to have spoken out loud about his misguided
, irate opinion.

  When he reached for Casey’s door handle Poppy walked out into the corridor to confront him.

  “Stay away from her, Ross,” she said, her voice infuriatingly weak and insubstantial. She didn’t like feeling this vulnerable in front of a man who clearly had ill intentions.

  Ross looked shocked to see her – surprised to be caught out, clearly – but then he smiled as if everything was fine. He held up his phone.

  “Sorry, King,” he said doggedly. “Didn’t mean to wake you. Casey messaged me asking me to come to her room, so, um…”

  “The hell she did. Get back to your own room, Ross.”

  His face darkened. For a moment it looked as though he was going to speak to Poppy the way she’d heard him talk about Casey, but then he schooled his expression.

  “You know what? You’re right. Even though she asked me to it’s really late, and I shouldn’t have disturbed you especially after that fall. Are you okay?”

  Poppy resisted the urge to call him out on his false concern.

  “I will be when I get some sleep. Night, Ross.”

  “Night, Poppy.”

  And then he skulked back the way he came. Poppy didn’t leave the corridor until she was sure he’d gone; when he reappeared and saw she was still there he flinched and walked off, probably hoping Poppy hadn’t seen him.

  He’s going to try again if he’s sure he won’t get caught, Poppy realised with absolute certainty. He’s been planning to corner her on this trip for weeks.

  As Poppy crawled back into bed she was struck by a gut-wrenching, twisted, disgusting conclusion. Abruptly she bolted for the toilet, violently retching the second she knelt down in front of it.

  Ross Bridges had to be the first person she sacrificed. Poppy knew it down to her very core. He had planned to do something vicious and pre-meditated towards another person. He had to go.

  The fact that the decision had been so easy only made Poppy feel even sicker. Just like that, she had condemned a person to death…or worse.

  As Poppy crawled back into bed for the second time she wished more than anything that when she fell asleep she could simply stop existing. That everything that had occurred today was some kind of bizarre fantasy that had never really happened.

  It stood to reason, therefore, that Poppy King did not fall asleep again that night.

  RACHELLE COLE

  Dorian

  A full week had passed since Dorian drank Poppy’s blood. He couldn’t help but be somewhat impressed that she had managed to avoid speaking to him altogether.

  As expected, her arm had almost fully healed seven days after he had torn it apart, though Poppy still had it tightly bandaged and acted like it hurt. But Dorian saw that, when she was alone, she moved about as if her arm had never been harmed in the first place.

  He was sitting in the surveillance room watching the entire club eat dinner. Cameras were set up to watch almost everything in the facility; all the better for his clients to decide who they wanted to bid on. Dorian was expecting several of them to visit in three days to observe the club in person.

  A few of his ‘middle men’ clients had already been posing as instructors from day one, of course, and he was expecting a list of names from them soon on the members of the Outdoor Sports Society they wished to procure on behalf of other members of their kind. He had always intended to be rid of the entire group once their two week ‘trip’ was over, after all.

  Dorian wondered what kind of excuse Poppy was going to come up with to encourage her club to stay. Nobody save Andrew would be allowed to leave; it would have to be an inordinately compelling excuse to convince the twenty-eight other people to hang around of their own free will for a further thirteen weeks. He knew he’d have to ask her what she was going to say before the two weeks were up, since ultimately if Poppy came up with nothing substantial then Dorian himself would have to think of a reason for her.

  He’d said he wouldn’t help her, of course, but if the only other option was for pandemonium to ensue and for the club to try and escape the facility then of course Dorian would come to her rescue.

  Not that Poppy was the kind of human who needed rescued. Rather, considering how near-invincible she was, Dorian gathered that she was the kind of person who would prefer to do the rescuing. He realised, with amusement, that in a cruel, twisted way, she was. Only she couldn’t save everyone.

  Dorian had been watching with glee as Poppy tortured herself over the decisions she had to make. The way she’d already distanced herself from her friends but was using her injury as an excuse. The way she was resolutely not reciprocating the silver-haired Nate’s flirtations, which occurred so often that Dorian was sure the two of them had previously engaged in some kind of fling.

  Dorian had a sneaking suspicion that Andrew – the quiet, awkward one whom Poppy had immediately chosen to save – also had a crush on Poppy, but she was oblivious. Dorian almost felt sorry for the young man.

  Almost.

  He had made a few attempts at conversation with Andrew, trying to work out for the life of him why Poppy felt the need to save him before Rachelle, the young woman who was clearly her best friend. He was weird, obsessive and highly focused about his interests, but was generally detached when it came to anything that he didn’t enjoy. Andrew only spoke to a few people in the club, namely Fred, Poppy and Rachelle, but particularly Poppy. It became apparent very quickly that she treated him gently, as if he were her baby brother. It only made the crush Andrew had on her even funnier for Dorian to witness. He wondered if Andrew was aware of how Poppy saw him.

  And then there was the third man in Poppy’s life: Fred, who did not like Poppy at all. Dorian was quick to see why. The two were complete opposites; even when Poppy was acting morose and quiet she still found it in her to snarl and snap back at Fred when he bothered her. Dorian realised he’d have to be careful of Fred, who struck him as the kind of person who’d be immediately suspicious of anything which resulted in a change in Poppy’s behaviour.

  Nobody knows you better than the person who truly, viscerally hates you, Dorian thought with a smirk. He pushed his chair away from the surveillance area and stood up, brushing down his clothes before making his way through to the large social area which overlooked the pool, the loch and the beautiful mountains beyond it.

  The group had gone swimming in the loch several times and hiking up one of the mountains the day before, though Poppy hadn’t joined for either of these outdoor activities. They had far more rigorous outdoor activities planned for the following week – bouldering, gorge-walking, rock climbing and abseiling – which Dorian highly suspected Poppy would insist on joining even though the ‘injury’ she had sustained from her fall suggested that she shouldn’t.

  Dorian had planned on speaking to Poppy on the occasions she had been left behind in the facility. But, infuriatingly, her female friends Rachelle and Casey had hung back once, then Andrew, then Nate respectively. It was clear that many members of the club would willingly give up going out to explore to keep her company for the day; Poppy was well-liked by most everyone. Nobody in the club liked seeing her so shaken up; her fall had surprised them all.

  Except for Fred, who seemed to take some kind of sadistic pleasure from seeing his club’s president finally fall from grace. Half of Dorian completely agreed with Fred feeling this way; the other half of him wanted Poppy to shove it in the man’s face and get right back into her reckless free-climbing like nothing had ever happened.

  But Poppy had not yet reverted back to the happy, confident, free-spirited person Dorian had first met. He supposed she never would. But, at the very least, she had to pretend to be that person, in order to convince the rest of her club that nothing was wrong. Dorian very much wanted to see that version of Poppy King again.

  It would make it all the more satisfying when he crushed her spirit again and again, every week that she had to give up a name to die and he drained her blood. Thinking about the fact he was just two min
utes away from doing it again sent shivers down his spine. The blood he’d taken from Poppy before was still roaring through his body; it hadn’t diminished in the slightest over the past week.

  It only made him want more. And, going by Poppy’s complexion, her body had regenerated every last drop Dorian himself had taken.

  So her body itself produces blood faster than the average human, he concluded with a satisfied smile. He wondered if he could drain Poppy more frequently than once a week after the fifteen initial weeks had passed and her friends were either dead or gone.

  She wouldn’t have a choice after that point, after all. She’d agreed to stay with Dorian for the rest of her life. With sickening glee he considered the fact that Poppy didn’t know her lifespan would be far, far longer than that of an average human. He couldn’t wait to eventually break it to her – that she was stuck with Dorian for more lifetimes than she could fathom.

  It was with genuine interest that Dorian wondered what would have happened if Poppy and her group hadn’t been ‘scouted’ by him. Poppy wouldn’t have gotten old. When would she have noticed? And what would she have done once she did?

  That was how the last human with immortal blood had been found, Dorian was sure. His kind followed rumours of humans who never seemed to age religiously. Of humans who moved about more frequently than was necessary. Of humans who would reappear as a ‘new’ person decades later.

  Most rumours turned out to be exactly that: rumours. The people who were tracked were merely on the run from someone, or in witness protection or, in some cases, simply aged well.

  It was why Dorian was so amazed by the fact that he, who was very young by his kind’s standards, had found one of the very humans they all longed for. The human form he kept up was of a man around thirty years old, which was in fact his true age. He’d only had to wait thirty measly years to find Poppy.

  The last monster to find a human with immortal blood had been well over one hundred when they’d found them. Dorian was pretty sure the human had been alive for a similar amount of time.