Invisible Monsters

by H L Macfarlane

  “I guess we’ll find out next week.”

  Poppy’s good mood abruptly snapped. She was listening to Aisling, Nick and Steven discuss Fred and Nate.

  Oh, no.

  “It’s Poppy I want to see more of,” Nick commented. “Girl has no fear. Can’t believe she did all that after such a bad fall.”

  “What about the other girl – Casey?”

  “She’s mine,” Patrick said as he slid into the conversation. “Sorry, guys. Keep your hands off.”

  “And how the hell did you manage that already?” Steven asked, sounding irked. “I liked her.”

  “It’s the benefit of being Dorian’s best friend; I get first pick.”

  Poppy shuddered, which her drenched hair and swimming costume only made worse. There was no doubt that Patrick was a monster, now.

  So much for letting myself feel good for a while, Poppy thought drearily as she spied Dorian glowering at her. She quickened her pace and joined Nate, Casey and Rachelle in order to prevent him from speaking to her.

  If at all possible, Poppy was determined to avoid Dorian completely until she’d have no choice but to let him cut her open once more.

  *

  Three days had never passed so quickly. By throwing herself into every activity suggested to her under the guise of building her strength back up, Poppy had successfully spoken to Dorian precisely zero times. She knew she was going to pay for it.

  She continued doing it anyway.

  But now it was time to face him. It was to her confusion, therefore, that she couldn’t actually find Dorian. He wasn’t anywhere in the central building, nor the east wing or the ground floor of the west wing. Poppy supposed he could be in one of the locked rooms, but what use was that to her? She couldn’t get in any of them, unless she clambered blindly through the ceiling. She wasn’t sure she wanted to.

  None of Dorian’s clients were at the facility, which meant Dorian wasn’t in a meeting or even outdoors with them. It didn’t matter who she spoke to – nobody had seen him. Which meant there was only one other place Poppy could check.

  Upstairs in the west wing.

  She suppressed a shudder as she thought about the dubious, unknown floor. Poppy assumed Dorian’s bedroom was up there, but it couldn’t be the only thing. It meant the staircase leading up to it gave off an even eerier aura than the locked rooms, if that was at all possible.

  And yet Poppy found herself cautiously climbing up the stairs anyway, at a loss for what else to do. She didn’t want to wait around with her heart thumping in her chest all day for Dorian to find her; she just wanted the whole ordeal over and done with.

  “Stupid son of a bitch,” Poppy muttered as she reached the top of the stairs. Hadn’t Dorian been the one who couldn’t wait for Saturday? She’d been sure he was going to pull Poppy into the infirmary as soon as he was able. Something didn’t add up.

  As she wandered through the first floor corridor Poppy grew no further insight into what the rooms lining the hall contained. The doors were all unmarked, windowless and locked. It reminded her of the mental asylums often featured in Nate’s favourite horror films.

  Oh, great, what a lovely thing to think about right now.

  When Poppy reached the end of the corridor she had to admit that she didn’t know what else to do. But instead of returning downstairs she sat down on the floor and closed her eyes. It was quiet up here, in a way that the central building and the east wing never were.

  That was how Dorian found her.

  “You really put so much effort into looking for me, Miss King,” he said as he walked down the corridor towards her. Poppy opened her eyes immediately.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Ah, so you’re speaking to me again?”

  “Only because I have to. What did you mean?” Poppy repeated.

  Dorian reached down and hauled Poppy up from the floor; she let out a noise of surprise.

  “I was watching you on the CCTV cameras. I’m surprised you didn’t use the ceiling to look for me, since you love it up there so much.”

  “You were watching me?”

  Dorian gave her a level stare. “Are you really that surprised?”

  “…I guess not. Where are you taking me?”

  “My bedroom.”

  Poppy stuck her heels into the corridor floor immediately, trying desperately to pull out of Dorian’s grip.

  “No way. I’m not going in there.”

  “You will, and you are. Don’t make me carry you.”

  Torn between trying to resist further and knowing she would invariably lose to Dorian’s height and weight, Poppy started following him again as slowly as possible.

  “Why your bedroom this time?” she muttered.

  “So I can cut you open in the shower. I’m tired of having to wipe down the infirmary. It’ll be much cleaner this way.”

  Poppy blinked a few times. It actually made sense, though she still hated the idea.

  Dorian pulled her through the first door on the left closest to the exit to the stairwell. His bedroom had a glass wall much like the one in the social area, overlooking not the loch and the mountains but the jagged cliff-faces that hugged the back of the facility. At the very top of the cliff, some ways off, was a grove of trees. The morning light filtered through the canopy, giving the place a magical, ethereal feel to it.

  Poppy wondered if she could climb up to explore it at some point.

  “What are you thinking about?” Dorian wondered as he inclined his head towards his bathroom. “We’re going in there.”

  Reluctantly Poppy followed him, impressed by the sheer size of the walk-in shower unit that could easily fit three or four people. Dorian slid the glass door open and moved to the side to allow Poppy to enter first, before turning to retrieve the same knife he had used to cut her open last time from a cabinet.

  “That thing better be sterile,” Poppy remarked, her stomach twisting nervously as her arm twitched in phantom pain. Now that she was here she found that she wasn’t ready to have Dorian cut her open at all.

  “Of course it is,” Dorian replied as he moved into the shower and closed the door behind him. “Not that an infection would do all that much to you.”

  “I’d rather not risk it, all the same.”

  “Who are you sacrificing and saving this week?”

  Dorian sidled up towards Poppy and unwrapped the bandages on her arm. She didn’t like how close he was, even though it was exactly how close he had been the last time he’d taken her blood, and the time before that. Perhaps it was because they were in the enclosed space of the shower.

  “Angelica Fisher,” Poppy breathed out as Dorian traced a line down the perfect skin of her arm with the edge of his knife. His eyes were transfixed on the motion, as if he was imagining exactly where he would cut her. “I’m sacrificing Angelica. And saving Jenny Adams.”

  “Steven will be happy about that,” Dorian murmured as he continued to slide the knife across Poppy’s arm. “He had someone interested in Angelica after she impressed them all with her archery. Keen eyes are a valuable asset.”

  Poppy’s stomach lurched. “I didn’t need to know that.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “I thought you wanted to know everything they said? Which would be much easier to do if you stopped avoiding me.”

  “I –”

  Poppy’s sentence was interrupted as Dorian violently wrenched the blade of his knife through her arm. She screamed; Dorian covered her mouth and pushed her against the tiled wall of the shower. Poppy’s blood spattered across the glass door and Dorian’s shirt. She stared at it in horror.

  “W-what happened to your kind not being so violent?!” she cried out in agony when she pulled his hand away from her mouth. “What happened to everything you said last time?”

  Dorian chuckled darkly. “And what happened to you promising not to show off? Do you realise how many of my kind are interested in you, now?”

  “I was pissed off at you.”
<
br />   “Well, this is me pissed off at you,” Dorian spat out, his expression twisted and angry and far too close to transforming. “What were you thinking? Racing your damn raft into first place, jumping off that stupid waterfall, making a scene with your daredevil boyfriend…”

  Something about the last comment irked Poppy.

  “He’s not my boyfriend.”

  “Oh, so he just kissed you and wouldn’t let you go for no reason?”

  “Why do you even care?!”

  Dorian responded by sinking his teeth into the gaping wound in Poppy’s arm, causing her to cry out in pain. He brought her arm up to her ear so that she could hear every last drop being drained from her.

  There were tears in Poppy’s eyes that she was desperate not to shed. But it hurt – more than it had before. Poppy could feel Dorian draining her of blood as slowly as possible, dragging out the process for as long as he was able.

  “S-stop,” she eventually stammered, “Dorian, stop it!”

  He pulled his bloody mouth away from Poppy’s arm for a moment. “Why should I, when you don’t know when to listen to me?”

  “If I don’t act like myself people will get suspicious! You can’t get angry at me for being myself!”

  Dorian stared at her for a few agonisingly long moments before returning to draining her blood. He quickened his pace, finishing up in a manner of seconds before finally releasing Poppy. She had to fight not to drop down to the floor of the shower in shock

  “I guess you’re right,” he muttered, wiping a hand across his mouth to clear it of blood. “But keep this in mind, Poppy; in three months you won’t see Nate or Andrew or Rachelle or anyone again. Perhaps consider stopping Nate constantly trying to get into your bed.”

  Poppy wanted to argue. She wanted to call Dorian out for overly caring about what she did or didn’t do with Nate. But his reasoning was solid, and caused the tears she’d been keeping back to finally fall.

  How had she come this far without actually acknowledging that she’d never see her friends again? Her family? She had kept it all back by staying numb to her situation.

  Now Dorian was forcing her to think about it.

  “You can’t go downstairs looking like that,” Dorian eventually murmured, touching Poppy’s arm in order to check if it had stopped bleeding. “Clean up and I’ll dress your arm.”

  “…I hate you.”

  He stared at Poppy, who stared right back through red-rimmed, tearful eyes.

  He smiled bitterly.

  “I know. I don’t know what else I was expecting from you.”

  Then he left the bathroom, leaving Poppy to clean up and wonder what the hell Dorian meant.

  INTERLUDE II

  Angelica was pulled aside from her friends on the day the club’s initial two week trip was over. Smiling smugly as Dorian informed her that her archery had so impressed one of his clients that they wanted to offer her a contract, she thought of nothing but how much better she was than the rest of the group to have been picked first whilst Dorian took her upstairs to the west wing.

  She had never been up there before; to the best of her knowledge Angelica didn’t think anyone in the club had. But when she asked Dorian what exactly it was that she had to do next she was unceremoniously pushed into a room with an unmarked, windowless door. The door slammed shut behind her with a resounding click.

  When she turned to survey the room she saw Ross Bridges, who was missing an arm.

  “What the hell…” she uttered, an overwhelming feeling of dread crawling up her spine. Ross stared at her with wild, panicked eyes.

  Then she felt a prick in her neck, and then there was nothing.

  When she woke up Angelica could not see.

  CRAIG HUNT

  Fred

  Frederick Sampson hated Poppy King with every fibre of his being.

  Maybe in the beginning his immediate dislike had been a little unfair, but as time wore on Fred realised that he was perfectly justified in hating her. The two of them were simply too different to ever get on.

  And yet somehow, inexplicably, they were interested in the same things. The same subjects at university; the same circle of friends; the same extra-curricular activities. That the two of them managed to successfully operate the Outdoor Sports Society as president and vice-president was still something that Fred couldn’t quite fathom.

  He wasn’t sure how Poppy had found Dorian Kapros’ outdoor facility. It certainly wasn’t one that anyone else had heard of before, though the fact that it was brand new went a long way in explaining that. But it served to fuel Fred’s suspicion that Poppy had somehow messed up her original retreat booking, and that Dorian’s centre had landed in her lap as a last-minute solution to her problems.

  Rachelle thought he was being ridiculous, of course. She thought his dislike of her best friend had gone too far, and vice-versa. It had broken up their relationship. Fred had tried to reign in his feelings for Poppy since then for Rachelle’s sake, and he liked to think he’d had some success on that front.

  But Poppy was really trying his patience now. After falling – falling – from the climbing wall, her behaviour had been all over the place. In all honesty Fred didn’t understand how Poppy wasn’t dead, or at least severely injured. He’d been sure she’d crushed her right arm into oblivion when she landed on it.

  And yet Poppy was fine. Well, as close to fine as she could be. She’d been severely shaken by the fall, though Fred wasn’t sure if this was due to her brush with death or the fact Poppy had never fallen before. And though Poppy acted as though her arm was injured, Fred was becoming increasingly certain that it was precisely that – an act.

  For sometimes Poppy seemed completely fine. When she thought someone wasn’t looking, or had for all intents and purposes ‘forgotten’ about it, she used her right arm like it didn’t hurt at all.

  He had thought her arm was simply getting better after Poppy had enthusiastically joined in with the white-water rafting course and flung herself off that waterfall with Casey and Nate. And in the days following it seemed like she’d gone back to normal.

  But then Poppy was suddenly as pale as the day she fell, and she held her arm to her chest as if, beneath the bandages, her arm had been hurt anew.

  Fred had never been so confused about her erratic behaviour before, and this was Poppy he was talking about. The most reckless, headstrong, impulsive and unreliable person he knew.

  Despite his disdain for her lackadaisical attitude towards safety, perhaps the person most in shock about Poppy having fallen in the first place was Fred himself. Whether he wanted to admit it out loud or not, Poppy was a superb free-climber. She was the best Fred had ever seen with his own two eyes. For her to fall from a climbing wall? It seemed ridiculous. But Poppy had been distracted – by Dorian. Fred supposed that even Poppy could make a mistake in front of a man she liked the look of.

  Except she spent the next week avoiding him completely, and even when she started speaking to him again it seemed as if she’d rather be anywhere else but by his side, Fred mused, not for the first time.

  Poppy had been distant with most everyone in the club for the first two weeks of the trip, though now she seemed a little more inclined to be outgoing and sociable. He knew Rachelle was worried for her, as were Andrew, Casey and Nate. And though Fred most definitely hadn’t wanted to know about it, Nate had told him that Poppy kept rebuffing his advances no matter what he did, which was unlike her. He’d thought this odd considering she reciprocated Nate’s idiotic kiss at the bottom of the waterfall but, then again, everything was odd about Poppy King right now.

  “…how does a retard like you beat my dive time?” Fred heard someone mutter, breaking him out of his thoughts. He was sitting in the small social area outside the board members’ bedrooms, whilst the voice came from the direction of the door into the main dormitory corridor.

  Frowning, Fred put down the book he had been trying (and failing) to read for the best part of an hour a
nd crept towards the door to listen.

  “Is it because you barely speak?” With some difficulty Fred recognised the voice as Craig Hunt, a third year student who tended to take his insults of people too far.

  Such as right now, Fred mused.

  “You just stand around holding your breath so you can beat everyone’s time, huh?” Craig continued, his voice unpleasantly slimy. “Is that how it is, huh, Forbes?”

  Fred almost bashed down the door, but a hand on his arm caused him to stop. Turning around he realised it was Poppy, who held a finger to her mouth to tell him to keep quiet.

  “I’ve been – I’ve been practicing diving every week,” Andrew mumbled in response. “At first I was scared to stay under the water but then –”

  “I don’t give a shit about your training schedule,” Craig interrupted nastily. “But you keep beating all my best times. You don’t even care about being first, so why are you doing it, huh?”

  Andrew stayed silent.

  “Oh, I see. You doing it for Poppy? You want her to be so impressed she finally bangs you? I’m sorry to tell you, freak, but you have no chance. You think she’d go for someone like you? Don’t make me laugh!”

  Poppy stared at the door in fury, yet still she kept Fred back from interrupting the cruel conversation.

  “Let me stop him,” Fred muttered; Poppy shook her head.

  “Think how horrified Andrew will be if he knows we heard the whole thing. We can sort Craig out later.”

  Fred didn’t like standing there and doing nothing but he had to admit that Poppy had a point. Andrew had been working so hard to become independent. For the two of them to jump out and intervene would diminish that.

  “You know, I bet I could get Poppy to screw me,” Craig laughed. “Just to fuck you up, Forbes. She seems pretty easy, what with her not wanting to leave the club or grow up and all. And she’s mental; I bet she’s great in –”

  “Shut up about her!” Andrew bit out. “Leave her alone!”

  Craig only laughed harder. “Man, you’re so pathetic. We’ll see who she prefers – me or you. Though I doubt you even have the balls to make an actual pass at her.”