I should’ve been freaking out over it, but at least with no cellular service, my father’s calls would go straight to voicemail. I wouldn’t have to listen to him, or talk to him. I could forget about that part of my life, what I’d done.
Soaking in water, fire should’ve been the last thing on my mind, but as I thought of my father, I couldn’t help but think of what I did.
Lifting my hands out of the water, I stared at my palms, watching as the water traveled along my flesh and dropped back into the tub. These hands…they’d done so much, really. Started a lot of things that I couldn’t put out. Fires, mostly.
Oh, there truly was nothing more beautiful than a fire, its orange flames wild and hungry, never satisfied. There was no better smell than ash, smoke, and cinders. No better sight than watching something that had been fine minutes ago cave and give way to its destructive power.
My father told me I was wrong in what I did, and I knew I was. Some mistakes you couldn’t take back. Did that mean I would go back and change it? If I had access to a time machine, would I stop myself before it was too late?
Probably not, and that was a terrible thing to admit to myself.
What could I say? I guessed I was as likely as anyone else to snap.
My eyes fluttered shut, and I let myself sink into the water, submerging my entire head, gripping the sides of the tub to hold myself under. Even though I was underwater, the memories were so fresh in my head that I swore I could smell it, I could feel the heat licking my flesh.
Haunting, erratic, and hot; fire consumed more than a person could ever truly fathom. Nothing was safe from its wrath. Get a fire hot enough and anything would burn, even metal. Especially metal, something humans believed to be so strong and unyielding. A fire’s flames could be louder than any siren, booming and echoing and bursting your eardrums. A fire could swallow you alive and leave you unrecognizable, nothing but charred bones.
Every facet of fire and what came after its flames died down was stunningly breathtaking, there was no denying it.
If I had an obsession, it was with fire.
I stayed under the water until my chest throbbed with the need to breathe in deeply, and I let myself rise to the surface, filling my lungs with the much-needed air. After wiping the water from my eyes, my gaze landed on the stone wall opposite me. The air around the tub felt too cold, and yet my mind still lingered on fire.
I had to get my mind off it, had to think of something else—so what did stupid, stupid me choose to think about instead? Victor Grimmstead, the headmaster at Grimmstead Academy, a man who stood a cut above the rest. A man out of his own time, and a man who radiated heat just like fire.
I really shouldn’t be thinking of my boss while naked and in the tub, but…oh, well. No one else was here. It wasn’t like anyone was in my mind, peering into my deepest, darkest thoughts. No one would ever know I was currently picturing Victor Grimmstead out of his suit.
Did he have muscles underneath that suit, or he was lean and slender, as his frame would suggest? He had to be at least six feet tall, and that was a perfect height for me. I imagined his chest being hairless, just like most of his face, and I found my thighs quivering when I imagined him below the waist.
It wasn’t often that I imagined a man’s dick, but for whatever reason, my horny mind went there. It was kind of funny, because horny was the last thing I should be in an academy surrounded by children, but it was what it was and there would be no changing it.
At least the boys’ rooms were on the other wing, so I was as alone as I could possibly be.
My right hand began to move toward the place between my legs, and I let the urge take over, let it take charge and basically control me. Everyone got horny once in a while, and a girl had to get some self-loving in when the only attractive man in the nearby vicinity was untouchable.
I wasn’t quiet about it, either. I let the pleasure swallow me whole, my fingers working like crazy beneath the water, rubbing circles around my clit before I started to squeeze it between two fingers. I knew what I liked, and I wished with a desperate heart I had someone here who’d touch me like this. Someone who knew exactly what I liked and wasn’t afraid of giving it to me.
I was a simple girl, really. The key to my heart was my clit.
Though the water was warm, heat built inside me, a different beast. An erotic pleasure that drove my heart to race and my lungs to heave with ragged, uneven breaths. My toes clenched under the water as I rubbed myself, imagining I was with Victor, his dick piledriving me into the sweetest oblivion there was.
It wasn’t long before I inched myself to my precipice, the peak of pleasure my body could feel. Every nerve inside of me was on fire, a heated inferno that kept growing until it exploded—and when it exploded, it came over me like a jolt. I cried out, not bothering to stifle myself, the muscles in my body tightening.
Oh, yeah. That was a good one. If I was honest, I could’ve kept going, but for whatever strange reason, I suddenly felt so very tired.
After the tingly high of the orgasm wore off, I pulled up the drain and got out. I dried myself with the towel hanging on the wall, not changing into anything before climbing into bed. Sleeping naked was probably a cardinal sin in this place, but my mind was hazy, and I wanted to sleep.
The moment I laid in bed and got under the covers, I could’ve sworn I felt the stiff coolness of something sharp touch my neck. But then, just as quickly as the bizarre sensation rose, it faded away, and I closed my eyes and welcomed a black, dreamless sleep.
My eyes were sluggish in opening the next morning, and the moment I saw someone standing beside my bed, holding onto a knife, I recoiled, quickly sitting up and holding the blankets against my chest.
Of course. I should’ve known sleeping naked was a no-no.
Bram stood, right beside the bed, holding onto a kitchen knife as if he was going to stab me. Maybe he was. You couldn’t put anything past a kid with a dark gleam in his stare. He looked like he meant business.
As in murder. Bram’s business looked like it was murder, and I was lucky enough to be his target.
Wait. Didn’t I lock the door? Of course I did. So how did he—
“Bram!” a boy’s voice called from the hall, and I watched with wide eyes as Koda hurried in, grabbing his twin’s hand. Beside the expressions they wore, you really couldn’t tell them apart. Same clothes, same height, same hair and eyes. He got the knife out of Bram’s hand. “You can’t do this.”
“Stop telling me what to do,” Bram hissed, his voice menacing for someone who was only ten years old.
Koda stood strong, meanwhile my heart threatened to burst right out of my chest at this almost-assault and total invasion of privacy. “You need to be better. He’ll punish you if you’re not better.”
I had no idea who the he was Koda was talking about, but for a split-second, I wondered if he meant Victor. Did Victor punish these boys when they misbehaved? Although, I would argue that misbehaving was not the same thing as breaking into my room with a knife and being ten seconds away from stabbing me in my own bed.
With his right hand holding onto the knife, Koda grabbed his brother’s arm with the other. He started to pull him out of my room, and Bram was hesitant to go. Koda stopped right before the doorway, tossing an apologetic glance my way. “I’m sorry about Bram. Please don’t tell Mr. Grimmstead.”
I could say nothing as they went, knowing that I had to tell Victor about this. The he Koda had mentioned earlier had to be Victor, then. This was too much. Bram was too dangerous. Not only did he sneak into my locked room, but he was literally seconds away from stabbing me. Someone like that, even if they were only a kid, was downright dangerous. He didn’t belong here, in a house with other children he could hurt.
Or, you know, me.
I waited until they were both gone before getting out of bed, still holding the sheets against the front of my naked form, and closed the door, making sure to watch myself lock it. Maybe locks were easy to pick in this p
lace. Or maybe it was a fluke and I never locked the door, even though I could’ve sworn I did.
As I turned and headed back to the bed, my intent to toss the sheets onto it and get dressed for the day, I froze.
Midnight sat near my pillows, watching me with wide, golden eyes.
“How in the world did you get in here?” I asked, letting out a sigh when the cat did nothing but yawn. Right. Because, you know, he was just a cat. Nothing more. Nothing special or supernatural about him.
Still…how did he get in my room? Did he sneak in with Bram? Was I that oblivious while I was asleep? I used to think I woke at the drop of a needle, but maybe not.
I changed, got dressed in the same outfit I wore yesterday—that unassuming, long grey dress. My boots were still in the bathroom from last night, and once they were zipped on, I was ready to go. My hair looked decent enough, surprisingly after a full night’s sleep, so I wasn’t going to even bother to brush it.
My will hardened as I stepped out into the hall, leaving Midnight on my bed. Koda didn’t want me talking to Victor about Bram, but I couldn’t in good conscience let what happened go. Bram could’ve killed me. My life could’ve ended today because of that boy, and color me crazy, but that kind of ticked me off.
I usually wasn’t one to swear, but damn that child. To hold the knife so steadily, to be so serious about murder…Bram would grow up to be a psychopath, no doubt about it. Best to stop those kind of behaviors early. Now I saw why Victor wanted Koda to go to Bram yesterday; without him, Bram was off the deep end, doing whatever the heck he pleased. Koda was the angel sitting on his shoulder, the good twin.
No, I had to tell Victor about this. I couldn’t let what happened earlier repeat, or put any of the other boys in danger.
I headed down the hall, down the grand staircase. My intent was to go to Victor’s office and speak with him directly, but he wasn’t there. His office sat empty, and a breeze blew past me, even though we were inside.
Suddenly, the office before me changed. A fire erupted on the desk, but in the blink of an eye, the fire was gone…and suddenly someone sat in the tall leather chair behind it. A man whose rugged appearance instantly made part of me warm, a man whose stomach was stained in red. He was dead.
And what was even weirder…somehow I knew this man. I knew his neatly-trimmed beard and his suit—this one much more modern than Victor’s. I knew him, and yet I couldn’t remember him, and that was the hardest part of all of this. Me, staring at him, expecting him to snap those eyes open—eyes which I knew were a vivid, clear hazel.
But he didn’t move, because, as I said before, he was dead.
The longer I stared at him, the more real he seemed, less like a figment of my imagination. I wanted to close the distance between us, touch him, somehow bring him back to life. That, or blink, and have his body be gone and out of my sight.
Was this real? Was that man real, or was I making him up?
Was any of this real?
I wasn’t sure where that last thought came from, but my heart began to beat fast. Faster and faster until it felt like it could literally pop out of my chest and run away. My feet took me away from the desk; I had to find Victor, tell him about Bram and the man dead in his office, but then I stopped, mostly because, beside the dead man, I was no longer alone in the office.
A small, pale boy stood, his blue eyes sparkling up at me. His blonde hair looked a little thin, but it held a shaggy swagger I knew I would’ve adored if I was, you know, still ten myself.
“Ian,” I spoke his name, taking his hand and leading him out of the office. My intent was to stop him from seeing the corpse, but Ian stopped me by saying something very, very strange.
“Whatever you see, it’s not real.”
I froze, glancing down at the boy whose cold hand I held. “What?”
“Whatever you see, it’s not real,” he repeated, and as a response, I threw a look over my shoulder. It was just like he said: the body wasn’t there. Victor’s chair was completely empty, no handsome dead man in sight.
But then…why did he seem so real?
I was measured in releasing Ian’s hand, turning my stare back to him. “How did you know I saw something?”
“Everyone does,” he answered. “I don’t.”
My brows creased. “What do you mean?” This boy spoke in riddles, and I was so not here for it. Give it to me straight, please. This place…possible concussion aside, it messed with my head something fierce.
“I don’t see anything,” he told me, and it was then I noticed the bags under his eyes. It was as if Ian didn’t sleep. “I think it’s because I want to see it.”
I found myself lowering to my knees before him, needing to be on his level for this particular conversation. “See what?”
“I want to see myself grow up,” he whispered, his eyes watering slightly. “But I don’t, because I’ll never be like you, or Mr. Grimmstead.” He turned his chin to his chest, having to turn away as he started to cough. He brought an arm up to his mouth to cover his cough, and when his fit finally stopped, I saw something that made my heart crack into a thousand pieces.
Blood. Splatters of it on his white sleeve.
Ian coughed up blood, which meant there was something majorly wrong with this boy, health-wise.
“Ian,” I whispered, grabbing his wrist as I sought to get a better view of the blood splatter on his sleeve. Such a bright red in contrast to the white fabric. “What—”
“Don’t worry about me,” he said. “I’ll go change.”
“No, I’m taking you out of here. We’re going to a hospital.” I didn’t have a car, but if I had to carry this boy, I would. I knew Victor said ambulances and Grimmstead didn’t mix, but surely he could make an exception.
“It’s too late,” Ian whispered sadly, pulling his arm out of my grasp.
A new presence stood behind him, tall and stern, and a deeply masculine voice spoke, “What’s too late?” Victor stood with his hands behind his back, looking as serious as ever, and wearing a suit very similar to the one he wore yesterday. Today’s suit was mainly black.
Ian was quick to say, “Nothing. I have to change.” Keeping his head down, he hurried off, like he was okay with coughing up blood and scaring me to death with the riddles he spoke.
I watched him go, wishing I could help him. Wishing I could help them all. This place really was a home to children who had nowhere else to go. My gaze eventually moved to Victor, finding that he now stared at me, his eyes holding a darkness I didn’t see yesterday.
Victor said nothing as he stepped into his office, less than a foot away from me. He closed the door behind him, and, even though I’d felt comfortable with him yesterday, even touched myself to thoughts of him, I couldn’t help but feel slightly uncomfortable with the way he looked at me right now.
A deadly kind of expression. A dominant one, one that told me I better do as he wanted, otherwise I’d pay a price.
“You will not take any of the children off the grounds,” Victor said, taking a step closer to me. I found I involuntarily took a step back, not liking the way he stared at me. Or did I like it too much? Oh, this place confused me at every turn.
But his words told me one thing: he’d heard that entire exchange, opting to keep quiet and eavesdrop.
This one…I couldn’t trust him, and yet even though he looked at me almost possessively, a part of me still wanted to. Maybe because he was the only other adult my age around, and even that was stretching it, as he had to be more than a decade older than me.
“Ian is sick,” I said, taking another step back when he kept moving towards me. “He needs professional medical help.”
“And you need to realize that you don’t know everything,” Victor said. My backside was now against the front of the desk, and I had nowhere else to back up. “There are some resistant strains that sometimes even doctors can’t cure. The boy had hope when he was younger, but he knows better now. Do not give him a false hope,
only to have his heart broken later.”
I had no idea what Victor was telling me. Ian was sick with some kind of resistant strain of something? Surely, at least, a hospital could do something to lessen his symptoms. Help him with his cough. Something.
Victor’s voice quieted, growing softer, and as he spoke, he lifted a hand and ran the back of his fingers along my cheek, “I know you mean well, Felice, but sometimes there is nothing we can do but wait for fate to take its hold. Ian is well aware he is on borrowed time, and he’ll be aware of that fact until the day he dies.”
Such harsh words, even if they were true.
A ragged breath escaped my throat, and it was then I said something that I probably shouldn’t have: “Sometimes you seem cruel, Victor.”
A low, dangerous smile grew on his face, and he leaned in closer to me, whispering directly into my ear, “That’s because I am, Felice. I’m a very cruel man.” His breath was hot on my neck, and I fought the shiver that crept up my spine as a response. His other hand found my waist, curling around it with a firmness that made a new warmth blossom between my thighs.
I should push him away. I should deny him. I should…tell him how inappropriate this was, but did I do any of those things?
No, no I didn’t. I let him hold onto my side, let him whisper those words in my ear, my whole body quivering under his touch. Though it was a mistake, I had no willpower to assert otherwise. Besides, it felt good to be touched, even if it wasn’t for the right reason.
“I find it so very odd that the lamb seeks out the lion,” Victor whispered, his lips brushing against my ear with each word. “The lamb is not blind; it sees the lion’s teeth, knows the danger it’s in, and yet it cannot walk away. Why is that, Felice?”
This was such a switch from how he was yesterday…was this how he usually was? Was this the typical Victor?
“But then,” he continued, “you’re not really a lamb, are you? You have secrets…very heated secrets. Secrets that you dare not speak aloud to anyone else. So, are you a lamb, or are you a lion?” Victor pulled his head back, though his body increased pressure between us.
Grimmstead Academy: Submission Page 3