Author's Notes:
Each episode in the "An Inhuman Love" series will be a stand-alone novelette, meant to be read and enjoyed in a single sitting. Expect a monster/human pairing in each episode, with all the juicy details included.
WARNING:
This is a monster-on-girl reluctance/non-consent story, with some minor horror themes. Tread carefully.
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Beth sighed, and leaned her weight toward the mirror, setting her hands against the tile wall around it. An old bathroom, but functional, and clean. And the mirror still worked, so she gazed at her reflection, and frowned at it.
She was an attractive woman, sure. Tall, pale skin, green eyes, black hair cut to the shoulder, and she was quite thin. Maybe too thin as of late; not eating enough will do that. People at work said she was starting to look like a regular Morticia Addams, minus the boobs. Assholes. But, she didn't have the time, or the energy, to fix herself proper food lately. That was a confounding problem, only getting worse as she refused to take care of herself, and she was sure she'd eventually get past it. For now though, she had work to do.
She walked up the stairs of the old home, and listened to its ancient creaks and how they summoned old memories, before she stepped into the kitchen. The glass door to the patio was modern, but everything else about the kitchen was antique. Green wallpaper with flowers. Good god. Countertops that looked like a child had chewed up stained glass art and vomited it back up. Satan, come rescue her from this ancient monstrosity. And the floor, it was white tile with more flowers, blue this time, in some sort of pattern she could only assume a blind pig had painted with its hooves.
It was horrible, but she couldn't stop herself from loving it.
"Gammy, the fuck am I supposed to do with this place?" She sat down at the kitchen table, a big wooden thing covered in a cloth of, naturally, painted flowers against the white base. Groaning, she reached behind her for a cabinet in the corner, scooped up a picture, and put it on the table in front of her.
Her great grandmother. A beautiful woman, tall and thin like Beth, long black hair, pale skin, subtle curves and all legs. Gammy Bethany took good care of herself until the day she died, two months ago. The picture was of her thirty years ago, when she was almost seventy. Still an amazing looking woman, even that old, big into fitness and healthy eating.
She was also kind of crazy, said she was happy living alone, didn't need anyone to take care of her, and that someone else was handling it. People asked who, because as far as anyone knew, Beth's great grandmother lived alone, and all her friends were just as old as her. You couldn't trust a ninety-year-old to take care of a near one-hundred-year-old.
"Jen says you were taken care of, though. Happy as a clam." Sighing, Beth looked around the place from her seat, before looking back to the picture. Bethany was smiling big in the picture, radiant, joyful. "You moved in here after your husband died, long before I was around. Everyone who knew you said it helped pull you out of your depression, said something about the house made you happy. Well, it's mine, now. Wanna tell me the secret, Gammy?"
Gammy said nothing. Gammy was dead, and Beth was talking to a picture.
Beth sighed, and looked out the glass doors of the patio. Night time. This was going to be her first time sleeping alone in her new house, and she should have been unpacking. But she wasn't. Unpacking had a finality to it, sort of like writing in stone how the people who used to live there, no longer did. Painful.
She'd said her goodbyes, but saying goodbye to a body in a coffin, all dolled up in makeup, didn't have the weight Beth had expected it to.
"It's this house, isn't it?" she said. "I think of you, Gammy, and I think of this house. I think of the way it squeaks when you go up the stairs, and makes different squeaks when you go down. I think of the way it'd randomly boom with a loud thud, settling on the hill; still does." It was a decently sized house, built onto a mountain side with several other nearby houses; nearby being relative, since they were a ten-minute walk away. It'd have growing pains and settling noises until it eventually collapsed, centuries in the future hopefully. "And of course, the smell of liver and onions. You cooked that so much, it's a wonder you didn't overdose on it." Classic old person behavior.
Chuckling, Beth pulled the papers on the kitchen table to her, and glanced them up and down. The typical crap that came with owning a new house, bills, some papers to sign, shit like that. The house had long been paid off, but that didn't mean the city was just going to let her move in for free. Nope, city had to get their fingers a bit wet, when property traded hands. Still, the house was paid off, and it was cheaper to live here, than her apartment.
"Cheaper, but good god. I don't think I can handle this... Great Depression decor." She laughed again as she looked around at the horrible wallpaper and ridiculous tiling. "I--"
The lights flickered. She froze, and looked around the kitchen as it went dark, then lit up, then went back to darkness. The silence, combined with darkness, was overwhelming. Every noise the house normally made, was gone, fridge included. The hairs on her arms stood up, and the ones on the back of her neck soon followed.
"Damn it." She blinked a few times, and tried to see in the darkness that buried her. Part of the problem in living in a house on a hillside, with only a few neighbors: not much city lighting nearby, especially with a driveway that was really a long path through woods. There was some light though, a nearby streetlight that lit the winding driveway. With time, her eyes adjusted to the darkness. The subtle light cut through her curtains, bounced off some walls, and provided her kitchen with enough light for her to see shapes.
If the street light was working, it probably meant her new home's power was dead, not the area's.
"Thought the realtor said this was fixed." Something about power flickers caused by weather. Well, the weather was nice and quiet, not a cloud in the sky. No excuse for this bullshit. "Just flip the breakers, he said. Yeah, ok." This was the twenty-first century, after all. She knew where the breaker box was, and she knew how to flip a circuit breaker. No handy man needed. Fuck Geoff.
First, flashlight. She got up, started feeling around the counters, and looked for the box that had her miscellaneous bathroom crap. That's where she'd normally put her flashlight, so it had be in the box. Finding the box was a problem though, considering she couldn't read anything in the darkness. And if memory served, she also had a bunch of random other crap in that box, razors and painkillers, shit like that. She'd have to go digging.
Dig she did, once she found the box. Razors, makeup kits, deodorant, tampons, painkillers, and a billion other things she was sure she didn't actually own, but someone had sneaked into the box while she'd been packing. Geoff had said she had a bunch of crap she didn't use in her cupboards. Maybe he was right? No, fuck Geoff. Geoff is never right.
Worse than digging through the box in the nigh complete darkness, was looking around at the darkness while digging. Much as she recognized this place from her childhood, that was a long time ago, and it lacked the intimate familiarity she had with her apartment. Learning to walk around in your new home was something to be done in the light, and learning how to do it in darkness, fresh off the bench, was a mistake waiting to happen.
"Found ya!" She whipped out the flashlight from the box, spilling some of the box's contents as she did, and she jumped as a plastic bottle bounced around on the floor. The only good thing about this situation was she couldn't see the tiling or wallpaper. At least, until she turned on the flashlight, and immediately found herself frowning at the walls.
Better to focus on how much she hated Gammy's sense of decor, over the cold chill running down her spine.
With a gulp, she started for the living room. Gammy's place was big enough for a large family, a four-way split with three bedrooms on the top floor, kitchen and living room on the next, a guest room and family room on the third floor, and big basement. Two bathrooms. Too much for just her to own. Gammy lived here alone for around sixty years, though, and she said it never felt too big. Maybe Beth would grow into it.
Right now, growing could wait. She needed to get the lights working before any growing could happen. Sighing, she stopped for a moment as she shined her light around the living room. Two couches, facing each other, with a big window behind one of them. This was where Gammy would set up her Christmas tree and have people over, lots of relatives, most Beth didn't know. People bred like rabbits back then, and Gammy's long life meant she got to meet a lot of her relatives.
Beth, unlike Bethany, didn't really like meeting a whole bunch of people that were essentially strangers to her. Her parents said it was good to meet family, because blood was thicker than water, but Beth disagreed. Except for her cousin Dorothy. Dorothy was awesome. One time, the little imp knocked over the Christmas tree, and tried to blame it on Johnny, but Marilyn would have none of it. A big fight started between Marilyn and Daniel, and...
Beth sighed, shining the light in the corner of the room, over the shaggy carpet, to where the Christmas tree had always been put. Memories rolled over her like an unexpected ocean wave, the sort that hit you in the legs and sent you toppling. A month ago, a trip down memory lane like this would have sent her straight to the bottom of a wine bottle, crying about her Gammy. In fact, it probably would, but only after she'd fixed the power.
