The Night Elias Hesitated

The night Rue learned monsters were real, she woke to a noise she almost mistook for one of her roommates.

It began as an uneven thump somewhere beyond her bedroom wall, a dull, irritating sound that rose through sleep just enough to disturb it.

She groaned and rolled onto her back, staring at the dim strip of hallway light bleeding beneath her door.

Evergreen Commons was always making sounds.

The air conditioner clicked loudly when it turned itself on and off.

People came home drunk and loud and incapable of understanding that walls in cheap apartment buildings were barely walls at all.

She shut her eyes again and pulled the blanket up.

Another sound came, heavier this time, like something colliding with tile.

Rue opened her eyes and reached blindly for her phone. Its cracked screen lit up her face in weak blue. Two messages waited there.

BTX party. miss u. prolly won’t be back until tomorrow. so drunk rn. vibes first, consequences later.
—Dalia

I stole one of your hoodies. It’s cold as hell. Sry. Love you.
—Mia

For a few seconds she only stared, letting the truth settle where comfort had just been. Both of them were out of the apartment. Neither of them was making the noise.

Something wet shifted beyond the bathroom door.

Rue sat up so quickly the room tilted.

She told herself it was an animal, then told herself that was impossible.

Maybe one of the windows had blown open. She told herself anything except the thing her body already knew: there was someone inside the apartment, and he was not supposed to be there.

She got out of bed, barefoot and cold despite the Florida heat that never really left her skin.

Her bedroom looked ordinary in the dark, exactly as she had left it. A tote bag slumped in the corner. Nursing textbooks waited on her desk beside a mug with a tea stain ring at the bottom. Her gold earrings glittered faintly near the lamp. All the small pieces of her life remained in place, which somehow made the dread worse.

By the time she reached the bathroom door, she was breathing through her mouth.

The smell of copper reached her first.

Something disgustingly metallic and thick.

Rue pressed her hand against the frame and listened.

A movement of fabric and a careful exhale.

She should have bolted for the front door and never looked back.

But Rue had always been cursed with curiosity at the worst possible moments, and now that instinct held her in place more effectively than fear did.

She pushed the bathroom door open.

Moonlight spilled in through the shattered window above the tub, pale and fractured over the floor.

For an instant she understood nothing. The room was undecipherable, pieces refusing to become a whole. Then her eyes adjusted and she saw him.

A young man sat on the floor beside the bathtub, broad shoulders bowed, one hand draped over the porcelain rim as if he had simply chosen her bathroom for a moment of private thought.

Rue’s thumb flew toward her phone screen.

She never made it to the call.

The device vanished from her hand so quickly she did not even see him move. It struck the wall and exploded into useless glittering pieces. Her scream tore loose at the same moment his hand closed around her wrist and yanked her back against the tile.

“Please,” he said, low and strained, like the word itself cost him something. “Please don’t do that.”

Her body convulsed with panic. She twisted, kicked, shoved, but his strength made every motion feel childish, unfinished, impossible. He pinned her with brutal ease, then seemed to realize exactly how that felt from her side of it. His grip loosened a fraction, though not enough for freedom.

“I’m going to let go,” he whispered near her ear. “If you scream again, I cannot promise that helps either of us.”

The phrasing was so wrong it nearly split her fear in two.

He released her.

Rue stumbled back, palm flattening against the sink. The overhead light was still off, leaving the room in fragments of moonlight. She saw pieces of him first. A cheekbone caught in silver.

Dark hair hanging loose around a face too striking to belong to a sane man crouched in a blood-scented bathroom. Emerald eyes reflecting strangely, not like human eyes, but like green metal catching light at the bottom of water.

“Don’t touch the light switch,” he said.