Page 30 of Florescentia

I would say we stared, but I wasn’t sure, with the state of its eyes, where it was looking, or if it was looking at all. Could it even see?

It twisted the stem between its phantasmal fingers. Then, as slow as rising steam, all that was good about the bloom wilted. The vibrancy drained, the proud posture of the flower deteriorating until it was crisp.

Before I could pull away, its hands grasped my skull, pulling me forward.

I had time to let only one gasp escape, then I was face to face with the beast. Its human-shaped form was larger than normal, at an awkward scale, as if it had anticipated humans to be a little bit bigger, a little more creature-like.

My feverish skin felt like it was against ice in those hands, its featureless face so close my nose nearly touched it. I wanted to yell, to scream. I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Despite being alone, I felt too embarrassed to be this vulnerable.

Something like a rattle, a noise of hollow bone on bone, a chattering of teeth, then that low baritone.

Then something else.

“Beast,” it mocked in my ear, with my own voice. The word disintegrated into an array of chittering sounds, then underlying whisperings of nothing.

I did not speak to it. I did not run. I could only wait for it to take what it had come for.

There were no other features on the face of the creature. The eyes were blinking and moving, possibly surveying. It leaned in, the featureless shadow hovering over mine, then to the side. I could have sworn I felt a breath against my cheek . . . its fingers enamored with the texture of my hair.

The iris, I thought. It likes the scent, I assured myself, attempting to keep my calm composure.

“Iris,” it hissed.

My eyes widened.

Its hand gripped my skull tighter.

I tried to grab its arms, its hands, but there was nothing really to grab onto. My fingers dug through the sludge-like shadow, dripping and pulling like warm clay.

Then the beast’s human marionette stood tall, its chest moving in unnatural ways—well, more unnatural than it had been a few minutes ago. It curdled and squirmed like eels under the skin, or something worse I couldn’t possibly imagine that lived down there in the Otherside. Then the clicking noises again.

And to my dismay, my hypothesis of what could be causing those clicking noises was correct.

Down the middle of its humanlike torso, a vertical split revealed something sharp and black. As the blackness dripped away, I could see something white like porcelain.

These were teeth. That was a mouth. And it was going to eat me.

“No!” I screamed.

I didn’t have any more words to beg. How do you plead with a creature that was probably older than the earth itself? Like most of the Otherside, such beings did not adhere to earthly laws, no order but their own.

Without the pleas, I just screamed.

I summoned it from the bottom of my gut, vibrating my entire diaphragm. It came from the soul, as anyone who’d heard it would know.

Then nothing.

Nothing.

I opened my eyes.

My own hands were on either side of my face, my nails dug into my own skin and hair.

The room was still a mess. A mountain of books at the back of my library, the floor harboring more wounds from battling my curiosities.

Yet the beast, my Peculiars, and the iris were missing.

Daylight shone through the window, the sun returning on its promise of another day.