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If it had happened once or twice, Carol might've been able to brush it off as a coincidence. An animal making its way through her back garden. The wind whistling through the trees. But by the third night, the sound is unmistakable - a soft footfall outside her bedroom door, almost imperceivable but altogether still noticeable. There is someone in her house.
She'd been awakened by the noise with a jump, the footsteps growing louder by the second. Her door creaks as the handle is turned and pushed open, and for a moment, she's disoriented - still stuck in a state between her dreams and reality. She'd been fighting off the harsh pull of slumber for hours by now, and had only just begun to give in to sleep, its draw too strong to resist. Her bones still ache with the weight of exhaustion. And now this? Her heart thumps against her ribcage in anticipation, the breath catching in her lungs at the sight before her.
The dark-haired woman stands tall in front of Carol's bed, draped in a silk robe like some kind of deity. Above her head, some of the light filtering through small gaps in the curtains gives the appearance of a golden halo crowning her.
"Zosia?" Carol blinks repeatedly, her mind still foggy with fatigue. Beside her on the bedside table sits the half-empty glass of whiskey she'd been drinking right before she'd dozed off. Perhaps it had been one glass too many. Maybe it's the dark playing tricks on her, or the lack of sleep is finally taking its toll.
"You aren't usually awake this late." The words tumble out of the woman's pink-lipped mouth, cool and effortless, like it isn't at all strange that she'd be aware of this.
Carol squeezes her eyes closed tightly, as if that might somehow ward off the woman in front of her, but when she snaps them back open, Zosia is still standing there, as calm as ever. "I thought you were... I thought you-" Carol tries to speak, but her sentence fails her. "I thought you all left."
Zosia nods. "We did." She's inching closer now, her robe billowing in the soft breeze. "We needed space. We need space." The mattress dips slowly as Zosia sits down on the bed, her fingers searching for Carol's knee in the darkness. The warmth of Zosia's palm seeps through the thin cotton material of her sweats, and she can feel heat flooding to her cheeks. "But that doesn't mean we don't care about you."
Carol scoffs slightly, still confused. "So you're...?"
"Checking up on you." Zosia smiles and it stretches across her entire face, the corners of her eyes crinkling. "If you'll let us, that is."
"I don't..." Carol's brows furrow. "I know what you're doing you sick fucks. I know that you're... I know what you were going to do with Helen's body."
"Please, Carol." Zosia gently takes her hand, fingers brushing over the bruised and calloused skin. The bandages wrapped around her own fingers are starting to fray at the edges, stained with blood from when she'd been working on Helen's grave earlier. "We can assure you that you don't know the half of it."
"And you're not going to tell me the other half of it, are you?" Carol sighs, pinching the bridge of her nose. "I know what I saw."
"You're overworking yourself." A beat passes between them, and the air feels charged. "We can tell." She's too close now, the saccharine smell of her perfume filling Carol's nostrils. "We're here to help you take your mind off things."
Her fingers are creeping up the length of Carol's thigh now, and a hand comes up to rest against her hip as if to steady her. Zosia guides Carol on to her back, allowing her head to drop back against the pillow behind her. "Let us take care of you, Carol."
The aroma is all too strong now - nearly suffocating. And in her haze, she swears it almost smells like rot, sickening and syrupy sweet, clinging to the air like a parasite. But it's addictive, and as it fills her lungs like smoke, she finds her body feeling more relaxed and pliant than ever. She allows Zosia to tug at the strings of her sweats, pulling them down so that they sit low on her waist. There's no fight in her, no matter how much her brain urges her to stop this.
She lets Zosia tip her chin up so that their noses are almost touching, the woman pressing a trail of kisses along her jaw and down the slope of her neck. "We just want you to be happy, Carol," she says, her voice a whisper, her mouth moving against Carol's skin. "We were so worried about you."
"And that's why you left?" Zosia's soft breath makes her skin tingle. "You left me here alone."
"We told you we needed distance." A hand slips into the front of Carol's sweats, pinky breaking the hem of her underwear. "And we do." Her gut clenches, her jaw set firmly in place as she feels the fingers dip lower and lower, reaching the apex of her thighs. "But we're not completely above missing you."
"Don't-"
"Carol." The voice is doting, and eerily serene. "We've seen how tense you've been."
"You're watching me now?" The breath hitches in her throat as Zosia's fingers caress her inner thigh. As much as she tries to will it to stop, a burst of arousal shoots through her, heat pooling low in her core at the touch.
"If we're being honest, Carol," Zosia says quietly, "we don't exactly trust you to be completely by yourself."
"So you are watching me?" Two fingers dip inside her now, and the sensation sends a shockwave of surprise and excitement rocketing through her veins, her nerves set on fire. She tries to bite back the exhilaration she feels, though she knows it shows on her face, her cheeks now burning a bright red even in the darkness.
"Yes."
Zosia pumps her fingers with practiced ease, and Carol can't help but wonder about her history as an individual. Surely the body retains some level of prowess, though the mind lies elsewhere. And how much of Helen's knowledge is she drawing on? She doesn't have much time to dwell on this, though, as the fingers curled inside her slowly withdraw. She watches with some combination of horror and awe as Zosia brings the hand to her mouth, licking it clean.
And suddenly her sweats are being pulled from her hips down her legs and to her ankles, and then all the way off, tossed to the floor beneath her bed. She feels the pressure in her stomach build as a knee slides between her bare thighs, pressing down against her core. Zosia hoists herself up and on top of Carol, her own robe riding up to expose more of her smooth skin.
"Is this okay?"
Carol's at a loss for words, and consciously aware of just how much of her arousal is staining Zosia's skin. Her clit pulses as the dark-haired woman reaches back between her legs, seeking out the sensitive spot with deliberate movement.
"Just tell us what you need, Carol."
"I... Fuck... I-"
Her mind tries to wrap around a sentence - anything - but again, the words fail her. "I need... I need you to-"
"Keep going?"
Carol nods profusely, bobbing her head up and down, and she knows how pathetic and stupid she must look. So eager, and so disgustingly malleable. But God knows she needs this. Zosia's free hand tilts her chin up and their faces are closer than ever now, lips almost touching. The woman doesn't wait to kiss her, mouths melding together in a desperate clash. The kiss is all-consuming - messy and raw, and brimming with addictive energy. If she could, Carol would inject the feeling straight into her veins.
And then Zosia's pulling back again, bringing her to the edge just to leave her hanging. The weight of her knee still rests against Carol, her hips lowered at an angle that holds the blonde woman in place. Both of their lips are glossy with saliva, a string of spit connecting their mouths together.
Carol grinds against the knee digging into her cunt, chasing the growing friction with each roll of her hips, as two fingers graze her clit. Each thrust of Zosia's hand brings her closer and closer to her peak, but the woman shows no signs of letting up. Instead, she lowers her head back down to Carol's neck, teeth skimming over her pulse point as she sucks marks into the flesh.
"Are we making you feel good, Carol?" she asks, mouth still pressed against her throat, fingers still working her cunt.
"Mhm. Yeah." Carol's head drops back against the bed frame, mouth going slack in ecstasy as she bares more of her skin to Zosia who hungrily swipes at it with her tongue.
Zosia lifts her head, breath warm against the shell of Carol's ear. "Good."
It seems almost as if the fingers inside her, curling at the angle they are, are clawing at her. Zosia's movements grow even more frantic as she picks up the pace, until Carol is writhing beneath her touch like an animal, completely at her mercy. Carol takes her until she's stretched fully around the fingers buried in her that they become synonymous with her insides. She wants to let them split her open, for all her decay to come spilling out.
Her heart and head are pounding, the taste of Zosia's sickly sweet saliva still flooding her mouth, and own skin now sticky with the woman's scent. She comes violently against the knee lodged between her thighs, both legs now spasming as her orgasm washes over her like an unrelenting wave.
"Fuck-" she chokes out, and the words fall from her mouth like a half-sob, unrestrained and on the verge of shattering entirely. Her back arches instinctively, hips pushing up against Zosia as she rides out the sensation.
And she thinks it's over. As she draws in rapid breaths, her chest heaving and her body worn out, she thinks Zosia - the hivemind, she reminds herself - is finally done. Her body is slick with sweat, the remnants of her arousal soaking the sheets beneath her. But the woman still isn't done with her.
She doesn't have much time to register that it happens, but in only a few seconds, Zosia lifts her head from off of Carol's neck and drops it between her thighs. She gently props one of Carol's legs up so that it rests over her shoulder, positioning herself with her mouth ghosting over Carol's cunt.
A flurry of unease swirls in the pit of her stomach, even though part of her wants it to happen.
"We just want to be closer to you, Carol," comes the voice from beneath her. "Are you going to let us?"
"I-"
"Please."
Even with her voice slightly muffled, Carol can hear the quiet plea her tone carries. She breathes a deep sigh, giving in to the desire taking hold of her. She doesn't have to voice this, her body already bending intuitively to Zosia.
The warm, wet heat of Zosia's mouth meets her cunt as the woman licks into her. Carol's leg tightens around Zosia's shoulder as she flattens her tongue, letting it drag through Carol's core. She stops to suck at her pink swollen clit, lets the taste overwhelm her senses.
Before Carol can even fully grasp it, molars are digging into her skin, the head between her legs now making its way from the entrance of her cunt to the skin of her upper thighs. Zosia's teeth sink into the sensitive flesh, tearing at it like the woman on top of her is nothing more than meat.
The feeling curdling in Carol's gut is something she can't quite describe, a combination of both pain and overwhelming, numbing euphoria. She is being eaten alive, every new sensation setting her skin alight. She can't pinpoint the exact moment that it happens, when the canines scraping across her flesh like daggers settle so deeply into her that the skin breaks. Her eyes flicker open, and she stares up at the ceiling, letting out a small whimper that comes from somewhere deep within her.
She grips the sheets beneath her so tightly that her scarred knuckles turn white, and she can feel the essence being drained from her body. It dawns on her that they had been right. This feeling of turning, of joining the hivemind - is something so blissful. This must be what's happening, she reasons. A rebirth of sorts. She's being changed.
But no matter how peaceful she feels, she still has most of her mind left. She doesn't feel a complete shift, her brain and body still able to register her individuality. She's simply being sampled for the fun of it.
Carol isn't sure what's spilling out of her, whether or not she's reaching another climax or bleeding out, but sickeningly, she hopes that lingering bits of her leave their traces on Zosia's tongue, that the woman never washes out her mouth for fear of forgetting this.
"Come here." Zosia lifts her head, lips stained with a mixture of Carol's fluids and blood, and Carol shifts into a seated position, mind still reeling. Her mouth drops open as Zosia tilts her head, a hand holding her jaw in place. And she comes closer than close, letting saliva - tinged with a pink pigment - trickle on to Carol's waiting tongue.
She closes her mouth around the spit, letting the taste attack her senses before she obediently swallows it. It's bitter, and she has to fight the urge not to gag, but it's hers. She may be sick and twisted, and all things rotten and wretched, but at least she is connected to something bigger than herself.
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In the early dawn, Carol wakes to an empty bed and the loneliness settles back in. The hollow space between her thighs still aches, faint crescent teeth marks that she is so sure she's imagining still dotting her flesh.
She's dazed, like a newborn opening their eyes for the first time and seeing the world in a different light. The metallic sting of blood sits heavy on her tongue, a grim but altogether grounding reminder of the previous night.
She blinks the sleep from her eyes, the sheets crumpled around her, a heavy weight pressing against her chest. She's still stuck, she thinks. Caught somewhere between reality and a waking dream.