Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 83946 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83946 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
I know I shouldn’t, but I step closer, and when I still can’t quite make his features out, closer still.
Go upstairs, my mind warns me, but my curiosity overwhelms my intelligence for a moment and my feet bring me closer to the wall yet again.
A gasp escapes me before I can even try to contain it.
That …
That is no man.
And as he whips around to look at me, a shuddering breath leaves me. Of fear. Or confusion. Of … attraction.
I did not expect him to be so beautiful.
His face leaves no doubt that he is a male with his chiseled jaw and strong chin being far from feminine, but it and his body leave no question that he’s no human. His skin is gray, with black markings of strokes and freckled spatters covering his chest and arms the likes of which I have never seen. It continues over his neck, across his forehead where the markings seem to embed into his skin with lines I could trace, and even between his eyes where I find something I do recognize. An upside-down crescent.
Black eyes, the most inhuman thing about his almost-human face, bore into me, cementing me to the spot and making me unable to flee even if I wanted to. But for some reason, I don’t. I can’t seem to stop staring at this … alien. He must be an alien. His brows were drawn down, making his face even more severe as he looked at me, but slowly they rise, and then furrow, as if he’s just as confused at my appearance as I am his. Movement at his side draws my eyes down. I watch as his hand, large with black claws for nails, slowly rises until he places it to the glass. Then, my eyes snap back to his face when he says a word I don’t understand and am sure I’ve never heard.
“Zawla.”
His voice is deep, but he speaks so softly that his single word is a whisper that races over my skin.
“Zawla,” he repeats, leaning his face closer to the glass.
The strangest urge overtakes me to place my hand against the wall exactly where his is. Before I’ve even given it permission to, it begins rising, extending, my body feeling like it’s preparing for something, but I have absolutely no idea what. Just as my hand is level with his, inches from the glass, I hear an all too familiar sound. A dreadful and ominous sound. It makes my head snap back so I can look up, as if I’ll be able to see through the ceiling to be sure of what I’m hearing, yet I know that sound far too well to mistake it for anything else.
The front door opens, and inside the library, I can hear the way the bottom of it always scrapes along the floor as it widens to allow someone in. And the only person who’d be coming to my house this late is my father returning. My heart, that I hadn’t even realized was racing until just now, begins thundering in horror.
If I’m found down here …
I have to leave. Right now. Whenever my father returns, he always comes to check on me. He will find my bed empty and demand answers I cannot give. Both the answers and my silence would earn me a punishment. But, still, I spend a few seconds I know I don’t have to look at the alien again, and I find his black eyes staring back at me, his hand still on the glass. I commit his face to memory in case—
No! Something inside of me demands I don’t even finish that thought.
I wave at him, although I have no idea if he even understands what it means, and then I rush to return the book I didn’t read a single page of to the shelf. Heavy footsteps thud above me as I run to the door. I look at the alien one more time over my shoulder as I leave the room. I could swear he looks … pleading.
Was he desperate for me to stay?
Or for me to help?
I hurry up the stairs, damn near tripping in my haste to get to the hallway leading to my room before my father does. When I reach the landing, I peek around the corner and find the hallway empty. I all but sprint to my bedroom door, hearing footsteps hit the bottom of the stairs just as I turn my doorknob.
I can barely breathe as I dart through my door and quietly close it behind me. I run to my bed and hurry under the sheets, closing my eyes as I drop my head to the cold pillow. His footsteps get closer and closer, the way they have on many other nights when he’s come back late from some meeting. Tonight, instead of just the usual anxiety that builds with knowing he’s coming towards me, terror fills me as well at the possibility that he heard or saw me coming back upstairs. My punishment would be nothing short of a beating that I would feel the pain of for days.