excerpt; hitchhiker au | Simon Riley x Reader
gore. graphic descriptions of decomposition. implied noncon.
“You’re not real,” she whimpers, words a rough scrape out of her raw, torn throat. “You can't be real.”
He doesn't answer tonight. Silent in his appraisal, his hatred; the bloodlust rolls off of him in waves, a suffocating deluge that tangles in her chest. Heart pulsing at the base of her throat, clogging her airways. She can't breathe. Can't move. Can only watch as the man cocks his head slowly to the side in a mutated parody of consideration. Confusion. Taking her in as he stands in her doorway, massive body filling the frame in an outline of black, making him more shadow than man. An apparition that haunts her at devil's hour. Always.
The moon's glow casts a line through the open window. A pale meridian between them.
Childishly, she thinks of hiding under her blanket. Bad things can't touch you under the covers. Curling into a ball with her eyes squeezed shut, fingers plugging her ears. Wishing for her mother. Howling for her dad. Waiting until morning when the thing haunting her finally leaves.
But he doesn't. Not tonight.
And she knows if she tries to hide, he'll just crawl into the bed next to her—
“Fix your bumper yet?” He asks, measured in his mockery. The weight of his words makes her stomach churn. Nausea a cold, familiar comfort that tethers itself to her ribcage. “Better get that fixed before someone comes askin’ questions, pet. Clean the blood off it, too. Caused quite the nasty spill.”
His directive makes her want to curl into a ball. “I–I didn't mean to, I didn't—”
“What'd you tell everyone? Hit a deer? Left ‘im in the bushes to die? And now he's got maggots crawlin’ all around ‘is ‘ead. Eatin’ his brains clean outta ‘is skull—”
“Shut up, shut up, shut up—you’re not real! You're not real—”
The man—Simon Riley, her mind supplies bitterly, brokenly; tinged full of regret and sorrow and hatred—lashes out in an instant, moves like water, like shadows on the wall, the too bright flicker of a moving car, until he's in her face, looming over her. A massive, unclimbable wall. And she hates it. Hates when he's this close to her. Close enough to smell the stench of rotten blood that dries on his chest, the side of his head. A brown stain that sinks into the too-large frame of his chest.
He smells of death. Sickening. Tainted with a noisome sweetness that glues in her nostrils, leaks down her throat. She can taste him there, right on her tongue. Him. Simon Riley.
Missing, the newspapers say. But only she knows the truth. Stowed away in a facsimile of a grave by the swamps, left to rot. Here, in her bedroom. Waiting for her whenever she tries for a modicum of sleep. A veteran. A drifter. Homeless, they write, and he barked out an ugly laugh as he read over your shoulder, but said nothing else as you scrolled. Tense. Shivering in your seat, waiting for the day the police show up and arrest you. You did a terrible thing. A horrible thing. Pay for what you've done—
His hand reaches out, fingers wrapping around the delicate arch of her throat. The width spans the entirety of it until the bone china, the vulnerable slope, is clenched tight in his slick, slippery palm. Moss, she knows; it grows over his hands and feet now. The earth reclaiming the body she threw into the swamp—
“Not real?” He mocks, wrenching her closer by her throat. Pulse thudding like the wings of a hummingbird against his thumb. “Oh, pet. M’very real—”
He leans in, too, until his horrid face is lit by the sliver of pale blue moonlight. Scraps of tissue slough off of his head, skin purpling beneath the balaclava that peels off in patches. Animals, he'd told her idly, like talking about his body being eaten away by creatures was piecemeal. The jaundiced bone of his cheek pokes out from raspberry skin. It shifts when he speaks, and draws her eye to the devastation of his mouth. Jawbone visible; muscle blackened, clinging by a strip of thin tissue to his lower mandible. His teeth gleam in the light. Yellow and crooked. The rest of his face is covered under the blood soaked fabric of his mask. A small mercy, she thinks.
But the worst is his eyes.
Once black, midnight grey, is now filmed over. Milky. And the other—
Something moves in the cherryred chasm. A long, thin black line slinks out of the gaping hole. Another. Another. From the rotten socket, a large spider emerges, crawling over the craggy pieces of his broken nose, making his decomposing body her home.
She whimpers as the bile surges up, swallowing it down when the blue skin of his mouth peel back in a horrifying grin—
Something white falls from the corner of his eye, rolling down the slick, damp skin of his oily face in a mockery of a teardrop, the image glueing to the bone deep remorse that coils like a noose around her neck. Tighter, tighter.
His tongue lulls out. Cold, slimy, when it flickers over the trembling ridge of her jaw. Fingers digging into her skin, stealing the warmth from her flesh. The air from her lungs.
He'll have her like this, she knows. Always does when he gets in these moods—the kind that makes him touch her more, sink boney fingers beneath the hem of her pants, and cooing in her ear about how much he wants to eat her alive. Buzzing with some strange, electric energy. She can't run. Can't scream.
Going to the police isn't an option when she buried a body under loose rocks and sticks. Hit and run. Vehicular manslaughter. Life over in a blink—
No. No—
She just has to wait, she thinks, her eyes slipping shut as his rancid breath curdled over the tears on her cheeks. Wait until his body rots all the way.
Until he's nothing but bones—
Only then will this ghost finally leave her alone.
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thinking about floyd faking a broken arm after falling from his broom in pe class just so you’ll take care of him for the week. he’ll pout about how he can’t carry his books with just one functioning arm (yes he can) and that it would make him the happiest if you helped him. you suppose it wouldn’t be too difficult to offer your assistance. all he really wants is you to stay near him and carry his things. that shouldn’t be an issue, and jade’s also willing to help when the two of them meet up after classes for lunch or break periods.
but then, after another day spent catering to floyd’s whims and essentially being his designated book carrier (there are also the shifts you covered for him when he claimed he couldn’t do it with one arm (again, yes he can); azul better pay you for those hours), he corners you in one of the corridors with a hard-on, insisting you help him out because, in his exact words, “shrimpy’s so mean to force an injured person to do it!” and with his non-dominant hand as well! shame on floyd’s shrimpy! if your technique is poor when using hands, he’ll insist on using your mouth instead, so be good and let him use shrimpy’s warm mouth. unless you’d rather bend over for him so he can use elsewhere... :)
once floyd tires of pretending, he’ll cast the sling aside and wave his arms about, all with the brightest grin. he’ll laugh at your expression no matter what emotion is displayed, be it surprise, anger, annoyance, or even no reaction at all. floyd’s gotten to spend lots of fun times with his shrimpy (good. you were getting too friendly with other guys and he’d felt starved of your attention), so he’s happy! on the other hand, you’re conflicted because you did so many less-than-academic things with him in hopes of keeping his mood pleasant and now that you know he was faking it all along... he’s so troublesome sometimes.
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