"There's really nobody else here."
@crazypeoplegetcaught answered:
Cale’s breath came in sharp spourts. A ragged gasp. He stood there, body tense, head throwing around. Black eyes flitted accross the room. He had been so sure he had heard a creak on the floor board, the whinning of foals. Their hooves, crunching on the gravel. But there were just a lamp, a table and the curtain, moving in the wind.
Cale turned around to look back at Sean. The boy might still wear the shock collar, but by now he was so well trained that Cale could bring him along to certain tasks or exercises. He scowled. “I must have been hearing things then.” It could happen on occassions. He swore he heard noises, which were not there. Sometimes even working with his horses, whom he trusted deeply, could be exhausting. Past, breathing at him from every corner.
He sauntered over towards the hotel’s night stand and picked up the water cooker. Cale poured some hot water into a mug and dropped a bag of black tea into it. As he stirred it with a spoon, he scoffed. Maybe he was just nervous about tomorrow.
“Have you ever been at a horse show, Sean?”, Cale asked.
Four months. It had only been four months (or was it five?) since Sean found himself in Cale’s hands, yet the man that sat in the corner of the hotel room was not the same Sean who had hunted Cale. He was, if possible, leaner, with his hair cropped close so that the once thick, spiralling curls more resembled half-moons, and his eyes... his eyes were perhaps the most different of all. The spark hadn’t quite yet died, but it had certainly dimmed. A young stallion, still holding out for some open gate, yet no longer seeking to jump the fence alone. Wearied, almost broken.
Perhaps that was why even as Cale screamed and paced around the room, tension crackling, that Sean scarcely shifted from where he sat. His heart raced with fear, his eyes stayed wide, but he didn’t move. He didn’t dare. A well-trained horse didn’t spook, after all.
“No.” Sean released a breath he hadn’t realized that he’d been holding, his attention glued to the rhythmic motion of Cale stirring his tea. Clink, clink, clink, clink. The spoon hitting the sides of the cup sounded like the jingle of a key. His eyes travelled to the man’s neck and the chain that hung there, just beneath his shirt. Not two months ago, he would have lunged for it. Taken the opportunity of splashing Cale with the tea to rip the chain from his neck. Not now.
Sean turned his head away. He couldn’t help but wonder if Cale had always been so particular and paranoid. How long had his nightmares haunted him? All his life, or just when he’d begun killing? Was it the ghosts of the women he murdered that flung Cale into rages, or something deeper?
“Horses never really interested me,” he admitted. “I rode one, once, but never cared about shows.”
