Watching "PLUR1BUS" reminded me of this old gem. Mostly just the visceral dread it evokes.
BTW I'm not sure there's any limit to how and where the Hive is collecting DNA from the survivors... Like I said, it's giving "Joe Goldberg" if Joe was every person on the planet and Carol was its next "YOU".
fuck it, here's the ENTIRE FIRST CHAPTER of my upcoming book, 'THE BEAST IN THE GLASS HOUSE'.
Trigger Warnings:
Misogyny, gore, body horror, graphic descriptions of murder and violence, death by gun violence, abuse through controlling food, emotional abuse, emotional manipulation, allegorical rape, abuse of bodily autonomy, rape revenge.
Chapter 1
June
The first time I see you, I fall in love instantly. At the butcher's counter, ignorant to my stare at your back, you ask the clerk, “Can I get a pound and a half of ground beef? Ten percent fat, please.” I can’t pinpoint what it is about you exactly, but I can’t look away.
I’m not finished shopping, nowhere near, but when you take your cart to the cashier, I can’t help but follow along. There’s two couples and their full carts between us, giving me cover so I can watch you. You’re careless with your personal information, and say your phone number out loud instead of typing it into the pin pad. Thanks, in part, to my condition, I have a fantastic memory. This means I don’t need to scramble for a pen to write your number on the back of my hand.
I pay for the rosemary sprigs and half dozen eggs that are in my cart, and make my way to the parking lot. If you’re still here, I can catch your license plate tag, too, but I don’t want to make a fool of myself by rushing outside. A small part of my brain wonders why I’m so immediately connected to you. It’s not your looks that stole my breath away, though you aren’t lacking in that department by any means.
It’s something about your spirit. Something about the way your energy rolls off of you in waves, and crashes carelessly through others. I swallow down an eager, “Aha!” when I spot you in the parking lot, half folded into the trunk of a white Subaru. You deposit your armload of groceries, straighten, and close the trunk.
The way the sun glints off your hair stops me in my tracks. Then it hits me. You’re my mate. Oh. Of course you are. Finally. I’m on the older end of thirty. Until now, it felt like I would never find my perfect other half. I’m so stunned by the realization that I forget to note your plates as you drive by.
I know how that sounds, okay? It’s not like that—I’m not a freak with ill intent. I am simply a man in love, who has access to a wide variety of resources. One of those resources is a man named Mister Chance. He finds people for me. I don't ask how he does it; I don’t care either. All that matters is that he gets fast results and covers his tracks.
Instead of going back inside the grocery store to get the salmon filets I had originally planned on picking up, I go to my car. Once I’m home, I make two calls. One to Mister Chance and the other to a nearby sushi restaurant. I order a deconstructed sushi bowl with an extra serving of seaweed salad and a large side of fried calamari. My personal chef is off for the evening. I promised Elijah he could enjoy his date without interruption, and I intend to uphold my commitment.
Mister Chance is quick. Faster than the delivery boy on his moped. I’ve learned your name before I even have my chopsticks cracked open. Freya Moore. It sounds like an alias but Chance promises it’s God-given.
I have your address. The numbers dance across the computer screen as I stare. According to the map, you’re just over thirty minutes away by car. It takes every ounce of restraint I have to stop myself from going to your home right now. I want to discard my dinner and wait outside your window with a boombox like a love-struck idiot.
But I don’t. I eat my dinner and listen to Mister Chance tell me about you. You’re young, but that can’t be helped. Love is love and you’re, quite literally, my soulmate. Fortunately, twenty-two is a perfectly legal age for me to date publicly. I’ll learn to ignore the inevitable ribbing I’m to get from Elijah. Anyone seriously bothered by the age gap can fuck off, for all I care.
Sushi bowl in hand, I pace the length of my third-floor bedroom. My skin itches like it’s the night before the full moon. It’s been a long, long time since I had to battle for control over my instincts like this. I feel like a teenager again. Every nerve inside me screams at the distance between us. I need to be close to you.
My mind keeps rushing to catastrophic disasters that you could suffer while away from the safety I offer. Dozens of irrational scenarios that I can’t stop conjuring. Are you giving me an anxiety disorder, Freya? Is this what loving you feels like? I take a moment to pity your ex’s before I wish death upon them for touching you. No one will touch you but me from now on.
The only exception will be our children. A thrill sings down my spine at the thought. You will rebuild my pack. My perfect human mate. We’ll be the pride of the west coast again. An exemplary family that lycans across the nation will look up to.
My phone beeps. Mister Chance follows up our phone call with an email detailing everything we already discussed and much, much more. Including your work schedule, a digital clone of your phone so I can see everything you do on it as you do it, and access to your desktop computer if I want it. Hell, I can even sit in on your therapy appointments. I shoot a message to my assistant to let him know I won’t be in the office tomorrow.
I’ll be busy learning about you.
I finish dinner reading through medical files from your childhood. You had a suspicious amount of broken bones and emergency room visits all chalked up to youthful clumsiness. Apparently, you grew into your limbs and developed grace around fourteen because those visits stopped. Coincidentally, that was also around the time your father died from taking a nasty tumble down the stairs. They found no signs of foul play. Good for you.
For the moment, I set thoughts of you aside and go take a shower. I do my usual thorough routine, not skipping a step. I’m in no rush. Unless I’ve got a woman with me, I only take cold showers. Men like me, we run hot. Things get sweaty, so I take two showers a day to avoid stinking.
I crawl between my sheets with a smile on my face. Tomorrow, after breakfast, I’ll take a drive to see you.
Goodnight, darling.
***
The next day, blinking against the harsh morning sun even behind my sunglasses, I stand across the street from your place. There’s a Starbucks within eyeshot of your apartment building. I stop by for a black coffee. Of course I pay with cash. The timestamps on your bank statements imply that this is the place you get your morning brew when you’re in the mood for something more complex than black coffee and almond milk creamer.
You’re already two hours deep into your workday at the costume shop by the time I take my first sip. It’s not good but not bad either. I’ve just had better. My machine at home makes a much better cup.
I’m waiting for your roommate to leave while I read about her on my phone. Cindi Song—twenty-one, about to turn twenty-two in a few weeks—a full-time waitress in a full-time sports medicine program. A hard worker if ever there was one. I appreciate people with work ethics like Cindi’s. Her file mentions she’s in daily contact with her mother. Her mother also regularly sends you two small gifts she finds while online shopping.
I hear the barista's stomach digesting her breakfast. Gas bubbles in her gut. The sound travels like rocks through a tunnel, but I’m the only one that can hear it. Phlegm crackles in the throat of the old woman ordering her drink. The smell of the burned milk invades my nostrils and I take my not-good-not-bad cup of coffee with me to sit out in the sun. Ever since I saw you, my senses have heightened to a painful degree, like I’m subconsciously straining to find you at all times. I feel raw and on-edge. Normally, I wouldn’t give a shit about the mild noise inside the shop, but you’ve knocked me off balance.
Before long, Cindi opens the front door to your shared apartment. She’s in form-fitting athleisure wear with her big backpack protruding over both of her shoulders. She’s pulled her shiny black hair up into a high ponytail that bounces rhythmically as she jogs to her car.
I wait twenty minutes before I get up, toss my mostly full cup in the garbage, and jog off in the opposite direction that Cindi drove. A full block down, I cross the street, then make my way through the back of the complex to your unit. Casually, I walk to the sliding glass door on your patio and test the lock. It doesn’t budge. Good. At least you’re smart enough not to leave this unsecured.
It’s easy for me to grasp the handle with one hand, and grip the opposite edge of the glass with the other. Then all I have to do is lift it and wiggle it for a moment. I glance around as the lock pops open to make sure there aren’t any eyes on me. As far as I can tell, I’m in the clear, so I slip inside and slide the door shut behind me. Blinds and curtains closed, I’m left in a dark living room.
Even from out here, it’s easy to tell which room is yours. I recognize your scent from the dozens I came across at the grocery store yesterday. Your sweat smells like onions and musk. I love onions. Your room is tidy, but could still use a good dusting. I spy your bed pressed against the far wall. It’s dressed with a set of spring green sheets and a canary yellow blanket.
You have two pillows, and a giant stuffed husky dog resting at the top of the bed. Laundry detergent wafts up from the cotton sheets. It’s clear you washed your bedding in the past few days. I sit on the edge of your mattress and take the room in. You have two bookshelves. One is chock full of novels, mostly fantasies and thrillers. You’ve organized them by color. You stuffed the second bookcase with manga, and different gaming devices take up the remaining shelf.
In front of your window is your desktop computer. It’s a cheap gaming rig, but you have decent enough monitors that I don’t feel the immediate need to replace them. When you’re mine, you’ll have the best of everything. While I’m thinking of your shopping list, I decide to buy a sliding door lock and ship it to you under Mrs. Songs’ name.
I can’t do that until I have a key, though, so I head out of your room and into the kitchen to search the drawers. The website for your apartment complex stated they give one key per tenant over the age of eighteen, plus one to have as a spare before they charge for extras. I just hope you haven’t already gone through your free copy.
The universe must be thinking good thoughts about soulmates because I find it in the first drawer I open. Glued to the thick cardstock that was stamped with the apartment logo was the very key I wanted.
After I tuck my shiny new key into my pocket, I leave through the same sliding glass doors that granted me entry. With my keen eye for detail, I scan your home one last time to make certain I leave the inside of your apartment as close to the way I found it as possible. Speaking of your apartment, I hate it. As I leave, music pumps from your neighbors' unit, despite it being before noon on a weekday. Marijuana and tobacco smoke stink up the air. You’re surrounded by losers and dropouts. Useless members of society. As soon as I can, I’m moving you into my home. And if I can’t get you to move in with me, I’ll put you up in a penthouse downtown.
Never forget that your mate is a very wealthy man, my sweet girl. I won’t claim to be the wealthiest man in the world, but I know for a fact I’m quite high on that list. That much money gives me access to a frankly obscene level of influence over the world.
And yet my pack is weak.
We are fifteen men strong, but just that- we are only men; even among those chosen few, I’m the only born werewolf. I turned the rest of them over the course of the past decade as they proved their worth. It takes a spectacular amount of self control to turn someone. Vampires have it easy. All they have to do is share blood, stop the initiate’s heart however you please, then bury the corpse and wait for the fledgling vampire to rise in their own time.
Werewolves have a much harder time propagating our species. In order for me to turn a human into a lycanthrope, I must attack them. A single bite won’t do it. They have to be mauled so viciously that their immune systems crash, thus allowing the werewolf virus to infect them. Even then, it’s not guaranteed. The initiate must survive the fever and their injuries.
It’s better to allow the infection to spread over the course of a month, where it will grow to its ultimate form under the light of the full moon. This allows the initiate to adjust physically and mentally to their new bodies and new instincts. As the alpha of my pack, I take the month to bond with my new beta.
I bring them to my family’s estate in the mountains where we once had a very lucrative silver mine. Believe me, the irony is not lost on me. A family of werewolves that owns a silver mine? Ridiculous. Yet, own it we do. Of course, we had none of our kind down in the mine shafts themselves. We kept them above ground where they wouldn’t die of silver poisoning just by breathing the air.
The veins have dried up in the past thirty years, so now the property is used to contain newly turned wolves. Even though it’s only us out there for hundreds of miles, I don’t let my wolves run around, causing havoc. Until they’re under my control, and won’t lose themselves to their instincts, they stay in the mines on full moons.
If they don’t submit by the end of the first night, I break their will before the moon thins. I do not allow any wolf to deny my status. If they are in my pack, they bend to my whim. Loyalty is an utmost priority. If they can’t commit to the pack, I rip their hearts out. Fortunately, I’ve only ever lost one new wolf in such a manner. The fifteen other men I’ve turned so far have become integral to my way of life.
They’re all employees of mine. My driver, my private security team, my home chef, my doctor, my lawyer, and the two groundskeepers that stay year round on the mountain to manage the estate and keep the property in shape are in my pack.
Born werewolves like me are rare. Our mothers are humans, but come from lycan bloodlines. Meaning they carry the werewolf gene. Then, when combined with our werewolf father's genes, we born werewolves greet the world, kicking and screaming. You don’t seem to come from a lycan bloodline, but deep in my gut, I know you’ll provide me with lycan children.
A handful of blocks away from my destination, I pull a KN-95 mask out of its plastic wrap and stick it on my face. Then I put a plain dark blue baseball cap on. I tie it all together with a pair of thick wire-rim glasses.
As a werewolf, my eyesight is better than the best human's. The lenses are just for show. I don’t want you to recognize me later when I truly introduce myself. I want you to fall in love with a stranger who sweeps you off your feet and leaves you aching for more.
What can I say? I’m a romantic at heart.
I park my car outside of the business next to Costume Avenue. You’re visible through the front windows, even though you’re tucked towards the back of the shop. I have a clear line of sight. That must have been on purpose.
Half the reviews on Google are about you, so I don’t doubt that you’re a large draw for business. It makes sense your boss wants you to be easy for customers to find from the front door. Not many places have a full time historical customer on staff and your work is more than worth boasting over. For example, recently, an up-and-coming starlet wore one of your gowns to the Oscars after-party.
If you hadn't left so fast last night, perhaps we could have hit it off naturally. Your timing is off, is all. I have to admit, as impatient as I am to be with you, I appreciate the opportunity to learn about you. I didn’t become the rich and powerful man I am today by jumping the gun and rushing into things. In business and in love, I need to keep my wits.
I can’t wait too long, though. If I’m too slow to act on our soulmate bond, the possessive animal in my blood will lash out. I might wake up one day on your porch, naked as the day I was born, my wolf having brought us there to paw pathetically at your door while I was sleeping.
The double doors of the building are wide open to welcome in both customers and the cool late spring air. There aren’t any heads bobbing around inside aside from yours. You get up from your sewing chair to stretch and take a walk around the building, tidying shelves and racks as you pass them. You stand in the doorway to glance at the parking lot and your gaze passes over me as if I’m not even there. Good.
Your cell phone rings and you glance around for customers. Seeing none, you answer it. Your smile makes you look younger. “Hey! I can’t talk for long. I’m at work. What’s up?” I hear you say as a greeting to whoever is on the other end of the call.
A woman's voice says, “I’ll be quick. Shaun wants to know if I can cover his shift Saturday night, so I was hoping we could have girls' night Friday night instead?”
You tilt your head slightly in thought and make a wincing expression. “Saturday is two for one at the Forty-Five, though.”
“Please, Freya?” The woman wheedles, “I’ve been trying to get an in with Shaun for so long! This is my chance!”
You roll your eyes. “You cover his shift at least once a month.”
“But I can feel this time is different! I’m so close to getting into his study group I can taste it.”
You laugh, and it’s musical. “Okay, fine, but you’re buying the drinks.”
“Deal!” Your friend is grinning. I can hear it in her voice. “I’ll see you there at eight?”
“Friday night. Eight o’clock.” You agree, and the two of you exchange goodbyes before you hang up.
I’ve never been to The Forty-Five, but I’ve heard about it from my men. It’s supposed to be a respectable sort of place, and quite expensive, so I understand your hesitancy to agree to full priced drinks. You won’t have to worry about that, though. I’ll take care of you.
I start my car and drive back to my house. I think it’s time we meet face to face, and what better spot to fall in love than on the dancefloor?
watching the horror movie "Men" lol and I'm alone in the theater ... haha what the fuck did I get myself into?!.... misogyny as a horror device...yeah that's true horror...ugh this movie is so gross and intense... I like it
Your words will be: Shadow, drift, hover, and innocent.
My words are: one, hand, fire and bruise
These are all pulled from my debut stalker horror novel 'THE BEAST IN THE GLASS HOUSE', which I expect to publish in June 2025.
ONE
I know how that sounds, okay? It’s not like that—I’m not a freak with ill intent. I am simply a man in love, who has access to a wide variety of resources. One of those resources is a man named Mister Chance. He finds people for me. I don't ask how he does it; I don’t care either. All that matters is that he gets fast results and covers his tracks.
HAND
It’s easy for me to grasp the handle with one hand, and grip the opposite edge of the glass with the other. Then all I have to do is lift it and wiggle it for a moment. I glance around as the lock pops open to make sure there aren’t any eyes on me. As far as I can tell, I’m in the clear, so I slip inside and slide the door shut behind me. Blinds and curtains closed, I’m left in a dark living room.
FIRE
I’ve got one foot on the first step when metal screams tear through the club. Even with my earplugs firmly in place, I’m momentarily stunned by the claxons. Somebody pulled the fire alarm, but I don’t smell smoke. Cindi has you by the arm again, and this time you’re both being carried by the crowd instead of swimming through it.
BRUISE
My parents gave Elijah the console and banned me from even touching it, only allowing me to focus on my studies. The one time I snuck into Elijah’s room to play it, I ended up frustrated and feeling stupid for finding it so challenging. In my room, I fumed under my blankets. Yes, I was angry, but under that ego bruise, I was embarrassed that I let a video game of all things, make me feel stupid.
