I call him the devil because he makes me want to sin

He half remembers her.

The way that he remembers a dream. The way that he remembers the edges of his evening wanderings, the places that the Krampus takes him when the moon is high and his lids finally close. He remembers her and the taste is rich on his tongue, rich in the back of his throat. Like summer wine it simmers there and he savors it for a moment as he watches her, the black of his eyes flat and unreadable.

There is a crazy within her that stirs something within him, something that rises up to meet it like a phoenix from the ashes. He can feel the reverberation of the Fear as it stirs from restless slumber, his fingers dancing along the edges of it and a hum beginning in the back of his throat.

She was one of the ones who craved it, he thinks.

One of the ones who nearly begged.

His tongue touches the tip of a sooty lip, a smile curving ever so slightly as he sends the tendrils of it low and slow through the meadow. It rolls like fog, dancing to his desires and bending to his wishes. Once, he struggled to control the Fear. Fought it. Was overwhelmed by it. But now, he is older, more mature, and it is easy to send it slipping through the shadows and over the nooks of the land. It is easy to command it.

He feels the edges of it reach her and begin to crawl up her legs, its tune sickly sweet.

Let it sink into her.

Let it find purchase on the ragged edges of her.

Let her look for its source, the shark-eyed, crocodile-smiled stallion in the shadows.

Let her come.

(and every time he knocks, I can't help but let him in)

I call him the devil because he makes me want to sin

She comes, of course she does.

He has spent many years sunk into the deepest pieces of the Fear—learning how to manipulate, learning how to weave false realities, learning how to carve out the emotions into the hearts of his victims—but the part that had surprised him the most had been how some hungered for it. How they craved it. He had not expected that, but he had found it. They were like junkies. Broken things who enjoyed the way it felt like swallowing glass. Who came to him for a hit of it, just a taste of that razor’s edge on their lips.

And he was oh so happy to provide it for them.

His crocodile smile splits his handsome face when she walks into the shadows, as he watches the way her fractured mind jumps behind her manic eyes. “Hard to blame him,” he says simply, his voice blunt, his hands never stopping the languid way they pluck and pull on the different threads of Fear. It is a fucking symphony around them, and he wants to throw his head back to breathe it in. Wants to bathe in it.

What a masterpiece.

“I don’t mind Death’s scraps,” he presses his lips together, considering her, studying her, wondering at all of the different ways she might be pulled apart. He takes a step forward, letting the Fear swell around them, letting it send a trickle of it down the back of his own throat as he hums. “Do you always come back?” he asks, curious. “Or do you simply stop before you hit Death’s doors?” He makes a low sound in his throat, wondering at how she is able to constantly elude death, constantly pull herself from its depths.

“It doesn’t matter,” he dismisses the question, waving a metaphorical hand in the air.

“Shall we begin?”

(and every time he knocks, I can't help but let him in)