Finding a place to live was relatively easy; NYU had some agreements with neighboring apartment complexes to allow students to rent at prices that weren’t egregious. With Aera and I living together, it should’ve been easy to make rent with student loans and money from jobs. There was a problem: Aera seemed to have trouble finding work. Well, it was more like she didn’t want to work, and every job interview she had, she would come back with a story about how it was a poor fit for her. I got a job pretty quickly as a barista in a local coffee shop, near the campus of NYU, and so school and work being close together was a boon for me. But we barely made rent, and things were looking a little dicey.
The envelope my grandfather had given me was full of money he had saved up for me, for my schooling and other future endeavors, and it was enough of a ballast to keep us afloat for a year like this, but unless Aera got work, or something else changed, we would be in trouble. I couldn’t talk to Aera about it though; every time I tried, she would explode on me, accusing me of trying to solicit her, or abuse her, and turning the situation into an immediately hostile one. The dream I had of coming home to her soft smile started drifting further and further away, and I didn’t know how to save it. And the sex. She kept demanding it, craving it, saying she needed to be validated in that way or else I wasn’t fulfilling my role properly. So I did, even though every time we did, it set my mind on fire, and felt of agony and bitterness. My body felt like a wound, opened anew every time she made this selfish demand, and for the first time, I began to regret bringing her along.
Things came to a head when I discovered my envelope from my grandfather was short a few hundred dollars; it turned out she had bought herself some new clothes at our living arrangements’ expense. I invited her out to get a coffee with me, even though it was 8pm, because I wanted to be in a neutral place when I spoke with her about this; I was tired of being yelled at, and I had heard in a psychology class that this approach works best for disarming hostile situations. She agreed, and so we went for a walk, stopping by a diner a few blocks away to sit and talk.
“I don’t know how to say this, so I’ll just say what I found, and see what you think,” I opened with. She raised an eyebrow. “I discovered that my grandfather’s money was short a few hundred dollars, around the same time I noticed your wardrobe had gotten a little nicer.”
“I’ll stop you there,” she said, a fierce look in her eye. “You have no right to snoop into my business, and determine how I spend our money.” Her tone was indignant, and authoritative, as if she were in sole command of the situation. I thought back to all the times I had simply fallen in line with her demands, and realized that she truly was the one in command. My fingers tightened into fists under the table.
“I just think that something that expensive and important should be a conversation, not just something you do on a whim,” I expressed as calmly as possible, restraining the voice in my head that was screaming to just submit to her demands.
“Do you think you get to make demands like that? I moved to another country for you. The least you could do is get me some nice clothes, and take care of me.” She was serious as sin, her face devoid of any emotion. “I put up with so much of your shit, you know? How busy you are, how you flirt with your coworkers and classmates when I’m not around. You think you are in any position to make demands or ask for anything?”
Why would she know about what happens when she isn’t around, I remember asking myself. “Are you following me?” I asked point-blank. It couldn’t be; she has classes at Pratt when I’m working, and she is usually home all day according to what she’s told me so far. She just smiled and said, “so what if I am?” I was stunned: not only was she not working, she was skipping classes to follow me around, keeping tabs on me. I remember thinking, what the fuck kind of relationship is this? This wasn’t the love my parents had, or the love I saw in other people; this was dark, and deep, and sinful, and painful. I hadn’t seen or heard anything like this before, and so I sat there, lost in the dark, unsure of what the fuck I was supposed to do. I simply felt sick, and so I got up from my seat and left the diner. Aera followed after.
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As I dry-heaved in the back alley, Aera just laughed at me. “I can’t be with you anymore,” I said reflexively, looking up at her with watery eyes. She just looked back at me, and without missing a beat said, “then I guess I will just kill myself.”
I was in way over my head, drowning in a feeling and completely alone. I hadn’t felt this awash in misery since the death of my mother; the person I confided in, trusted the most, was now the one twisting the knife in my heart. I dry-heaved again, unable to process the raw emotion of the moment. Panic began to grip my quickening heart; had I consigned myself to a life with a person whose love was so toxic and vile that it corrupted me from within. I thought of poor Joon-hu, and how I hurt him just because she told me to, all because he wanted to be my friend. She had molded me into something I didn’t recognize anymore. I didn’t understand what was happening at all, not the past, present, or future; I was completely lost.
Suddenly, a knife was pressed to my throat, and Aera was held suspended to the diner’s brick wall. Two figures, wreathed in shadow, humanoid in form, had appeared in the alley with us. The one holding Aera by the neck was at least seven feet tall, a lithe and lanky figure with an elongated neck. I couldn’t see the one behind me, but from their stature and the force of their grasp, I reckoned they were human. The tall one chittered with its mandibled jaw before it began to clasp down on Aera’s neck, siphoning her blood for its own. The human behind me laughed wryly and said, in a low husky voice, “after the master is done with that one, you’re next.”
I responded by breaking his wrist and thumb, and flipping him over me in a fluid motion. I wrested the knife from his mangled hand before slitting his throat on the ground, watching him panic as the blood seeped endlessly from the wound. He was a young man, probably not even 30, but his eyes were a strange color, suggesting that he had been enchanted somehow. I looked up to the true threat, who had released Aera and looked me down with curiosity. “Strange,” it said in a low whisper that echoed in my mind, “I thought that thrall was rather strong. Perhaps you will make a better one.”
It lunged at me, its long clawed hand reaching to disarm my knife from my hand, but I expected this: this Othersider didn’t know that the knife wasn’t the dangerous part of me. I dodged the strike, before grasping its forearm and punching its elbow with every ounce of my strength; thankfully, I heard a crack, and the creature screeched and recoiled. I regripped the knife and went back in to press my advantage, but the creature was swifter than I was, and managed to slash my midsection about an inch into the flesh; I grimaced, but still managed to find my target, burying the knife in the throat of the creature, and then wrapping my body around its back before stabbing away as many times as I could. It cried in pain, attempting to flee by climbing the walls of the alley, but as I buried the knife in its brain, it simply stopped, and fell back down to the ground.
I landed flat on my back, the full weight of the creature on top of me, and I felt several of my ribs crack from the force of the fall. As I struggled to catch my breath, I saw Aera leaned against the wall, the blood draining from her frail body from the gaping wound in her neck. I reached out to her weakly, unable to move from my spot, when I heard a voice. “Interesting,” she said, her voice saccharine sweet. I looked over to see a humanoid figure, long wooden staff tapping the ground, making their way up the alley. She knelt beside me, smelling of sandalwood and lavender. “I can help you and your friend. Would you like that?”
Something about this woman was disarming and gentle; from the small charms that gently swayed from her cloak and staff, I put together that she must be a witch or sorcerer of some kind. Looking at Aera, I knew that she would most likely die before a typical ambulance could arrive, and so I met the strange woman’s gaze, and simply nodded.
