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Insomnia was beginning to set in. After the events of the train, Alex found himself up at ungodly hours of the night, driven by some sense of paranoia, maybe sadness. He did miss Josh, of course he did, but he more so found himself haunted by bloody noses, cold blue eyes, perfect hair out of place for once in his life.
He didn’t want to admit that Nigel scared him. It was partially his demeanor, but no, there was more to it. It was his unpredictability that was most terrifying. It had been a bad idea to drug him, to put him on that train, but it had been a worse idea to think that he could gain the upper hand in the first place. Nigel was many things, but controllable wasn’t one of them.
Alex was sure that he must’ve met the devil. He was Eve in the garden of Eden, and Nigel was the snake that begged him to eat the fruit. Whispers in his ear, eyes that could hold a higher power on their own. Even whilst the whole school prayed in unison, Alex felt his eyes fixed solely upon him, a victim chosen by circumstance. On those cold nights before the train, he always knew when Alex was awake, watching him. His instincts told him what he didn’t physically know. It was like he had invisible accomplices, whispering into his ears to inform him of every movement his roommate made.
It was after Nigel had long since vacated the room, on one of those sleepless nights, that Alex stared at the vacant bed where Nigel used to sleep and he realized that his fate had been decided the second his roommate was. There was no escape from the void that pulled him in, no angel that would pull him up from hell. He was just a man, and he would have to face the devil with his own two hands.
It was a Wednesday, that’s what he remembered. The time eludes him, but it must’ve been late at night, for the sky was no longer blue but a stark black. It had rained the night before, and the smell of petrichor penetrated his nostrils. He told himself he should shut the window, the howling winds likely doing less harm than good, but he couldn’t muster up the energy to move out of bed. So he laid on his back, neck tilted towards the open air where moonlight entered and splayed itself across the wood floor.
The weight of his eyelids combined with the faint odor of wet dirt made him feel like he was being lowered into his grave. No textbooks he had ever read mentioned a specific time that sleeplessness took to kill somebody, but with the way things were going, he couldn’t be far off. Would he be buried next to his mother if died? Their two gravestones lying in perfect parallel to each other, Josh’s not so far down the hill?
It was on this godforbidden Wednesday night that the knob of his dorm room slowly twisted, and Alex didn’t even have to look up to know who it was. He never locked his door; nobody had ever had a reason to break in. He didn’t have much to steal, and if anybody did take something, they assumed he had the ultimate trump card. Not that he would ever call upon his dad to fix his problems, anyways. But fear isn’t always logical.
“Get out of my room,” he said, in the same deadpan manner that he had delivered the line before, although this time he didn’t have the energy to put any real malice behind it.
“You’re not asleep?” was the response, a rhetorical meant to fill the silence, but there was a certain tone behind the question–one that almost implied that its inquirer had already known the answer, even before he entered the room.
“Why are you here?” Alex asked, exasperated. Across the room, the intruder stood against the wall, a dark shadow with concealed features. Alex knew he was being studied even if he couldn’t see his face. No response came, and for a second, Alex wondered if he was hallucinating. That had been happening a lot more recently, causing his line between reality and fiction to blur.
The primary focus of his visions would be the person in front of him, but sometimes it was Josh. Glasses reflecting just enough light to obscure his eyes. And then he’d reach out a hand, and blood would drip from the seam that formed between his wrist and palm. And then he was Nigel. Avoiding eye contact, fixated on some point in the distance. And then he was gone.
The real Nigel began to move along the wall, closer to the empty desk that used to be his. He reached out, brushing his hand smoothly across the wood grain, before pulling it back, turning slightly to Alex. He was wearing that familiar green jumper, white shirt just barely visible underneath, paired with black trousers. It was an outfit that made him seem smaller than usual, the lack of jacket to accentuate his frame. But it also made him seem less real, his pale skin white against black.
“I had a feeling.” Alex stiffened. “That you weren’t sleeping.”
Alex didn’t verbally ask for elaboration, but in the same way Nigel had always been able to guess what he was thinking before, he answered the question that hung wordlessly in the air.
“You’ve been hunched over. Circles under your eyes. You nod off in class sometimes, only for seconds. You’ve been tapping your foot, a sign of irritability.”
“So what, you’re stalking me now?” Alex shifted his weight. He hadn’t even noticed that he’d been doing half of what Nigel described. It was like he knew him better than he knew himself. He thought back to the journals, everything Nigel had written down about him. What else had he noticed? What had Alex been telling him unconsciously?
Nigel pulled up the chair from the desk to sit perpendicular to Alex’s bed, where he himself sat on the edge, having moved to a position where he could more easily track Nigel’s movements. He moved slowly, surely, without a sense of weight to his motion. Maybe Alex had been studying Nigel just in the same way that he was studying him.
“I came to help you.” His tone sounded genuine, but from this distance, Alex could make out his face, and in his eyes, there was a certain glint. The same that he had while dissecting his projects, the same that he had after killing Josh. A spark of intrigue, the only life that could be found beyond his dead blue eyes.
“No, no, that’s bullshit,” Alex scoffed, shaking his head slightly. “You came here to taunt me.”
“I’m serious, Alex,” Nigel responded, leaning forward. “You’re not sleeping. I can help you.”
He’s sure that he would’ve turned Nigel down in any other circumstance, but he was exhausted. His brain wasn’t functioning right with so little sleep, and he was getting desperate, his body yelling at him that whatever Nigel does, it must be better than going one more night feeling like this. It was a survival instinct, he was choosing torture over death.
“What do you plan on doing?” Through the dark of the room, Alex swears that he could see Nigel slightly grin. It was like he just signed his soul away, given away his personal choice for a chance at a momentary solution. Maybe Nigel Colbie’s solution was just to kill him, put him to sleep forever.
He silently stood up from the desk chair, sitting on the bed next to Alex, who reflexively moved back, lifting his legs to be level with his shoulders. Somewhere, far in the distance, a train whistle sounded. A cry of destiny, maybe. Alex envisioned it, steel cars moving in sync with the night. A train signal switches its red lights on and off and on and off and on and off again. Maybe it’s a ghost train, and it doesn’t even truly exist for the living, invisible to all who still sleep. The wind quickly carries the sound away, leaving a vacuum of quiet in its place.
Sitting with his legs crossed, Nigel reached into the pocket of his trousers, pulling out an unknown object. Alex only identified it as a switchblade when he effortlessly unsheathed the knife portion. It certainly wasn’t very long, poised between Nigel’s slim fingers, but the way that the moonlight reflected off it cued Alex into the fact that it was very sharp.
“Do you know that blood loss can make you feel tired?” Nigel fingered the steel in his hand, staring at it lovingly as if it were a pet cat and not a deadly weapon. “You lose hemoglobin, meaning oxygen can’t be transferred to your other organs as easily. Your body works twice as hard to keep you alive, and this leads to general loss of energy.”
But before Alex had the time to respond to his strange spewings, Nigel was leaning forwards, cold hand ghosting at the back of his neck, brushing the hair on his nape. Every instinct in him told him to pull away, to punch him, but he wasn’t thinking straight. For a moment, Alex wondered if he had been drugged. Here he was, sitting on his own bed, with the person he hated most holding him in one hand and a knife in the other, but he was making no move to escape.
“Do you trust me?” Nigel murmured, his voice taking on the cadence that it had earlier that week, in the auditorium. I’m really sorry about your friend.
“No, why the fuck would I?” Alex mutters, but still he didn’t resist as Nigel’s other hand lifted to the side of his neck. The edge of the blade teased his skin, metal just as cold as his fingers. His breath hitched as the other slowly ran the switchblade down his neck, warm blood spilling out of the open wound. In the silence of the dorm room, sharp pain had never felt so freeing. Alex understood now why people cut themselves, and why they cut others. It was like he had been exposed to air for the first time in his life. And then, just as quickly as he had flipped it open, Nigel closed the blade, pocketing it.
A million thoughts rushed through Alex’s mind, but before he had a chance to process any of them, Nigel had moved onto his knees, shifting his weight forward as he locked his mouth onto his neck. A choked gasp escaped Alex as his past roommate moved his tongue along the deep cut of his own creation. Nigel’s hands were so cold but the inside of his mouth felt burning hot in comparison. The sudden heat and wetness was baptism, and Alex succumbed to it like a saint, like a sinner. His mind went fuzzy and his head hit the wall behind him as he registered what Nigel was actually doing to him, and what it meant.
He didn’t want to acknowledge the heat that was developing in his stomach, too focused on the chaos occurring in his brain. Because you don’t let your sworn enemy lick fresh blood off of your throat, and you definitely don’t feel compelled to let it continue. Alex wasn’t gay, after all. It must be teenage hormones. He must be touch deprived. Ever since Nigel entered his life, Alex hadn’t masturbated. At first it was because having a roommate made it impossible to. He was always either up dissecting rodents or sleeping. But as time went on, girls and sex became the last thing on his mind.
He had only done it once before, with a girl from the neighboring academy. Brief, reckless sex in a broom closet. But this felt different. And it wasn’t only because Nigel was a boy, it was because he was Nigel. The freak that fucks with his mind. The one person that has been able to aggravate him to the point that he wanted to kill him. The one who can never truly escape his thoughts, the picture of sin that beckons him closer. The one who turns blood into wine, who manages to be the most beautiful person Alex had ever seen, and simultaneously the evilest person he had ever met.
All of his confused thoughts about the situation momentarily disappeared when Nigel’s knee slotted between his legs, the sudden friction causing Alex to have to bite his lower lip to stop from moaning. Then he started to grind his thigh against him, and Alex swore that he saw god for a second. A garbled ‘fuck’ was pulled from his throat and suddenly he didn’t know where to put his hands. They had been keeping him upright up to this moment, but the sudden advent had caused his elbows to give, and there was no way in hell that he was holding on to Nigel.
So he slumped down onto his bed, taking Nigel down with him. The other, in response, removed his leg from Alex’s crotch, leaving him embarrassingly needy. And he knew Nigel was aware of that, because he could feel him smirking into his neck. Nigel’s hands were still located at his sides, trapping Alex like a bird in a cage. He lifted one to lay on top of Alex’s body.
Nigel trailed his hand slowly down to Alex’s stomach–not exerting any pressure–as Alex tracked his movements immaculately. Separating himself from his neck, Nigel moved his head to where Alex’s shoulder met his throat, slow, structured breaths contrasting Alex’s quick and shallow ones. He was always so composed, a Greek statue built to last through war and hunger. He pushed his icy fingers below Alex’s beltline, and for a second he wondered if Nigel was secretly a vampire. Everything lined up–His pale skin pallor, his nighttime visions, his desecration of Alex’s neck. Maybe he was dead this entire time, only a reanimated corpse bound by bloodlust.
Alex was just coming to terms with the fact that he was achingly hard when Nigel’s slender fingers wrapped around his dick, still under his trousers. Every touch felt ice-hot. Alex had forgotten how fragile it felt to be aroused. He jerked his hips ever so slightly upward, but the other seemed to catch onto his impatience. Painfully slow movements followed, hand slowly dragging up and down. He was teasing him. Of course he fucking was, the prick.
“Nigel–” Alex was quickly interrupted by Nigel’s left hand finding its way to his mouth, his index and middle finger pressing down on his tongue. His gag reflex was triggered, his words caught in his throat as fingers arched to fill the void. His teeth pushed against skin. If he wanted to bite his fingers off right now, Alex had the power. Cannibalism seemed to be the logical next step in their twisted relationship.
Nigel lifted his head from his shoulder, piercing blue eyes making eye contact with his hazel ones. A slight smirk pushed at his lips, his hair falling into Alex’s face.
“Having fun?” the bastard said, his voice still holding its typical gravelly tone. Alex tried to say ‘fuck you’ but had little luck. Nigel only grinned slightly in return. Sitting back on Alex’s legs, he began to move his hand along his cock with a quickening pace, finally done with all his teasing. Whilst he did so, he also pushed and pulled his fingers in and out of his mouth.
Fingers hooked in and out of his mouth, and Alex wondered if this was what it felt like to get finger-fucked. Nigel was a natural, his hands moving expertly, much better than Alex’s had when he tried to finger that girl. It made him wonder how many people he had slept with, if he ever had done this to anybody in the past. It seemed absurd, the thought of him having ever had sex with somebody else. Maybe it was the dissection that made him so good with his hands. Or maybe not. He was creepy, sure, but he was far from bad-looking.
For a second, Alex tried to imagine he was Susan. If it was her hand on his cock, stroking him with her delicate fingers, flowing brown hair and hazelnut eyes instead of the demented boy above him. But he found that even though he loved her, he could never imagine her in the same breath as Nigel. He was the single candle left burning at the altar while she was the virgin mary caught in stone on the wall, watching as the person in front of her chooses the burn himself.
Alex felt heat building in his abdomen, his eyes unfocused as he gazed at the ceiling above him, hands gripping the duvet. This ceiling had been the view he had subjected himself to for the last few nights, but now it was entirely new to him, a vague memory of the person he used to be. He had started naturally rocking his hips against Nigel’s hand, and hadn’t even noticed when the fingers were pulled from his mouth. Alex couldn’t tell if Nigel was even turned on himself, but his selfish side, the side Nigel cherished, couldn’t even bring himself to care.
Fingers wet with saliva slid towards the wound on his neck. A combination of blood and spit spread around the cut, the tips of Nigel’s fingers pushing into the fleshy laceration. He rubbed against the tissue inside, no doubt a sick sense of curiosity and perversion driving his actions. Alex was being dissected alive, an animal on Nigel’s desk, skin split apart revealing everything that lay underneath. Nigel leaned down only for a second to whisper something inside of his ear, his voice ringing in Alex’s head like resounding church bells at night.
“Does this feel good?”
He then regained his distance, looking down upon Alex as the other avoided eye contact. Nigel moved his thumb to rest over his Adam's apple, spreading the mess from his incision further. He let it rest there, feeling Alex’s rabbit-fast heartbeat, a product of his own design. When his fingers exited the wound, Alex reached his own hand up to feel the side of his neck, his palm and digits becoming covered in the mixed fluids.
Nigel’s rhythm picked up as he got him off, a familiar sensation making itself clear to Alex. By force of habit, he reached up to grasp at the other’s hair as he came closer to release, hand trailing blood onto cool pale skin. As he ran his hand down Nigel’s face, painting him red, he thought for sure he had recreated a painting of god, his muse appearing just as he did that day on the train. And his eyes, the look in his eyes. Piercing and unforgiving. Evil and untrue. Demonic and angelic. Undead, but not alive.
“Nigel, fuck–” Alex choked out as he came, breath catching in his throat. Ecstasy overwhelmed him, and he was left panting, forced to stare up at Nigel as he spilled over his hand. The intimacy was sickening, and Alex wanted to spit in his face to get back at him for that night. But undeniably, he was completely at his mercy.
Once his body finally stilled, his benefactor fell back onto his knees on the bed in front of him. Alex brought his arm over his eyes, letting his body recover. The two sat in silence, breaths synching. And then he dropped his arm, willing himself to look at the boy at the end of his bed.
At some point, Alex’s trousers had been pushed down, no doubt to allow Nigel easier access. He quickly reached down to put his clothes back in the right place, and then surveyed the state of the one in front of him. He knelt there, blood all over his face and neck, evidence of their act on his hand. Looking as in control as ever.
“Are you feeling scared any more, Alex?”
Alex’s eyes moved upwards to meet Nigel’s, confusion setting in as he struggled to remember what Nigel could even be talking about.
“What?” He propped himself up on his elbows to be level with him.
“I know why you haven’t been sleeping.” Nigel sighed, glancing down for a second and then up again. “But it’s alright now.” And there was that look in his eyes again. The one that made Alex feel like he must be the one that would eventually bring on the apocalypse. There was no other man that could ever signal the end in the same way that he did. “Everything will be alright now.”
“I’m not scared of you, Nigel,” Alex answered. He realized that he hadn’t swallowed in a while, and his words came out sounding jagged.
“No.” Nigel chuckled slightly, almost shaking his head. “No, you’re scared of what’s to come.” He glanced upwards, as if he were speaking to the heavens instead of his classmate, before returning eye contact. “But don’t worry. Even a bullet to my head wouldn’t remove me from yours.”
Nigel lifted his thumb–still covered in Alex’s release–to his lips, swiping it along his tongue. A calculated movement, just as precise as his slice to the neck had been earlier. He lifted himself from the bed, not bothering to fix his appearance as he dropped his arm to his side. He lifted his clean hand to the doorknob, twisting it and letting a sliver of light pass through into the room.
“Good night, Jack.”
And then he left. The mattress still caved slightly where he had just been sitting, but other than that, only one thing indicated that he had even been there in the first place. The cut on the side of Alex’s neck prickled, singing to him in its own strange tone. It sounded glorious, a full symphony played on a single violin. The open window watched him, the night winds dying down as it questioned him. Alex ignored it, the weight of the world, for one night.
Alex would never tell of this encounter to anyone. To the rest of the world, him and Nigel had never gotten closer than punches and whispers in ears. How Nigel was able to predict his fate, Alex hadn’t a clue. But the one thing that remained clear to him even after years had passed–Nigel was no devil, and he was no god. He was human, painfully human, and that was the reason he died.