Darkness Follows

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. It was largely unnoticed; its sporadic flicker blinked and shuddered, barely visible in the fading light across the large south pasture. The large window, cracked open to cool the interior of their old farmhouse bedroom, perfectly framed the cabin’s crumbling silhouette and unexpected glow in its window. The girls would have gone immediately to their beds, chittering and screeching, if Amera hadn’t grabbed her sister’s arm abruptly. “Charlie,” she whispered, “what is that light?”

The two girls, barely a year apart at 9 and 10 years old, stood wide-eyed. Charlie’s arm was still grasped tightly by her sister. “Ouch, Amera, let go,” Charlie said softly. “I think it’s a candle. Doesn’t it look like a candle?”

Amera squinted. “It does. Should we tell mom and dad?”

Both knew it couldn’t go unexplored. It begged discovery. They were both quiet as they considered whether it would be advantageous to ask permission rather than forgiveness, and as generally very honest girls, they opted for permission. They were still standing at their window when their parents walked in for the evening routine--a song on the guitar with dad, hugs and kisses all around, and pre-emptive admonishment for getting out of bed. “All right, girls, into bed,” their mother said. “What are you looking at?”

“The Fletcher Cabin has someone in it,” Amera blurted.

“Yeah!” Charlie concurred. “There is a candle, we think.”

Their parents looked past them curiously, frowning a little. “That cabin isn’t habitable. Might be a hunter or something, but that roof would make for a real desperate shelter. Also, what light?” Their dad knew those woods and surrounding areas like the back of his hand--former federal law enforcement with the Forestry Service meant he was out in the woods constantly before retirement. He’d never told the girls, or any of the kids for that matter, why no one bothered to rebuild that little one-room cabin. The officer he replaced seven years prior had been adamant that no one went near it--he cited dangerous conditions, and implied a history of locals meeting unfortunate consequences after exploring it. The girls’ father had examined it himself, finding the space unsettling, but nonetheless innocuous. He caution-taped it, posted a notice prohibiting entry, and left it at that. As he observed the cabin in the fading light, searching for movement of any kind, a distinctly cold, prickling feeling spread from the base of his neck outward. “You girls stay away from that cabin, do you hear me?” he demanded, more firmly than he’d meant to.

The girls nodded in obedience.

Closing the curtains, their mother, Mel, tucked each girl and sat on the ground, listening to the bedtime song strummed out as always. She could sense her husband’s unease, and rightfully attributed it to the strange cabin. Upon leaving the room, Mel inquired, “Ty…babe, what’s going on with that cabin? Do you think someone is squatting there or something?”

Ty pursed his lips in thought, scratched his beard, and rubbed the back of his neck. “Don’t know. I’ll check it out tomorrow. Feels weird.” Mel agreed. Something felt…off.

The next morning, their father made a point of riding his buckskin pony across the field to the edge of the woods. As they neared the structure, the missing windows gave the distinct impression of soulless eyes, hollow and insatiable, consuming any light offered in the cool start of the day.

It was, ostensibly, a perfect spot for a small homestead. Backed to the forest and the jutting rust-colored rocks above it, the cabin faced the open field connecting it to the farmhouse, no doubt built at least a generation or two after the cabin itself. Excellent hunting and fishing with the opportunity to graze livestock was no doubt the original thinking of its builders in the early 1800’s. Dirt, Ty’s buckskin, slowed his gait as they approached. Dirt was like their three sons: eager to be assigned a task, ready for action, unafraid of anything to a fault. This morning, however, Dirt snorted in dissent as he was pressed toward the cabin they’d ridden past almost daily. He dallied, shaking his head, hesitant to disobey. It added to the unease Ty felt as he dismounted. “It’s alright, Dirty Dirt. It’s alright, bud, just chill out.”

He approached the front stoop, sagging with age and neglect, and ducked under the equally drooped eave. The door hung partially open, and was easily pushed aside to allow entry. Ty carefully examined the interior before entering, assessed it to be empty almost immediately, and stood in the middle of the dark, dust-filled room. It was more than eerie--no animals had made this place their home, despite it being a remarkable shelter for any forest creature. No skittering squirrels or flapping wings were brought forth by his entrance, and the heavy silence broken by the scrape of his boots as he walked seemed thunderous. He had reflexively drawn his firearm, and proceeded to walk the splitting floorboards with an increasingly pounding heart. Years of military training made the blood thumping in his ears remarkable, and every sense was dialed up to the extreme. His heightened awareness, along with his sweeping gaze, were suddenly struck by a thin, undulating black mist stretching from floor to ceiling before him. He snapped back, aiming his pistol while understanding its futility as it pointed at something…immaterial. It smelled of sickly sweet florals, and roughly assumed the shape of a grotesquely thin human, devoid of features or defined appendages. An underlying scent of decay began creeping into Ty’s nostrils, while his ears began ringing as if in the wake of a mighty explosion.

The shadow began filling the corner, then half the room. Instinctively, Ty began backing away, kicking the door open with his heel and maintaining horrible focus on the growing spector before him. Where its eyes might be, should it have had a face, a single glowing eye started to appear; a mouth began forming beneath. It stretched longer and longer, and a scream mimicking a train attempting a wild stop on its tracks emanated from the creature with a ferocity that shook the doorframe. Ty burst backwards onto the porch, ran madly to Dirt, seeing him pawing and whinnying with anxiety as he saw his owner rush to him. He flung himself horseback and the two thundered across the field to the barn, looking back at the motionless, now silent cabin. It stared back ominously, and for the first time since moving to the farmhouse, a tinge of fear and regret took hold of his heart. “The fuck, Dirt. The fuck was that?” he yelled. Dirt neighed back in agreement, still pounding his hooves intensely to move as far from that place as possible.

They halted, both a little breathless, at the stable. Ty took a moment to consider his options, and began worrying he’d lost his mind. It was Dirt, still antsy and anxious, that assuaged his fears over his sanity. Something was there. Something otherworldly, and something horrifying. He went to find his wife.

He approached her in the kitchen, flour dusting her face and hair in equal messy measure to the girls, he tried to adjust his gait and expression to avoid alarming the girls. Mel could see immediately something was off; she gave Amera and Charlie permission to eat a glob of cookie dough as she followed Ty to the living room. In hushed tones, he rapidly divulged the experience, searching her face for any clues that she found him absolutely mental. Her gaze was steady on the bookshelf behind him as she listened intently. When he was finished, she looked at him directly, tears welling up in her eyes. He felt almost as worried, in this moment, about her response than the creature he had seen just minutes before. “Please say something, Mel,” he whispered.

Her face was pale, her eyes full of hot tears that threatened to spill down her cheeks. She said just three words. Three words that took the breath from his lungs and flooding him with questions.

“It found me,” she whispered.

Her hand shook as she pulled at her long dark hair, her lip pinching where she had begun chewing on its inside. Ty held her tightly, holding the back of her head with his right hand, pressing her to his chest. “It found me,” she said again, crying softly.

The girls, ever-aware of the household happenings, were suddenly in the doorframe. “What’s wrong with mom?” Amera asked. Quick as anything, their mother grinned and wiped her tears with the back of her hand.

“Girls! You know more than anyone that I cry at everything. Your dad was just reminding me of a sad story, and it got me going.”

“About what?” Charlie inquired suspiciously.

“Tell you later, girls. Go finish putting those cookies in, and tell the boys to shut off those screens. They’ve been glued to them all morning,” Mel commanded kindly, a complete reversal to the shaking, shuddering response Ty had witnessed. The girls trotted back to the kitchen, happy to steal more dough and boss their little brothers around thereafter. Ty released his embrace, waiting.

“Do you remember the story I told you about, when I was a little girl?” Mel asked. Her husband grimaced. There were so many shared stories over their years together, that it often ran one into the other.

“Remind me. I am sure I do, but remind me,” he responded. Mel swallowed, paused, and nodded.

“I was four, nearly five. Beginning of the snow season, just after Halloween,” Mel began. She diminished the emergency of the morning’s events by sitting on the sofa, tucking her feet underneath her and unsuccessfully trying to brush bits of flour from her pants.

“Was this on the front range? Before Durango?” Ty asked. She nodded. He sat on the chair across from her and leaned in, elbows on his knees.

“Almost Wyoming, not quite. I remember looking outside the window, watching the snow get thicker and heavier, wanting to run outside and play. I was all sugared up…Halloween candy, I guess,” she smiled. She could hear the battle upstairs as the boys refused to heed their sisters. Her money was still on the girls. “I saw this snowdrift building up on the big oak tree in the field. We’d just inherited the homestead from my grandfather, making us the fourth generation to live there. I remember my mom being so excited, but my father…it took a lot of convincing for him to accept it from his father. He’d left when he was sixteen, and never talked about his time there. He always seemed…weird about it. We assumed it was from Vietnam, you know? Always patrolling. Always checking not just fences but the edge of the woods, the outbuildings, everything. Just…checking. That night he came in from his walkabout, put away his sidearm, and shook the snow from his hat before hanging it up. He saw me staring at the old oak tree. He told me a story. He said that before his family added onto our house and fenced that pasture, his great-great-grandfather John had been a part of the original homestead, just as Colorado became a state in the late 1800’s. John had been in the Army, pushing west to pursue gold and territory along the way. He wasn’t the nicest man, with the limited information we had on him. My great-grandfather said he’d sooner slap the back of your head than look at you if you remotely bothered him, and his gnarled hands and thick leather belt had left a few notable scars on sons. His grandchildren--my grandad--had turned out kinder and softer, even with generational military and combat influence.

He asked me if I knew about the Sand Creek Massacre, part of the American Indian Wars, and one of Colorado’s darkest moments. I didn’t, not really. Turns out my great-great grandfather John was a driver of that event--he really relished killing Cheyenne and Arapaho, Ute when he could get to them. The Army, at that time, gave carte-blanche approval to do so. He enjoyed it. He didn’t see them as human--women, children, warriors--all were the same to him. His letters are horribly disturbing. My father told me he saw similar proclivities in Vietnam--he never held any truths from me, even at that age. He pointed to the oak I was enamored with, the snow drifts now up four or five feet. ‘That,” he said, “is where my great-grandfather buried his father. You don’t disturb that tree, do you hear me, Mel? Don’t. Anything wicked, anything dark you hold in your heart, that tree will bring it out. Don't disturb it.’ And I listened. For a few years.” Mel paused. The girls had joined the dark side of their mission, and both Ty and she could hear them giggling at whatever show or game they’d been duped into watching. Ty waited, patient. He’d seen a lot of combat, a lot of evil. This was resonating, deeply. Terrifyingly.

She continued. “When I was thirteen years old, I got mad at my mom. She’d said no to my going into town alone, probably very aware that I was planning to see a boy secretly. I screamed and yelled, full of teenage fury, but she stood firm. I slammed out of the house, planning to walk until she regretted her ultimatum. I found myself, inexplicably, at the oak tree. I had my pocket knife with me--like any respectable country girl--and without thinking, began screaming and stabbing at that tree. It’s bark was so thick, darkened with the season, gnarled in places that bounced my little knife back. I remember screaming at it, I hate you I hate you I hate you I wish you’d die, over and over. Something had…snapped.

“That night, in my bedroom, pouting and almost out of fury, I watched the tree whip around in the evening wind. It was so unusual--I remember, because none of the other trees or grasses were moving. Just that tree--like it was trying to get rid of something. I opened my window, and immediately it stopped. Still as death. And across the field…oh, screaming across the field, a long shadow. One empty eye, long open mouth, blacker than night and aiming for me.” Ty’s face was frozen as he listened. This was exactly what he’d seen, exactly.

“I tried to close my window, but it was too late. It saw me. I knew it saw my anger, I knew it was all the evil my great-great-grandfather had ever stored up and I knew it was coming for me, because it saw darkness in me. I don’t remember anything else. Not really. I remember being knocked over, I remember kicking and screaming and trying to…” she cleared her throat with emotion at the memory. “I vaguely remember trying to hurt my little sister. I held her in the bathtub, sputtering under the water, only a third grader…my dad threw me off of her. I couldn’t explain it, couldn’t remember the moments before. A few days later, driving me far outside of town, I confessed what I’d done to the tree. The further I got from that place, the clearer things seemed. It took no time for my father to put the place up for sale. He burned down that tree, removed the grave marker, and we were in Durango three weeks later. But…it’s followed me. I know it has. It’s found me, and it’s going to come for our kids, I just know it, Ty!” She began weeping, desperate, guilty, overcome.

Ty moved to the couch and held her once more. “Throwing a fit as a teenager doesn’t count. It doesn’t count. That thing--whatever it is--senses darkness. It’s probably me, babe, if you think about it. How many lives have I ended? How many people have I taken from this world?” His voice cracked a little, causing her to look up at his eyes, full of hurt, full of unspoken things she could never resolve. Something in both of them clicked into place suddenly. A resolve; a deep fidelity to their home, their family, and each other.

“We are not the sum of our regrets. We are the sum of our desires. This is our home,” Mel said. She put her hand to the side of his face gently, stroking his beard with small movements, comforting both of them. He nodded.

The couple stood up, resolute, prepared to enter battle together with the dark spirit residing in that dilapidated cabin. They didn’t have a specific plan, not really, but they knew if they went together and faced that darkness with shared strength, they could overcome it. They walked out into the mid-morning clear-eyed as the children remained upstairs, glued to whatever screen occupied them at the moment.

They walked. Dirt was still full of nerves, and it wasn’t worth saddling Mel’s horse for such a short ride. They strode through the knee-high grass, late morning dew wetting their legs. Hearts pounding, holding hands, Ty kicked the door inward with experience and authority that was reassuring to both of them. The terrible sound began.

The shadow rose, and rose quickly in response to the intrusion. Filling the corner of the cabin, stretching its hideous mouth longer and longer, the one-eyed spirit screeched out its deafening wail. They stood strongly in the middle of the one-room cabin, withstanding the stench and chaotic wind emanating from its writhing black mists. “You have no authority here. We do not carry the same sins as our forebears, and we have no darkness in our hearts! You have no power in this place!” Mel was shouting over the wind, again and again, repeating those three sentences almost as a chant, a prayer, a command. Ty joined her with his own voice, speaking hypnotically alongside his wife, imagining light and forgiveness above all else.

It fled.

Bursting from the dark recesses of the room, it flooded over, through, around the couple, shooting out the door of the cabin with furious lament, as though in pain. The atmosphere in the room immediately changed. Light filtered in through the open window frames; a bird flapped past. Ty and Mel looked at each other with a hesitant expression of hope. “Maybe all it took was us working together. Standing in love together.”

They began the walk back home. Strolling easily, they soaked in the sun as they exited the edge of the forest. Taking in their beautiful old farmhouse, Mel leaned her head on his shoulder as they walked toward it. His shoulder suddenly tensed. “What is that?” he said, pointing to the topmost window. The kids’ rooms.

The large window was black as night, and opened wide. The couple began running as fast as they could to the house. There are child locks on that! Mel thought. Horror took hold of both as they saw Charlie and Amera standing in the frame, arms to their sides. Even from halfway across the field, their black eyes were visible to their parents. Streaks of dark gray, veinlike lines stretched from the corners of their eyes and mouths, and as the distance closed, Mel shouted at Ty, “The girls! It has the girls!” They thundered into the house, with a force that dislodged the screen door’s topmost hinge. They could hear dark, horrific laughter from the top of the stairs; it was the girls’ giggles, but carried by a deep, throaty, old man’s gritty chuckle. Without ever hearing him, Mel knew it was her great-great grandfather. His evil spirit was insatiable; and he was reaching through time for her girls. Ty burst into the children’s room, immediately confronted with a profoundly cold atmosphere and strange absence of light. They were just in time; Amera and Charlie had begun dragging their brothers to the window, ignoring their screams and kicks, placid expressions on their faces with unfocused, darkened eyes. Each parent grabbed a boy, panicking when they couldn’t locate the third--but seconds later his soft whimpers from under the bed gave relief to their fears.

Mel screamed into the room the same mantra: “You have no authority here! We do not carry the same sins as our forebears, and we have no darkness in our hearts! You have no power in this place!”

The girls collapsed. The boys clung to their mother, sobbing. Ty slammed the window shut, latching it and returning the child lock to its safety position. They all sat in the middle of the room, the girls shaking and bewildered. It was gone, for now. He had left them, for the moment.

That afternoon, the family drove into town. They settled into a small motel room, holding each other, away from the house and the cabin, and away from the malicious spirit. Mel stopped in the office to check in, grabbed towels for showers, and they ordered take out, a rare treat. Hours later, the couple looked at one another as they stroked the heads of their children, almost asleep on the shared bed. “As long as we’re far from that place…maybe we have more time, we can get help,” Mel wondered aloud. Ty nodded with exhaustion.

He slipped out from under the pile of kids, now snoring softly, and crept in his bare feet to the bathroom. Closing the door softly, he turned to the sink, running the cool water and staring at it as it circled the drain. He washed up, brushed his teeth with the little hard-bristled brush from the motel, and rubbed the back of his neck. At least we can get away from that cursed homestead, he thought. He understood now why his wife’s parents had uprooted and sold their place for almost nothing, exchanging lush front range acreage for the dust of Durango.

He showered, contemplating his next move, how he could possibly protect his family, and letting the steaming hot water hit his neck and back. Wrapping a towel on his waist, he opened the bathroom door. He snapped to focus immediately.

They were gone.

“Babe. Mel. MEL. Kids?” He looked out the curtains, and noted their truck was no longer in the parking space. Panic seized him. He called his wife repeatedly, only stopping when he saw her cell phone on the side table, buzzing uselessly. Throwing on his shorts and flip flops, he ran to the motel office. “When did the black truck leave?” he demanded. The teenager looked at her phone’s clock.

“Ten minutes ago? Are they ok? Your wife said they were pretty sick,” she said.

Ty paused. “Who was sick?”

The teen looked equally confused. “Your kids--she said they had really, really bad allergies. She bought all the allergy medicine from the machine there, cleaned it out.”

Suddenly the rapid, deep sleep that grabbed hold of the kids made him feel sick. She would never leave him, would never hurt the kids, would never behave like this. His heart began racing. “I need to borrow your car,” he said, without negotiation. The teen stared at him. “Life or death,” he added. She dug in her pocket and handed him the keys to her rickety Honda hatchback.

“Blue one right there. Do I need to call the police?” she asked.

“No. I’ve got it. Just want to make sure they get to the doc ok,” he fabricated. If this thing had hold of Mel, police would only complicate things. He floored the Honda, tires screeching as he peeled out of the parking lot, aiming for home at 95 miles an hour. The car’s frame shook and shuddered, but whizzed along the highway regardless. If he didn’t catch up to the truck, it meant she’d be driving this fast, too. It wasn’t like her. She didn’t do such reckless things. His eyes begged for a glimpse of the black Ford F-150, but were unrewarded. The highway stretched before him, painfully empty. If they didn’t go home, he surely lost them. He refused to consider the thought, and drove on.

The truck was near the cabin. Parked strangely, doors ajar, kid’s blankets trailing from the back seat to the ground. The fading light created a further eeriness, and Ty could see candlelight inside flickering. He braced himself for what he might discover, but disallowed it from stopping him readying his sidearm and stealthfully approaching the structure.

He looked in the window, breath held. The children were arranged carefully, side by side, still. He fought the urge to cry out, to see if they were breathing, and searched for Mel inside the limited space, dimly lit and radiating dark intent.

Then he saw her.

She floated above them, peering down, eyes black. She did not notice his careful examination of the interior from his post outside, so enraptured by the children as she--or it--seemed. She was suspended by that dark shadow, a full two feet off the floorboards, hair floating on the tendrils of darkness. Her lips and eyes appeared to crack at the edges as she beheld what Ty hoped was their sleeping family.

Charlie moved. Just a little, just a sleepy flutter, but it washed relief over her father. They were drugged, but alive.

Mel’s feet touched the ground softly; she was carried by the rotting black spirit to their son, Remi, holding Ty’s sharp, efficient pocket knife. He had to move, now. He dashed across the remaining ground between his position and the door--still broken from their earlier entry--and with a silent leap, took his wife down with a football tackle. She slammed to the ground, and the children murmured and rustled, but did not wake. Pinning her wrists and sitting heavily on her hips, he withstood the wild snarls and otherworldly screeches as she writhed, possessed, under his weight. Her black eyes were furious and wild, and when she paused her writhing, her expression changed to delight and hatred simultaneously.

“Hello, soldier,” she said. Only she didn’t say it. It did.

Ty took a guess. “You must be John,” he replied, calmer than he felt.

His wife--or her great-great grandfather, rather--grinned. The cracks and gray veins webbing from her eyes and mouth flashed and deepened. “In the flesh,” it hissed with delight.

“What do you want?” Ty demanded. It seemed this spirit had craved the embodiment he now had, and Ty wasted no time in leveraging that to gain answers.

“Death,” was the immediate reply. Emphatic, final, stated in a deep, gravely voice. She began flailing again, squirming, uncomfortable in being pinned down. But the body the spirit had chosen wasn’t a match for its subduer--so trapped it remained.

Ty thought. He thought through the moments when he was deployed, when he was in firefights, when he was on post, waiting for the enemy to give him a reason to fire. He thought of the dark moments, when he worried about his soul as he executed the tasks set before him. He felt that pull, that tugging into the abyss, beckoning him into the known waters of taking life out of the bodies of others. The spirit in his wife could sense it, could smell it.

“Yes, soldier, you know death. You want it, too,” it said. “Kill this vessel,” it commanded. It was difficult to ignore the forceful edict. His brain was flooded, suddenly, with all the arguments and hardships they’d ever had. Memories of when Mel had lost her temper, or they’d exchanged biting barbs during conflict. She had drugged their children. Stolen them. Driven recklessly, planning to bleed them out in this very room. His heart rate increased, anger flooding him. She was so vulnerable, so easily extinguished. He could. Of course he could.

He shook his head.

With gritted teeth, he locked his blue eyes on his wife’s. He didn’t want to talk about power, or authority. Those things can be taken. He quoted Mel’s other mantra instead.

“We are not the sum of our past. We are the sum of our desires. And I desire life.” He placed his forehead on his wife’s, hers slicked with cold sweat, and closed his eyes. “I love you. I love you. I love you.” She writhed. She screamed. She could not escape. He repeated it over and over, for what felt like hours, but was likely mere minutes. The room spun. His muscles ached from holding her down; he remained. “I love you.”

The spirit receded. It faded, returning the color to her cheeks. Her eyes began to clear. As she focused on her husband’s mouth, she saw and heard his spell-like recitation. “I love you. I love you. I love you.”

“Ty,” she whispered. He looked at her, gradually allowing himself to hope she was herself once more. She looked panicked when she saw the children nearby. She looked at him wildly.

“Sleeping,” he reassured her. Her body went limp with relief. He carefully removed himself from restraining her, still watchful. Amera roused.

“Mom?” she asked sleepily. “Dad?”

They gathered the children up. Those that could stumble to the truck did so, and the two littlest boys were carried. Remi yawned. “Are we going home now?” he asked.

“Yep. Go get tucked in, I have to handle a couple things.”

It didn’t feel good, but Ty knew what had to be done. He’d been around enough evil to know what tempts it, and he knew that spirit was hungry. Insatiably so. It wanted death, so it would get it. It would be the final life it took.

Once the kids were inside, he drove back to the motel. The teen, relieved to have her car back, was more than happy to drive him back to the homestead. He instructed her to pull into the drive, and unceremoniously knocked her unconscious with the butt of his pistol. Mel met him outside, apprised of the horrific plan, and loaded her into the truck bed, hogtied. They drove to the cabin, placing her on the floorboards and lighting that dirty candle that seemed to start the entire nightmare.

“Here is your vessel, young and with much life. Take it. Leave us.” Ty said. The room was flooded with stench and darkness. The long spirit appeared once more, dripping with laughter and delight. The teen’s body twitched and convulsed as shadow settled in, her eyes popping open with an ever-blackening gaze. She grinned a terrible smile.

“Most excellent. Unbind me, and I will leave you and your family be,” it rasped, wriggling in the ropes that held tight.

Ty and Mel backed out of the cabin. It was dry this year, so the gasoline and straw they’d brought were more than enough to ignite the aging wood. They spread the hay around the entire cabin, ignoring the writhing of the girl in the middle, trapping the hideous spirit in fleshly form. It screeched at them, suddenly aware of its own vulnerability.

They worked without words, the background of their terrible task punctuated with its forceful yells and writhing attempts to free itself. They dropped their matches synchronously, exiting the cabin quickly. It took less than an hour for the entire structure to disintegrate, sacrifice and all, as they stood by to prevent further spreading of the fire in the little clearing. The screams from the spirit never gave way to screams from the girl, and both convinced themselves she felt and knew nothing.

They drove the car back to the motel, leaving the keys inside. As they made the trek home in the truck, a heavy silence filled the cab.

We are not the sum of our regrets, they thought. We are the sum of our desires.

Mel smiled softly as she looked at her husband, his expression similarly peaceful.

“I love you,” she grinned.

And just for a moment, her eyes flashed darkly.