You are terrified of it, the daemon who has taken you. It is a hulking thing, and hideously formed—all sharp edges and watery yellow eyes. It has a soft voice, and tells you it was born from your fiancé—Victor.

It tells you many things. That it is all alone and detested for it’s looks. That it loves to read Milton and had spent the first year of it’s life in a barn.

You think it loves you, for it treats you with most tender of kindness. You find yourself never wanting to leave.

And when the creature, first of its undead race, Adam, it once called itself—beckons you into its arms at night…you find yourself enjoying the feeling. It has become a nightly ritual, the daemon insisting that you sleep with your back against his chest, his arms draped around your waist. He cannot allow you to escape, nor freeze. You cannot argue with a creature that stole you so easily.

So you lay against him. Feel his broad chest against your little back. Feel him hold you like you are all that is precious in the world. Its arms are thicker, longer and, warmer than Victor’s embrace. There is a palpable affection in its touch. A loneliness that makes your heart ache. Is grey fingertips twitch, like you are sand slipping them. And so, you press your back further into its body. You are not sand. You are flesh. And, oddly enough, you begin to feel you are his.