You couldn’t really explain it, not in any way that made you sound sane. There wasn’t a simple reason you could give for never letting dates come back to your place, for shutting down every suggestion of hanging out in your home, for keeping even your own family at arm’s length from your front door.

After all, how were you supposed to casually mention the god turned cannibalistic demon living in your apartment?

Jack was… an anomaly. That was the only word that ever seemed to fit. You had no idea why he’d taken such a strange interest in you, why he lingered instead of disappearing like you sometimes wished he would. Still, there was something about him that held your attention. The way he moved, the way he carried himself, the unsettling calm beneath his usual arrogance.

His hair fell in messy brown curls so dark they looked almost black in the dim light. His skin was a strange bluish grey, and then there were the eyes, or rather, the lack of, just that endless stream of tar like gunk that somehow kept reappearing no matter how much you cleaned. It stained the corners of your apartment, the pillows, even the sheets.

Tonight, you sat beside him on the bed, the mattress dipping slightly under his weight. He was quiet, unusually so. No smug grin, no dramatic monologue about how easily he could ‘crush you like a grape’, no teasing remarks meant to get under your skin.

Just silence. He was being weird. Weirder than usual.