[h2][center][color=orange]Archie[/color][/center][/h2][hr]
[i]"This was nice," she says abruptly, almost like she's forcing herself to say it. "This... dinner. It was nice talking to you."

'I missed talking to you' is what he thinks, but like always he doesn't say what he means. "You, too," he responds. "Goodnight."

"'Night."

He dropped her off and drove home. Now, here he was, half an hour and half a handle later. The ceiling swirled lazily above him, and out of the corner of his eyes he could see the walls flowing like waves on the ocean. And like the ocean, he felt his moroseness flow out with the tide. It should be easy for him to go to sleep, having handled the last of their business. He tosses and turns; shuffles around like a dog that can't quite get comfortable. He considers calling her, and so he does. It rings once, twice, three times, and then goes to voicemail. Hearing the emotionless tone of her voice sinks under his skin and rests there.

In the end, he decides to just stare up at the ceiling. Archie's glad that one of them can sleep.

It gets somewhat easier every day, is the thing. But as much as Archie tries to suppress the rising thoughts of 'we could be' and 'I should be mending' they won't leave him alone. He would make some progress, drag himself out of bed, and human for the day, but it always felt draining. As if something was still very wrong. He still couldn't sleep.

It was always easier for him to fall asleep when they were touching, somehow, even if it was her toes barely brushing his ankles. Archie's never thought about how much he needs physical intimacy, but after she walked out, his sudden loneliness made it more and more apparent. Sometimes he feels like he might need a warm body beside his to fall asleep, as a reassurance of sorts. He's not sure why he needs that; not sure why sometimes he wakes up and feels scared when there isn't someone next to him. Along the way, Archie realized how tormenting it is to be alone.

He has to buy a new journal two weeks after they signed the divorce documents. He begins writing and then rips them out to trashes the pages he writes on. None of it is on any particular subject, but he's not fooling anyone, especially not himself. They're all about her and sometimes himself and what happened to his beautiful little boy and where they went wrong and how he has to fix it and how he's an idiot and regrets so much of what happened and if it turns out okay which it has to and—

Weeks pass. Things are okay.

He goes in her room again. Writing his name in the dust gathered atop the dresser seems like the best idea in the world, so he does. He also manages to inhale quite a bit of dust in the process.

He's a man deprived of someone who made him feel more than he has in his lifetime. The saying goes that it's better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all, but he finds himself bitter at the situation. He hates how unkind fate had been.

He stays in the room for a while. It still feels like there's a ghost here, so just in case there is, he writes 'I miss you' in the dust, too. Maybe the hypothetical ghost will pass it on. To him, to her, both. Maybe, somehow, it will make him better.[/i]

[hr]
Vinnie didnt reply to Natalie. He remained as silent as the dead, as if he didnt even hear her. He could not breath. He could  barely even think. He simply held his stance, and did not move an inch as a growing sense of dread overtook his whole body. His eyes remained locked on glowing white orbs that bored daggers into his very soul. It watched from the shadows, remaining to its dark confines, no moonlight could touch its thick hide and it. Mist steamed before its mouth and a light growl tickled its throat, but only to come out in silence. In life, when a predator is near, there is dreadful quiet despite how the surroundings teem with nervous energy as if alive and watching. Even Monty, who had descended and was standing on the foot of the stairwell behind Vinnie, had fallen still. The hairs on their arms rose in alarm, and the whole setting felt like it was full of static. As if it had come off of a large playground slide and couldn't pat its hair back down.

[color=silver][b]"What the hell's going on here? I...don't know and I'm still not sure I wanna know..."[/b][/color]

Then suddenly, as if a switch had been flipped by Natalie's statement, the air turned malevolent. It was heavy, charged, alive, and now it wanted to hurt them. Monty reacted first, raising his handgun and firing haphazardly in the direction of eyes in the dark. Vinnie, having been too focused on the predator, had not seen his friend and was surprised by the gunshots directly behind him. Vinnie did not movie from his prone position on the ground, instead throwing his hands on his ears trying in vain to shield them from the sound of the shots. The monster launched forward, releasing that same inhuman battle cry from before and moving faster than it had any right to ever move. It grabbed Monty's entire torso with one hand and, using it's momentum, turned into a swinging motion throwing the man through the guardrail of the stairs and then driving him straight down into and through the floor. The reptile released Monty, moving quickly on all fours to finish the job, only to hesitate from driving his six inch claws through the downed man's chest. He remembered that he had an audience.

Archie cast his eyes upwards, finally getting a good look at Natalie's lithe form. Suddenly his vision buzzed and his own voice screamed that she was [i]undeserving[/i] in his head. He looked back down at the only semi-conscious but still breathing form of Monty, and then to Natalie again as his own voice faded from his thoughts. He shook his head, immediately ignoring the strange happening and grabbed the incapacitated man by the leg. Archie pulled Monty out of the small crater in the floorboards he had created using Monty's body, and a steely predatory look returned to Archie's features. With one swift movement, the giant drove a huge scaled fist into Monty's knee, driving his fist and the crook's joint through the floorboards. The sound of muscle and bone being pulverized was sickening, like the combination of the crack of a baseball being struck and a watermelon being smashed. Monty, who was already in shock, convulsed momentarily, but did not regain consciousness. Monty would never walk again.

The beast rose to stand on its hind legs once again, dropping Monty's mangled leg and with its claws picked three crumpled nine millimeter bullets out from the scales of its neck. It shook itself in a trembling fashion out of discomfort. He tasted the air, and he could smell blood- the corpse's, Monty's, and a trace amount of his own as the scales of his neck were thinner than other areas. The sound of whimpering caught his attention and he looked to the shaking but prone form of Vinnie, who had not move. He was curled up facing the floor with his hands over his ears. He was muttering something, but Archie either wasn't paying attention or didn't seem to care. 

As his battle trance faded, Archie turned his gaze once again to Natalie and backed further into the bowels of the building, hiding his huge form in the darker shadows cast by the walls of the house. He was leaving Vinnie to her, to harm, evaluate, call the police, whatever. His own voice in his head was just too interesting to pass up, and so he kept his gaze on Natalie- who no doubt could see his glowing white eyes on her as if daring her to do something.

And somewhere in his heart of hearts, he was.

[hr][@Silver Carrot]