Devour
an excerpt

Ruby knew she was sleeping when she saw herself sitting on ruby red sofa in a strange, dimly lit room. The room was painted black. The walls seemed thick and plush. Ruby wanted to touch them, they seemed almost moist. The only light in the room was a flickering black and white movie on an old T. V. that sat on an entertainment center painted as black as the walls, so the T. V. seemed to float in the air. A man came out of an ajoining room and walked toward the other Ruby on the couch. He hands her a bottle and suddenly she is no longer seeing events from the outside. She is back in herself, seeing things through her own eyes. The boy sits next to her on the couch. He has black hair and skin the color of coffee with heavy cream and has the build of Jack Skellington, tall and very slight. She thinks he might be part Native American, but it looks like his nose has been broken a couple of times. Ruby thinks she knows this boy, she watches him as he takes a drink from the bottle and places it on a dark cherry wood coffee table. There are a couple books she can identify, Burroughs, Kafka, Palahniuk, Danielewski, laying on the table. He seems to know her, he is comfortable with her. She searches her mind and in this dream she can't identify him. He leans back in to the sofa, and they both start watching the old black and white "Night of the Living Dead". He laughs at the slow, stumbling zombies, and Ruby thinks the walls are starting to throb and sweat. The boy didn't seem to notice the walls coming to life. He turned to her, his eyes were dark and warm like roasted coffee beans. She suddenly wandered if he tasted like coffee.
"They're coming to get you, Barbara." The boy said, smiling at her. He put his hands up, mimicking the zombies in the movie and wiggles his fingers at her. She couldn't help but smile at the mysterious boy next to her. The walls were starting to look like meat or skin, thick and quivering. The hum behind the walls was getting louder, it began slow, but soon sounded like a swarm of bees trying to get through the sweating meat wall. He still didn't notice the walls beating around them and went on watching the movie. She starts breathing harder, her lungs unable to get enough air no matter how deep she breathes in. She looks down, and the boy's hands are around her throat. His eyes are cold and hard now, she sees none of the friendliness he possessed earlier, like he's a completely different person. He pushes her down, pressing on her throat harder. She's on her back, the red couch trying to swallow her. He straddles her, Ruby grabs at his arms, trying to claw at him, trying to get him off of her. Still struggling, she grabs his throat as hard as she can, her knuckles turn white. Whatever that is trying to get through the walls is closer, all she can hear is buzzing. She can feel her fingers pressing through the skin of his throat, in to the meat and muscle underneath. Her vision starts to go blinding and white as she starts to loose consciousness. Small things crawl over her flesh, creeping and itching her skin. He grabs her hands away from his throat. He smiles at her struggling, his teeth are blinding white and sharper than a normal human. His smile grows as wide as the wicked smile of the Black Dahlia. She freezes in terror underneath him. The boy opens his maw, striking fast, biting into the flesh of her captured arm. She howls in blinding pain and everything goes black. When she wakes up in a panic, Ruby is back in her apartment. The glowing whisper of dawn starting to seep through the curtains.