Chapter 4: The Hollow Smile
The days grew quieter after Matthew.
Not for the town — it buzzed with rumors, fear thick in the hallways, grief stuck in the walls like smoke. But for Leah, everything felt soft, muffled, like snow had fallen on her mind. She floated through it. Unbothered. Numb. The world felt distant, a background noise that blurred in and out, like a dream that had long overstayed its welcome. Her days were marked only by the passing of time, the rhythmic ticking of clocks that never seemed to sync with her own heartbeat.
She had grown used to being invisible. No one wanted to see her, not really. At first, it was the teachers, always watching from behind their glasses, muttering about what they didn't understand. Then it was her classmates — avoiding her like she was the edge of a blade. But Leah didn't mind. She didn't need them. Not anymore.
It was the silence that bothered her most. Not the quiet itself, but the way it filled her with a strange kind of emptiness. It made the thoughts in her head louder. They echoed. Sometimes, she heard them when she tried to sleep, or when she stared too long into the mirror.
That was the only time she felt something. The only time she felt alive.
It started with her smile.
She had perfected it by now, the kind that fooled the world into thinking she was just like everyone else. It was the smile that seemed genuine, warm even, though it never quite reached her eyes. Her mouth knew the shape, the curve, the perfect angle. But her eyes? Her eyes were hollow, dark circles that didn't reflect anything except an emptiness that felt too vast to fill. Even she could see it now, the way the light in her eyes had dimmed.
The Beast didn't hide behind her skin anymore. It was inside her. In her bones. It moved her like a puppet on invisible strings.
Her fingers twitched sometimes, itching for something to hold, to dig into. She didn't know what the Beast wanted — but she knew it wanted something.
One evening, when her father was in the shed working on some project that involved rusted nails and old wood, Leah slipped out. The box of mice had always been a fascination of hers. Her father never cared much for them; they were just food for the snake, an ugly thing that lived in a glass cage at the back of the shed.
Leah wasn't interested in feeding them to anything.
She'd watch them in the dim light, the small rodents huddling together, eyes wide and panicked, ears twitching at every sound. It made her stomach tighten in ways she couldn't explain. It wasn't hunger, not in the way people meant. It was... curiosity. Fascination. Power. She liked to hold one in her hand and feel its heart beat faster as she came closer, her fingers curling around its fragile body, as if she were shaping the world with just her touch. The sounds they made, the sharp squeals, the way they quieted when they knew what was coming, it made her feel something.
She would time them.
The last breaths of each mouse became like a song to her. One lasted eight minutes. Another, only four. Each breath a note. Each struggle a verse. She marked the time on her wrist, the tally drawn in red pen that stained her skin.
Sometimes, she thought about the way her body reacted. It wasn't that she wanted to kill them. Not really. But it was like she couldn't stop herself from measuring their fear, their panic. It was beautiful in a way she couldn't explain. Maybe that was the Beast — maybe it was what it had become, its voice whispering in the back of her head, guiding her.
At school, the marks on her wrist weren't noticed at first. They were small, faint lines of red, nothing that couldn't be brushed off as the product of a careless moment. But then one day, during art class, a teacher asked her about them.
Leah smiled. The perfect smile. The one that never touched her eyes.
"It's an art project," she said, and that was enough.
The teacher nodded, oblivious. No one ever asked again.
But the mark stayed, darkened with time, a reminder of what she had done. Of what she was becoming.
The world outside of her seemed... a little more strange now. The people at school, the classmates who once feared her, didn't seem to care. They kept their distance, but there were whispers. Silent looks. Glances that never met her eyes. She had become a mask, a silhouette, something people nodded at but never really saw. And maybe that was what she wanted. Maybe she preferred it that way.
But then there was Clara.
Clara was different.
She was soft, not in the way Leah used to be, but in a way that made her feel... uncomfortable. The way she moved through the world, the way she smiled — it was all so alive. So full of something Leah couldn't put into words. And when Clara looked at her, she didn't see the mask. She saw Leah.
It happened one day at lunch. Leah was sitting at her usual spot, near the window, where the light fell across the tables like a broken promise. She didn't expect anyone to approach her. Not really. But Clara did.
"Is this seat taken?" Clara's voice was quiet but steady, like she wasn't afraid of Leah. Like she didn't think Leah was a monster.
Leah glanced up, her eyes narrowing slightly. The seat next to her had always been empty. No one ever sat there.
"No," she said, her voice flat.
Clara sat down without another word. At first, they didn't speak. Just sat there, side by side, like two strangers in a room that didn't belong to either of them. But something changed.
They shared silence for a week. Then words. Then laughter, though Leah wasn't sure if it was real or not. Sometimes she couldn't tell. Sometimes it felt like the world was fading away, and it was just the two of them — two pieces in a game that didn't have rules.
Clara smelled like warmth. Like something Leah had forgotten she could feel. She wasn't perfect, but she was... alive. And Leah hated it. She hated how much she wanted to be near her, to hear her laugh, to taste that warmth that seemed to seep into her skin.
But the Beast inside her... it didn't like it.
It growled in her chest, low and guttural, like a warning.
"Don't get soft," it hissed, its voice like gravel in Leah's mind.
But Leah didn't know what to do with it. She didn't want to kill Clara.
And that scared her.
Because for the first time in a long time, she didn't feel empty. She didn't feel numb. And that scared her more than the hunger, more than the darkness inside her. Because it meant something was changing. Something inside her was either waking up... or dying.
And she didn't know which one would be worse.