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Nothing from me.
He stepped from the doorway, heading to the kitchen. I could hear him pressing buttons on the microwave, heard dishes and silverware being shuffled around, these sounds repeating for several minutes before he emerged holding two plates, setting them on the coffee table. He left again, this time returning with two bowls. The third time he made for the kitchen, he returned with two bottles of ginger beer. I watched as he pulled a chair from my tiny bistro dinette set to the opposite side of the coffee table, picking up one of the plates and beginning to eat like this was a regular thing for him, for us, eating dinner together. Well, I wasn’t eating a damn thing because fuck that!
When he finally came up for air and looked at me, I’d evidently found my voice and a modicum of composure because I heard myself asking him, “How did I get up here?”
He stopped chewing, his eyebrows meeting for a moment before he swallowed and smiled. “I carried you up here. How else?”
It was my turn to frown. “Carried me?”
He set his plate back on the coffee table and nodded. “Yep. You passed out. I caught you and brought you up here.”
“Why? Why not kill me down there instead of trying to poison me up here?”
He stared at me for a long, uncomfortable beat before laughing, the sound oddly melodic considering the fact that he was evil. “So that’s why you’re not eating? Hold up,” he said before using his cutlery to eat a portion of everything on my plate and in my bowl. “See. No poison.”
I blinked, my eyes glued to him.
The man shrugged. “Okay, I guess I’ma have to feed you. I know you’re hungry; you’re so…tense. Takes a lot of energy to be anxious.”
“What are you going to do to me?” I queried, my voice breaking ever so slightly.
“I just told you. I’ma feed you. You need to eat, Lilith.” Hearing him say my name made my stomach twist and turn.
In what felt like seconds, a spoonful of something was in front of my mouth.
When I didn’t open it for him, he sighed, “Shit, you don’t like Nigerian food, do you? Well, I really fucked this up, huh? Tell me, what do you like? I’ll bring that next time.”
“Next time? Why are you doing this? Why are you here?!” I screeched.
“You like barbecue, Lilith? Wait, you’re Black. Of course you do. How about Chinese? I’ve had a taste for Chinese lately.”
“Leave!” I screamed.
“Eat, and I will.”
“No! I’m not eating that!”
“Then I’m not leaving.”
“I’ll call the police.”
“Now, Lilith…if you were going to do that, you already would’ve. But you’re not…are you?”
My eyes widened. “W-what?”
With lifted brows and a humorless look on his face, he repeated, “Are you?” His voice sounded like a warning, and I’d seen what possible danger was attached to it—death.
Since I’d spent several years as a student at the ID Channel University, and I was indeed Black and understood that snitches get stitches, I shook my head wordlessly.
“I need to hear you say it, Lilith.”
My eyes fell to the bandages I hadn’t noticed on his knuckles and shot back up to his face as I licked my lips and spoke. “I won’t call them.”
He smiled brightly. “I knew you wouldn’t! So…you good? Don’t feel like you’re gonna faint again?”
“I don’t. I…please,” I whimpered.
He stood, moving to drop on the sofa beside me. In response, I pulled my knees up and tried to disappear into the corner of it.
