Starwort for a Stranger
It happened quickly.
Rose yelped as she was yanked back by her hair. Her back slammed against a cold body. There wasn’t time to get another scream out before a cold blade pressed to her neck. Any idea of screaming fled her body on a pathetic whimper.
Cold fingers gripped her hair as fear seized her throat.
The blade pinched her skin. Rose shook like a leaf. A warm drop slid down her neck.
“P-please—”
The fingers in her hair tightened. Rose whimpered. Her eyes squeezed shut. Her captor’s quiet, steady breaths brushed across her ear.
“Don’t—don’t hurt me. Please,” Rose pleaded.
The man behind her was silent, unmoving.
“Please.” Hot tears poured down her face.
He didn’t budge.
A part of Rose—the part that wasn’t busy praying to every god in existence—wondered what he was waiting for. She was vulnerable, with a blade at her throat. He could have killed her five times over by now.
Rose quivered in his hold, gasping past the tears that dripped across her lips.
“My name—my name is Rosemary,” she blurted out. “My dad is dead. I didn’t go to his funeral. I don’t talk to my mom if I can help it.”
It was stupid, it felt stupid to blubber about her life to the stranger who was holding her at knife-point.
“I had an older sister. But—but she died before I was born. Her name was Rebecca.” She squirmed in his hold.
The blade at her neck pressed closer.
Rose cried harder and talked faster. “I’m an art restorer. I really, really love my job even though I have to keep fish gelatin in my fridge. And I…I was in love once,” she sobbed.
By the time she realized that the advice of telling a gunman—knifeman?—personal details about yourself so they’d see you as a human and not a target was from an episode of Grey’s Anatomy, Rose was too far in. And she had never checked on the scientific validity of that advice.
Rose gulped in air past her tears. Her numb fingers grabbed at his knife hand and clung to him as if he wasn’t the one about to end her life.
“She was my best friend—”
The knife withdrew. Rose crumbled to the floor.
The man stood over her, harsh breaths lifting his chest. Rose scrambled away, curling in on herself as she pressed into the corner.
The man backed away, stopping at the exit between the racks, blocking her only escape, not that she could’ve gotten past his wide frame. He lowered slowly into a crouch.
Rose wrapped her arms around herself and squeezed, trying to abate her shaking. Her hands clutched at the thin cotton of her sundress. She felt small, exposed. And he wouldn’t stop staring.
His focus was intense. Too intense. Rose couldn’t draw a full breath.
They sat like that for too long. Every other second Rose was sure he was going to lunge at her. She tried to keep still, tried to give him less reasons to attack her again. Rose shivered at the lingering sensation of a cold knife at her throat. The cut on her neck had clotted, but the dried blood smeared across her neck itched like hell.
Hesitantly, Rose chanced a look at the man crouched not six feet away from her. He was still in the same position. Not a single strand of his greasy hair had moved. She wasn’t even sure he had blinked. He just sat there, his face hidden in shadow, and watched her.
The second Rose met his eye, he stood. Rose gasped, pressing further into the brick wall at her back. He stepped forward. Her quivering picked up. He stopped.
The man crouched down again, this time closer to her. His head tilted as if he was appraising her. Rose swallowed the lump in her throat. Her eyes darted back and forth, resting on the man for half a second at a time before flitting away to the bolts of fabric on the racks or the scraps of wood stacked at the far wall.
When he moved a step closer, she froze. He waited a minute, both of them tense, before moving closer again.
After a few minutes of this, he was crouched right in front of Rose. She kept her eyes on the straps across his chest. She couldn’t meet his eye, not again. And he didn’t give her enough room to look anywhere else.
Rose saw it from the corner of her eye. A glint of silver. But it wasn’t the knife.
Rose held her breath, her eyes widened as the man lifted a metal hand to her throat. Cold fingers brushed across the blood on her throat. Bits of it flaked off and stuck to his hand. His focus shifted away from her, down to his hand. A gentle chime echoed in the room as he rubbed his metal fingers together.
He pulled away, resting his elbows on his knees and looking down at Rose.
Rose gasped when he moved. He paused, watching her intently. The next time he moved it was slower. He lowered himself to the ground, sitting down in a more comfortable position in front of Rose.
Her arms squeezed tighter around herself.
She couldn’t really see his face, even with the barely-there distance left between them. He was back-lit, just barely, by the main studio lights filtering through the open door on the other end of the room.
The man’s hair hung down into his face in greasy strands. It was long and looked like it hadn’t been properly cut or cared for in months. When he tilted his head Rose noticed scruff on his jaw, like he hadn’t shaved in a few days, which she supposed he hadn’t.
They sat there for a long while. Long enough for Rose to stop shaking. Long enough for her to stop digging her nails into her arms, though the crescent indents remained.
With each passing breath the panic in Rose’s mind abated and the threat of danger seemed to shrink. After all, if he hadn’t killed her by now, why would he? And the longer they sat there, the more she itched to move. She raised her chin a fraction and met his gaze.
His eyes, though they stared right at her, looked far away. He tracked even her slightest movement, but it was like he wasn’t really seeing her. Rose had seen that look before.
In all honesty, Rose wasn’t sure if it was exhaustion, recklessness, a leg cramp, or just plain stupidity that made her open her mouth.
“Are you hungry?”