Slide 1: Shady

The door opened, a young woman stepping into the dark apartment with a deep sigh. She moved with the practiced steps of someone who has their home's layout memorized and disappeared into the kitchen, not bothering to turn a light on. After a few minutes and the sound of a window scraping open, a dim light flickered on in the kitchen.

She padded back into the living room, stripping off her jacket and slinging it across the back of the couch. She went and changed into her pajamas and stood in the kitchen for a while making dinner and listening to the street musician play something folksy through the open window. She took her plate and sat on the couch with the television on to eat. She fell asleep mid commercial break sprawled across the couch with one hand behind her head.

Once the television had long since ceased to broadcast actual shows and was just blaring infomercials, she startled awake on the couch, spluttering and almost falling off. A cold breeze blew through the house. She groaned, turning off the TV and grabbing her iPod off the coffee table. The music started as she stumbled sleepily into the kitchen and across to the window, her bare feet chilled against the night-cold tiling. She leaned up, slamming the window down as hard as she could. It scraped closed reluctantly with the encouragement of a string of mumbled curses.

She stumbled out of the streetlight-lit kitchen, through the living room and into her bedroom, feet dragging in the half-stumbling stride of someone who hasn't quite decided to be either awake or asleep. The overhead fan whirred to life with the sudden surge of electricity as she hit the light on and moved to make up the bed. Covers got tugged back onto the bed from the tumbled heap in the floor, straightened, tucked back in, and she turned back towards the middle of the room.

She leaned up to the chain for the light, stretching up with one arm on tiptoe to grab hold of it and then falling sharply back down onto her heels, dragging the cord with her. The light switched off abruptly, the bulbs not even glowing in the darkness. The bass-line of her music pounded deep into her mind by way of her eardrums. She laughed lightly, rising up onto her toes and freestyling a spin back to the foot of her bed.

With a deep sigh, she let herself fall backwards into the mattress, closing her eyes and switching off her music.

A breath that wasn't hers.

"You ought to be more afraid of the dark." The voice was English, a rough and tumble sort of poshness about it, and it sounded very close. Too close.

She stiffened, panic coursing red-hot through her veins, and her eyes snapped open of their own accord despite the overwhelming urge to squeeze them shut and hope the nightmare went away. White teeth, stark against the darkness, grinned at her from three inches above her face. Something in her chilled, thoughts clarifying into crystal in an instant, and logic became a biological imperative. A small thought, timid and cowering in the section that was still supporting fear as a good option, pointed out that the teeth seemed perhaps a bit more…toothy than the average person's. Logic glared at it and, with no small measure of sarcasm, questioned how much time they spent looking at average people's teeth.

The mattress shifted and there was a knee pressing against her thigh. She closed her eyes again slowly, carefully, and stretched her arms above her head lazily. A brush of fabric, the heat of another body told her everything she needed to know. The man was on top of her, a move that spoke of dastardly crimes young ladies oughtn't to know about, let alone be faced with at wee hours of the night, and if he moved one more small inch he would have hands around her wrists, pinning her down.

Panic motioned for control again as her mouth decided to speak. "There is nothing to fear in the dark itself, except those things that dwell in it. And if one doesn't fear that…" She didn't know what she was saying.

The rustle of fabric as he shifted above her, a hot breath on her neck. She felt the barest brush of teeth before he spoke, his words whispering against her skin. "Even vampires?"

She froze. Logic told her he was crazy, a lunatic broke into her apartment. Panic told her to be warier than that, there was something about this guy. The general consensus amounted to "Oh god, oh god." Instead, her mouth took over again, having a conversation she wasn't really sure she understood. "Yes." And a part of her believed it.

Suddenly the weight retreated and quiet laughter sounded. She waited a still, tense moment, and hurriedly inched up to sit properly on the bed, reaching behind her with one hand to switch her bedside lamp on. A slowly brightening puddle of muted light illuminated the bed. She hesitated for a moment, wondering if she would look up and nothing would be sitting there.

But there was. He was young, younger perhaps than she'd expected, and well-dressed. His shoes were off, she noted with admiration, and she wondered for a moment if she would find them neatly laid out at the foot of the bed, all parallel lines and right angles. He seemed like that kind of guy, with his navy blue socks and the smartly tailored suit. He smiled at her, something rakish in his expression (the teeth, her mind prodded insistently). "You're very clever, girl."

Somewhere between her smiling back at him and her mind formulating a sensible question, she drifted off to sleep. She knew he was still curled at the foot of her bed, watching her with that toothy smirk, but something primeval inside of her trusted the lamp shining its soft light over them both, trusted the softness it lent to the strange man's features. Trusted the night to keep her safe.