Obsessed ( Jeff the Killer x Reader )

Chapter Nineteen: Art is Dead

|| Chapter Nineteen ||
|| Words: 1586||
|| June 18th, 2020, Thursday ||

It's hard to pretend that someone's not there when you keep running into them and they keep trying to talk to you. Jeff doesn't know but today's the first day of his "program", still sounds sketchy, so he's not going to know unless Liu does something stupid. From the moment Cassie mentioned the FBI, I should have known: the universe does not let me off easily.
Yesterday I bailed on Otis, so today we're resuming where we left off, you know, before Liu came back. A gentle knock emerged from my door. I was about to say "come in" but I remembered what Jeff had told me. I peeked into the peephole within the door and saw Otis, wearing a similar fit from the day before.

I unlocked my door and opened it.

"You locked your door, that's new," Otis laughed a bit. My heart stopped and with a small smile, I held my breath: how did he know I didn't lock my doors before?

He started walking down the hallway and he went down the stairs, still empty as always, but Otis was walking directly behind me instead of beside me.
"Does Jeff know you're here with me?" Otis asks, his voice in a low tone.

"...yeah," I lied, "of course he knows."

I could practically feel him smiling behind me. Then, the doors to the lobby were finally in my eyesight. Putting my hand on the door handles, Otis slammed his hand against the door, stopping it from opening. Flinching, I turned my face away from him, trying not to squirm underneath his hot breath.

"Do you trust me?" He whispers.

Looking into his cold eyes, clearly finding amusement in this, I stood my ground and refused to give him the reaction that he was looking for—though, from his point of view, I'm not sure that I'm doing a good job at that. Still, I cleared my throat and looked into his eyes.

"Why wouldn't I?" I lied.

There was a long moment of silence between us, staring at each other in this vacant stairwell.

"Correct answer," chuckles Otis, though something tells me that he wasn't joking at all, "follow me."

He leads me down the lobby, still empty as ever, and then stops in his steps.
"Stay here, I left my wallet here yesterday, I'm going to go ask the staff," Otis says, walking off without my response. Rolling my eyes, I went to one of the fish tanks surrounding me.

Walking over to it, my eyes targeting a bright green fish, contrasting with the vibrant blue water illuminating the room around me. I dragged my shaky hand across the glass, watching the fish follow it slowly. As I put my hand against the cold surface, another hand appeared on the other side. I lifted my eyes up from the green fish to see two green eyes peering back at me. Stumbling back, I fell back and sat there in shock.
Liu walked around the fish tank and bent down to me. My heartbeat began accelerating while I attempted to keep my eyes from his.

"We aren't in high school anymore, Y/N, please grow up. We can't have this childish miscommunication between us—I mean, there's really no 'us' anymore. Tell me why you're avoiding me and what you want me to do. It's not like I followed you here, I worked here for years," Liu says flatly.
God, we really have changed, haven't we? I think in this short span of the high school lockdown and where we are now, we aren't even the same people anymore. I can't pretend that we were those same kids.

"I'm avoiding you because of Jeff," I say, trying to rationalize that with myself as well. It's not completely a lie but it's not completely the truth either.

"Jeff knows I'm here. Again, what do you want me to do," Liu repeated, his tone sterner.

Does Jeff know Liu is here? I know I shouldn't be surprised, but...Jeff hasn't said anything about it.

"I don't know...," I trailed off.

Liu sighs and extended his arm towards me, offering a hand to help me up. Hesitating, I looked up at Liu and took his hand. As he pulled me up, he immediately took his hand back from mine and looked away, his brows furrowing.
"Jeff and I work in the same program, Y/N. I can't exactly avoid you if that's what you want me to do, but I can pretend that I never knew you. I pretended that I wasn't living a double life my entire time that I was friends with you, so this will be easy. I do expect the same treatment from you: don't look at me, don't speak to me, and better yet, don't even talk about me. As far as I know, you're still dead," Liu states, walking away from me.

I felt my eyes tearing up as he walked away from me, which doesn't make sense, I wanted this. I wanted him to be an old memory...but I didn't think it would hurt this much knowing that he wanted the same thing for me. I'm such a hypocrite.
Otis then approached me, his eyes slightly widened from what happened. He gulped awkwardly and led the way out of the lobby.

"Where are we going?" I ask quietly.

"I'm going to show you real art. Not saying that digital art isn't real art, but...I'll show you a style that's more authentic," Otis smirks.

Leaving the Clubs province, we stepped out into the crowded roads of New York. Otis grabbed my wrist and quickly navigated us through the crowd, speed walking towards a row of apartments. Otis then darted behind the apartments in an alleyway, yanking my arm behind him. The gut-churning smell of the dumpster filled the air around us, causing me to hold my breath.
"Sorry," Otis laughed, "I was in a bit of a panic, so I dumped the bodies in here. I guess I forget that bodies rot."

My eyes, widened and dilated, glanced at the dumpster, and started involuntary shaking uncontrollably. Otis clasped his hands on my shoulders with a gentle smile.
"You said you trusted me," Otis states. Without a word, Otis had picked me up and lifted me up to a window right above us.

"Get inside, I'll get in after you," Otis whispers to me.

Still shaking, I fiddled with the window latch and eventually propped it open. I squeezed through the window and landed face-first on the ground. I laid there and held my head, which was the most impacted by the fall. I stood up and looked around to find myself in the lobby of the apartment complex, which was unkempt and cheap. Luckily, it was empty, apart from the occasional cockroaches and flies.

Otis then jumped out of the window, landing on his feet instead of his face, unlike me. He walked past me and took my wrist in his hands to guide me with him. We started to quietly walk up a flight of stairs, trying to keep the creaks of the stairs to a bare minimum, though the chatter of my teeth seems to defeat the purpose.

We then walked into where the rooms are held. Otis skipped down the hallway and stopped by a door. Looking around, his eyes targeted a kid's metal baseball bat and glove leaning against a nearby door. I hesitatingly approached him as he took the bat.
"What are you doing?" I whispered to him.

He ignored me and started to open the door and, thank god, it's locked. Yet my satisfaction came to an end when he took the bat and busted it against the doorknob until it fell to the floor, causing the door to creak open. Otis started whistling, scanning the room, and dragged the bat against the floor, scraping the wood beneath us.
"I know I heard voices," Otis chuckled, "Come out or else you're forcing my hand to come find you."

Eventually, the closet door opened to reveal a woman in tears with her son, no older than seven years old. She dropped to the ground and pleaded for Otis to leave them alone.

"Quite stupid of you to stay here after your husband went 'missing'. Don't be stupid, you can smell the stench of a rotting body from here," Otis smirked.

Otis then looked at the son who was standing, shocked, and frozen in fear.
"Get out," Otis demanded. The boy started shaking, unable to move. Otis raised his bat and I immediately covered the boy, acting as a shield. I quickly grabbed his wrist and sprinted out of the room. Stopping to pick him up, I could hear the sound of the bat colliding with the woman's head. Then, the footsteps started growing closer to me.

When Otis caught up to me, he pinned me against the wall, making the kid drop to the floor.
"I went through the trouble of bringing you here and this is how you thank me?" Otis yelled, squeezing my arm tightly. He dragged me back into the room along with the kid, throwing us to the floor.

The woman's head was bashed in, blood splattered against the wall, and Otis had drawn a smiley face on the wall with her own blood.

"You want to know something about art, Y/N? First lesson: art is dead."