Haunt || Matty Healy

Fifteen.

"Dressed in black, from head to toe," Matty Healy sings softly, a crazed smile gracing his beautifully horrible features. "Get it," he asks, raising his hands to the light, showing me the crimson blood dripping from his fingers, slowly following the track lines of his veins before he darts his tongue out and takes a heady lick. "Because that's what you'll be wearing to his funeral." I stand up from the table, forgetting completely about these awful skates and my breathing eradicates until I can no longer force my lungs to compensate my quick breaths and my vision swims with black dots.

I pass the fuck out.

He catches me before I hit the ground, but I'm so dangerously close to Zay's severed body, I can practically smell his blood. Matty leans over, his icy breath hitting my exposed neck. I can't move. Every inch of my body is paralyzed, save my heart, jumping against my ribcage, begging to rip free from my chest. One of his hands holds the back of my head, saving me from a three-inch drop to a pile of blood and limbs. His other hand is warm and wet and caressing my face so gingerly. "Easy there, princess."

I'm repulsed enough to heave and gag. I twist in his arms and retch out the contents of my stomach, Matty holding my hair back while my hands find a grip in the material of his shirt. "That's pretty gross, Nila." I make a sound in the back of my throat, something between disbelief and astonishment.

"Fuck off," I manage, weakly pushing at him, but he doesn't budge; only lifting us from the ground into standing positions. My body trembles but he holds me steady at my hips. His thumb swipes just under my lip, wiping at spit and he smiles down at me like we're lovers reunited. I can't find my voice again but my head is pounding with unspoken pleads: undo, undo, undo, undo, please God, undo this, please, please, please –

"No can do, baby girl." He says loudly, his voice echoing despite the DJ's morphed track repeating morbidly against his limp body. "I've missed you," he confesses. "You look so lovely," he tells me, a sincere grin on his lips, hiding the sharpness of his teeth. "So ethereal in a mass of destruction – I wish someone could capture this moment on film."

"You got it, fam," I twist my head, not in time for the flash to go off, to see Adam Hann standing on a table a few meters from us. "Looks baroque," he muses, checking back on the footage he's captured. He hops down from the table, making his way towards us, "I'll call it, 'The Fallen' – too cliché?"

Matty's hand tilts my chin to face him again. I wrench out of his grasp but stumble and slip until his grip on my hips go tighter, so tight I can feel his nails dig into my bones, and I swear he's leaving marks I can't recover from.

"I think it's quite beautiful," Matty tells him.

My mind is swimming. I don't even know where to begin. "You killed Zay."

"He killed himself." Matty frowns, "I told him to stay away from you."

"What?" I gasp, bringing my hand to my chest, "Oh god," my knees fail me but Matty enjoys my struggle, using it as leverage for him to be closer to me, holding me upright. "He's dead – they're all dead - " I throw up again, on Matty Healy's chest this time.

Adam's camera flashes again. "That one's for me." As an after thought, he says, "Kelis will get a good kick out of this."

"Matty –" I break off, I don't even know what to say – this can't be real, this has to be a dream, a mind trick, some fuck shit Matty would get off on.

Adam walks closer to us and I'd kill for Ross or George to show up in his place in stead. He swings his camera by the wrist strap and inspects the body beside my feet. "Hmm," he hums out thoughtfully. "Looks like he's a little tongue tied."