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He arched and stretched his back again, yawning. He closed his eyes while he rolled his neck – when he’d reopened them, Mara was no longer perched across the room. A wisp of motion to his immediate right froze him, and a flash of adrenaline swept through his body when he realized that it was her, seated only a foot or so away on the edge of the bed next to him (most likely an attempt to mimic or mock his own posture). Her head was turned to face him.
Benjamin tried to the painful eye contact, as her green eyes silently shimmered and gazed into his own. This felt like a challenge, which he eventually failed. Ashamedly, he turned his head away, and his eyes roamed aimlessly around the room – anywhere buck back into Mara’s piercing, dagger-like eyes. She had been such a pestilent little shit the day before, and now she was playing cute. Benjamin had no desire to take part in whatever game this might be. He put his hands down on either side of himself, to heave himself up off of the bed.
Mara growled a furious growl. Her eyes widened, her pupils narrowed, and a flashing of twinkling yellow light reflected off of the green of her irises. She subtly barred her teeth as she continued to growl.
Benjamin shot his own eyes her way, turned his torso to face her, and lunged his face forward to within inches of her own. Mara didn’t flinch at the sudden motion towards her, though her growling did immediately cut short, and the faint curl in her lip went away, so that she was fully covering her razor teeth.
“Bit me,” Benjamin growled. He paused a moment to allow his command to sink in, before he lurched upward from the bed and stormed out of the bedroom, down the hall towards the bathroom. His body language screeched brazen defiance, though his face discretely whimpered, “What have I done?” But no sound followed him from within the bedroom. As he swiftly turned and closed the bathroom door behind him, he timidly peered back down the hall, into his bedroom. He could see that Mara had already vanished.
A tentacle snatched the pair of tattered jeans which Ben had pulled from the closet, and replaced it with another clothes hanger – a pair of pants which weren’t quite so torn or slathered in paint. Ben brushed his teeth halfheartedly with his left hand and passively accepted the exchange. Sometimes he liked to pretend that he could interpret the fanatical, high-pitched whoops and wubs that were emanating from the hidden source of the tentacles. He imagined that they were weaving a coherent sentence. “What if you have to go to the paint store again? And what if you meet a beautiful woman there? Or worse – somebody from high school? ‘Dress like you’re going to meet the love of your life today’…or was it ‘worst enemy’?”
Ben smirked at the fact that dressing for either eventuality might result in the exact same outfit, as he lazily continued to brush. With an agitated whoop, a tentacle snatched his left hand and wriggled it wildly. Before Ben could free himself from its grasp, it successfully maneuvered the brush to begin scrubbing his tongue – though it plunged the brush too deep, sending Benjamin into fit of hacking and dry-heaving. The tentacles that were making themselves busy by picking out his outfit of the day all twitched in unison, and then recoiled back to the safety of the closet. Just as Benjamin furiously wound back to hurl his toothbrush at the beast, one lingering tentacle flung a paint-covered t-shirt towards his face, and then slammed the closet door shit. The toothbrush clicked against the door panel, and Ben again dry-heaved as he furiously pulled the shirt from off of his head.
