Eros: The Obsession

Prologue

The trailer that Jun walks into is musty, making his nose itch. There are things scattered everywhere – old tomes littered about the floor, bottled herbs lining the shelves; he even thinks he spots a bottle of eyes towards the back of the room.

"Come in, dear," a soft voice mutters from his left, and when Jun turns, he comes face to face with an old woman. She looks ancient, the skin hanging off of her bones and barely a head of hair to cover her balding scalp. Her eyes though, her eyes are warm, alluring. It sends a chill up his spine.  

"You're Madam Rosmerta?" he asks in an unsure tone and she nods her head in confirmation, lips parting into an amused grin as she flashes him a mouthful of browning teeth. Bile rises in his throat, and it takes everything in him not to grimace.

"What can I do for you, my sweet?" she asks, draping herself over an armchair and gesturing for Jun to take a seat as well. He glances at the dust-covered loveseat opposite her and sighs in resignation before he gingerly lowers himself into it.

"Your flyer said you could," he glances around the room again, at the shelves littered with strange objects, "Make people fall in love?"

She smiles – a cruel, almost mocking thing – as she says, "Having love trouble, dear?" He narrows his eyes, fists clenching atop his knees. Jun doesn't reply.

Madam Rosmerta chuckles before waving off her comment with a nonchalant flick of her wrist. "No matter. I can make people fall in love," there's a glimmer in her eyes, unnerving and penetrative. "All I need is the object of your beloved."

Jun nods quickly, pulling out a hairbrush from his backpack, tangles of black hair clinging to its bristles.

Madam Rosmerta grins, a brow c*****g in amusement as he gingerly hands it over. She takes the brush, brush, rubbing the strands of hair between her fingers for a moment before she closes her eyes. The room falls eerily silent, the hairs on the back of Jun's neck standing on end at the feeling. The woman begins to mutter, the words too low for him to hear.

Then she starts to bleed, dark red trickling out of her mouth, staining her teeth and skin. The muttering gets louder, progressively so, until it becomes so deafening that Jun's ears start to ring.

He has no idea what she's saying, can't decipher anything familiar save for a few garbled vowels. And then she freezes, and everything in the room feels like it's pulling him in, a foreign ache burning through his chest. Jun gasps, fingers rubbing over his torso, trying to pull whatever it is out –

and then the feeling is gone.

He throws himself over the arm of the chair, emptying the contents of his stomach out onto the woman's floor. When he finally stops heaving and his chest doesn't feel like it's on fire, he glances down.

Blood. 

There's blood mixed in with his throw-up.

"A small price to pay," Rosmerta says and Jun turns to her with his mouth gaping in horror, "For true love." The tone of her voice is coy, the curl of her lips mocking. 

"What did you do to me?" he demands, jumping to his feet as he stumbles away from the crazy old hag.

"Nothing you didn't ask for," she tells him nonchalantly. She holds up the brush and c***s her head to the side, "Would you like this back?"

Jun turns on his heels and bolts out of the tiny trailer, stumbling over the steps in his haste to escape.