All Chapters of Dirty and Sinful Collection: Chapter 141 - Chapter 150

6I didn’t sleep the night after Leah left.I lay there in bed, staring at the red smear on the floor like it might suddenly spell out an answer. I didn’t clean it. I couldn’t. Part of me wanted to believe it was wine, maybe old varnish reacting to humidity, or a trick of my own over-sensitized mind.But deep down, I knew better. And Aren didn’t show up again.Not that night, not in my dreams and not in the mirror.Just absence, which made the silence feel more suffocating than ever.By morning, I’d already googled six different psychic mediums in the city. I’d seen enough horror movies to know that was a terrible idea, that people who go looking for ghosts rarely like what they find. But I also knew I was way past the point of walking away.I didn’t want him gone.I wanted him closer.The only one who sounded like she might take me seriously without treating me like a TikTok clout-chaser or someone who’d taken too much shrooms in a walk-up with mold, was a woman named Delilah Cross.

8I woke gasping. Aren was gone. I’d been standing in the shadows of the bedroom, willing his presence to surge into me but there was nothing.I wrapped the robe tight and stepped to the mirror. There was no fog or handprints there.It felt like I’d been exorcised.I set the alarm on my phone and left the apartment. Downstairs, I grabbed coffee at a café two blocks away. The barista gave me a sympathetic look. Of course, I was the tired woman in a bathrobe at noon. I smiled weakly and took the steaming cup out onto the sidewalk. The fresh air hurt my lungs, in a good way. Normal felt both foreign and necessary.I started the car, heading south away from the building. My phone buzzed while I was halfway home.Malik: How about dinner tonight? Thai place on Pine. 7?I stared at the message. Malik. He’d slipped into my life about a week ago. Kind. Charming. With shy eyes that warmed whenever I smiled.Tempting.I took a sip of coffee and typed yes.***At night, I had a deep, hot water sh

7I don’t know when it started to shift from enjoying him to needing him. I can’t say I didn’t see it coming, because the hunger for his presence had been building since the ritually stained candles and broken mirrors of that night. But it hit me like drowning when I realized I was deliberately starving myself of everything else just to feel him again.I stopped showing up.Work emails went unread. My phone rang once from a number I didn’t recognize, my sister maybe, but I didn’t answer. I told myself I needed time and space from the world, but the truth was I needed him. Without him I was unraveling, craving those invisible fingers and that invincible weight pressing me into the pillows.Days blurred past.I slept in my bridal-slip of a robe, the one Manifestation Night had drenched in sweat, and didn’t bother changing. My hair was knotted. My cheeks were pallid in the pale daylight that slanted through the half-drawn blinds.I spent most mornings half-asleep, arms locked around myse

1I stepped over a dead potted plant on my welcome mat, half-expecting it to groan at me for neglect. My key jammed in the lock again, same as always. Everything in this building stuck. Doors, plumbing, anything you can thinking of. I walked up to the third floor where I stayed. I had only one roommate, which was myself.A box was by my doorstep when I looked down. Plain, no postage, just a small, perfectly square gist box with a red ribbon that strangely reminded of an horror movie. There was a single card looped in delicate twine. All it said was “she will keep you company”.I looked left and right. There was no one there. I kicked the box gently with the toe of my boot but it didn’t move.“Creepy,” I muttered, picking it up anyway. Because of course I did. Because I’m the kind of woman who talks back to horror movies and then does exactly what the dead girl did. Because it’s been three weeks since Brian left and I still talk to my microwave like it’s going to ask me about my day.T

3The library smelled like wet dust. That was the first thing I noticed, followed by the faint crackle of fluorescent lighting above me, flickering lightly. Which was fair, honestly. I hadn’t stepped foot in a university library since I dropped out of grad school, and back then I wasn’t exactly the occult section’s most loyal visitor.But here I was, clutching a notebook full of increasingly unhinged observations about a possessed doll that whispered to me, made me come in my sleep, and definitely moved when I wasn’t looking. The logical part of my brain, the part that liked neatly restored paintings and clean brushes and answers, was having a very bad month.The occult section was tucked in the farthest corner, behind a dusty pillar and next to a broken radiator that hissed like a snake. The books looked untouched, mostly oversized hardcovers with cracked spines and spooky fonts. I traced my fingers over them, unsure what I was looking for until something sharp pricked my index finge