Being an abnormal young girl with nyctophilia, she preferred to be nocturnal. Especially how whenever she slept at night, dark nightmares would follow. In her early years, Xanthe was often bullied at school because of her race. She was one of two Indians in a Caribbean school full of the racist type of Africans. As a preteen, she accomplished a number of awards for various competitions and exams despite the bullying and lonliness.
She entered high school with those achievements. But being a teenager, all of her personality aspects began to falter and so it affected her work. She left high school with what many people would call great accomplishments, but she did not satisfy her personal genius.
Xanthe worked as an agent of M16 and was happy enough, but even at 25 she still couldn’t find her passion. She was also very alone as she was known for her natural psychopathic tendencies.
Until the night that a man who looked like seven and twenty, equipped with numerous blades and dressed in black with ashen hair -much like her ebony colored hair- and with a face the color of white chalk, had slipped in her window.
She was yet to meet the strange man. As Xanthe returned home from work, she had almost jumped out of her skin when she saw the man with the permanent smile like The Joker and… burned off eyelids… and did he have any irises at all?
Her train of thoughts were interrupted by the man advancing on her and pinning her to the wall, his trailing point blade against her throat. “Tired?” He asked, grinning.
She was afraid to move her windpipe, but she had to say, “You look rather familiar.”
In his expressionless eyes -which, she now noticed, had grey irises after all- she saw a spark of confusion and felt his grip on the blade tighten.
“Nice knife. But I prefer butterfly knives,” she continued.
The man stared down at her, and she at him. He slowly lowered his knife. “You didn’t scream… or fight back,” he breathed. There was an unreadable tone in his voice.
Xanthe smiled at him, and again, there was the confused spark in his eyes. She was about to say something, but he abruptly growled something inaudible at her and escaped. Xanthe was confused, but she felt as if she liked this weird and supposed killer.
He came back the next night, once again through her bedroom window, but she was waiting for him. He looked at her, and as she looked back at him, she began to find him uncannily resembling Jeff the Killer from the Creepypasta stories. “He must be a darn obsessed fan,” she thought.
“Hello.” She grinned at him. He seemed to suddenly get mad at her and with lightning speed, he had her pinned once again. “All I did was greet you, wannabe Jeff.”
His grey eyes bored into hers. “Why are you awake? You should get to sleep,” he said, raising his knife.
Xanthe ducked low and swung her leg in an arc, bringing him down and grabbing his knife. She straddled him and pressed the tip of the blade to his throat.
From that battle, Jeff accepted that Xanthe was not to be killed by his hand. Xanthe and Jeff formed something like a friendship from there, and miraculously she could tolerate and deal with his mood swings and unpredictable attacks.
Jeff, for the first time, loved someone. And Xanthe now had someone she could relate to and love.
Three months later, the two had their first date. It was casual, at Jeff’s Victorian house. She thoroughly enjoyed it, and as she could now read Jeff’s face, she saw that he did too.
He took her to bed. They had never spent a night in the same bed, but they were comfortable enough to sleep next to one another. There was no firy attraction between them; they didn’t need it. There were only gentle caresses and whispers.
Jeff found out that Xanthe had never slept a wink in the night because of nightmares, and felt he had to change that. He did.
He held her close, and Xanthe, against her own will, fell asleep as Jeff whispered, “Go to sleep.”
For the first time, Xanthe slept a comfortable, dreamless sleep. And for the first time, Jeff whispered “go to sleep” to someone… and meant it another way.
