Netta found her time occupied later that evening as she often did, in front of her desk. Old habits died hard, as she returned to the same forums where she monitored the conversations of people who claimed to be Witches.  They usually ended up being harmless house wives who just really enjoyed patchouli and fantasizing about the occult.

During that time, she was aware of how quiet the apartment seemed to have grown.

Eerily so, in fact.

Shifting uneasily in her seat, Netta turned way from her computer, sliding the headphones away from her head. She looked to the door, was surprised to find that she could not hear any of the familiar sounds of her roommate's loud habit of playing bass-thumping music. Or the cries originating from his porn.

Netta turned around and examined her room, only to find that she seemed to be alone.  Glancing down at her phone, she noted the time - three in the morning - and looked over at her window.

The blizzard and the sun's setting seemed to have plunged the world into a gray, vague shadow outside. The snow had not let up, as evidenced by the sound of the wet, groaning sound of the wind pummeling it against the wall.

Netta shivered, shook her head. She felt isolated in the storm - an unexpected emotion. She would have thought that she should have preferred to feel alone, following the day that she had had. And the days to surely come.

In a matter of hours - the amount of which she could nearly count off of a single hand - she would be free of this - 0f of It. Having missed her original ride, Netta could lay down in her bed once the danger of Ash was put behind her.

Netta stood up, sliding the headphones onto the desk.  She felt thirsty, that was why she was wanting to go out into the communal area.   It had nothing to do with her wanting to see if her roommate was still somewhere to be found, afraid of being alone this night...

Walking out of her room, Netta glanced down to Curtis' room and saw that his door was open. The sound coming from his room echoed the haunting sound of the blizzard outside. No lights were on in the apartment, save for the glow of the artificial light coming from her opened bedroom doorway.

Turning, Netta walked, tentatively, past the deserted bathroom and into the communal area, to find that the kitchenette was deserted.

Like the living room.

Netta stared at the dark rooms and wondered what could have possessed the scrawny man to have left in this weather.

He could be afraid of ghosts.

"Oh, Ash." Netta realized that she had said Its name aloud, and quickly looked around before relaxing. In spite of her having said Its name, the creature itself did not make an appearance. Maybe it was because of the strange day that she had had, but Netta found herself, uncharacteristically, emboldened.

"Ashwoooooood." She said Its name under her breath, looking around. She jokingly squatted down on her knees to look in a cupboard before she got back up.   She laughed, pouring herself a glass of water. Taking a drink, she looked around, confidently, before she found that she could not help herself from saying it again. 

"Aaassshhh, don't you have some harassment that you've had planned for me after all of these years? Hel-lo?"

Still, there was no answer. Anything.

She returned to her room, where Netta stared for some time at the conversation that the humans were having with each other about the supernatural causes of the winter vortex.

As she continued to read forum posts, Netta had been beginning to feel a fatigue that hit her harder than it had before. Eventually, it won over the aftereffects of the headache that she had been suffering from.

Sighing, she rubbed at her eyes, blinked.  Moments later, Netta found herself blinking, in a slow manner punctuated by increasingly heavy lids.  Grunting, Netta took her reading glasses off and leaned back in her seat, massaging her face.

When she had told Ash that she had no plans to sleep tonight, she neglected to tell It how much she would very much love to sleep.   Netta bit her lip, felt as the beginning fingers of dread combed through her thoughts, coloring them a hue not unlike the darkness beyond her window.

She could not sleep - if she slept, she would surely be easy prey for the Monster that she had been playfully teasing.  As she thought of how vulnerable she would be, with no way to fight back without the use of her conscious mind, she felt sickened. The memory, especially, of her earlier foolhardiness, mocking the Monster, haunted her.

Netta rocked back and forth in the seat, her arms clasped over her chest.  She felt a panic at the understanding of the shutting down of her mental facilities.  It was something that she could have done something about, if she had thought to purchase someone else's magic before all of this had ever happened. 

She did not have enough magic to fend off sleep and be able to banish Ashwood.

Netta's eyelids fluttered shut overlong for a moment, before she slammed her eyes opened. Rushing breath into her lungs, Netta shoved her chair back and ran her hand over her face, wishing that she could rub the sleepiness away.

The cold hit her like a slap.

Gasping, Netta wrapped her arms around herself, found herself standing up, hunting for a sweater, socks - anything to alleviate the sudden, terrible cold.  Her breath shuddered out of her mouth in a heavy mist.

Finding some clothes, Netta pulled the sweater on, she followed it up with shoving her feet into thick, heavy tube socks. To her immediate dismay, the cold that struck her seemed, somehow, to be more intense than it had before she had pulled clothes on.

It was as though the clothing was insulating the cold instead of her body's heat.

Shuddering, Netta walked to her bed, then slid underneath her blanket. She was so cold, and the weight of the blanket seemed like it would offer respite. She could, maybe, just let her eyes fall closed for a bit - just a moment - and try to focus, finding some respite from the cold...

She shook herself out of the urge. She had to focus on staying awake - as much as she wanted to fall asleep underneath the blanket.

Netta realized, with a shock, that the cold beneath the blanket seemed to have only, somehow, grown. She kicked the blanket off and hurried to her feet.

Shuddering, Netta wrapped her arms around herself and rushed to her door.  She opened it and hurried down the hallway to look at the thermostat.

For a moment, all she could do was stare in disbelief at the number on the horizontal scale that the red stick was pointing to.

According to the temperature, it was at zero degrees Fahrenheit at the moment. But that wasn't all.  It was, seemingly, creeping only further down.

Netta winced, shivering. She felt so cold - it was as though she was wearing nothing, the heavy weight of the chill settling on her skin. It felt as though she would never be warm again, that the cold and the dark would be there forever.

And then a different emotion began to take shape in her, as if in direct answer to her cold. It was a yawning, spreading feeling, like hunger, starting in the bottom of her abdomen.

Netta moaned, resting a hand on her stomach, turned around so that her back hit the wall. Her heartbeat sped up in her chest, and a curious sensation began, starting at her abdomen and spreading down her pelvis.

She tingled, she ached, she could feel as sudden, hasty desire burned through her, shifting and expanding.  It was horrible, wonderful, as though every chemical - influence of magic - inside of her had had its switch flipped.

And yet -

If anything, her desire seemed to freeze her further, burning her in frost bite.

Her mouth fell open, she panted. Suddenly, her hand reached up the front of her chest, began to grasp and fondle her chest blindly.  And then her hand found her left breast, gently squeezing and massaging the curved weight. Even through the heavy layers of her clothing, when her index and middle fingers ran over her encased, hardening nipple, she felt it like a shot of adrenaline, coursing through her body. 

She had become possessed by a wild desire, tearing through her like the staggering power of a god striking.

She moaned, arched away from the wall, her legs falling apart. Her other hand reached up, greedily taking hold of her ignored breast.  Netta fondled herself, feeling as her breasts became fuller in her hands, her nipples hardening.

She was so cold, a cold that penetrated deeply inside of her like icicles stabbing into her back, her belly.

She needed - wanted - coveted -

Her legs had spread themselves apart, and as if with a mind of their own, one hand fell down to the front of her pajama bottom. Her index, thumb and middle fingers of her left hand running a fluttered, shivering trail.

She shuddered, her breathing rising and falling out of her like the beginning thrums of a quake. Her pulse sounded as if it was pounding a throbbing, heavy beat in her ears. It was like a primal rhythm, a calling.

She threw her head back and moaned.

The feeling - the rushing of a presence that seemed to enfold, engulf her - made her eyes open.

Taking in a shuddering breath, she felt it die in her lungs as she saw, in her glazed vision, the man who leaned over her.

She smiled at him, moments before desire made her moan, throwing her head back. Quivering, she moaned Its name, needing, wanting only - him.

"Ash..."

There was no need to look up into Its face to know who the oppressive force belonged to.

She knew, had long memorized a face that belonged to a man far older than the form that his waking self had taken. It - He - possessed a stern face, angular and with a large, heavy nose. His mouth held no softness, and the red of his eyes were the color of blood blooming in water, sanguine, a berserker's violence. His deep, brown hair fell over his face, throwing his features in shadow.

He was no boy - not even a man.

A Monster.

She arched against him, felt rewarded when he ripped her from the wall. His unyielding strength was beyond what even the lean power of his body seemed capable of.

He carried her with speed so that it felt like she had blinked from the spot in the hallway.  He did not carry her into her bedroom, but rather laid her out on the counter.

She was cold, encased in layers of clothes. In the next moment, she was nude, the biting cold of the counter behind her.

She gasped, looked up at the hovering shade of Ashwood. His shadow fell over her as he reared back on top of her. She saw that he, too, was naked.