Horrors in my mind
Disclaimer: I do not own Twilight.
Chapter 1:
Seattle was in it´s perpetual gray state: gray skies, gray buildings. Giving an eerie feeling to the air. A brunette woman made her way gracefully to a undescript building, identical to the ones surrounding but for the faded numbers by the door. Her dark pea coat flapping with the cold wind while she waited patiently for the metal doors to open.
A shrill sound came from inside as the doors unlooked and made way for the woman to enter, after a second of hesitation she pushed in gently in to the warm air of a elegant reception area. An empty, dark reception.
The woman´s golden eyes traveled the room quickly, taking in every piece of furniture, every speckle of dust in the air. Her senses tingling with the knowledge that she was in fact, not alone in the building. The fluttery heartbeat of another person in the next room, rapidly, anxiously approaching.
-¨Mrs. Cullen!¨-Exclaimed a heaving man, his round figure gasping for air after such a short run made the woman twitch with sympathy and concern.
-¨Bella, please¨- Her voice a soft melody, a bird´s happy chirp. The man´s red face began to crease with an uncertain smile.
-"Yes, good evening Bella. Please, come in!" The man spun quickly, hands having wildly to the open door down the only lightened hallway.-" We have much to discuss. Here, let me take your coat, it must be dreadful outside...¨
Bella nodded, slipping out of her coat and letting Jenks take it with stumpy, hurried hands and made her way slowly towards the bright office, taking in her new surroundings with a uneasy glance. Until yesterday their dalliance with Mr. Jenks had been completely one-sided: the Cullen´s called, he provided, never the other way around.
Bella remembered Jasper´s foul temper as the call was received and the appointment was made. Saying plainly that maybe the partnership had been outlived. Carlisle had not been happy, but to Bella`s utter shock, had not argued.
Bella was of another thinking; the man had been nervous, afraid even, while pleading for a date. And even with her 20 short years on her back, she knew: there were few things in this world able to turn cowards into brave men.
She had set a date against everybody's better judgment, and now, in the empty office she could smell the sickly sweet scent of a child in the air, vomit, sweat... blood.
Bella´s fingers curled in as she took the seat offered to her by Jenks, taking in his lose fitting suit, evident in lost weight, his draught and pale face, the dark circles under sorrowful eyes.
-"I´m sorry to bother you with such short notice"- Jenks stuttered out, fiddling about in the small room, picking and arraigning things that did not need rearranging. Anxious- "I know this isn´t how we usually work, but I found no other way."
Finally Jenks sat next to her, as opposed to the large chair on the other side of the desk, leaning in to Bella even as his pulse raced with fear, clearing his dry throat he sighed.
-"You have a child, Bella?" this was said as a fact, Bella nodded slowly.
-"So do you" She replied, cogs turning quickly in her head, trying to tie every end to bring sense to this mystery.
J. Jenks nodded heavily, a resigned expression on his round face. –"So you must know what one is capable of doing for the sake of their children."- Jenks raised his troubled eyes to meet her own-" what one is capable of asking for?"
Realization began to dawn on Bella, frozen in place as her body begged to spring out of her seat and away from the broken man. Her expression must have bellied her thoughts as Jenks hurried to shove a wrinkled photograph in her cold hands.
-"This is Tessa, my little Tessa."- He rushed, pushing the picture in her immovable hands until her shock subsided into something worse and much more heavy in her chest, looking into the bright blue eyes of a young girl, no more than 15, holding a violin proudly in her hands as most would hold a sword, smiling fiercely into the camera. Her heart shaped face flushed, nearly as red as her waving crimson hair, smile so contagious it prompted a smile of her own to Bella´s tight lips.
Almost as if taking this as permission, Jenks continued.
-"She is my daughter, my only daughter. For many years it has only been her and I... It´s been hard but we get by, she´s so much like me that it´s almost like living with myself... you can imagine the fights!"- Jenks broke into roaring laughter, nearing on hysterical. Bella smiled hesitantly, waiting him out.
Jenks sobered quickly, ringing his hands together as he slowly began to form his speech in his mind:-"My wife died when she was still young..." –He said, sucking in a harsh breath- "she bit off her tongue and drowned in her own blood."
Bella was shaken out of her revue, throat tight in horror.
-"She was schizophrenic, you see"- Jenks sighed, an almost clinical tone even if his eyes dulled with past sorrow, buried deep with the years but no less painful as they were all brought back for their perusal.
Jenks pulled a handkerchief out of his breast pocket, drying the sweat pooling on his wrinkled brow and cheeks.
- "The horrors in her mind were far more than she could take, she was only 30 years old then, had been diagnosed only 3 years before with frontotemporal dementia and paranoiac schizophrenia."
Jenks paused and laid back into his chair, suddenly tired and expression wary. His shoulders though, Bella noted, set with determination.
-"Tessa and I were left alone too soon, but we managed, at her 16 years she is already a virtuoso in the violin, an accomplished ballerina and was accepted into Julliard 2 months ago"- Jenks boasted, his fat chest puffing with pride as he gazed into the young girl´s stormy eyes.
-"You must be so proud"- Bella whispered, her pale fingers passing gently over the youths face, dreading what her mind shouted but her heart refused to hear.
-"I am"- Jenks lip trembled, passing a heavy hand over his newly sweaty face, voice rough- "Dear God am I ever."
A broken sob escaped the man, suddenly shrunken in his rounded figure. Bella´s stilled heart seemed to jump to a full run as she braced her self for the fall.
Jenks sucked in a harsh breath and with a sudden swipe of his handkerchief his frown was gone, and suddenly Bella could see the same fierce look, like father like daughter. Jenks was no coward here.
-"Tessa was diagnosed with early onset frontotemporal dementia 3 months ago."
Bella´s back hit the chair, suddenly her own weight too heavy to bear, even with her immortal strength. Her eyes itched to shed tears for a child she had never met, tears that would never come.
-"She was too young to remember her mother; before the disease, that is."- Jenks parroted quickly, almost as if the words could drown away the terrible truth he´d just laid bare in the silent office.- "but she wasn´t by the end of it, the nightmares, the violence... the screams, I don´t know if there ever is an age when that won´t scar."
"But she remembers what it´s like, she´s seen it, what it does to people: it starts innocently enough, not remembering things, stumbling about a bit, my Natalie always was a bit of a ditz"
Jenks laughed, an empty little thing that held no joy, before setting his eyes above Bella´s shoulder, seemingly far away.
-"Then it isn´t so innocent anymore, you forget your neighbors, your friends... your family. And that´s when the hallucinations set in..."- He paused for a moment, steeling himself- "She once tried to boil Tessa alive in the stove so the monsters wouldn´t get her, and that was when she still remembered who she was."
Bella held her breath, her hands tightening dangerously over the thin photograph, her treacherous mind conjuring the image of Rennesme in a big pot. She lurched forward, gagging into her hands, dropping the photograph, the face of a bright young girl staring right into her from the polished floor.
A meaty hand laid on her trembling shoulder hot as burning cowl. Bella breathed deeply, taking in the smell of a sweaty Jenks and the ghost of a sickly youth.
-"Forgive me, I shouldn´t have been so crude."
Bella straightened herself, willing away the thoughts of her precious daughter in harm so as she could function. Jenks served her a glass of water from a decanter on the desk, which she took gratefully, but did not drink. The gesture, so common when she was human, brought her little comfort now as she felt the cool glass in her palms. Jenks took notice of this and nodded to himself, as if remembering something all of a sudden.
-"Yes, of course. You don´t eat, you don´t drink."
Her body tensed in her seat. Jenks huffed and waved a heavy hand.
-"Don´t bother Bella, dear. I´ve worked for decades with Mr. Hale, I don´t know what exactly it is that I know but I certainly know something."
"Grief has made me bold, or foolish, but I couldn´t stay quiet if there is even a remote chance that this..."
Jenks sobbed once again, now looking directly into Bella´s eyes, pleading.
-"If there is even a small chance that you could save my girl."
-"You don´t know what you´re asking for." Bella croaked, her own throat impossibly dry, suddenly she wished she could drink the cool water, even knowing it wouldn´t help.
Jenks whimpered: -"Maybe I don´t, but you do. You, sweet Bella, do; and if you believe that you could save my daughter, if being like you would spare her even an ounce of suffering. I beg you"- He fell to his knees, clasping his wet palms to the bare skin of her knees, careless to the calling in his instinct that screamed: Danger!
-"Please, save my daughter."
She could have pushed the man away, break his neck as Jasper surely would, the safety of her family above all, or even just walk away and disappear. But the pleading of a desperate father and the triumphant grin of a brilliant child had hooked her heart. And really, there was only one thing her motherly heart would have allowed.
-"Yes."
Author note: Please review.