This is a story written by Nina Malkin called Swoon and I decided to re-write it using the Twilight characters.
Update news: The next chapter for CTD is being written I'm about half-way through it. In other news; I start classes again in about 3 weeks and I need to be able to concentrate so I'm not sure how often I will be updating these stories. I have so much work to do going back to school, it's my last year and I really want to get good grades so I can get into a good nursing program. :)
I've also been on holidays for the past 3 weeks and although I did have my laptop with me I haven't had access to the internet.
The fifth chapter for Gone with the wind is up. Please read and review. Oh and below is the full summary for this story.
Summary:
Torn from her native New York City and dumped in the land of cookie-cutter preps, Bella is resigned to accept her posh, dull fate. Nothing ever happens in Swoon, Connecticut...until Bella's perfect, privileged cousin Rosalie nearly dies in a fall from an old tree and her spirit intertwines with that of a ghost. His name? Edward Masen. His mission? Revenge. And while Rosalie is oblivious to the possession, Bella is all too aware of Edward. She's intensely drawn to him – but not at all crazy about the havoc he's wreaking.
Determined to exorcise the demon, Bella accidently sets Edward loose, gives him flesh and makes him formidable. Now she must destroy an even more potent – and irresistible – adversary before the whole town succumbs to Edward's will. Only trouble is, she's in love with him.
What do you do when the boy of dreams is to bad to be true?
Disclaimer:
Swoon: All right to go the original author Nina Malkin.
Twilight: SM owns Twilight.
I
Falling in love at first sight must be glorious. I wouldn't know since at first there was no sight. Smell, yeah – the tangy, salty scent of horses. Plenty of other sensations too. But I'll get to that. The point I want to make up front is that by the time I laid my eyes on Edward Masen – in the flesh that is – I was already in love with him. Nothing could change that. Not even the fact he was dead.
Edward appeared— in this dimension, this century—on the autumn equinox, but he'd been with us since late July. That's right, us. My cousin Rose has been involved, intimately involved, from day one. Which was, as I mentioned, late July, the second half of summer like haze across a field, and us by then thoroughly indolent, twitchy, bored.
"Bella, I've got to do something"
Bella — that would be me. Everybody goes by monosyllable here—reference Rose née Rosalie – so this past spring, having being plucked from the companionable misery of NYC and dumped in the Connecticut countryside, I took mine. It's fine. Isabella never fit; to fancy. Bell, either; too cute. As it turned out Edward didn't adopt this tidy truncation. Opting to stay with his name instead, although he got the sly sideways glance whenever someone called his name.
But I'm jumping ahead. Let me focus, let me feel it – that fervent midsummer afternoon in the village green, Rose and me, free and idle.
"Watch this." She jumped up, stubbed the joint we'd be sharing been sharing onto the stone fence (never would the potential consequences of smoking pot in plain sight even occur to my cousin) then took off at a trot. Me, toasted, I just wanted to loll, to let my mind go off while my body indulges inertia. Rose, no – she had the remarkable goofball gusto to climb a tree.
Physically, the girl could do anything. Throw and catch with agility and accuracy. (I could duck) Dive and swim and water-ski. (I could...not drown). Even in flip-flops she scrambled up that tree like a monkey, hoisting herself onto carbuncles that stuck out from the tree like mutant broccoli. Rose knew the tree, had grown up with it, and must have scaled it countless times. Still, it's huge, a handsome, ancient ash. Grabbing at branches, strong of grip and sure of foot, she was soon half lost in foliage – saw-toothed leaves and clusters of purple-black buds. I got off the fence to stand below, admire her ascent. Rose was high, literally. Then, with a rustle she changed course from vertical to horizontal.
"Bella" she called from her limb "Can you see me?"
A patch of tan, a swatch of blue shorts. I saw her. Apparently I wasn't the only one. There, across the village green, lounging legs splaying on a bench with some cohorts was Mike Newton, his antennae up. He'd picked up that Rosalie – the Rosalie Hale – was going out on a limb. Not that Rosalie has to do much to capture the attention of any sentient being, especially if male. With those big breasts and that silken bolt of blond hair, all she had to do was breathe. And what did she do with this embarrassment of rapt male riches? Not much. Banked it, maybe, in case she wanted a favour later, or gave a groan that turned into a giggle. The way guys acted in her presence, Rose thought it was funny.
Further on she crept, hands and knees, fingers and toes. The she cursed, and one of her flip-flops swished down. The limb she'd pick was thick, but it bent with her weight.
"Rose, you are a cuckoo bird" I said, more to myself or the universe than her.
"What? Louder!"
Hmm, so – she'd noticed Mike had noticed her. That was to be my role then, fine. I could play emcee, no problem.
"Rose!" I shouted "Rose, you're crazy! Oh my god, you'll kill yourself!" Overwrought lines from some soap opera script. I didn't have to turn to know that Mike's radar for girls was in full blip. I hollered some more, waved my arms. I didn't have to look to know that Mike was on his way, friends in his wake, gas station saunter.
At some point during my theatrics I felt a prickle of fear, the plain and simple feeling that Rose might get hurt. Yet before I could fix how unfair that was – I wasn't suppose to know such fear, not now, so soon, not here, in Swoon – there was a familiar tingly foretaste. That anticipatory tremor, the distant thunder roll. There wasn't a thing I could do about it. There never is. So I let it course through me with secret not-quite delight.
Right about then Rose wrapped her legs around the branch, emitted a shriek and let go. The bough dipped, and she dangled like a lantern, legs locked, hair a cascade, bra threatening to disgorge out the scoop of her T-shirt.
"Holy crap!" from someone.
"Nice" from someone else.
Hooting, whistling, applause from. Mike and his boys.
Rose may had been laughing, too, but it sounded strangled – it must be hard to laugh upside down. But oh the ease and grace of her swing, like she could do it and eat a sandwich; I was impressed. Only the awe got shoved aside, diminished by a second, stronger tremor that didn't seem related to Rose at all.
Not even as she fell.
Talk about buzz kill. Energy versus gravity. Arms and legs pawing at elusive leaves and then the emptiness of air. Torso twisting like a cat righting itself post-plunge. Only Rose's body was no cat. She body-slammed onto the ground, hard. The impact reached the soles of my feet while a cranial choir sang hosannas of "Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!" I dropped to my knees beside her. Rosalie was on her back, eyes closed. She was very, very still. My mouth was open, but her name hid behind my tonsils. Mike and company hovered nervously, wondering if somehow they could be held responsible. Them. Yeah right.
Then, the third tremor – a steamroller with thorns this time – and with it, the equine smell. The world folded in and out like accordion bellows, and suddenly none of this was here. No, it was, but it wasn't the same. The tree wasn't nearly as mighty. The day was different, too; drizzly, the sun off duty. Rose, Mike, et al were absent. But there was a crowd. This was... an event. A spectacle. The atmosphere was thick with it. Every one of these people had something to feel, and none of it was good.
Then, with a time wrenching twist, I was back again. Kneeling by Rose and her eyes shot open. Except they weren't her eyes. Rosalie's eyes are indigo, different to my brown ones – they were her mother's eyes, and my mother's eyes. These were shards of onyx, sharp and black.
"You put to death an innocent man" cried Rose, who was not Rose.
"What the...?" wondered Mike, or someone, or a distant insect.
"You convict me of murder – what a cowardly lie! In truth you condemn me for doing in life what you all dare do in dreams! It festers there in the sweat of your beds, expunged now as this poisonous righteousness."
The voice spilling for Rose was her own, but as I begun to grasp the cadence, the eloquence, and the unadulterated wrath could never be, the cosmos convulsed again and I was once more part of the angry throng.
"Mark me, oh town of Swoon, oh great Connecticut colony, I shall be avenged."
I couldn't see him for all the people in front of me, who crushed forward and howled back. I could feel him though, his rage and terror. The onslaught of his oath seized me from the inside, held my heart like a shipwreck victim to a flotsam.
"So warn you children's children's children and beyond – warn them well!"
The assembly roared, scorn and tightened together as fibres on a loom. They're going to do it, I thought, all at once comprehending. String him up on this very tree.
It takes a while to hang a man. He must have been strong; he must have fought. But at last he was well and truly dead, for the knots and clots of the crowd began to unravel and disperse.
For me, the world flexed in and came out the other side. There was sunshine. And there was Rose.
"Bella . . . ," she said weakly, her eyes – they were hers – on mine. "Did I do something dumb?"
Relief was oxygen, blessed and brisk. "Yeah...no," I told her. "You fell. You probably shouldn't try to move right now. I think you lost consciousness or something."
"Whoa...really?" She blinked. Tickly shards of hair covering her face. I smoothed some away with a finger. "I think I'm okay," she said. "Nothing really hurts."
Me? I was burning up, but it would pass. I studied Rose. The position of her body was normal; nothing stuck out at odd angles. My cousin is one of those indestructible people. One of those people nothing weird or bad ever happens to. A bouncy rubber ball of a girl. Except something about the way Rose's glance flicked to Mike's – the way she seemed to suspend him for a second with an almost sexy smile – made me wonder if such people genuinely exist, or if they were just a legend we hold to so we can feel safe.
Leave me a review :) There better than sexy time with Edward...actually maybe not, but you get the gist.