Resisting My Darkness.
During Midnight Sun - Chapter One
Jasper's Thoughts
The scent was truly intoxicating. No other word, in any other tongue of the world could describe it. Intoxicating. The fragrance lapped at my nostrils like the tide moving in from the sea, splashing at my senses tantalisingly. It took all of my restraint, all of my humanity that I clung to so desperately, not to discard my morals and dive in.
The sound, oh God, that sound. That humming murmur of pulses rising and falling, jumping quickly, or ebbing slowly. The sound was so vigorous, so multiple, that I could almost dance to the never-ending beat. And it was endless, constantly there.
Lub, lub. Lub, lub. Lub, lub.
Each heartbeat bringing with it a fresh new round of temptation, a brand shiny new reason to abandon everything I had built up and just lunge for the nearest petal-skin covered vein I could find.
And the taste. Though it dulled in infinite comparison to the actual flavour of that sweet, sweet nectar gushing down my throat, it was enough to set my taste buds on edge and my venom pouring into my mouth, swilling around my teeth.
My own personal hell. Edward liked to compare this lunch-room to some version of his purgatory, but he had no idea. Not one. He had no idea of the fiery inferno that raged within me, slicing the inside of my throat with its curse.
He heard that, turning to stare at me with injured eye. But I turned my head, facing elsewhere. It was true - he was clueless to my suffering.
Oh, he thought he knew. He thought he knew how easily it would be for me to single-handedly massacre the collection of humans before one of my siblings even began to stop me. He believed that he was privy to my every desire and whim.
But after centuries of existence, one tends to get quite adept at hiding their thoughts from nosy intruders to their minds.
In reality, it was more the knowledge that I could kill each and every human with a single flick of the wrist and snap of the teeth that made my resistance all that much more weaker. The fact that if I were to bend, to truly give up the fight and allow my true nature to become dominant once again, the burn that savaged my nerve endings and singed my throat would be quenched.
The tight-rope that I had chosen to tread, the narrow path against a mountain-side, was a dangerous one. To keep my balance, I had to keep my senses about me. I had to continually be aware of my surroundings so I didn't fall… however, that meant that my awareness had to be upon the humans at all times.
Which made resisting all the more difficult.
My reasons swarmed around me, mocking me, challenging me, empowering me. All contradicting me and switching allegiances just to make my existence all the more painful.
What little humanity I was clinging to with my finger-tips would certainly wither and die if I were to take yet another life. For years under Maria's watchful eye I had hunted indiscriminately, playing the hand of God as I picked and chose who and who wouldn't die that night. I had killed innocents, people with lives and families, people who would leave behind memories and grief, just to fuel my own cursed half-life.
The sanity that Alice had weaved into my veins would dissipate. As decades passed at the right-hand side of Maria, the monster in me had ran free, killing all in it's path. But eventually, the blood in my eyes had shadowed my every move, the debt of life I had stolen away began top pile up on my shoulders, bearing me down.
My gift, or my curse if you looked at it through my eyes, the swirling and tumbling emotions of my victims influenced me in a way no-one sane should ever know. I lived their death through with them as I stole it away. It was almost like I had been reliving my final night of pure humanity - my last night as Jasper Whitlock.
I gave those same memories to others.
And my family. If I were ever to earn the disapproval of Carlisle, a man who to call an angel would not be exaggerating, I could never truly live with myself. Those feelings of condemnation would haunt me wherever I trod the earth, those amber eyes of displeasure dogging my every footstep.
And, finally, there was the most important of all my reasons. My one true reason for even considering this way of this. My reason, not only for this diet, but for my entire pitiful existence.
My Alice.
Ever since that fateful night in a diner in Philadelphia when the light had danced so carefree into my darkened life, taken my hand and never let go, Alice had been my life. My one true soul-mate, or whatever hokey word you wish to chose.
Poets of great love stories that will forever echo through the eternity of literature can't even begin to sum up the intensity of my love and devotion for that tiny little vampire that managed to fill up my heart with only seven simple words
"You've kept me waiting a long time"
Alice was the one I lived for. The one I continued to fight for, fight myself for. I would die before I let anyone touch a single hair on her precious head. Even if it was my lack of self-control that hurt her. Seeing her face break in sorrow would cut me deeper than venom or fire ever could.
My throat contorted as a petite human girl shifted slightly from her table, standing directly in the air path of one of the cafeteria's ventilation shafts. Her scent hit me in like a bullet out of a gun, a train heading for a tunnel.
It would be so easy to kill her.
Her flesh would be like butter beneath my razor teeth as I sliced through the layers of skin to reach that pulsing, throbbing vein that lay waiting for me within her jugular.
Her hands would scrabble at me, fruitlessly trying to make her escape from the reaper. She would try to scream for help, but when no air can enter your throat, it's not a manageable feat.
Her blood would coarse through my body. I would feel the forbidden nectar charge my every cell like electricity. My body would hum with energy. And my throat would finally dim from its never-ending torture.
I jerked out of my fantasy, my body moving forward as a kick to the back of my chair jolted me. I growled, snarling at the fact that someone would be foolish enough to dissuade me from my prey.
My eyes locked with Edward's. His ochre to my crazy ebony. He sent a pointed look at my body before turning away. I checked myself, tempted to pat myself down and check I was really there.
My hands were fists in the table, denting and moulding the plastic beneath my fingers til it warped as though it had been melted. My body was tensed, ready to spring towards the girl from my fantasies. I was on the balls of my feet, facing the girl.
My teeth were bared - dripping with poison.
"Sorry," I muttered, pulling my lips back over my teeth and attempting to relax.
Alice's hand reached mine under the table, her tiny digits entwining with mine. "You weren't going to do anything. I could see that." She smiled so reassuringly, that I almost believed her.
But then I could taste the guilt swarming around her. She was lying to me. Lying to me like a mother lies to placate a screaming child. I was pathetic. I always would be, especially in her eyes.
And that, that cut me deeper than I thought anything possible.
"I know who she is!" I snapped, cutting off her description of the girl mid-flow.
Her face betrayed hurt for the tiniest of moments, before she erased it. But I caught it, and my vampiric memory pasted it painfully before my eyes even as she smiled reassuringly and squeezed my hand once, releasing it gently.
But, as she got up and danced away from the table, as though she had not a care in the world, the understanding that lingered in her every movement reached me, sinking me into a pit of self-hatred.
She was my wife. My wife. Sickness and health, richer and poorer, better and worse, for as long as we both shall live. And I had pushed her away like a sack of garbage.
There was no way on this earth that I could ever deserve a creature such as she. Alice was the living embodiment of goodness, so pure and kind. And I had spent a life where hate was my constant companion and I had to restrain myself from slaughtering everything that held a pulse under its skin.
As she reached the doors of the canteen, she turned and smiled at me, waving once before heading away.
I watched my safe-harbour depart from my eyesight, and sank under the waves of depression that dragged me to the bottom of the sea and then threw me back against the rocks.
I deserved nothing more.
Because, no matter how much I tried to resist the darkness around me, it always found a way back in.