ENCOUNTER

"Will that be all, Ma'am?"

I was checking out at the local Safeway, so it's not like the place was terribly crowded, but I was self-conscious. It felt so weird to be around people again. I still wasn't used to it.

"Yes, thank you," I mumbled. I didn't look the zit-faced teen running the register in the eyes as I replied and I grabbed up my bag and moved to the front of the store at a near dash. For some reason, I felt especially nervous here, and I realized that it was more than what was caused by my discomfort with the people I was sure I felt looking at me. Something at the back of my mind was bugging me, but I wasn't quite sure what. I stopped by the door and pretended to check the contents of my bag—even though I could easily tell everything was in there that should be—to waste time so I could maybe figure out what was bothering me before I left the store.

Shampoo. Ramen. Razor. Deoderant. Pads. Hairbrush. Toothbrush. Can Opener.

The last was for my Uncle, whom I was staying with here in Forks. He had lost his old can opener, which he needed to eat his nasty lunches of cold pork and beans on the job. He was the overseer of a logging company, and he owned a small, isolated cabin on the side of a mountain. He was only home about three nights a week. He had no wife, a "confirmed bachelor" to phrase it politely. So there were some things lacking at his house for a 16 year old girl.

For some reason-I don't know, maybe it was because he was one of only five people I had actually spoken to since coming back to civilization, or my paranoia-anyway, it caught my attention when the boy running the register spoke to the girl who had just come up to the checkout.

"Oh, um, hey Bella! How's your summer been? I mean, how are you?" His voiced cracked high on the 'hey'.

"Um, pretty good Eric." I wasn't engrossed in their conversation. I really didn't care. But it drew my attention enough that I glanced up at them. There was zit-face, and the girl he was talking to, and then…I looked behind the girl. And it was there. The reason I felt uneasy: my subconscious had been warning me of a danger I hadn't noticed.

There was a monster in the store, behind her. A Vampire.

o o o

Now, I'm sure you're very confused at this point, and I owe you a few explanations. Coming back to civilization? Living with my uncle? Vampires?? Let me backtrack a little here. I'll answer the last question at least, for now. It seems the most important one at the moment.

But before that, my name: Cristen Anna Renhaus, or Cris. More important, you should know that I am not an ordinary human. I can… feel things……see things….. it's….. very hard to explain. I could maybe compare it to X-ray vision, in one aspect: for example, if I look at a car, I see with my eyes what anyone else would see: the exterior of a car. But in my minds' eye I see something very different. In my mind, I can clearly "see" every single internal working part, how they connect, how they work together, and I can also sense the fine layer of dust on the cars' surface, and tell if the tires are too thin, and… you get the point. Simply put, I can detect every single physical element of an object without touching it, with my eyes closed. And it doesn't work on just cars. Everything that exists, I see like this: trees, animals, rocks, buildings, even people. Especially people.

Because with living things, most of all people, I do more than just see: I feel. The human body is one of the most complex pieces you could ever imagine. Eventually its constructs get so small that even I can't see how they work, like at the cellular level… Anyway, you don't need the details, just the concept: back to the point, when I am physically close to a person, I not only see how their body works, I feel it, and my body mimics theirs. When people are afraid, or happy, or sad, or angry, or anything else, their body responds. Blood pumps faster. Heart slows down. They get a stomachache. And so forth. It's very annoying. One of the main reasons I left civilization in the first place (like I said-I'll get to that later).

There is a third part to my ability. I can see, I can feel, and… I can control. The hypothetical car I was talking about earlier? If I felt like switching up the wires, carving a hole in the gas tank, disconnecting the battery, I could do all that within a minute and not even touch the thing. So when my body mimics the changes in others, I can manipulate my heart and bloodstream back to a normal rate. But it's risky. The movements are imprecise, and if I didn't know the inside of my own body so well, I would probably accidentally kill myself.

And there is one other flaw. I can control the influence of other's emotions by controlling my physical response. But I cannot control pain. Raw, physical pain. So imagine someone cuts their leg open. Blood starts spilling out of their wound. I happen to be next to them. Their nerves tell their body about the pain, and they tell mine. I can't help feeling it. I can't stop their pain, or mine. The only thing I can do is run away—it lessens over a distance. And over time, I have learned to temporarily disconnect myself from the pain center in my brain, but even then, I still feel about a tenth of the pain at best. So walking down the street, living in a city, I know who has a headache. Stomachache. Cramps. Bruises. Sunburn. Arthritis. You get the idea.

I have no idea why I can do this. Why this happens to me. There is no one to ask, and no one to answer.

I don't tell you this so you can pity me. Pity is worthless. And I don't mean to bore you with the freakish sci-fi details of my life. It's just that, if you're going to hear my story, you're going to need to know how I experience my surroundings for any of this to make sense.

And for now, I think you know enough about me. I'll explain everything else later, at a better time. But for now, back to the story: I was staring at a monster.

o o o

Externally, the thing was an unbelievably hot guy. Seriously. Hot. But that didn't distract me—much—from what I was seeing on its' inside.

There was no life inside it. It was cold. Dense and hard like a stone. Motionless. No heartbeat, no bloodflow. There was no blood in its veins at all, just some liquid I couldn't name. That wasn't to say it didn't have blood, though. In the huge empty cavern of where a human should have had many organs—intestines, liver, kidneys, bladder, stomach, pancreas—was one giant sack connected to the esophagus. And it was full of cold blood.

I would have been freaked out regardless, but I was even more frightened because I knew just what it was. And how did I know what it was? Let's just say I've…."seen their type" before. (Another story for later.)

My first instinct: RUN!

My second instinct: RUN FASTER!

But I was frozen to the spot. Then the thing wrapped its dangerous arms around the girl.

"We need to get going, Bella." Its voice was low and eerily smooth. With a shock I realized that what seemed an endless moment of horror in realizing what the thing was, had only been a few seconds, and the conversation between the three—the boy, the girl, and the monster—had had no gaps.

"Hang on, let me pay first." She dug around in her pockets.

"Here, Eric, keep the change." It tossed some money at him.

"Hey!" she shouted.

The thing was pulling the girl swiftly towards the door—towards me—as it simultaneously grabbed the small plastic bag from the checkout.

And, even worse, as it was headed out the door, as it passed me, I looked at it—I couldn't help it.

It looked at me back, just one quick glance, and our eyes met.

Cold anger was frozen there. And fear? For once, my body did not mimic, so I had no idea what it was feeling—could it feel?—and besides, my body was too busy reacting to my own fear to tell.

The door opened and closed; the bell jangled.

I felt their forms moving farther and farther away, and when they got to their car, I was somehow sent even further into shock when I felt a second monster waiting for them there. The car started quickly and they sped away.

And then they were gone.

The shock wore off. And underneath the shock was numbness. Nothing.

I'm not entirely sure how long I stood there, but eventually the zit-faced guy—Eric, I guess—somehow appeared right beside me.

"Are you okay? Do you need something?" I could tell he was genuinely concerned, and… nervous. About what? Did he know, too? Did Vampires have some kind of free reign over this town? My paranoia flared.

I looked up at him, and he blushed. He had glasses, zits, and inky hair. No, he couldn't know. He must just get nervous talking to girls. Great.

It was then that I realized that my mouth had been hanging open all this time, and that I had dropped my bag. I snapped my mouth shut and snatched my stuff off the floor.

"Um, no, I'm…." What was I right now? "…fine." I was definitely not fine.

I made a break for it before he could answer.