Author's Note: Hello my fello fans! It took me longer than I anticipated (four months, instead of just one!), but here I am! This piece will serve as a standalone, but also as a prequel: for fans of my "So Fair and Foul a Day" and "On My Own" this is the promised story of how Molly Johnston came to be Molly Johnston. As always, reviews are welcomed.
Disclaimer: I own neither Twilight nor it's respective characters.
Prologue
A Now-Abandoned House in the Outskirts of Chicago, 1939
I stared at the cracked hand mirror, unsure. What was I seeing? Each break moved like a cobweb across the glass, in between brown clusters of dirt and the yellow signs of age. It was like someone had taken a photograph and ripped it into tiny shreds before piecing it back together again; disjointed and disfigured. My reflection, I thought with a hint of irony; the picture my newly sharpened eyesight absorbed was just as broken as I was – the fragments of my person just like the fragments of the mirror.
I couldn't remember the last time that I had seen my reflection, so I didn't know which features to attribute to those painful days I'd just endured – because it had to be days, at least - and which to attribute to the rotten card life had dealt me from the very beginning. I wasn't thick; it hadn't taken me long to figure out what had happened. Despite the agony I endured – agony wasn't a strong enough word – my mind was quicker than before. The evidence stacked up neatly; the strange man, the way he looked at me, the way things smelled – things I wanted now – things that would have revolted me before. I had become a thing now relegated to myths; a dangerous creature that I'd never believed in until it was too late. The events of the past twenty-four hours had proven it, had changed everything I ever believed about myself.
I was no longer weak. I was no longer just worthless scum, unfit for society, a disgrace by all counts. I had power now. I was filled with anger, and I could use it; I had been graced with the ability to kill, quick and ruthless and satisfying. I wasn't used to this, being a vampire, but one thing was certain; I didn't hate it.
I smiled into the mirror; for the first time in years my smile filled my whole face, shining from behind bright red eyes.