It's little more than a shack really, a little way back from the stony, grey-sanded beach, hidden by the fringes of the emerald forests of Debundscha, Cameroon, western Africa. Constant, unrelenting rain kisses the tin roof, and makes it sing. I lie under Emmett's arm, listening to the absence of a beating heart. Things could be so different if we were living. Nights spent warming each other with only our bodies, raising a family, spotting out grey hairs and teasing each other over wrinkles. Why were we cheated of that? I curl in on myself, the ache in my stomach growing too much to bear.
Emmet curls around me, and we're as close as magnetic spoons of opposite poles, and just as inseparable. The silent throb lessens a little, but I still feel all tight and watery, but of course I can't cry. I used to be able to cry, I could cry like a baby.
I would give anything to see a baby cry - and not just because it recognised me for a predator. I would love, and I know this is strange, to see a baby cry, because it misses me, its mother. I did give everything once. Well, I risked everything. But Emmett corrected my mistake, as always. I hated him for months, years, but I understand why he killed the child. I know it broke his heart to do so, she was so beautiful, with white-blonde hair, brilliant, dazzling sky-blue eyes, freckles over creamy skin, and delicate gangly limbs. Of course, after I changed her, her hair was constantly matted with blood, her eyes morphed into a grizzly red, her freckles were ironed out, like undesired creases, her skin was bleached to a dull alabaster, corpse colour white, and her limbs turned supple and lean, enabling her to be a fully-fledged ten year old monster. But she was far from immortal. It was only too easy for Emmett to rip her head from her petite shoulders as I held her in one final embrace. Olive, her name was, a far too grown up name for someone as sweet and innocent as her. Olive, who was so trusting, she barely cried out as I bit into her sweet, apple and blueberry scented skin.
"What are you thinking about?" Emmett murmurs, so quietly that no other living thing apart from me can hear him.
"Why do you ask?" I reply, my voice thick, and harsh.
"You haven't breathed in half an hour." His own breath whooshes onto my neck in the same steady rhythm. I close my eyes, squeezing them against tears that couldn't come if I tried, and take a deep, juddering breath. It's all too easy to imagine cobwebs being ripped apart by the sudden intake of air. I am nothing but a vessel of broken dreams and dead flesh, a spirit somehow trapped in an unchanging, deceased, barren body.
"Rose," Emmett sighs, and I can sense the beginnings of a lengthy monologue on how he'll always be here for me, and I'll never be alone, and I should stop dwelling on negative things and so on.
"I want to go for a swim," I say, sitting bolt upright, ripping the blanket away from our naked bodies. A few mosquitos land on my skin, break their tiny suckers on my unyielding flesh. He doesn't move. "Please?" That does it. Timid Rosalie gets her way where scary Rose might not. He drags on his shorts in a deliberate, slow motion, while I have my swimming costume on in a matter of milliseconds.
"Let's go visit your fishy friends then, little mermaid." A kiss on my head, he opens the flimsy wooden door, gently pushes me through, then before I have a chance to even taste a single raindrop, he slings me, like a sack of protesting potatoes, over his shoulder, and races down, into the roiling ocean, silencing my feeble complaints, with his hearty, wholesome laughter, until the crystal depths of the sea plunge us both in to amicable, understanding, inevitable silence.
Hey, thanks for reading, shall upload again when I get the chance, reviews would be much appreciated, and constructive criticism is more than welcome x
