thirsty
part II: new eyes
"Cause every breath I breathe
Oh, how it's killing me."
-"Narcissus", Yellow Taxicab
The fire grew softer, as though I were in an oven and someone was turning down the heat. I could hear again.
"Any minute now. It's been three days."
Carlisle, I realized. Beside me. I could smell the antiseptic hanging on his clothes.
"How will she handle it?" A soft, beautiful voice, like ice against my burning skin. "She had no warning. She'll be confused."
Please, I wanted to say. Make it stop.
Three days...it meant something. The number, the fire, they went together somehow. I can't remember. It's like I'm being boiled in hot water.
Any minute, he said. It would be over.
--
When I awoke, everything was clear.
It was like my entire life--every second--was lived through a veil, pressing my eyes against a transparent fabric and trying to see things for what they were. Every memory was as dull as such, every smell and image like flash frames of a long forgotten movie seen as a child. I smelled everything, the leather of the couch and the softener of the bed sheets. It hit me in a wave of scents, mixing together into a somewhat pleasent explosion of senses. I tensed under it--the sudden awareness--and felt my breath catch...
My breath?
It felt so...useless. Unnecessary. Empty, whistling taking of oxygen that was better suited elsewhere. I tried to stop.
Suddenly, the smells and colors disappeared, as though someone had slammed them back where they came from. My lungs did not burn, needing air. It was uncomfortable.
I breathed again.
"Bella?" Edward's cool, heavy voice whispered. I dared myself--forced myself--to open my eyelids, take in the overwhelming onslaught of obscene ticks, sights. Color. More then I thought existed. I felt like I should have gone insane, that no mind could process this many details and remain unscathed.
"Bella." His voice was like a sigh. Like he'd spent years carrying a mountain on his back and had just let it drop back onto the earth. Relief.
Words bubbled at my throat. Words that made no sense to me, but so much sense at the same time. Words foreign, that I couldn't wrap my tongue around, too swift and emotional to even comprehend. I could only gasp with a swift of cold, stale air.
I blinked. Again. And again.
"I know it's...different," he said. He was close, and I could feel his tension, his muscles constricting, as though waiting for some kind of outburst.
All I could say was, "What?"
More people, more voices. I could feel the hair on their arms and the swish of their breath. Leaning in, watching. Cullens.
"What...am...I?"
It sounded choked and foreign and confused, to my own hears, hissed between clenched teeth as a horrible burning invaded my throat like acid. It was all I could think of. Surely, I was not myself, not human. Humans breathed. Humans could feel their own heart beating against their chest. Humans could not see this much or hear this much or feel this much. This bitter cold that surrounded me. I was dead. Dead and alive at the same time.
It registered, before Edward or anyone else could say a thing. Dead. Alive. Living. Livingdead.
Vampire.
My scream was deafening.
--
"Why?"
His chest pressed into my cheek, his now warm, soft hand rubbing circles in my back. I wanted to cry, wanted to feel the salty satisfaction of tears running down my cheeks. I wanted to cough and hiccup and sputter like I did when I was younger. I wanted to pound my fist into the walls without sending the entire foundation into a heap on the ground. I wanted to feel the desperate intensity of empty lungs. I wanted my heart to beat like a raquet ball.
Instead, I got dry, unfocused eyes.
Dry.
Like sandpaper.
"The venom was already in your veins, infecting your heart. Bella, we had no choice," Edward whispered, his breath tickling my cold skin.
"You should have killed me."
The same retraction, convulsion, of his muscles curved into Rosalie's shirt. They had, apparently, replaced my blood soaked blouse during the three day period and the cool, elegant cloth felt foreign, even on my new skin. New skin. Like I had shedded.
"Don't say that." Was that a crack in his voice? A break in the lyrical harmony that accompanied every syllable he uttered? Jesus. "Please, don't say that."
We sat in the ruins of his living room, me squatted in corner, forcing oxygen through my lungs even though it was so painfully unnecessary and him, holding me agianst his chest as though it could make it suddenly go away. His bronze hair touched my forehead like a babies fingers. If that kind of comparison was at all appropriate, that is.
"What should I say, then?" I croaked, my hideously smooth voice muffled in the cuff of his shirt.
I felt his dry swallow against the top of my head. "I'm sorry. I'm so...so sorry."
I knew what he meant. I just knew.
Thirsty, I thought, biting at my lip. I'm thirsty.
As though reading my mind, he whispered in my hair, "We should hunt."
--
Months past.
The Cullens placed their steps carefully, standing on their toes as though afraid of what other damage I could cause to their household possessions. I had, apparently, the strength of a newborn; where the human blood still clutched to my veins like parasites, pumping my muscles and giving me the strength of ten Emmetts. Which was cool, in a sick kind of way.
Edward showed me how to hunt, how to find the animal and beat it down and snap it's neck and break it's bones and drink it's blood. It's wonderful...delicious blood.
"I'm in mourning," I whispered to myself one night while I stared at the new ceiling of the room Carlisle had cleared out for me. "I'm grieving. In mourning. A human life lost."
That's what it was, wasn't it? Grieving. Mourning a life.
I don't know why I said this. It just sprang to mind.
I couldn't go back to school, and I was declared missing. The last sighting of me had been in the Ballet Studio, where they found abnormal amounts of blood. They sent out search party. I caught Alice and Jasper watching my face flash on the news, my father in uniform. Crying. At a press conference.
He never cries.
I think I broke a few chairs.
--
They wouldn't let me get too close to the road. Control, Bella, they said. It's hard to control.
My resentment grew with every new restriction. Every mindful wall they placed, every leash they tied around my neck. My tension grew. I missed Renee and Charlie and...fuck...even Mike. I hated this house, I decided. I hated the cleancleanclean floors and the spotless furniture and how no matter how much mud Emmett dragged in the rugs seemed to absorb it and God this house!
One day--or night, I can't remember--I tested myself. Didn't hunt, just smashed rocks in my palm and dented the Volvo with my pinky nail and dry sobbed at how I very clearly wasn't human. Edward came in, stared, stepped foreword, stepped back, shuffled on his heels and sat down. Watching, waiting.
"Can I see Charlie?" I asked, denting his passenger door with my thumb.
The noise he made was something like a cough, and he wisely kept his distance. "I..." he said quietly. "I...don't think that would be safe. For Charlie. Your still young, we don't know how much...control you have."
"He thinks I'm dead." My voice was horribly broken, like burnt wood being crunched under a hiking boot.
I didn't look at him, but I could imagine his eyes sparkling with pity and anguish and whatever else he felt for me. I knew what he would say, but still I pushed and prodded him like a child the weekend before Christmas.
"Maybe..." he said, "next year, after you've made it past the tentative months..."
I stood up and started towards the back door, to the woods. My throat burned. "I'll hunt."
I leaped from the door and ran off into the darkness of the forest.
--
Days turned to weeks and weeks to months and soon it was a year and I should be eighteen.
Charlie came, and that was when I lost it.
I was wedged between Edward and the edge of the sofa, staring at the television without interest, waiting for the sun to set.
Carlisle had been talking about moving to Alaska for a while, get me away from this town city state and I felt the need to object but I couldn't, wouldn't. I was tired but I couldn't sleep and goddamnit I was hungry.
The doorbell rang, Carlisle answered it.
Muffled voices, should be indistiguisable, but I heard every word.
Charlie, how are you?
Fine, just fine. Have you gotten any word on Bella?
Pause.
I heard the tapping of his boots--so familiar--and a sudden scent carried itself through the air, swarming me, suffocating me.
God.
Edward felt it too, gripping me by the shoulder and gesturing to Jasper--sitting at the coffee table with a thick volume. Edward had taught me to resist, to stop breathing and move as far away as possible.
I tried, but it smelled so damn good.
"Edward..." I squeaked, ripping my fingers into his hand and mindlessly struggling against him.
"Emmett," he hissed quitely. "Emmett, get down here."
I was to my feet now, pushing, resisting Jasper's waves of sickening calm.
Hungry I'm hungry so hungry oh God
If my mouth could water, it would.
I was now dragging my feet into the floor, struggling with the ferocity of a rabid animal. Horrible, savage screeches ripped through my throat and so hungry so hungry so hungry.
This smell wasn't my father, it was food and I was starving and it was there and it smelled so good.
"Argh!" I screamed, sending my fist flying behind me, feeling the sickening impact of my knuckle with Edward's cheek. He remained unmoved, didn't even flinch, dug his heels into the floor, called for Emmett again. Stop it, Jasper, with the goddamn calm. I'm hungry, so hungry, so hungry.
Thirsty, hungry, food.
I saw him, now. Those cartoons, you know, where the characters are so hungry they see their friends as steaks and chickens and try to eat them? It was like that. Except he still looked like Charlie. Except that the last time I saw him, he was not something I would eat and now he was and--
Christ.
I did a Superwomen dive from Edward's grasp and only Carlisle's stone-like body was keeping me from ripping his throat out. Something, a small part of my brain begged and pleaded with me he's your father he's your father he's your father but I couldn't listen couldn't stop couldn't coudn't coudn't.
Charlie's eyes were saucers, tinged red, his face pale and taut, a shade of yellow from too much junk food. A vein throbbed temptingly on his throat and I growled and hissed like a jungle cat. Carlisle was screaming, Charlie was screaming, Edward Emmett Jasper screaming and I was thirsty.
"Bella? Is that Bella?" he cried, fear and relief and more and more fear breaking his voice into thousands of pieces. I couldn't see anymore, couldn't hear or feel only smell, smell this wonderful, beautiful smell and I'm so thirsty, so thirsty.
"Charlie, go!" Carlisle shouted, the loudest his voice has ever been and he did. My father left with his sweet smell, running to his truck and I could smell his tears, salty, the taste of heartbreak. The taste of fear.
Finally, once the smell was gone and the air was still and I finally succumbed to Jasper's waves of silence, I fell to the floor, Edward and Carlisle still half holding my arms and sobbed.
Alice was here now, Esme and Rosalie. All crowding me, watching me with the same aching sadness in their eyes. My fault, these looks in their eyes. Hurting everyone, everyone because I'm so hungry and I'm weak. Frail and week and a monster a horrible monster oh God oh God.
"Bella," Edward whispered, crouching down to whisper to me. "It's okay, it's fine. You didn't hurt him, you didn't hurt anybody. Every things fine."
"No, no, no, no!" Screeching and thrashing like a five year old.
I wanted to eat my own father.
--im a monster im a monster im a monster--
I was on my feet, stronger then Edward or Emmett or any of the Cullens and running out the door, wishing desperately for tears to come, to verify I still had a soul. I didn't, though, so my cheeks remained dry and, no matter how much I ran, I couldn't run out of breath.
The sun set finally over Forks, Washington, and I left it behind my heels.