Chapter 1 – A new light
I expected it to be more silent, a sort of low humming but I was wrong as I strolled through the Cimmerian night of Nuremberg. With nothing in my pockets but a small cell phone I clung to my solitude striving to be forgotten; to become obsolete.
The air was scented in a sea of perfumes, freshly baked cheese bread, croissants, tenderized meat from the Butcher, brewing beer, and not one lavished interest on me. It was just another city, another country, another place where all the statues and paintings somehow reminded me of her.
Wherever I traveled, sometimes anywhere or at times even nowhere, she was there. Her frail human physique, heart shaped face, and warm docile chocolate brown eyes haunted me. Every step I took was like a stroke of midnight, and it began as it always did, when the ghost of her memory came to torment me. I was forced to recall her vacant expression and saddened faltering eyes, as I bid her farewell.
There were days when I believed I couldn't bare the unending remorse, or that happy dagger that cleaved at my chest. It hacked, slashed, and tore free my dead bowels, tearing out and serving the devil my beat less heart on a silver platter. I had no need for it after all.
What I had inflicted upon her was beyond mortal sin, it was destructive and vile. I had driven a stake through that gentle soap bubble; I filled it with incurable poison, and left it to rot. And all that, was little over four decades ago. Four decades spent in utter ruin, in which every minute, when air filled my lungs it reminded me of her. How grateful I used to be, when her chest expanded and filled with air, giving me all I needed to live.
I barely paid attention to the BMW's, buses, and street trolley rushing on by me. The loud blare of their engines was just too quiet to infringe on my heavy thoughts. I rounded into an alley, smelling the distant odor of garbage cans, and vermin. I passed a tavern or Wirtschaft,hardly inhaling the scent of malt beer and brats. The incoherent mental ramblings of the drunks inside were almost soothing over the jabbing despair in my head.
There was light lingering within me though, somewhere between the guilt and yearning to return to her. In this very moment, this second, she could be lounging in a rocking chair cuddling herself into warm cotton blanket. I saw her with a book in her hands, maybe Pride & Prejudice or Sense & Sensibility, her favorites. She also held a cup of green tea around her finger, and relaxed in front of a fireplace made of cedar and bricks.
Grey strains colored her lovely seaweed like mahogany hair, and on the bridge of her nose sat a pair of reading glasses. And just maybe, as painful yet inspiring as it was, she wasn't rocking alone in front of the searing fire. An old man enveloped in another blanket, sitting next to her and reading too, and occasionally tossing an affectionate smile at her.
This was what I had hoped for. I longed for he to rid herself of my memory, and foul wish for immortality. Though I can't predict what would have happened had I stayed but I never could have erased the roaring torch of life inside her. Or could I have?
Would my subconscious desire to keep her forever, have swayed me to give her an impenetrable armor? Could I have seen into her eyes, and cast my reflection in their burgundy glow? The trees passing us in a blur as we ran, matched for velocity, through a green wilderness? There was comfort in that thought too because she would be here with me, in this very lonely moment.
But I had to protect her above anything else. I had to throw a veil of safety on her vulnerable form. Every minute, hour, and day she spent by my side her life was in peril. Against my better judgment and out of selfish craving's I endorsed it anyway. And all that time I knew, eventually, eventually, eventually, something grisly is going to happen. When that small cubic drop of blood soared through her cracked skin, and Jasper's thoughts became inflamed with thirst; I knew I was right.
I had no choice then, as much as it devastated me, I had to leave my lamb behind. Why oh why that cruel fate intertwined our destiny's I'll never know. Maybe it was it's way to punish me for slaughtering the people in my decade's crusade for human blood. That would be a plausible explanation, wouldn't it?
I had to break her, I had to tell the most notorious lie I ever lied. I had never done anything more detestable. My sweet, beautiful, and innocent Bella, my meteor that flared across my horizons setting everything aglow; how I struck at you. She ambled through my world and new seeds of life sprouted and blossomed. The nebulous sky unveiled itself, and revealed an endless delight of glistening stars.
I stopped in my pace. A large hole in my stomach compressed me, it throbbed, and pulsed through me. My fingers shivered and dug my unbreakable nails into my diamond palms. My lips parted, ending their hardened line, and trembled as if I had the shivers. The hole spread branches through my body, greedily consuming, puncturing, splitting, and conquering me. It asserted control and used my woe against me.
These momentary lapses were of lesser quantity in recent years. My veins were fueled with a type of liquid misery that melted me. But as time passed my sorrow turned hard as granite. The hole was bolted shut with a rock so it couldn't grow. But every once in a while, the rock was smashed into pebbles, and the misery spilled over me again.
I squeezed the sides of my torso with the shaking arms I had, trying to minimize the expansion of that hole. Slowly, as I swallowed and heaved with breaths the hole shrunk, and filled it with my rock again. I banished, as impossible as it was, Bella's image from my mind. I tilted over, still standing on my feet, smashing my belly. I sighed, cleansed, as I became whole again.
I took a look about me to see where I had gone. Thinking of Bella and the past four distraught decades of anguish my sense of orientation was flushed. I was long out of the alley, and near a cathedral. I stood up straight and continued to walk down the street to nowhere with one arm still wrapped around my stomach. No human minds were close to have seen my crumbling muscles, and despairing face.
As I walked I began to think about my family. Rarely did I pick up the phone to check in with them. Once I realized I couldn't set foot on the same continent as she they implored me to come home, and not vanish into Europe. I couldn't oblige. I hated myself for making Carlisle and Esme worry and often considered going home. But in my state of mind seeing me would only cause greater concern for them.
Just a few months ago the buzzing in my pocket snapped me out of my trance, and Carlisle was on the phone.
His voice was sad and tired. "Edward," he announced semi happily. "How have you been? Where are you now?" Whenever they called I seemed to be in a different nation of Europe. The last time it was France.
"I'm in Munich, Germany Carlisle. I'm doing okay," I had answered lying. "How is everyone at home?" They had just recently migrated again. They moved from Madison, Wisconsin, to upstate New York and close to Canada.
"Everyone is doing well, Esme's blueprints turned out splendid. She did a marvelous job and is really proud of herself. Rosalie and Emmett are in Brazil, celebrating yet another honeymoon," he said laughing, trying to lighten the mood. "Alice has been helping Esme decorate the house. They've been painting and buying furniture and decor like lamps, oil paintings, pots, chandeliers, curtains, and flower seeds for the back yard."
From the sound of it they were leading peaceful life's, as always. "What about Jasper and you?"
I noticed Carlisle's reluctant sigh, and felt ashamed over leading away from why he truly called me. It was the same, every time.
"Jasper's been doing a lot of studying at the Jefferson Community College here in Watertown, he wanted to further his view of philosophy and comparative literature," Carlisle said.
"That's good, I'm glad he's keeping busy," a sharp edge in my tone betrayed my casual voice. It was the fifth time in forty years that my speech had leaked the wee drips of sourness. There was no legit reason as to why.
Never, never once in all the time since the event and now had I blamed Jasper. I always chided myself. If I hadn't exposed Bella to my world Jasper would never have had that faithful collapse. There wouldn't be need for him to strife for penance. The guilt was misplaced, and the fault was lain out before my feet. "Edward?"
I blinked twice before remembering that Carlisle was still on the line, "Sorry Carlisle, I just dozed off a bit."
"So what about yourself?" I inquired. Carlisle had a ritual though, that he performed in every new place.
"I applied for a position as head surgeon at the local memorial hospital. I'm still awaiting their reply but the interview went smoothly. Alice predicted they were still debating over me and someone that is, well, more experienced,"Carlisle chuckled. What a joke I had thought bemused, if those ignorant humans only knew of Carlisle's century long exploits.
"Surely they will pick you Dr. Cullen, you and your impressive resume," I mimicked his voice perfectly, lightening the mood even deeper. Undoubtedly, it would be in vain, and Carlisle's pending question would arise soon enough.
"Do you really think I sound like that?" he questioned humored. I laughed half-heartedly.
"Only when you use your angry voice," I snickered. I could see Carlisle shaking his head, and rolling his eyes.
"I don't even think I have an angry voice," he challenged. "Although, to be honest, I might have a rougher tone when disciplining child patients," he mocked. That would be worth paying money to see.
Carlisle laughed a short time longer until he sighed, and I knew the atmosphere might just grow uncomfortable any second. "I'm glad to hear some life in you again son," he murmured elated.
But he and I both knew that it was untrue. Carlisle had known me for so long that he had become immune to my charade. Perhaps he didn't even think it was one but that I was desperately trying, failing horribly in the process.
I could hear Carlisle adjusting his chair in the background of the phone, sitting up, and I distressed over his coming disappointment. I had hoped he would surrender given enough time but he prevailed, valiantly reaching forward.
"Edward," he began swallowing nervously, "Son, I know you've heard this before and you're probably tiresome of the subject but, Edward, have you considered coming home?"
I squeezed my eyes shut, a mask of sheer grieve had trapped my face.
"Edward," Carlisle continued, sensing my bitter silence, "I'm not going to say I understand what you're going through because it would be a lie. But I am going to say that life is still full, and if you continue down this self-destructive road you'll risk being left behind." Carlisle's pleading words shuffled my insides excruciatingly.
"I don't want to see my son becoming a decadent statue, void of the simplest pleasures in life." Carlisle only spoke to easily with rue in his voice. Perhaps he felt liable over the catastrophe he couldn't help avoid. Either way, he shouldn't direct blame towards himself.
"Carlisle," I spoke uneasy, "I'm, just not, ready, to come back," I stuttered.
"It's been forty years Edward. We've only caught glimpse of you less than a handful. Esme, Emmett, Alice, and we others miss you terribly. Do you think she, "he raised his voice at the word, "would have wanted you to live like this? Always in doubt and regret?"
I repressed the rumbling hiss in the back of my throat. The mere idea of Bella wanting a Utopian life style for me was rubbish. She should have been thrilled over my departure. I couldn't give her what any other man could, so why cling to an old scratched up stone?
I groaned quietly, feeling weary. "Carlisle to the rest of you it might seem like years but to me, the events unfold again every single day," I said painfully. "I have to live with the temerity of my own actions and the savage emotions that follow. I can't come home until I can learn to live with it and without affecting you."
Frustrated Carlisle's voice carried on, "Edward we're a family. What hurts you hurts us too. If you come home I'm sure we can work through this together." I withheld a sob building inside my chest. They didn't understand that they too were reminders of the time spent with the most exquisite person I had ever known, and loved.
"Please come home," Carlisle had made his final plea, "For Esme's sake Edward."
But I couldn't, not now, and maybe not forever. I didn't like troubling Esme so but I couldn't budge. The conversation promptly weakened into the realm of obscurity. Carlisle as always was left with nothing and couldn't convey me to come home. Frowning and crestfallen, and with a lowly goodbye he hung up. The urge to rip off my head was tempting then.
The fleeting appetite to physically punish myself was only strengthened when two weeks later, Esme called. The palaver with Esme was just as fruitless. It was nearly a perfect copy of the dialogue exchanged with Carlisle. Only Esme asked me to come home for Carlisle's sake. And again, I had to decline.
Thinking about them distracted me enough to leave the streets of the German city behind me, and I wandered off until standing atop and in front of a forest. My road came to halt there.
I contorted my face irate, there was something nagging at me. I've felt it for some time; maybe as long as ten years now. I huffed strained but filled my nostrils with the calming scent of pine. I looked across the tops of the pointy trees and watched as the night wittingly resigned to the dawn.
Bella, I let her name echo through my head. Her name was a double-edged sword filling me with moments of pleasure but burning me at the same time. The more I relived the events of another life time the more powerful that nagging became. I was hesitantly capitulating to it. I knew what it was, that nagging, but I had always exiled it.
What I did to her, was it truly such an atrocity? Of course it was, it's undeniable. But that nagging, it made me think of the other side of the medallion. Humans heal so much faster than vampires. Their life's have meaning and purpose compared to us, as we remain the way we always were. I didn't know how much I hurt her. It hurt me even deeper the way she accepted it, that I didn't love her. What a heinous crime. How could she embrace the lie after I declared my love for her to the world?
So maybe, instead of atrocity, it was kindness that led me away from her. I could never have given her a future, and one that she deserved. She would have grown old as I stayed by her side. Nevertheless, she would have always been my Bella, and always beautiful. But it would have robbed her of so many things.
I had to let her go, for her own good. I wanted her to have it all, everything a human life could offer. I aspired for her to go to college, study whatever field of interest she wanted, then go and live her dreams. I wanted the whole world to be her garden to explore. With me, yes, some of these tasks could have been accomplished. But the things that truly mattered like life, love and a family were turned to pillars of dust.
The nagging in my heart might be misleading. By chance, possibly, it wasn't just some badgering emotion. It was something that's been trying to leak through the gaps in my heart. It's been trying to reach me for so long, and I had revoked it for all that time.
It wasn't a nuisance was it? I questioned myself. It was a light. It was forgiveness.
Subconsciously my mind opened the gates to forgiveness. And like a raging river it worked its way to my forsaken heart. It was trying to tell me that suffering is not eternal. That if you start with yourself, and accept the past, that all sins could be made moot. What I did to Bella was to protect her, and not harm her. Maybe I began to understand that. As much as it tormented me to leave her behind I knew it was for the best.
After forty-two years I finally understood that it was the right thing to do. And by some divine intervention my stubborn head finally gripped the fact that I couldn't go on like this forever. I doubted I would ever find someone that could allure me the way she did. But I always had our memories of those passionate times when I bathed in her delicious fragrance. My only wish is that she found true happiness and lived a wholly life.
The sun broke over the horizon and revealed a magnificent dawn. It was my first sun rise in decades. She threw her rays of warmth over the stunning trees, making them glitter in an everlasting emerald glow. They radiated with juicy life, turning the air into a bouquet of luxurious aromas. The sun turned the forest into a field of Christmas trees, as they kindled with sparkles of lustrous light.
When her beams hit me my cold skin immediately absorbed her heat. My body reflected the sun sending rainbows leaping across the trees. My lips twitched and a sound like a knife being scratched against pavement could be heard, while a crooked smile danced across my face. I looked into the sun seeing her perfect circle shape and felt new hope within me.
"Maybe it is time for me to go home, and play a tune on the old piano," I smiled into the light and waxed myself in her adoring blaze.