Chapter 7:

She woke in the hospital in the middle of the night and blinked a few times and faded away again. She thought she saw Alice by her bed—a sad figure watching her sadly—but when she woke again there was no Alice.

She was in a coma for two days. They said she had experienced some sort of heart failure caused by complications arising from blood loss. The doctor asked her how she had lost the blood but she had nothing to tell him. She was laying in a small bed with peagreen sheets. Her badge and gunbelt were on the nightstand beside a plastic vase of flowers with a note signed by some of the guys at the station. She looked for any evidence of Alice but there was not even a get well card. She asked the doctor if Alice had been to see her but the doctor didn't know who she was talking about. She asked the nurse as well when the nurse came to take the IV out of her arm but the nurse didn't know who Alice was either.

Bella already had a bad feeling. She was weak but she managed to get up and use the bathroom and when she came back she sat on the edge of the bed in her hospital gown and called Alice. Her stomach felt like a solid block of rock inside her. The call when to messagebank. Bella had no idea what to say and disconnected without saying anything. She called the house as well but no one picked up.

The only visitor she had was the chief. He came in the afternoon, wearing a frown and his police uniform. He closed the door and took off his hat.

"Well," he said gruffly. "How are you feeling?"

Bella didn't answer.

The chief's frown deepened. He was holding his broad brimmed hat at his chest, like a man at a funeral, and he exhaled through his nose.

"You wanna tell me what's been going on with you, Swan? The doctors tell me it was blood loss that triggered whatever happened to you. But they didn't find cuts or any other signs of self-harm. Only them holes in your neck. You wanna tell me why there's teeth marks around them holes?"

"I can't."

"Can't or won't?"

"Can't."

"Does it have something to do with that girl you took in? She have some kind of blood fetish? You been letting that girl do that to you?"

Bella looked away, an angry flush coming into her face. The chief glared at her and then went on, his voice rough and disapproving.

"She into drugs as well?"

"Drugs?"

"There was drugs in your system. Thought the doctors didn't notice? Methamphetamines. Guess you had a happy new year, didn't you?"

Bella's eyes burned and she kept them fixed on the chest of drawers in the corner. The chief shook his head and put his hat back on. Then he came over and took her badge and gunbelt from the bedside table. She didn't even glance at him.

"I'm sorry about this, Swan," he said, softening slightly, "but you know the rules. There won't be any charges, but you can't show up at work wasted and half dead and expect people to trust you with a badge and a gun."

He opened the door and turned back. Bella was still staring across the room from the hospital bed. Pale. Vacant. He took another breath and shook his head.

"Your daddy would be disappointed," he said.

Then he left.

Bella wanted to leave that afternoon but the doctor kept her overnight for observation. She kept waiting for Alice to come. Lying awake well into the night, waiting even beyond visiting hours. Waking later still and staying up until she drifted away again. Waiting for Alice to come but Alice did not come and did not come.

She was released in the morning and left to walk home, her police cruiser repossessed. She had been admitted with no clothes but her uniform and it would probably be the last time she ever wore it, wrapped up in her jacket and hurrying through the snow under a bleak and sunless sky. Shivering. Shuffling along the sidewalk without even a shadow to keep her company. A gloomy morning. The streets deserted. Gray slush in the gutters and small birds struggling through the gray and glazed atmosphere. They had given her a transfusion at the hospital and physically she felt almost fine. Emotionally she felt on the verge of some terrible hysteria. She was blinking back tears. Sniffing. Soon she started jogging.

When she reached the house she fumbled with the cold keys and got the door open. She walked in and closed it again, looking about for Alice.

"Alice?" she called.

No answer. No footsteps on the stairs.

Nothing.

Bella took a few steps into the livingroom and the cat came trotting down the stairs. It looked up at her and squalled loudly, hungrily, accusingly. Bella reached and picked it up, stroking it and apologizing softly, looking about the room. The stack of videogames on the coffeetable that Alice like to play had been packed up and put away. She shot a glance up the stairs, hoping with all her heart for Alice to come down but Alice did not. She wanted to call out again but she was afraid to.

She took the cat into the kitchen and fed it quickly, opening a tin with the cat sitting on the counter and staring intently at the proceedings, as if she would learn how to do it herself. Bella left the plate on the counter, washed her hands, and went upstairs.

She went down the corridor with a sinking heart. The bedroom door seem to recede before her. There was no reason to expect Alice to be in there but Bella did hope with all her heart. She opened the door. Her breathing had gone slow and deep. She was cold all over. There was no one in the room. The bed was made. The closet doors were open and there were clothes missing and on the nightstand there was a small stack of cash.

Bella swallowed the lump in her throat and approached the bed. There was a note on the pillow, a sheet of paper folded and sealed with red wax like a regency loveletter. Bella already knew what it was going to say and tears sprang to her eyes.

She took the note and sat on the edge of the bed. She unfolded it. The seal of red wax broke like her heart was breaking. The page was covered in a flowing script which was hard to read with the tears in her eyes.

My dear Bella,

I would've preferred to say goodbye in person, but I'm not sure I would've had the strength to follow through. I hope I'm not being conceited when I say I know you would have wanted me to stay. But the danger of my love can no longer be ignored. I simply cannot bear the thought of hurting you. I thought I would rather hurt you than lose you, but I was wrong. I would rather lose you forever than harm you any further.

I know you had dreams of one day becoming a creature like me so that we could be together for all time, but I'm afraid I must make a confession. There is no turning. My various appetites were afforded to me by no agency that can be replicated in another. Some people are born a certain way, some people die a certain way. I died many years ago and rose as the thing you found lost in the rain. There is no companionship for me. No love, no hope. Only death and despair and a never ending lust for the blood of my lovers.

Now you can see how we were doomed from the beginning. I'm sorry. It was the only thing I was less than honest about. The truth, as truths are, is just too sad.

I could not leave, however, without first letting you know how much you have meant to me. I love you. Your generosity and acceptance were more than anything I have ever known. I love you. I really cannot repeat that enough. Being with you has made me feel things I hadn't known I could feel. And although our time together was short, I will cherish it always.

I must conclude this note now because, honestly, I can't bear to elaborate on the magnitude of the loss and despair that has settled into my withered soul. I can only hope the damage I've done to your heart is somewhat mitigated by the happiness I contributed to it as well. Remember me not as the monster who fed on your flesh in the dark of night, but as that lonely little girl in the rain to whom you offered a home and happiness—if only for a moment.

Farewell, my love. My precious, loveliest, dearest Bella. I will remember you forever.

Yours eternally,

Alice.

Tears were dropping onto the paper, dark medallions of sorrow pooling among the sorrow already scribed there. Bella was struggling to control herself. Her whole face was trembling. Her eyes were wet. She tried reading the note again but her vision was swimming. A sob broke from her burning throat and finally she broke down and cried.

She didn't know how long she cried but she cried for a long time. She was there for over an hour, crying and wiping her eyes and rereading the note, hoping it wasn't true, praying it wasn't true. She didn't know what to do. Eventually she got up and checked the closet. The backpack was gone and most of her clothes. Only a few things remained. One of them was a top. She took it off the hanger and looked at it. It was pink with a rhinestone loveheart embroidered in the neckline. Bella held it in her hands and sniffed. It was so small, so light in her hand. She lifted it to her nose and inhaled a faint trace of Alice's scent. Then she started crying again.

It was still morning and she spent the rest of the day in the kitchen. She made a cup of coffee and sat down and then she just didn't rise again. She didn't drink the coffee either. Her eyes were bright red and glistening and she kept sniffing. She stood up only once to get a roll of paper towel and soon the tabletop was strewn with little wads of wet tissue.

It was late when she went to bed and later still when she actually slept. A few hours of fitful rest before waking in the slate gray morning. A brief flurry of hope in her heart before the blackness settled back in. She lay there for hours watching the gray gloom gather across the bedroom walls before getting up to use the bathroom. Then she went back to bed, taking her phone with her. She sat against the headboard with the covers over her lap and flipped through the small gallery of pictures she kept, already crying softly. She seemed to have forgotten how pretty Alice had been. Her eyes, round and beautiful like an elf, her lips. Her smile. Bella sniffed and wiped her eyes with the bedsheet. She used the phone to try and call but the call didn't go through.

That night she was starving enough to eat something. She descended into the kitchen with her nightrobe knotted about her waist, her stomach a gaping pit inside her. She put some bread in the toaster and stared bleakly out the kitchen window. Darkness. Snow in the yard. There was a dead elm tree out there and the dead boughs held beds of snow like the nests of ice birds. A swing made from an old truck tire hung from one of the branches. The tire had no snow on it and it was moving gently. As if stirred in the wind. As if a ghost had been sitting there and quickly fled against being seen. Bella stared at it, wondering, a sick sort of hope accumulating in her stomach. Then the toaster clicked and snapped her out of it. She put in two more pieces and went outside to check. But there was nothing. Only the cold and the darkness.

She was depressed for days. No one came to visit. No one called. In the evenings she would order takeout and remember Alice's cooking. Sitting alone at the kitchen table, eating fried rice from a box and trying not to cry. By the end of the week she had to go shopping.

It was the first time she'd left the house since coming home from the hospital. She had put her hair in a ponytail and threw on slacks and a shirt. She pushed a shopping cart along the aisles, unfocused, not really remembering what she needed. She was reaching for a twelve pack of toilet paper when someone said her name.

"Bella?"

It was a guy she knew from highschool. She didn't remember his name right away but she remembered he had once asked her to prom.

"Oh," she said flatly. "Hey."

He smiled and approached her with his shopping cart. Blonde, blue eyed. He looked almost the same as he did ten years ago. "Hi, wow, long time no see. How have you been?"

Bella shrugged noncommittally and waited to see if he had anything else to say. He registered her expression and retracted his smile.

"Sorry," he said. "That was a stupid question. I heard you lost your job?"

"Yeah."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

Bella shrugged again, avoiding his eyes. She didn't know if he knew why she was fired but she hoped not. He was waiting for some kind of reply but she gave him none. Christmas carols were playing overhead although Christmas had been and gone almost two weeks ago.

"Well, I'll let you get back to your shopping," he said. "Nice to see you again."

"You too."

"Do you know what you're going to do now?"

"What?"

"For work. Any idea what you want to do now, any plans?"

Bella didn't know how to answer. She hadn't thought about it. She thought it now briefly but there seemed to be nothing to think about. Her future seemed blank. Without Alice.

"I don't know," she said. "I hadn't really thought about it."

"Well, maybe you should come down to the store sometime. I've been looking to hire someone, even just temporarily."

"I don't know anything about sporting goods."

"Didn't stop you back in highschool, remember? All I need is someone behind the counter. Think about it, okay?"

"Okay."

"Great. I'll see around."

"Yeah. You too."

He gave her another smile, all dimples and blue eyes. Bella found it vaguely revolting for some reason but she smiled back. He nodded and then he pushed his cart on down the aisle.

That night she tried cooking something but it wasn't the same without Alice. She made pasta and ate slowly as she thought about her life. About what she was going to do now. Her career over. Her heart broken. She had gotten used to being lonely before she met Alice. But now she didn't know. They say it's better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all and she would've agreed—before Alice.

She went to bed with her phone and curled up in the dark and read old texts. The oldest was only weeks old. Hard to believe they had only been together for a few short months. She flipped through the pictures again and touched the screen with her fingertip. The pain inside her was like her heart had been shattered into fragments of glass embedded in her chest. It hurt to breathe. To live. She wanted to die and she realized she really did. She had been crying but then she stopped crying. Thoughts of suicide seemed to soothe her.

In the morning she decided she better get her life in order. Three days later she visited her old friend from highschool at his store in town and took the job.

It was a small place on main street, not far from the school. It sold sporting goods and hiking equipment. It used to belong to his father until his father died. Bella had worked here once before, back when she was a teenager, part time for a few hours after school. Now she was full time. Most days they worked together and he seemed happy for the company. He gave her a quick course in sale techniques and a rundown of the goods in stock. The store smelled of rubber and tennis balls, a scent oddly comforting. Bella nodding, a strange peace settling over her. Memories of highschool. Old friends. Simple days. She smiled at him a few times and even laughed at some of his jokes. Relationship rekindling.

She didn't know how long she expected to work there but she worked there a while. The days turned to weeks and the weeks turned to months. The snow cleared. Winter went away. Spring came and the weather turned almost warm.

She woke in the mornings to the sound of birds outside her bedroom window and a bright dawn beyond the curtains. Yet still with loneliness in her heart. It had been a long time but it still felt sad to wake without that warm weight in the bed beside her. Those eyes watching her, those lips smiling. A kiss good morning. Bella lay there and listened to the birds, remembering her, missing her. Some mornings she would wake from dreams in which Alice never left. Dreams so real that upon waking reality itself seemed the nightmare. A gasp in her throat, tears in her eyes. The loss and the loneliness crashing upon her all over again. By now she had abandoned hope that Alice would return but she could not abandon the despair that Alice had left her. Nor did she want to. It was all she seemed to have left.

She walked to work in the mornings with her head down and her hands in her pockets. It rained some days—spring rains, warm and clean—and she would wear a black raincoat.

In the afternoons she would have lunch with her old friend from highschool in the diner across the street from the store. The diner where Alice used to work. Bella would order a salad and save him the mushrooms because she didn't like them. One afternoon she found herself short on money and he offered to pay for her. She said she'd get him the money tomorrow or she could run to the bank quickly. He told her not to worry about it and went to pay at the counter. Bella gathered her loose change back into her purse and the waitress, who'd come by to take the plates, looked over her shoulder and back at Bella.

"Wow, he's cute," she said. "You guy's dating or what?"

It was the same blonde waitress whom Alice had fed from once. Bella looked at her, a cold feeling creeping over her skin. "We're just friends," she said, although she didn't like what it looked like.

The next morning she gave him money for lunch and in the afternoon it began raining again. It was a slow day and the rain guaranteed no more customers. They talked all day, about this and that, and towards the end of the day they were goofing off like teenagers, playing catch with a football they'd taken directly off the shelves, tossing it back and forth across the store and laughing.

"I remember you in highschool," he was saying. "You couldn't catch anything. I always thought it was cute."

Bella snorted and caught the ball before throwing it back. "You thought every girl in school was cute."

"Nah, none of them were like you. I still can't believe you shot me down for prom. You know how crushed I was? I could never figure out why you didn't like me."

"It's not that I didn't like you," she said. "It's…"

She trailed off. She didn't like what she was saying. He was waiting with his hands ready, waiting for the ball and for her to continue. She lowered the ball and glanced at the rain in the front windowglass.

"Looks like the rain's slowing down," she said. "You mind if I take off early today?"

She had already put the ball back on the shelf. He nodded, a little disappointed at her abruptness, and spoke as she was putting her raincoat on.

"Yeah, sure, but listen," he said. "Why not stick around a little bit and let me give you a ride? Or maybe we could get something to eat together?"

Bella's face went hot. It felt like shame. A bad feeling was seeping into her stomach like poison and her ears rang loud enough to drown out the sound of the rain.

"No, thanks," she said, fluffing her hair out the raincoat and trying not to seem flustered. "If I'm not home in time to feed the cat…"

She trailed off. He nodded disappointedly.

"Thanks, though," she said. "I'll see you tomorrow."

She rushed out before he could reply.

She hurried home with the rain rattling on the hood of her raincoat, shoulders hunched, staring down at the sidewalk. She couldn't understand why she was so rattled. Had she rebounded so badly she was actually tempted to date someone she wasn't attracted to? No. It wasn't that. It was Alice. She was getting over her and that in itself felt like a betrayal.

She looked up. Rain was splashing in the streets and on the roof of the house. In one of the upper windows she thought she saw a curtain move and she hurried across the dead lawn to unlock the door. She raced upstairs and looked about. But the house was empty. Empty as her heart.

In the weeks to come she regressed deeper and deeper into her depression, although outwardly she remained normal. Even cheerful. She spent more time with her old friend but made it clear she wasn't interested in a relationship. He seemed to understand. They went to the movies once after work and she sat beside him in the dark of the empty theatre and remembered the times she came with Alice. The giggling, the touching, the making out. She smiled to herself sadly, knowing those days were gone, that they were never coming back. She dabbed at her eye with her knuckle as he laughed at the movie beside her.

She thought about suicide more and more. Mostly at night, alone in bed. At first it seemed frightening. Then it began to seem natural or inevitable. Finally it even seemed comforting. No more loneliness. No more sadness. It even seemed romantic. To die for love. For Alice. She wasn't sure if she was unable to live without her but she was positive she didn't want to.

The decision came to her very slowly. She did some checking on the internet. She researched methods. Soon she was even making preparations.

She quit her job at the store and said she was going back to university. She gave her clothes to charity. She visited an attorney and made a will, leaving her house and assets to a young cousin she hadn't seen since her moved out of state years ago. Each day more of her life slipped away from her until there was little left to cling to. Nothing but the cat. Snowflake had been with her for three years and for a time she felt Snowflake might be worth living for. At night she cuddled on her lap as they watched TV together but it wasn't the same as Alice.

Finally she ran an ad in the paper to try and find her a home. Days passed and she was about to take her to a shelter when she got a call from a woman who lived only a short walk down the street.

The next morning was Sunday morning. Bella fed her in the kitchen and watched her eat. The cat-cage was sitting on the kitchen table. When the cat was finally done she picked her up and held her for a moment. It was bright in the kitchen window, brighter than the occasion would seem to warrant. Bella petted her until she wanted to go down and then she kissed her, shedding a single tear, and loaded her into the cat-cage.

She delivered the cat herself, carrying the cage down the sidewalk in the bright light of morning with her entire life falling away before her. She knocked on the woman's door and the woman came out onto the porch, smiling, already cooing to the cat and poking her fingers through the cage.

"Aww, she's so cute, isn't she? The kids are going to be so thrilled. They always wanted a cat but it's so expensive for a purebred. What's her name?"

"Snowflake."

"She's beautiful."

Bella nodded and handed the woman the cage. The woman took it, smiling through the mesh. Bella smiled too, a fey smile, not unhappy.

"I'm just glad I could find a home for her," she said.

"She'll be happy here, I promise. But it really is a shame you have to leave town and can't take her with you."

"Yeah."

"When exactly are you leaving?"

"Not sure. Soon."

"Have you decided where you're going?"

Bella chuckled once, softly, to herself. She shuffled her feet on the porch and turned and looked up at the sky, squinting slightly in the sun.

"Yeah," she said. "I know where I'm going."

Then she sighed and said her last goodbyes to the cat before turning back to the sidewalk and walking home to a house that was finally, truly, empty.

She gave herself almost a week to reconsider but it didn't happen. She left the house only once to buy a straight razor at the pharmacy. It seemed like the best option. She didn't want to decompose so she planned to call an ambulance moments before she did it to come pick up the body. Painkillers would've been too unreliable. A severed artery would be her best bet. And poetic too. Exsanguination. Death by blood loss. It would prove that she would've loved Alice with all her life if only Alice had stayed.

It felt right on Saturday night. The same night Alice used to feed from her. She ate a small dinner in the kitchen and thought about her life and realized she wasn't unhappy with it. It seemed fine for what it was. But it had run its course and now it was over.

After dinner she washed the plates at the sink and dried them and put them away. Then she dried her hands with the dishtowel and wondered if there was anything else she needed to do. She was looking at the fridge. In the window behind her a dark figure was crouching in the darkness by some flowerbushes like a dark little gnome. Bella didn't notice it. She hung the dishtowel from the barhandle of the stove and went upstairs. The figure rose and moved deeper into the shadows.

Bella went into her bedroom and opened the dresser drawer but then she realized she didn't need a change of clothes. She closed the drawer again and went into the bathroom.

The first thing she did was use the toilet. Then she took off her clothes and folded them carefully on the tiled shelf by the bathtub. Pants. Shirt. Underwear. No towel. She laid her phone and the razorblade on top of the pile, carefully, like instruments of ritual. She turned on the taps and tested the water with the back of her hand, making sure it was nice and hot. She shook her hand dry and sighed and waited for the tub to fill. Out in the bedroom she thought she heard a noise but it was probably just the cat. It didn't occur to her in that heightened moment that the cat was gone.

Finally she turned the taps off and hesitated. She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror and she took a moment to look at herself one last time. Pale. Long hair. Dark. She hadn't known how beautiful she was before she met Alice. She had barely been alive before she met Alice. And even less alive after Alice had gone. Tears were coming into her eyes and thought she thought probably just get it over with.

She climbed into the tub and descended into the water, the warmth closing over her body and engulfing her. Like being swallowed. She took a moment to relax, her head completely blank. She laved water onto her arms and listened to the sound, the trickle.

Eventually she turned and took the razor from the pile of clothes. The handle was plain black plastic and she unfolded it, revealing the stainless steel blade. The edge was as long as her finger. She held it in one hand and sighed and turned her wrist. She could see the veins there, pale blue under her pale skin. Her head was ringing and her skin was electric. The touch of the razor to her wrist was almost like the graze of fangs on her neck. Her heart was throbbing and she was breathing deeply. She closed her fist, tightly, and began to apply pressure to the blade. The first drop of blood had dripped and bloomed a pale red in the bathwater when a soft voice spoke from the doorway.

"Don't."