Chapter summary: She's a woman; I'm a woman. We're supposed to ... understand ... that. Each other. But she's just like everybody else. Just like James. The trees have been here 10, no: 100 thousand years, and even they laugh at me. Why am I so weak? Why does she have to see my weakness? I. hate. her. I hate myself.
I carried Bella back to her tent. Her arms were around my neck, and she was looking at me the whole time.
Good. Her focus was where it should be.
I set her down in the tent.
"Get dressed, Bella," I ordered. I turned to go.
"Oh," she blinked in surprise.
That gave me pause.
"'Oh'?" I said, turning back to her.
"I just thought ..." she said, then broke off, blushing.
I put my hands on my hips, my arms akimbo, looking her up and down, scorn clear on my face.
"I just thought ..." she said.
Then she stopped again.
I tsked. "Your first mistake, Bella," I said curtly, "is thinking that you think at all."
Her face went white.
"Let's not waste time with this kind of foolishness any more, huh?" I said, ignoring her affronted look. "Do what I say, and leave the thinking to me," I looked at her appraisingly, but then, disappointed with what I saw, I added: "for it's simply the case that you can't form a complete thought at all, can you?"
I didn't wait for her answer to that. In actually, I hadn't really asked her a question. Not one that I wanted an answer to. I left her tent.
After all, I needed to get dressed, too, and Bella's clothes ...? They'd fit, barely, but I wasn't in the mood for clingy-tight anymore, and I had the run of this campsite. There's be clothes that'd fit me, or at least well enough. Bella's shape was 'elfin,' if I was thinking of a charitable word for 'skinny chick.' But my frame was svelt and proportioned, and not skeletal-starving as what passed for as 'beauty' in this modern era.
In my day people who looked like that were viewed as what they were: either starved or be-plagued and were given a wide berth.
Not that I'm calling Bella 'ugly' by any stretch, but ... how could she bear, birth, and nurse children with her figure? Did she think about that at all as she exercised away her calories?
I quickly scouted out the other tents and found some clothes suitable for me. Jeans and a tee, of course. Durable and commonplace, and that's what I needed.
I had no room for dressing nicely any more, nor for beauty in my life.
At least, that's what I always told myself. That's what James told me, when I indulged in 'silly frivolity,' at any rate, so I didn't. Not anymore.
...
I reentered Bella's tent.
"Uh," she stuttered. "Uh, ..."
She was dressed now, blue jeans and a buttoned-up short-sleeve shirt, sitting cross-legged, and chewing on something.
She nearly choked on a mouthful as she swallowed quickly to answer my inquiring look.
"Um," she said, "I, uh, got a granola bar, ... 'cause," she looked carefully at me. "'cause I was hungry."
My silence answered her.
"I hope that's okay ...?" she 'stated.'
Bella 'states' things by asking a question, I observed.
I frowned.
Of course, I hate the word 'okay,' but I didn't like her setting the tempo here, nor did I like her taking the initiative. Every good thing came from me, including, ... what did she call it? ... her granola bar.
"Give me that," I commanded.
Bella bit her lip but handed the food over quickly. I took it from her and sniffed it suspiciously. She put petrol in her hair, what in the world was she eating, I wondered.
It smelled of oats and honey.
"Did you want some?" she offered politely.
My eyes came up from the food, and narrowed on her.
"Um, or ..." she stuttered.
I shook my head and handed her back her food.
"Next time," I commanded, "ask first."
"Uh," she said, taking back the bar, "okay."
That word again. I wondered if I should institute a new rule: a free punch for each time she says that word.
A free punch, hard.
I kind of liked that rule.
She wouldn't.
I looked her up and down, then said curtly. "Finish that, then come meet me outside."
I swept out.
As I left I saw her surreptitiously sneak a sip of water from a clear plastic bottle with a blue label with some bold, white lettering on it, washing down the bite of food she had just taken.
It did not escape my notice. She'd pay for that. Later.
...
Bella stood in front of me beside the fire pit.
"Bella," I said, "fetch me a rock."
She blinked. "'Fetch' you a rock?" she asked incredulously.
I back-handed her across the face, hard, sending her a good ten feet across the clearing.
Bella cried out sharply, and lay where she fell, gasping.
I walked up to her and squatted down beside her.
"Lesson one, Bella," I said grimly. "When I tell you something, you obey, instantly. I don't need your confirmation in acknowledgement, because I know what I said. I don't need you, my little shit, to repeat it, you got me?"
Bella's tears formed a little, tiny mud-puddle on the dust by her cheek.
"Oh-okay," she whimpered.
I picked her up by her neck and stood, all in one smooth motion, holding her a good foot above the ground.
"Say that fucking word again, Bella;" I snarled. "I dare you."
She didn't say that word again. Technically, she couldn't say anything at all, as I was strangling her with my hand's vise-like grip around her neck.
Her lips started to purple.
I set her feet back onto the ground, and let go.
She collapsed at my feet onto the ground, panting, nearly sobbing.
I gently turned her over onto her back, so that she was looking up at me.
The world as it should be: me, standing proudly, towering over her, and her, at my feet, cowering and afraid.
Perfection.
"Bella," I commanded softly, "get up, and fetch me a rock. Now."
She took a wheezing gasp, and clambered up, her look, shattered. I regarded her levelly, coolly.
She cast about her, her eyes on the ground, then she wandered a bit, looking about.
Eventually she kicked up a smooth stone from the dirt, and brought it to me. It was dun and smallish. I wanted it to be fist-sized, but this would do.
I held out my hand. "Put it in my hand," I said.
She obeyed, watching me, carefully.
I looked down at the rock, then looked back up into her eyes, and then, ...
I crushed the rock in my hand. I crushed it into sand, watching her eyes the whole time.
Bella looked down at my hand in shock when she heard the grinding sound, seeing the rock being pulverized, then she looked back up at me in askance.
"This, Bella," I said, "is your little hands. I so want to do this to your hands after you disobeyed my command earlier, then you fucking had the gall to ask if everything were 'okay'?"
I glared at her furiously, then, with a quick, snapping motion across my shins, I wiped the dust from hands.
I put my hands out, both of them.
"Bella," I said. "Put your hands in mine."
Bella blanched and swallowed.
"First lesson, Bella," I reminded her grimly.
Bella bit her lip and placed her hands into mine.
They were little things, like mine: my little hands. Her hands were fragile things, unlike mine. There were more than two hundred bones in her tiny hands, each one of them vital for their function, each one that could be so easily crushed into powder.
I looked down at her hands.
Then I looked into her eyes.
She looked back into mine, unflinching.
I liked that, for some reason.
"I so, Bella," I started, "I so want to crush these little disobedient hands," I said.
I looked into her eyes, holding her hands in mine.
"Why don't I?" I demanded of her.
Bella swallowed convulsively, looking back into my eyes.
"'Cause, ..." she bit her lip, then she dared: "'Cause you don't want to ...?"
She paused, as she answered, and her voice instead of answering with certainty, that was in her eyes up to now, ended in a wavering, upward lilt.
I frowned, looking right back at her, then shook my head. "Bella, are you fucking stupid?"
She blanched, then made to answer. "Uh," she said.
"No," I said, cutting her off. "Don't answer that, because you're either going to lie, or ... I have my answer already. I told you I wanted to crush your hands, and you say I won't because I don't want to? You're not listening to me."
I pondered my words, and that only made me angry. She wasn't listening to me!
With my thumbs I turned her hands toward her face as I rotated her arms around, facing into her.
"Ahhh!" She cried in pain, and was forced down to her knees in front of me.
That is: she was either forced to her knees, or, she could have resisted and had her hands snapped off at her wrists. Her choice.
"You tell me right now," I snarled, "why I don't crush these little hands of yours, Bella."
"Because you don't want to, Victoria!" she shouted desperately.
I liked her saying my name. I twisted a bit more, smiling cruelly, reveling in her pain, and she cried out and bend back, trying to ease the pressure on her hands, and taking it all along her spine.
Another set of bones I could easily snap.
"Explain," I commanded, not easing up one bit.
Bella whined in pain, tears sparkling her eyes, but she looked at me, right through her agony. "We b-both know you could do it if you really wanted to, so-so," she gasped, "y-you really don't want to, 'cause ..."
She panted through her pain.
"Because why?" I demanded harshly.
"'Cause I don't know, okay?" she screeched. "I dunno!"
I let her go.
"Owww!" she cried and fell to her back, cradling her arms into her chest.
"Because," I said softly and waited for her whimpers to soften, "it is my pleasure not to. That's why, Bella. You are entirely at my disposal and for my whimsy. You piss me off, and you pay for it, and each and every agonising moment you suffer will be a sumptuous feast for me to savour. And savour it I shall, like a meal: bite by bite."
I looked down at her, pityingly. God, I'd hate to be her. "So it'd be best to do everything I want the instant I want it, because the alternative ..." I paused, smiling down at her, "This is nothing to the alternative. You can't imagine the alternative, you hear me, Bella?"
She sniffled, then she whispered, "Yes," sadly.
I smiled down at her. "Good girl," I said cheerfully. "Now, get up."
She got up, wearily, rubbing her wrists.
I smirked. Then held out my hands again.
Bella blanched.
I looked down at my hands then looked back up into her eyes.
Bella put her hands into mine.
I smiled at her. "Good girl," I cooed warmly.
I let her hands go.
"Listen to me," I said as she put her hands to her chest again, rubbing her wrists.
I glared at her. "Are you listening?'
"Yes," she whispered.
I smiled. "Good."
"You see this mess?" I said, pointing down at Alan's remains.
Bella looked down at what was left of her lover. She swallowed.
"You left him," I stated coolly, anger burning in my eyes.
"He said to ..." Bella began.
"Shut up!" I screamed, losing my equanimity in an instant of hot fury at being interrupted.
Bella flinched back, shocked.
"You never, never, leave your mate," I stated forcefully. "If you loved him, you would have stayed by his side to the very end. You didn't. You abandoned him."
"I couldn't do anything!" she said.
I frowned. "Are you listening to me, Bella?" I demanded.
"Yes," she muttered petulantly.
"Really?" I asked. "Because it sounds to me like you're waiting to answer back to me. It sounds like you're trying to justify yourself, when, clearly, there is no justification for what you did."
I glared at her. "Two are stronger than one. You never, never, abandon your mate. Ever. You hear me?"
"Yes," she whispered.
"But you did," I said, "You little shit, you did. You put yourself above your lover; you sought your own sur ..."
"I didn't!" she cried.
I stopped and crossed my arms, raising my eyebrow.
"I didn't," she repeated, the full force of her conviction in her voice.
"Bella," I chided.
Bella bit her lip. "Sorry," she whispered, looking away.
"Yes, you are," I agreed with what she said, but probably not in the way she meant her word. "You are one sorry, little shit. So what are you going to do about it?"
Bella's face was white. "I..." and she cleared her throat.
"Speak up, Bella," I barked.
Her tongue came out, its tip touching her upper lip.
That tongue of hers had a life of its own. I wondered if it were a symbiotic entity. To the point: I wondered if she controlled it (she didn't), or it controlled her (the jury was still out on that one).
"I don't know," was her eventual and lame answer.
Just about what I expected, I reflected ruefully. Just so the modern person, they do something, and expect nothing to come from it, and, in particular, they made a mess, and they expected someone else to clean it up.
So that all that followed in the wake of people were messes.
"Exactly," I muttered, but not to her, specifically, but to this stupid World I found myself in, where all I did was kill and kill and kill, but instead of me being destructive, I actually was the one to clean up these messes. I had to. I had to be neat, and these stupid cows were oblivious to everything they did.
Where the fuck was the justice in that? I had near-infinite power, but I had to be careful in my every exercise of it, but these human cattle did whatever they pleased and never took responsibility for anything they did!
I'd be doing the World a favour by wiping the face of the Earth of them all!
My focus returned to her. "Well, I have a little job for you, Bella," I told her. "Every mess I make? I clean up. This time? This mess? Your responsibility. You did Alan a disservice by abandoning hi-..."
"But he said ...!" Bella began.
My hand flashed out, white lightning, and connected with her cheek.
I actually marveled at how thick-skulled she was. You think she'd learn to shut the fuck up, but, no, not Bella. She fought on for her nonexistent dignity, regardless to the drubbing I gave her. She kept standing on her pride.
And I kept knocking her down.
I walked over to her crumpled body. She was rocking herself, moaning softly.
I stood over, just a little bit proud of her.
The stupid little shit.
My heel rested on her shoulder and turned her, easing her over onto her back.
I smirked sympathetically down at her.
"Bella," I said calmly. "I can do this all day and all night." Then I clarified, "I'm actually having fun doing this." I looked down at her. "Are you?"
She was gasping, winded, looking up through eyes blinded by pain to the sky filtered through a canopy of trees that looked back down at her dispassionately.
The trees have been here hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years. They would see her come, and see her go. Her sorrow did not affect them. She was not even one ring in their experience. What was she to them? Nothing.
My little Bella was nothing to them. She would come, she would go. That was all.
So I, the only one in her miserable life now, told her. "You'll be lucky to last until the sunset, and when you see the Sun fall... if you see the Sun fall," I clarified, "you'll curse the darkness because you know you'll wake to the morrow of more of this, and worse even still, little Bella, you hear me?"
She surely heard me, even as she might not have comprehended the words through the pain. Her body understood. She moaned and a tear fell.
"So," I said, "it may just fucking help, just a little tiny bit, for you to drop this pretense of fighting me every step of the way and just accept what I'm telling you about you for a change, huh, you little shit?"
Bella sniffled.
I pulled her up to eye level by her shoulders. "Do you still have some fight in you?" I demanded. "I'll be happy to beat it out of you if you do..." I added.
Bella sniffled again and looked away.
I smirked.
She still had fight in her.
That dumb shit.
"Bella," I said, demanding her attention, "what are you?"
Bella bit her lip and whispered sadly, "Imma little shit."
"Was that hard?" I asked sarcastically.
Bella wouldn't look at me.
It was hard for her.
I smirked again.
"You abandoned Alan," I pressed, then I demanded angrily. "Say it."
"I..." Bella whispered, "I abandoned Alan."
Then she hung her head, and sobbed.
"Oh, no, Bella," I tutted. "We're not done yet. We're not half done."
She sniffled and tried to rub her nose.
My arms were in the way. I wasn't on planning on moving them any time soon. Bella gave up her attempt at dignity.
She could learn. I guess.
"You did him a disservice, Bella; say it," I said.
"I did him a disservice," she whispered.
"What?" I demanded.
Bella looked up and glared at me, the fight flaring up in her eyes.
But then it went away, and was replaced by sadness.
"I did him a disservice," she said, just as softly, but now she was really saying it, she wasn't just repeating my words, she was actually taking on what they meant.
"Do you know why you said that, Bella?" I asked.
Bella looked back at me and sniffled.
I nodded to her. "Because it's true," I said. "That's why you said it. That's why it hurts for you to say it. Because it's true."
This was probably the first time in her pointless life she ever faced the truth. This was probably the only time anybody ever made her face the truth squarely.
"So what are you going to do about this, Bella?" I asked again.
She sniffled. "Dunno," she said. "Can't do anything, I guess." She tried to shrug. "Can't undo it. Can't make it right, so ..."
I waved her to silence. "Yes," I said brusquely. I wasn't interested in hearing her litany of 'can't's. I didn't ask for that, anyway. "What would you do if you could do something?"
"Uh," she said, the stupid look on her face telling me what she didn't say: she didn't get it. "Uh, not go on this vacation, I guess, I mean, knowing what..."
I shook my head. "What would you do now, Bella. Not what would you have done. Coulda-woulda-shoulda runs your life, and that's why you're fucked now. What would you do now, right now, given everything's that happened, given what you're given right now."
Bella blinked at me, helplessly.
She bit her lip. "I dunno," she said finally. "I dunno what you want me to say. I dunno what I'm supposed to do."
I gave her a hard look, frowning. "How old are you?" I asked.
She shrugged. "Twenny-six."
She said 'twenny.' Not 'twenty.'
Her enunciation was simply atrocious. And Americans pretend to be so superior to other foreigners because they can speak 'English.'
Americans spoke something, that was for sure: they were always blustering on about something, but what language they spoke? I wouldn't hazard a guess at what to call the travesty of a language they pretended to be speaking.
"Twenty-six," I repeated, disbelieving. But with proper diction, I'd like you to know.
Bella nodded.
Twenty-six. I mulled over that age. Back in my day, a woman twenty-six years old was an old grandmother, ready to die. She ran her household, the farm, the servants, if there were any, her children, four at least still living, her grandchildren, already a few on the way. She planned the meals, the week and the year with a will and determination to get her family through the Winter, or at least most of them, the ones strong enough to survive.
'I dunno,' in my day, anyway, was not part of a woman's vocabulary at the venerable age of six and twenty.
I shook my head. What was before me was not a woman, what was before me was a child.
"What?" Bella demanded defensively. "I mean ..."
"Here's what you will do, Bella," I cut in.
I didn't care what she 'meant.' I knew what she 'meant.' She meant nothing. Not knowing? No will. She meant nothing. Any further explanation or justification from her was just pointless noise.
"This," I waved to Alan. "There is no decency in death. There is just death and the shame of it for those left alive. Your disservice to him brought this on you and on him, and, normally, it is I who do the only decent thing to these remains, the only decent thing ever done for them in their lives. Well, this time, you get to do a decent thing, Bella, for your Alan."
Bella looked down at him and then looked back up at me, but she said nothing.
She didn't get it. Or, she got she would be doing something for him, and it was probably something scary, because it was coming from me, but she just didn't get it: the decency of what I was offering.
Stupid, little uncouth shit. Her naïvety could be so grating at times.
"You are going to give Alan a decent burial," I spelled it out for her.
"Oh," she said.
She looked at me blankly.
"How?" she said.
I stared back at her in astonishment.
My estimation of her intelligence? I didn't know I was underestimating how stupid she could be.
I blinked. James didn't appreciate that I had things to say, but, I'll give him this, at least he had quickness and a wit to him, but this one?
Maybe I could knock some sense into her with her crowbar, or at least I could knock the stupid out of her.
Words were pointless with this one.
I walked up to her, grabbed her by the neck and threw her onto the ground, and not so gently this time. "Dig," I commanded.
"Woof!" was Bella's response.
It was so easy to knock the wind out of this twenty-six year old child. And she was supposed to be so healthy, too.
So much for her exercise regimen.
She didn't move, just tried to catch her breath.
I stooped down beside her. "Bella," I warned, "we don't have all day. The Sun is nearing its zenith, and once it falls to the tree line, you will have dug a grave, six feet deep, or ..."
I glared down at her. "Or I will finish it for you, in which case it'll be yours."
Bella's cheek was on the ground where she lay. "Six feet?" she gasped, overwhelmed at the enormity of it.
"Don't tell me you were thinking of digging your true love a shallow grave?" I remarked scathingly.
"Um," Bella began, but then she saw the hard set of my eyes, so she finished lamely: "...no."
I was furious, thinking if it were her, and it were James, would she abandon him to flee, as I did? Did she have no regret? No sense of decency?
Was she thinking she would welch on this gift I was offering? A gift I couldn't give to myself, because all I could do was to run and run and run from those accursed Cullens for my very survival? But this one? Could she run?
Well, she did, but she didn't get far. Not as far as I've gotten, but here I was giving her this thing, and she was balking at it?
Somebody should teach her some manners. Somebody should teach her to appreciate the things she was given.
I knew who that somebody was. And I would teach her some things. And she would learn.
Or she'd die trying.
"Well, then," I tsked impatiently, "get going!"
Bella propped herself up first on her elbows, like it were a hard thing to accomplish, then, lifting her chest, still on her knees, she looked down, put her hands to the earth, and started to dig.
...
To say that it was amusing watching Bella dig, not even making an inch of progress into the dirt. Well, I am a consummate liar, but I don't think I could manage a lie of this magnitude.
It wasn't funny watching Bella dig.
It wasn't even sad.
It was ...
I pitied her.
"You've never worked a day in your life, have you?" I remarked dryly, but my wry wit did not cover over my irritation. I wanted to scream at her to just try, but the sad fact was that she was trying.
It was a misery, watching her.
"I have a job!" she snapped back.
"Yes," I bit back. "Your job is to dig, and you are failing spectacularly at it!"
"It's not my fault!" She began, "It's this dir ..."
"It never is your fault, is it?" I cut in.
"I have no idea what you're talking about!" she shouted, glaring at me from her hands and knees in the dirt.
"Oh," I beamed, my tone turning conspiratorial. "Did that one rub a little too close to the nub?"
Bella glared.
"Like ..." I offered. "You leaving messes everywhere in your life, and other people having to take care of them and you, little Miss Six-and-twenty?"
Bella's glare could have melted steel as it was hot with hate.
But it was she who first lowered her eyes to the ground in front of her.
"Fuck you!" she mumbled angrily and returned to digging.
I wish, I thought, just as angrily.
I wish James would've just fucked me and forgotten that Swan girl and the Cullen family.
But he didn't. He wouldn't. And now I'm here, lording my loss over an obstinate, recalcitrant, incompetent little fuck, who's full-on bitch-mode because I told her a little truth about herself.
How did I know this truth?
Fucking obvious: entitled little fuck. All people were like this, except the ones who recognized that they were and did something about it. This one? She runs off to the woods for a weekend camping trip so she can get everyone around her killed by me.
Dumb little fucker; it's all her fault, and the first thing she does is to deny it.
"Uh, huh," I said instead dismissively. "Funny coming from you, as you're the one who's so fucked, little girl!"
I instantly regretted my statement. No matter how cool I had sounded, the bald fact was this: she had baited me, and I reacted.
I was too old, too wise, and too experienced to fall for her little shit-game, but that's exactly what I did.
"Whatever," she shot back, missing the interplay.
I have made a mistake, but she was too inexperienced, only having lived the length of one life to have picked up on it.
"Six feet, Bella," I said, remanding to her task. "How far have you gone?"
Bella sat up on her haunches and sighed heavily. "I can't!" she tsked angrily. "This root!" she waved down into the dirt.
I saw the root. I saw her (lack of) progress. I wasn't blind.
"I've got a question for you, Bella," I said.
Bella just glared. She knew it wasn't going to be a nice question.
"What?" she demanded angrily after seething in the silence.
I smiled. She didn't like censure, and she couldn't stand the silence.
Me, I could go years in the silence. I have, actually.
I held her gaze for exactly six more seconds, which for her, grew longer and longer.
I liked watching her bravado. I particularly like watching trying not to squirm with impatience, entirely spoiling her affronted look.
"So," I said slowly, drawing out the word. "God gave you a brain for what again, precisely?"
Bella looked away.
"Are you going to dig down six feet, through that root, in the next six hours with your bare hands?" I prompted.
Bella wouldn't answer.
That wouldn't do.
"Well?" I demanded.
"No," she whispered.
I waited.
Bella just sat there, radiating anger and despair.
"So?" I said.
Bella looked down at my feet, the crowbar lying nearby.
"Can I use that?" she asked humbly.
I smirked and looked down at it. Then, in a flash, I stepped down under it and then kicked it up into the air. It spun, suspended in a lazy spiral until it fell neatly into my waiting hands.
I examined it critically, ignoring Bella's astonished look.
"How did you ...?" she began.
"You hit me with this," I stated, interrupting her question.
Humans are always asking questions. None of the questions they ask have any relevance.
Bella looked at me from her haunches.
I smirked, tapping the crowbar in the palm of my hand, thoughtfully.
Bella, ashamed, looked away. "Didn't do anything," she remarked sullenly.
My smile widened. "Perhaps you didn't do it correctly. Perhaps I should take a swing at the back of your head and see if that does something? What do you say to that, hey, Bella?"
"I ..." she stuttered.
"Fair is fair," I put in, reasonably, smiling. Then I glared hard at her. "Right?" I demanded.
Bella looked back at me, hard, but pleading at the same time.
Finally, she said, "Yes. Fair is fair."
That was exactly what I wanted to hear.
My little Bella was all about fairness, ... or, if not fairness, then blamelessness. It wasn't her fault, unless she had to admit it to herself, and when she did admit it, she submitted to her punishment meekly. After all, by her own judgement of fairness, she deserved it.
She deserved her punishment when she was wrong.
Bella was such a perfect little victim. She fought, then she yielded.
She was just so ... perfect, that way.
I strode up her tapping the crowbar lightly in my hand.
"Bella," I said, standing over her, "bend over and put your face in the dirt."
She looked up me, pleading, one last time, from her kneeling position.
Then...
She bent over and carefully put her face in the dirt.
Total, and complete submission: that's what the image of her was, kowtowing to me, awaiting her punishment.
If I could pee now, I would have wet my pants. I have never experience pleasure as exquisite as this.
I stood silently over her for a few long seconds, breathing in her scent, savoring this moment.
"You know, Bella," I said softly. "Most people die, and they know exactly how they are going to die, and they know everything lead up to their death, and ..." I smiled, "there is not one thing they can do about it. They see it come, and they can't stop it, and then they die, and that's it."
I took the crowbar in my hand and brought it gently down, resting it on the nape of her neck.
A heavy sigh tore through her, shaking her body.
Not unlike a death rattle.
"Are you ready, Bella?" I asked.
"Yes."
She whispered the word into the dirt so quietly that if there were not other sound in the world, her 'yes' would have been quieter.
"Good girl," I said.
And I swung the crowbar in a singing arc, then brought it down, hard, with such force that the air snapped a crack in reply of me displacing it.
Sna-CRACK!
And I buried that crowbar two full feet into the dirt, snapping the protruding root neatly in twain as the crowbar landed three inches away from Bella's head.
Bella fell over onto her side from her bowed position, and moaned a shocked and mournful sigh. Tears were falling freely from her eyes. She looked up at me, surprised and dumbfounded, shocked into immobility.
Then she started crying, rolling up into a foetal position.
"Bella," I said calmly, "listen to me."
She sobbed softly, crying into her chest, she was so lost in the aftermath of this moment, the moment of her death. Maybe she couldn't hear nor understand my words, but she listened, or her body did, because she could do naught else.
"This is how it shall happen," I said. "You will die, and I will be the one who kills you, and you will know it, and there is not a thing you can do to alter its course."
Bella sniffled, still crying, but cried out.
I looked down at the crowbar. "There it is, Bella," I said. "Dig it out and it's yours to use."
Her progress so far? After a half-an-hour, she hadn't dug an inch six feet across.
She really needed to pick up the pace.
"Here," I offered, then stooped down, then uprooted the impedance, one end of the root that had been in her way.
I yanked. The ground trembled, then the root jerked, loosening its strangle-hold it had on the ground and slithered up out of the earth, twanging as I pulled on it, humming, anchored to the tree at the edge of the clearance for the camp. I played it, giving it some slack, then I pulled hard and fast.
SNAP!
It broke free from its anchoring tree then cracked through the air, winding over the top of my shoulder.
A bullwhip, fashioned from the root of a tree in this forest park.
If I had been human, the whip would not have flayed my skin. No, the force of it? It would have cut me down neatly into two pieces. I would have bled out right beside the girl I had just intimidated.
If I were human, that is.
As it stood, I would have to get a new shirt.
Annoying, that.
I turned to the other half of the root.
This should be easier, as it quested away from the tree, questing nutrients.
And finding me, instead.
I should be able to yank out this bitter end from the earth quite easily.
I reached down, letting my newly-fashioned bullwhip fall from my shoulder, reached down to the root and tugged.
Hm.
This was interesting.
I tugged harder, not expecting this resistance, then received quite a surprise.
The root had its origin in another tree, across the clearing. I yanked at it thoughtfully for a second. Now, wherefore, or how could this been.
I pursed my lips, and I felt my eyebrows crinkle in thought.
"Huh," I said, not being able to puzzle this out.
Bella looked up at me from the ground and sniffled, but her curiosity was aroused by my own.
I looked down at her, pondering.
"Uh, what is it?" she asked.
She shied from my look, thinking I was casting aspersions or censure, where in fact, or in this case, anyway, I was simply deep in thought.
"Sweetie," I said, and, reaching a decision, waving her away from the (very) shallow grave she was digging.
Bella blinked in surprise, but got up, brushing off the dirt and forest-floor detritus from her jeans and shirt.
I waved her back more. "Further," I ordered.
Bella's face was puzzled, but she took two steps back further.
I snorted a soft laugh. "Stay," I ordered, smiling.
Bella was too confused to react to my little ... our little joke.
I was beyond caring about her puzzlement. I had my own curiosity to satisfy.
I crouched down, low to the ground, and I felt it, the power coursing through my legs, and the power built and build there, I felt it spilling up into my belly, and I smiled a feral smile at Bella, both terrible and beautiful.
Bella's look became shocked and scared.
"What ...?" she said, breaking the silence.
But something else was humming in the air.
A low growl was bubbling up out of the pit of my stomach and spilling up through my throat and out into the air through my clenched teeth.
"I ... can ... do ... anything!" I snarled, glorying, drunk, in the power coursing through my whole body now.
Bella stumbled two steps back.
And I leapt.
I leapt straight up into the air ... ten ... twenty feet, not even coming close to the tree tops a further sixty feet up in the air, but high enough.
O, yes: high enough, indeed!
At the zenith of my jump, I hung suspended in the air, gravity cancelled out perfectly by the strength of my ascent.
Then ... CLAP! ... I brought my hands together and dove, falling, whistling through the air, ten, then twenty feet, falling faster and faster, harder and harder, until the Earth's crust and I kissed.
Then, like James penetrated me with his big, hard dick when he fucked me, I penetrated Mother Earth.
Good, hard, and deep.
And fast. Let's not forget fast.
I chuckled at my own joke as I submerged myself into the ground, six feet down, the depth I demanded from my little good-for-nothing fucked-slave, and then, I ... 'swam.'
I clawed my way through the Earth, just as a young, svelte athletic swimmer would claw her way through the water in a swimming pool, I 'swam' through the earth, seeking, questing.
It's harder to swim through dirt than it is to swim through water. Water is our element, and nothing can stand against us when water is at play, be it knee-deep or to the depths of the bottom of the Ocean. We are solid matter, hardened to that of diamonds, but in water, we are a force of nature that cannot be stopped nor outmaneuvered.
In the earth it's a little different, but let's see you try what I can do ... what I am doing now.
I quested. I followed the loosened earth, swimming my way underground, looking to the origin of the root, and finding it under the obliging tree.
Thousands of trees have obliged me over the years and centuries. One way to guarantee a body won't be found is to plant it under a tree.
Nobody looks for anybody under trees. The thought would never occur; it's too much work to hide someone thus.
Impossible, even.
Impossible for some, that is.
I spun around onto my back, under the earth, and 'looked' up with my fingers, questing, feeling the root systems.
Hm.
That's interesting.
I followed the roots not to their bitter end, but to another tree, then another, ... then another ...
... then another.
Well, I'll be! I have never seen such a thing!
The whole 'we are connected; we are all one in this ...' whatever people say they are these days?
I was seeing it, right here, right now in this forest.
Were all forests like this, I wondered, and I never stopped to look?
I swam back to the gravesite. It was easy to find: like a worm, I followed my own scent, a very clear marker, an unique-in-the-World marker of me, and what I am.
Each vampire has her own scent. Or his own stench. I could only stomach James'. All other male vampires' scents were a complete turn-off for me, and the females' ...?
Well, as Bella claims: I'm not a buggar. What did she call it? 'Lesbian'? What in the world did the word 'lesbian' mean?
And, no, I'm not stupid: I know what it means. What I meant was how in the world does 'lesbian' mean 'two women in a sexual relationship'?
This modern language was so difficult to me because none of it made any sense at all. They say 'gay' and don't mean 'happy,' they say 'queer' and don't mean 'odd.' They say 'fine,' 'I'm fine' when they don't mean 'refined,' nor 'purified.'
It was like a whole different language, all with somewhat similar sounding words, but each word had made-up meanings that had nothing to do with the word's origin.
I say 'accident' today, and it means 'intentional harm,' not 'incidental (sometimes happy) result.'
I could go on and on with this.
But I'll just say that if I annihilated every person who pretended to speak 'English' today off this planet?
I'd be doing 'English' a favour.
Just leave vampires three-hundred years and older.
The young vampires were just as bad, if not worse, than humans. They needed to go, too. All of them.
Particularly those Cullens.
My lips turned up into a snarl of feral pleasure and I sprung from the earth right in front of Bella's shocked face.
She wasn't shocked enough. She had been looking intently at where I had been, but now she fell over backward and screamed.
I landed on the ground lightly, smirking.
Nothing gets the blood flowing in a human like a little scream-fest.
And then: nothing gets my whole body hard with want than a little juicy snack, all primed and ready to be eaten.
No pleasure like that in the world: sucking somebody dry as they scream, struggle and die. Particularly when their good, hard cock is ejecting nice warm sperm into my hungry cunny.
Yes, I feed alone, on those special occasions.
James tends to be the jealous-type and wonders why he and his two-pumps weren't enough for me. I mean, after all, he got off, on top of me, and he dumped his cold, acidy load in me.
What more could a girl want, right?
I smirked at Bella, and had to swallow, or else I'd've drooled.
Or attacked her neck and sucked her dry.
You see, I was in a good mood.
But I ignored her shock, because I was just too excited with my discovery.
"The trees!" I exclaimed, pleased, almost gleeful: "they're all connected!"
Bella blinked, still surprised, then digested my words. Then she blinked again, this time a little more slowly.
"Well, yeah," she said.
I didn't like her tone, however. It was the, 'well, yeah; doesn't everyone know that?' kind of superior tone that these granola-nut freaks all adopted when they put on airs of 'we are all connected, we are one with the environment, so let us commune with Nature by driving our gas-guzzling, carbon-monoxyde-spewing vehicles to a public park and leave our litter all over the place' nonsense they all adopted.
In short, she didn't get it.
"No," I stated more forcefully, almost a little bit angrily. "When I say the trees are all connected, I really mean that they are all connected! I've never seen this before," I explained. "The root system is like ..."
I looked at her expectantly, weaving my fingers together from my hands, trying to convey to her what I saw under the earth, that she just didn't get.
She blinked again. "Like... 'integrated'?" she offered.
"Yes," I said. "They're all ..."
I stopped.
I just looked at her, looking at me, my hands knitted together, looking foolish. She was looking at me like James looked at me when I just wanted to rap or to vent and he had that tolerant, superior, smug look on his face that I so hated, because it made me feel so small.
I was taller than this girl, and she didn't have a smug look on her face. No, she had a patient, ... almost expectant look on her face, like she were waiting for me to explain myself so she could understand my excitement.
And my words meant nothing to her. I couldn't convey my excitement, and just adding more words made me look, and feel, more foolish.
And I hated that feeling: that feeling of being awkward and small, particularly in front of this lesser creature.
Why did she get to look at me, like James looked at me and like Laurent looked at me? They were men, so they could get away with them being men: it was a man-woman thing, men just didn't understand women, so they could be cruel and heartless to them, without even doing it intentionally. But this was a woman, and she just wasn't ... getting me, and my excitement.
And that wasn't supposed to happen. As different as we were, we had that commonality, and ...
And, looking at her, we didn't even have that.
I looked down at my interlaced fingers, feeling stupid for discovering this amazing thing.
"It's the Pando," she offered softly, seeing my disappointment.
I looked up at her. I understood her tone: pitying, but I didn't understand her words.
"It's the what?" I said.
Bella bit her lip, looking away. Then she looked back at me. "It's the Pando," she said again, then explained. "People come from all over the country, because this is, like, the biggest organism in the world, and they just discovered it recently, or something. This isn't a forest, it's one tree, or one ... something, root system, or whatever, and all the trees come from it, so they're like ... all connected," then she blushed, "... like you said."
"Ah," I said, looking at her.
Bella blinked and blushed, looking away.
"But you knew this already," I said.
"Yeah," she said, "that's why we ..." she swallowed, "we came out here, 'cause it was really ..."
She shrugged and shuddered, and her eyes started to shine.
Here she was, feeling miserable that her best-laid vacation plans had gone awry, had gone straight to Hell, straight to me, and all I wanted to do was ...
I was furious. With her. Here I discovered this amazing thing, and she was so casual about it, this thing, this discovery. So flippant: 'yeah' she said. Like everyone knew this, so why didn't I?
I wanted to put her out of her misery. I wanted to put her down for making me feel so stupid, particularly because of my excitement at discovering this novelty.
Jaded. Nothing kills wonder like that, and that's how she treated this knowledge. 'Oh, everybody knows.'
Well, I didn't.
I stood there, glaring, then I waved imperiously to the gravesite, the very shallow outline of one.
Bella blanched then walked back the shallow grave, knelt down, and started to dig.
"Sorry," she mumbled into the dirt.
She shouldn't have said that.
I lashed out with my hand, grabbing her by the nape of the neck and twisted her head so that she was facing me fully.
I glared. "Fuck you," I snarled, then threw her bodily into the dirt.
The air left her in a whoosh, and she lay there for a second, stunned.
I didn't care. I turned from her, facing my back to her, and sat down, hard, in the dirt beside her and put my face into my hands.
When you're immortal, it doesn't stop, and you can't run from it. The 'it' is you. You always have to face yourself. You can't run from your own shame; it's always there. My head felt so, so heavy now, and I just wanted to close my eyes, so I did, and make it all go away, my shame, my smallness, my inadequacies, my childish excitement, that I so wanted to share, so wanted somebody to get, and was that a crime? Was that a crime?
I couldn't even escape myself, not even from a scrawny, little human.
But it didn't go away, none of it. It stayed and stayed and stayed with me, no matter how hard I ran. James was gone, and I couldn't even lord my greatness over a nothing-human girl without me exposing my own weaknesses, even to her.
I heard Bella sniffle, lift herself onto her hands and knees and start digging again.
"Sorry," she whispered. And she dug.
A/N: Okay, this is like out from left field, but it's like really struck me.
Why are we all such slaves to fashion? I mean, before, it was the mini-mini skirt, every girl, then every woman was wearing them, even those who had no right to.
I didn't. No way am I showing off my knobby knees, thank you very much.
But now it's the perfectly form-fitted jeans, jodhpurs, actually, and knee-high soft-leather boots? I mean: everybody, and I'm like: really?
And, but then, there's this one girl at work, Susan, and she's like, way up there in management, and she does P-90X and has the so-the-Rosalie-Hale look (her hair's shoulder length), and she's rockin' the jeans and soft leather boots, and I'm like ...
Damn.
So, this weekend, I got me my own jeans-n-soft-brown-leather-boots, thank you, and I looked myself up and down, and I was like ...
Okay, some girl's gonna get herself way lucky tonight. Big time. I am lookin' fiiiiiiine!
`phfina, you sell-out, you slavin' it to the fashion, just like everybody else?
I say onto ye: Hells, yeah!
What works, works, even if it's the fashion and everybody's wearin' it.
p.s.: Okay, there's a lot of good stuff out there. You know? Like we all like to troll and say, why is this sh!t and why is that sh!t, but there's actually some good sh!t out there. Like, 'In a World' (check my blog entry) where I really, really liked that even the 23-y-o bimbo who moved in with the Dad had heart, and smarts, and, fuck! that was a great movie, and the Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey, that I'm gonna read on my commute, but it inspired me to write (well, to start!) 'The Little Girl of the Snows' under my jesumina kyd penname, and then there's Sales Team by Cat5 on literotica. Such a sweet, sweet, d'awwww! story, so nice to read! And, okay, guy-girl, but they guy wasn't dickless, but he wasn't a dick, either, and he so could have been, but instead, he was the fucking knight in shining armor, but, lo, and behold, the girl was my heroine, because she was way smarter than him, way better than him, but she didn't rub it in his face, no, she was, like, grateful to be admired and appreciated for who she really was, and she just didn't see it, until he did.
So many girls like that. One girl I know, perfect in every way, beat herself up for her imperfect skin, and her imperfect self, and yes, we're all imperfect, okay, but we're also God's gift, okay, and God loves us, in spite of, even because of our imperfections, and I just wish I'd remind myself of that sometimes and more often, you know? We're all, each of us, amazing women, ... and men, too. Each having something to give to our families and sig. others and coworkers, and we really, really do and will be missed if we were gone, but we're here and doing the best we can, and damn, that's way better than we give ourselves credit for, so I MAKE sure I'm grateful for my coworkers and family and little nieces out visiting in California, and I miss them so much, and, jeez! am I going on a rant or what?
Pant, pant, pant!
Okay. I'm okay again. I'm good now.
So what I was saying is there's so much good stuff out there; AND you can just get your b-u-t-t outdoors and go for a walk or a jog and just admire nature's handiwork, too. Like Pando, but do we? Noooo! We stay inside and sulk, but not this girl, nosiree, bob! I went out this weekend to the river (estuary, actually) and looked at the boats and threw rocks into the water and let the sea-breeze muss my hair and wish really, really badly for a raspberry beret like that cute girl was wearing, 'cause it was cold outside this weekend, but a good-cold and I was so glad for my scarf and my new jeans-n-boots and I was lookin' fine as I walked and checked peeps out and blushed as I realized I was getting checked out.
It was a nice weekend, even though I miss my nieces so, and now back to work.
Bleh!
But maybe it'll even be a nice week at work. Who know? I'll give that a try and see how it goes.
Luvus, my dear readers, be kind and gentle on yourselves!
kisses, `phfina
