"Even your going let it find you. Even in hiding find it knows you. Rocking you to sleep from the otherside. Tethered by timing let it undo. Aimless and ripped from the root. Binds you"
Otherside, Perfume Genius
Chapter Twenty-One
BPOV
Because I could not stop for Death –
He kindly stopped for me –
The Carriage held but just Ourselves –
And Immortality.
We slowly drove – He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility –
We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess – in the Ring –
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain –
We passed the Setting Sun –
Or rather – He passed Us –
The Dews drew quivering and Chill –
For only Gossamer, my Gown –
My Tippet – only Tulle –
We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground –
The Roof was scarcely visible –
The Cornice – in the Ground –
Since then – 'tis Centuries – and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses' Heads
Were toward Eternity –
"Isabella, since you prefer to engage yourself in pursuits other than the lesson at hand, I assume you must find this curriculum below your spectrum of superior analysis." My head shot up from its bent position, hunched over the doodles in my tablet—new designs for the signs I wanted to make for the march.
Mr. Davenport was staring at me, a look that wasn't uncommon to the ones I'd received from every other professor this semester looming on his face. I needed to start being more attentive or I'd find myself back on a train home long before the Christmas holiday.
"I apologize Mr. Davenport."
"Why don't you share with the class your extensive knowledge of Emily Dickinson and this particular poem, since we seem to be boring you."
I couldn't help but blush with embarrassment as a dozen different sets of eyes turn to look at me. I could practically hear them rolling, 'not Isabella again', I'm sure they were all thinking.
"Anything, in particular, you'd like me to dive into Professor?" I tried to be coy.
Mr. Davenport was younger than most of the professors at Vassar and he was arguably my favorite, with his beautifully eloquent lectures on renowned poets and authors. He assigned readings by a diverse group of masters, including many women who's works I had come to take refuge in as my bones started to ache with a need to do more in this life.
"Tell us about immortality Ms. Swan and its role in this poem." His stern grimace lessened and I knew I'd have to thank him later for being mild in demeanor, as we did have a good relationship—him often letting me borrow several of the books from the shelves in his office that weren't on the required reading list and sometimes too scandalous for the library on campus.
But my mind was past his niceties as I looked at the poem written on the dusty chalkboard ahead of me.
"Well," I tapped my pencil against my chin, more thinking out loud than answering his question, "immorality is more of an ambiguous idea here. Of course, you can say that Dickinson's usual Christian ideals play a theme in this piece as you hear about the carriage leading the narrator towards an afterlife…" I trailed off still trying to gather my thoughts.
"But?" Davenport encouragement me onward.
"But, maybe it's more…ironic?" It came off as a question, not feeling truly confident in my answer, but decided to continue on anyway, "She almost hints at the idea that maybe there is no afterlife but just a permanent nothingness that awaits us all. Either way, I think the greater point is that death is inevitable no matter what lies beyond. He, I mean death, isn't in a hurry to make our demise happen because, in the end, he'll all be picking us up in that carriage taking us to our final destination, whether its heaven or just the graveyard."
Silence lingered after my wax poetizing ended.
"Insightful Isabella, now please keep your eyes at attention." He scolded me one last time but I could see a small smirk pulling up one side of his face.
The class continued on normally and I couldn't help but let my full mind wander as I lazily took in the back of the heads of the young women who sat before me.
"Bella?"
My eyes slid towards the sound of my informal name, thinking I was once again in trouble, but as I looked towards the front of the class Mr. Davenport had his back turned to us, writing something new on the board.
"Bella?" This time I realized it wasn't a man's voice but rather a soft feminine call that dance across the classroom, although it didn't gather any attention besides my own—all the heads remained poised in attention towards the front of the room.
"Bella!" More urgently my name was called now and I finally pivoted my gaze towards the door.
Standing in the previously empty doorway that leads out into the hall was my mother.
I stared at her confused.
How could she be here? The trip from home was hours by train and it wasn't like my parents to make impromptu visits. Also, they had just been on campus in September for a family weekend and we weren't set to see one another until Thanksgiving.
"Bella!" She called me again with urgency, motioning for me to come to her with a wave of her hand.
I expected to see that she had finally caught the attention of my fellow students, but when I glanced back they remained in their neutral positions.
Something must be wrong at home. Maybe something had happened to Michael or Garrett.
The mere doom of it sent a wave of nausea over me as I quickly got out of my seat, heading towards the door, leaving my doodles and Dickinson behind.
As soon as I was near enough, my mother gathered me into her arms, embracing me in a hug that was all-encompassing, warming me in a way that made me feel like I hadn't truly been warm since I last left this spot.
"Mother?" I couldn't help the sob that burst from my lips as I clung to her like a small child.
"Bella, he knows what you're planning." She whispered in a rushed voiced tinged with terror, her breath labored like she had run the whole way here to find me.
I grabbed her shoulders to try and settle her trembling form and she flinched when my hand came in contact with her arms.
"Who? What's going on?" I begged her—desperate to know why she was here.
"He found everything, he knows!"
"Who Mama? Try and calm down and tell me what's happening." I attempted to pull her back into our embrace but she quickly slipped from my arms and was running down the hallway, her beautiful shiny chestnut hair disappearing around the corner before I even felt the warmth of her arms leave my fingers.
"Mama!" I was crying now.
This wasn't like my mother. Her outfits always pressed and pinned in the perfect places, her thin lithe body the ideal amount of feminine and her hair…
Wait…what color was her hair again?
I started wondering down the corridors of the long, empty hallway, my eyes darting back and forth looking for something or someone.
Who I was I looking for again?
I suddenly couldn't remember what I had been doing.
I put one foot in front of the other, hoping that somehow the constant movement would spark a light of remembrance. But everything seemed foggy now—covered in a light sheen of confusion.
"Isabella," my name was whispered in the air.
Back and forth I snapped my head to try and find what I was looking for, but it seemed the same as looking for a dream after you've woken and the imagination of your conscious mind quickly fades.
"Hello?" I whispered back to the cold air that was wrapping its arms around myself in a prickling sting. No warmth was generated from the chilly fingers that seemed to grasp at me know.
"Isabella, come here." The voice was harsher now—demanding.
"Where?" I cried out, darting into the darkness ahead of me, no landmarks of remembrance sticking out amongst the disappearing backdrop of this nightmare.
"Bella!" The yell of my name was directly behind me, skimming my ear, blowing the loose strands of my hair against my neck.
I screamed.
Edward didn't need to follow the pungent scent of his unrequited mate as he finally pulled himself from the ground of the forest—only moving after a full minute had stretched on. The painful pulling against his ribs was maddening and the ache was almost unbearable. The agony was like a ribbon tying them together, tugging him in her direction.
Even if she didn't want him, he had to find a way to stop this pull that connected them in some paranormal way.
He knew where to find her, but he took his time climbing the winding staircase of what he was coming to think of as the 'cursed Cullen house'. Each footstep felt like he was moving through quicksand, never making any real progress, and while he was sure his heart couldn't actually start beating again, the useless organ suddenly felt like it was swelling inside his chest.
Through the halls and up another flight of stairs he went, cursing his traitorous body as he went—a knife stabbing through his ribs, one enlarged heart, and the continuous throbbing of the hard piece of flesh that strained against the now ruined pants he wore.
If he could only see her, maybe the string would at least settle it's rattling and let him breathe.
The relief of reaching the attic landing escalated upon him seeing that the door had been thrown off its hinges in what he could only guess was accomplished by a passionate need to escape. But the excitement quickly died when he saw the slight blue shimming sparkle around the entrance of the door.
It didn't take him more than half a second to realize that just like in the woods, only a second earlier, a shining translucent barrier stood between him and his unfinished business.
A murderous growl echoed against the walls surrounding him, a picture frame to his right shattering with the vibrations.
He approached cautiously; not wanting to add the electric sting he knew came from her little party trick to his long list of ailments.
These aches and pains, the surmounting feelings coursing through him, a quietly intriguing mind, and a desperate need to touch the little creature that wrecked his body left Edward feeling more human than he ever had in the last three centuries of this existence.
"Isabella," her name fumbled from his mouth when he caught sight of her collapsed face-first into the small bed to the right side of the room, the blood from her dress staining the white sheets she laid on.
He watched partially in fascination and partially in horror as she thrashed back and forth, her body looking like it was possessed by a sinister demon. It was both disturbing to him and somehow erotic.
The hem of her dress that he once gripped in his hands was scrunched underneath her flailing body, riding up to the backs of her pale, bare thighs. Only a few inches of beige floral fabric kept his eyes from seeing the naked flesh of her heat—he could smell it with every deep breath he drew into his lungs, leaving his mouth-watering.
"Isabella, come here." He spoke the words slowly, firm and demanding, pushing away the desperate hiss he had wanted to make.
He knew if she just turned and could see him, he could push away those cloudy glazed eyes. He could make her sees stars instead of darkness.
His skin felt singed and raw, needing the salve of her gaze to help begin to aid the burning.
Her body twitched in his direction, rolling on her back suddenly, her limbs wild and waving before going still. Her eyes were tightly clenched, almost painfully so, her head tilted to the side of the bed, giving Edward the first clear view of her hauntingly beautiful face.
"Where?" she cried in a broken, small voice.
The carnal needs were quickly pushed aside with the ache of needing to absolve her of the pain she was feeling. He needed to hold her and pull her back down from the clouds she was lost in. He would do anything she needed if it meant never hearing her make another brutal plea like that again.
He leaned against the frame of the door with both hands pushing dents into the wood, his face, so close to the glimmer of her shield, that he could feel the charge tingling against the skin of his nose and cheeks.
"Bella, Bella, Bella," he whispered over and over, not realizing that he was doing it, his mind nearly as lost as hers was in the pain of not being able to press himself against her.
Her back bent like a snapping twig, arching off the bed in an unnatural looking way that would have snapped her in half had she not been indestructible. Her hands clawed at the fresh teeth marks that Edward had left on her and he growled, desperate to give her relief from the scorching pounding that he somehow felt radiating in the crook of his own neck.
"Bella!" He finally yelled—shaking the doorframe he clung to so desperately.
Her answering wail was immediate and bone-chilling—the screech of a dying creature.
He fell to the floor immediately, no longer able to withstand the pain that was ripping him apart. His hand clutched at the fabric covering his empty chest, his head too heavy to hold up.
"Bella?"
He hadn't even heard Rosalie until she was calling to her pseudo sister from the edges of the woods right outside of the house.
Rose didn't mean to be gone so long from her family, from Bella, but she needed to clear her head and think about how she was supposed to handle her father's deception and the new 'additions' to the household. She had always been an analytical thinker, needing to dissect every movement and action of the others around her so she was prone to disappearing into the dark woods for a week—not even Bella having enough sway to keep her from her head.
The sounds of Bella's scream from inside the house sent a strong feeling of dread, more potent than ever before, through her body. She didn't need to analyze the immediacy of that reaction to know that she had made a mistake.
She should never have left her sister.
Two seconds was all it took for her to race into the house and bound up the stairs, needing desperately to pull her sister into her arms like she had done so many times before.
But there was something different about the house. If she had given it more than a moment's notice, she would have smelt it well beyond the entrance of their home. It was everywhere, a deep sharp odor that she had never come upon before. It was both intoxicatingly sweet and horribly putrid. If she hadn't been so focused on reaching Bella, she would have collapsed to the floor with its potency.
Besides the stench that settled in every space of the house, there was a heaviness that had also matured into the air. Something less physical than the smell, rather more of a physiological turn that was melting around her making her movements seem watered down.
They were warnings that Rosalie was in the wrong place at the wrong time—an intruder on something significant.
But it wasn't until she was charging up the last flight of stairs that everything came to a peak of realization at the moment that she saw him kneeling in front of the attic doorway.
Rage swelled in her chest, a fire that had started to burn from the minute he'd laid his hands on Carlisle, the same one that flared when he inquired about the 'little mouse' wailing upstairs and spread deep into her being when she found he had the audacity to share the same venom with her.
"You!" she roared.
Edward was out of his mind watching his mate thrash and scream, feeling every muscle and vein begin to peel apart from inside of him. Maybe like Rosalie, if he had been more perceptive of what was going on around him, he would have reacted in a different manner to her arrival. But while Rosalie missed the warning signs that plunged the house into darkness, he had lost any civilized behavioral reactions.
They were beasts, and Rosalie was a threat to his mate.
His already crouched position on the floor morphed into something more animalistic and defensive. His answering growl was deep and guttural, made more so by the stabbing sensation pulsing over his body.
No longer was he the handsome devil dressed in her father's crisp black clothing, hair quaffed and clean. Now he looked more like the antichrist torn from his bloody womb. Half dried blood was streaked across his face and up into his hair that was spiked in every direction or matted down in other places. The black button-down he'd worn was practically hanging off his shoulders in tatters; the trail of fingernails that had torn through the fabric was glaringly noticeable. His pants and once slick shoes were covered in mud and grass, pine needles, and even more blood. But more than his physical appearance, his eyes look manic—both dark with a desperate longing for something and burning irately with a dominance that even Rosalie in all her fury suddenly backed down a step.
"Edward?" She held a hand out in front of her, realizing she was now facing off with a demon rather than a man—treading lightly was the only way she was going to get to Bella.
Another growl rumbled through his chest and Rosalie was hit was a wall of that confusing half intoxicating half horrific smell she breezed through earlier. It brought her to her knees, her hands clutching onto the step in front of her.
"Leave!" Edward spat at her.
Rosalie's stomach clenched violently as if she was about to retch up the week's worth of grizzly bear she had filled up on. She stopped breathing, not being able to stand the smell that barreled down the staircase, clinging to every surface it touched.
Beneath the overwhelmingly human feeling of nausea, there was a twinge of something deeply inappropriate that had her thigh clenching together as uncontrollably as her stomach had.
She had to leave—now. But she had to get Bella away from this monster too.
"Bella," Rosalie managed to gasp with the last of the clean oxygen in her lungs.
"Mine!" Edward towered over her in a blink of the eye, sheathing with every pent up emotion and painful stab that drenched him in panic.
With a flick of his wrist, the blonde was thrown down the stairs and skidding through the floorboards of the second story hallway, taking the hardwood with her as her body came to a stop.
Rosalie lay gasping and confused, loathing every gulp of tainted air she took into her body.
One more look up at the dark staircase and she finally peeled herself from the splintered floor, dashing for the front door and fresh air.
She had raced to the edge of the clearing where the house stood, clinging to an evergreen before the pheromones dissipated enough that she could finally think clearly.
What the hell was that? She gasped out a sob as she replayed what had just happened, feeling useless and unbelievably bewildered.
Why did he act that way? Was he going to hurt Bella? I can't leave her in there with him after he basic claimed her—
"Oh my god," she breathed out, her hand sliding over her gaping mouth in shock as the implications of what had just happened slid into place.
Edward wasn't going to hurt Bella…he was trying to protect her. From me. She quickly worked through what this meant.
"He's her mate." She didn't need to say it, but somehow hearing the words out loud made it seem less impossible and more concrete when paired with the evidence that lay beyond the brick and glass of the house she stared at now.
Rosalie slid down the trunk of the tree until she was sitting on the damp ground, her knees pulled to her chest, her arms clenched around her settled stomach.
"This can't be happening," she whispered to no one but the empty field.
Not to her Bella. Not with that vicious demon.
She stared back at the house for a moment longer before she suddenly realized that her sire was nowhere to be seen in all of this.
Where are you, Carlisle?
Things weren't right. But she couldn't sit and listen, as Bella started screaming again—knowing there was no way she would get back into that house until she found Carlisle.
With one last long glance up towards the windows of the attic, she rose from the ground and fled into the cover of the forest, needing her father once again.
A/N: I had so many great comments from the last chapter. I hope you're enjoying as we all enter back into our Twilight phase of obsession.