CONTENT TRIGGER WARNINGS! Suicide. Gender dysphoria. Physical assault. Mentions of rape. Possibly self-harm. A Transphobe. A possible existential crisis. Proceed with caution.

In case anyone didn't catch the memo on entry, this is a fanfiction website and the IP you recognise as non-original doesn't belong to me. This piece of work exists in the Public Domain. In the event of the author no longer permitting fan work, this will be removed from public platforms.

If you are Ben Shapiro, I would strongly recommend that you do not read this story, that you close your web browser and report to your nearest safe space. If symptoms of being triggered do not subside, take a dose of stargazing to put everything into perspective. Triggering symptoms may include anxiety, intense agitation, heart palpitations, fits of rage, and the desire to make a lengthy YouTube video rant with some angry Twitter tweets thrown in. These are not healthy symptoms to experience and may require medical intervention in your 40s and onwards.

Now that that's all over, let's get into a brief preamble about this story. According to previous interviews and cannon declarations made by S. Meyer, the process of vampire transformation not only makes one attractive and superhuman, but it also removes imperfections and body modifications. That is some important language right there. A body modification is considered to be a tattoo, piercing, cosmetic surgery procedure, among others. Because my mind jumps through some crazy loops sometimes, I came up with a challenge based on a "what if". Write a trans character that found themselves enduring the curse of Meyer's vampirism. Granted, in light of recent social progresses, I am sure that Meyer would reassess the language and possibly be more inclusive now. However, this is the result of that awful thought experiment. It was terrible. You're welcome.

O Sweetly Burning, The Butterfly Mourns:

In the beginning there was darkness and a piece of infinitely dense space. Then, everything was burned into existence in the span of minutes, and for ages it burned until light burst into existence, and stars became immense crucibles of life. Then, there were planets and those planets made other planets and, seemingly all of a sudden, a heart began to beat on a planet very familiar to us. And then stars expanded, incinerating planets and their heartbeats. And they cooled and died and fell into black holes. And black holes evaporated until there were just light beams in the dark. And entropy pushed the universe towards its infinite end, a process that would be the universe's empty unbecoming. But that is too far, too distant for any of us to be concerned of.

A heart began to beat on a planet very familiar to us, and that heartbeat became many heartbeats until the planet was covered in heart beats. Volcanic explosions killed heartbeats, but more came after. Asteroids attempted to destroy these heartbeats, but they came back and they spread and, miraculously, there were heartbeats that began to think.

They became heartbeats of self and they were complicated and made friends and enemies, fought wars and negotiated peace, committed atrocities and made great acts of kindness, were so utterly stupid and were so incredibly intelligent.

They harnessed the electron and, finally, these children of self were able to grow. They could discover the entirety of self and what awareness meant.

And in a world where one can cheat death, however temporarily that may be, selves are doomed to the condition of existential privilege.

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL

In the early hours of the morning, a sunrise kissed beaches and buildings as it moved through the sky. A massive statue of a man atop Mount Corcovado grabbed the sun's rays and cast a long shadow behind him. The ocean crashed against the shoreline, the sound humming through the ground closest to the salty water.

Children, already awake, ran through streets, attempting to hold on to this brief moment of their lives by exalting in their youth. Adults, too far gone from such joys, shouted at the children, at each other, then they laughed and chatted and went about their day.

The sounds of traffic and trade and industry filled the air as Christ the Redeemer's shadow grew shorter and the sun rose higher.

Hotel staff moved louder as guests began to emerge from their rooms to populate the breakfast hall. They cursed, but always kept it out of earshot of the guests, and rolled their eyes as managers barked out inane orders, but they marched on anyway, keeping afloat the home of the traveller.

A few levels up, a young woman danced in her room. She'd beaten her fellow travellers to the breakfast hall a few hours prior and was readying herself for a journey beyond the hotel.

She was beautiful, sculpted by the day's standards, a perfect feminine creature. Long dark hair framed her face and long eyelashes stole the viewer's attention to her brilliant dark eyes. Her brows were thin and her jaw delicate. Her nose was dainty and full lips were stretched into a pleased grin.

A flowing shirt hugged curves that exercise and hormones and surgical precision had produced. Her denim shorts-clad legs were smooth and free of blemishes.

Alexa Monroe had worked hard over the last couple of years to achieve happiness, a feeling of being true to her self. There were moments of intense physical agony, but that had been the birthing fire. Like a phoenix, the flames of pain had rebirthed her into something she always was but needed to realise.

She was now treating herself to a trip through South America. All of her friends had visited Europe in their early days of self discovery, while she was creating herself, and they had raved at her about how she should get round to that backpacking experience. She was older now and knew that there was very little to discover about Europe. All the landmarks had been found and photographed to death.

South America, on the other hand, was something she had seen in brief images online and the odd documentary. It promised a beautiful land of unique experiences. Its people were a diverse tapestry of individuals. Yes. There were grievances about its politics. However, being a tourist generally comes with special protections against such issues.

This was going to be amazing, she told herself as she picked up her rucksack and danced out of the room. She shut the door and was off down the corridor towards the elevators that took her down to the ground level.

She was out of the building, heading down streets to where the people congregated. She flavoured some of the local cuisine along the way. Once she had found a congregated area, she flagged down a cab.

She had struggled through a few lines of Portuguese before the cab driver, a cheerful middle-aged man, had relieved her with his comparatively better linguistics skills. The conversation continued in English and they chatted during the colourful drive.

His family had been Brazilian for as long as they could remember. He had a wife, whose mother had come from Colombia, and they had three children together, a son and two daughters. Alexa learned that the cab driver was quite worried about raising two daughters in such an uncertain future, but she had assured him that he would do his best.

They arrived at her destination, a footpath on the outskirts of the Amazon rainforest area. He left her his number so that she could call him once she needed to return.

She stood for a moment, looking at the task ahead. She had booked an intense weeklong camping expedition with a group that was starting in a few days, but spontaneity had summoned her for a hike of her own. She wouldn't be long.

She hiked in her own local area and so knew how to surmount such tasks. She was prepared for a brisk walk and wouldn't stray from the path.

She pulled her bag closer and trod on.

Trees and shrubbery surged on past her to the pace of her march. She watched this passing greenery that was so different from the Northern Hemisphere, inhaling the forest in. It was humid, but fresh, like she was inhaling pure oxygen. She occasionally stopped to take out her camera and record sights that were particularly beautiful before moving on again.

Eventually she reached her midpoint, a resting spot for hikers, and claimed a bench as hers to sit and be with the forest in this moment. She leaned back and rested. Her eyes fluttered shut as she felt the forest. She listened to the chirping of birds and the squeals of small mammals. She inhaled humid clean air, smelling the damp soil and the sighing bark of ancient trees and the sharpness of leaves and natural green. It was hot, but it wasn't at the same time. Water molecules hung in the air and a breeze rustled through this natural alley, alleviating her of this pressure.

She opened her eyes and, for a moment, she believed that she was dreaming. A man of impossible beauty lurked in the shadows of the trees, stood directly across from her. She blinked rapidly as if such an act could dispel illusions before realising that this man was real and that she was being rude.

"Hello," she called out tentatively.

"Good afternoon," the man's voice sang and the sound made her bones ache from its beauty.

She stood, compelled forwards by the siren call of his shimmering beauty.

"Hey," she said, more confidently, and smiled, enraptured in this moment.

"A senhora," he purred. "May I humbly present my name? Joham."

He extended a hand and she numbly lifted her arm towards it.

"Alexa," she took his hand. It was cold, too cold for the weather, but she didn't question it, she was too enchanted by this dark angel.

He lightly tugged her closer and he closed the distance with a step that seemed like he was floating. He raised a hand and stroked her face, trailing down her neck to her collarbone. She sighed, a soft moan escaping from her throat. Butterflies exploded in her stomach, fluttering around until she was a tightly wound doe held captive in the headlights of this mysterious man.

"I want to show you something," Joham's voice excited the butterflies. "Will you let me?"

"Anywhere," she breathed, her voice sounding significantly more mediocre in comparison to his.

He chuckled and pulled her arm to hold her astride.

He stepped off the path and led her off into the depths of the forest, away from where something in her gut told her not to leave, the same gut that told her who she was. After so long of listening to her gut, she ignored it. This man had her head in a fog.

They walked for a while and the sun had traversed the sky, touching the horizon at a point that couldn't be observed from within the forest. When he stopped, the foliage was thick, thicker than the hiker's trail.

Joham floated just a few steps away from her to face her. She wasn't even looking at the surrounds. His presence was all that she could perceive. Nothing else registered.

"Minha doce beleza," he began. She couldn't understand his singsong words, but didn't say so. "From the moment I saw you, I understood you to be perfect. We could be a couple so pristine it rivals the kings and their wives. I can make you a deusa and we can live with my children and become greater than kings."

"Sure," she whispered, feeling ineloquent and clumsy compared to his ethereal grace.

She didn't really understand what he was saying other than there was a flattering compliment somewhere in his words. How could she, though? Her mind felt like it was full of static, the crackling ghostly whispers of the big bang still rippling through the universe billions of years later. One couldn't think clearly with their head full of that cosmic noise.

She had to be rational in this world. She had to be in control. But in this moment, her mind had failed her.

Joham's grin dazzled her, leaving her gasping as he closed the distance again. He paced around her and stopped behind her. Her skin prickled, Goosebumps raising the hairs on her neck.

She felt him against her back and an arm wrapped itself around her torso. Another hand cleared her flyaway hairs and held her head. He bent his head into the crook of her neck. She felt him sniffing down from her earlobe to the point where the shoulder met the neck. She sensed his mouth open and suddenly time seemed suspended.

Her gut screamed at her and she was bombarded by its message. It was screaming at her to not let this happen, to do everything in her might to prevent whatever this was from happening. It screamed that terrible things would happen if it did, indeed, happen. It was like an air raid siren ringing through her mind. This must not happen!

She felt this intuitive message and, for a moment, was overwhelmed by fear. It was in her cells, in the air, in the screech of a far away bird. And she was paralysed. She was now a doe, frozen in the headlights, about to get run over.

She made a noise and Joham bit down, hard, piercing through her flesh. She inhaled a deep breath and his hand covered the scream that issued. He removed his teeth and she hung limp in his arms, as pain overwhelmed her.

Pain became her world. Fire consumed her entire body. It was like the plasma that was the surface of the sun was licking her every cell, like she was being shredded by a black hole because she had been stupid enough to touch its event horizon. It warped time and distorted her perception of her body.

Joham had dumped her body here, wherever here was. Was it a cave? Was it a hole at the bottom of a sheer face of a mountain? Had he just thrown leaves on her and left? She didn't care. All she knew was that Joham was gone and she was in some place where her screams for help would not be heard.

Joham was a liar anyway. He had said that he was going off to source food. It was the final lucid moment she had experienced before his departure. Before his abandonment, he had carried her writhing body in his arms, telling her all sorts of deluded nonsense.

He had told her that she was transforming into a vampire. Hah! As if such creatures existed! And even if they did, all the popular literature hadn't said anything about pain being a prerequisite for vampire transformation. Sure, a few fictional books weren't a definitive guide for anything, but vampires were mythological creatures. What could one look to in explaining things that weren't supposed to exist?

He was lying anyway. He had told her that vampires were gods and goddesses, beautiful creatures that were immortal, whose lives were sublime experiences of pleasure. They couldn't want for anything, but could have everything.

How could he be telling the truth when she felt so terrible? He couldn't be.

Her thoughts had been so circular, so loud, that she hadn't noticed a change in the agony. It was now receding away from her limbs, concentrating into her core. Her fingers and toes felt numb when the fire was completely vanished. Then, slowly, her wrists and ankles, her forearms and shins, her elbows and knees, her upper arms and thighs, the liquid fire seemed to swim away, closer to her heart. Those numb limbs felt odd, but it was still refreshing.

Then, the pain seemed to throb like a heartbeat in her head before she felt this acid swimming down her neck, pulling more acid down with it. Her neck was then left devoid of pain.

Then the pain was concentrating itself in her heart and the pain was worse, on a cosmic magnitude of worse. She arched her back and screamed and it sounded like a man was screaming with her, but louder so that her voice was entirely drowned out.

And then it was gone. The pain was gone. She lay still, her eyes closed tight shut. Something was definitely off. She could feel that. It was her body. Something was wrong with her body. It didn't feel like it was hers. A terrified cloying filled her mind and she desperately shoved her senses outwards.

Her world exploded in an overwhelming mess. She could hear so much. Water droplets crashing into one another in lakes, rivers, and waterfalls, footsteps of animals, the scratching of insects moving in branches and soil, the tapping of birds landing on branches, the screeches and squawks and growls and roars of the animal orchestra in the wild, and heartbeats.

There were so many heartbeats that drummed at different tempos and wouldn't synchronise. These heartbeats made her salivate ravenously. It reminded her of when life had gotten in the way of her eating dinner at her regular time once. By the time she had arrived home, she had consumed wildly, desperate to sate her body's hunger.

Noticeable, though, was the distance. It was this thing that made her move. It was just a slight crease of the forehead, a frown of confusion. It sounded like the wild had formed a perimeter around her, not daring to approach any further.

What was wrong with her?

A foot made soft landfall somewhere very close. That was bizarre.

She could make it out as human-shaped, but it didn't have a heartbeat. In fact, she didn't have a heartbeat. How was she thinking all of this without a heartbeat? Shouldn't she be dead? Wait. Was she really a vampire as Joham had promised? Was this soft footfall Joham?

She was loath to open her eyes because she knew that she would have to confront the reality of this extreme wrongness. To her, opening her eyes would be like waking up from the best dream ever to the bleak de-saturated cold of reality. Right now, with her eyes closed, there were still the colours of the dream. Opening them would mean no turning back.

She had to, though.

There was this new instinct inside that told her that movement was essential. It wasn't the alive fidgety nature of having a heart thundering, forcing blood through her veins, nerves flashing electric signals, and neurons firing. It was this knowledge that movement was needed to maintain an ability to move.

She inhaled, opening her eyes. She blinked them, astonished. It was like seeing light for the first time. There was so much of it! It bounced and refracted and bent around angles in nature, reflecting a world of so much colour and detail. If she were seeing in normal HD before, she was now seeing in 8K HD. It would have been overwhelming if not for her priorities.

She twitched her arms. The muscles felt wrong. It wasn't the incredible amount of power in them that was wrong. No. They felt too thick, too masculine. Shakily, she moved her hands towards her torso and felt her abdomen. It was wrong. It was filled out where it shouldn't be and, through her shirt, she could feel abdomen muscles that shouldn't be defined like they were.

A thick feeling built up in her throat and she sniffed. Her hands sought out her upper torso. She released a soundless moan at the back of her throat. Her upper torso was flat. There was nothing.

And then her hands were feeling everything and she was desperately wriggling around in her attempts to find anything that was her body. But there was nothing, only the long hair she had laboured to grow. She sobbed, horror and devastation filling every cell in her wrong body.

A twig snapped and she threw her head in its direction.

There was Joham, at least the approximation of what she could remember him as. He was ugly now. With her new eyes, he was this horribly plain creature with a constant sneer of arrogance and judgement.

"What have you done to me?" she screamed and then wailed at the baritone that was her voice.

"Alexa?" Joham seemed disbelieving.

"What have you done to me?" she roared through her baritone wails that the more she heard of them, the more she wailed.

"You're a man?" he spat.

"No, I'm not!" she screeched.

His face was black with disgust and hatred and fury.

"You're one of those sick abominations!" He yelled. "You're a porra deceiver!"

"I'm not a deceiver! You deceived me!" She yelled back, hating him.

Something seemed to snap inside Joham and the ugliness of his person reared its head. He marched over to her and punched her through the face. The pain was brief, but it still stunned her. He picked her up by her hair and then slammed her against the ground.

"I make love with real women," he told her. "Maybe you will be lucky one day to find a bicha."

He then grabbed her crotch and pulled roughly until she screamed. He chuckled and threw her to the ground. She curled up into a ball to protect herself. He kicked her back, the sound reverberating as a massive boom, winding her.

"I want no more to do with you," he said, his tone chillingly cool.

His final insult was spitting on her as she sobbed on the ground.

He left and her world descended into a black and grey and razor sharp painful overlay.

She clutched herself, sobbing wildly, and the sun began to set.

The sun set, and she clutched herself, sobbing wildly.

Alexa sunk. She sunk like she had never sunk before.

The first thing she had discovered was that she couldn't sleep. It had been about a week of sunrises and sunsets without the exhaustion that beckoned sleep that she had concluded this. If she could sleep, she supposed life would be marginally more bearable.

She supposed this because one vague muddy memory of Joham's sweet nothings to her while she had burned recalled him telling her that vampires were unchangeable.

She supposed this because after two weeks of lying in that same spot, she had wrenched herself from her position and set to violently rectifying what Joham had done to her.

It had been violent and painful.

Transferring the fat from various parts of her body to her chest to rebuild something of her former body had been difficult and produced disappointing results. She should probably have gotten help, but the only other creature like her that she knew was someone who had ruined her in the first place.

Dealing with her nether regions had been much more painful, the pain only subsiding two weeks after she had convinced everything to stick together. At least she had discovered that her saliva could also function as a form of surgical glue for this thing she now was. The results were also disappointing and discomfort was a way of life.

Her face and her voice, she had resigned to not having any ability to change.

Although, she had resolved to never look in a mirror again and the possibility of her talking was ridiculous.

Talk to whom?

She couldn't return to her old life. There was something inside her that knew that returning was impossible. What she was, how she looked, she couldn't return.

Joham had stolen her body and then he had stolen her life and the people that made up a beautiful tapestry of brilliant colours.

By now, hotel staff has likely contacted officials to report a missing tourist. The officials have contacted her parents, and her parents, her friends.

What would they think happened? Were they looking for a dead body by now? Joham hadn't had the decency to bring her rucksack before dumping her in the crucible. She couldn't even glace at her mobile phone for a final moment of feeling connected to all the people she loved. She craved them the most.

She would often break down and cry tearless sobs that didn't alleviate the tension because crying was best experienced when it was done thoroughly.

Nothing did.

Her first "meal" had been spiteful in envy.

She had just managed to steal a set of more durable clothes from a clothing line on the outskirts of a rural village. She'd scented a woman that was menstruating. She'd frowned for a moment. The new dimension of scent and the knowledge of the world it provided had been mind-boggling.

Then the next thought was of intense jealousy. This woman was gorgeous and everything that Alexa had been. This woman wore her body with no regard for how privileged she was. This was a body that Alexa deserved!

She lunged and the woman was dead soon thereafter.

The blood satisfied an unquenchable thirst only sufficiently enough that blood wasn't the only thing on her mind.

She ignored her guilt and ran off into the depths of the Amazon to sit and think.

It was in this cave in a mountain that was impossible to reach that she doubted herself and then blamed herself for everything.

If only she hadn't gone wandering the woods of the Amazon on her own. If she had just waited for the hiking expedition, everything would have been different. Safety in numbers was the big thing on college campuses in her home country. Safety in numbers was the best way everywhere.

However, safety in numbers was only ever seriously discussed in the context of "girls". Alexa's Enlightenment process had occurred later in her college life, after dormitory halls became residency houses, and residency houses became small apartments shared between friends in suburbs near to college campuses.

Safety in numbers was now practised in clubbing scenarios. And she had been considered the protector of the group, having had the adolescent experience of karate, even though years of oestrogen therapy had stripped her muscles of their former strength.

Safety in numbers was a lesson taught to young girls by worried mothers who feared that their daughters would become the next statistic.

"Cover your drink." "Dress modestly." "Beware the predatory gaze of perverted men." "You are not safe." Mothers would say, glancing fearfully at their daughters' boyfriends, wondering if their daughters' first times would be forced, unreported violations that scrutinised the victim rather than the persecutor.

Alexa hadn't had the training of vigilance, to be distrustful of men's intentions. She had been the focus of fear, before Enlightenment and after Enlightenment. Her mother had never told her that the world was a dangerous place that blamed victims and congratulated persecutors.

Alexa remembered the locker room talk of her high school experience and a furious growl snarled through her teeth and echoed through the air molecules around.

This wasn't her fault, though.

She remembered Katherine Hardwick who always dressed in clothes that made her garishly modest and who always spent her spare time in the library, studying to become a scientist. She remembered hearing a whisper of a boy in a higher year bragging about how he convinced her from her books to the bleachers in the football field and how he took her innocence from her because he thought it was what he deserved.

A month later, Katherine had taken her father's shotgun and blown her brains out.

Her rapist became student body president and got a glowing recommendation to a college he didn't deserve because his grades were insufficient.

She remembered that tale with a bizarre amount of sharpness.

With this sharply in the forefront of her mind, the unquenchable thirst had lured her out of her cave.

Her next kill was a man that looked exactly like Joham. The man even abused those around him like Joham. She witnessed him filling women's drinks with gross amounts of strong liquor. He slipped a pill into the prettiest woman's drink. He had manipulated the woman away from her friends, promising them that he would take care of her, paying for their next round of drinks.

In an alleyway a short distance away, he prepared for his assault. She was faster.

Moving with superhuman speed and acting with superhuman strength, she had ripped him away before he had started removing the woman's clothes. His loud yell had probably been enough to alert authorities to the drugged woman left alone in the alleyway.

Alexa hadn't cared much on the rooftops where she had slowly ripped into the predator, filling herself.

Returning to her cave, Alexa's new problem became painfully clear. Immobility had ensured that she could ignore the reality of the situation. However, her hunt stabbed painfully at the wound her former life had healed.

Her genitals kept on falling out and her attempts at building herself an acceptable chest had become a lumpy failure on her torso. Her hunt had jostled her attempts at living with her body.

There was a thick feeling of despair in her as she watched herself in a still body of water on a full moon evening. She'd stripped herself naked and challenged herself to get used to the image of her wrecked body that didn't feel like hers.

She had only managed to count to ten before she was hurriedly pulling on the over-sized clothes that allowed her not to feel her reality so acutely.

She flitted back to her cave and sat, hugging herself in the foetal position. She desperately tried to remember the love of her friends and most supportive family members. Her sister had been the most elated about Alexa's Enlightenment because she had always wanted a sister, but life hadn't given her one thus far.

Alexa sobbed those awkward, painful dry sobs. The memory that had been so crystal clear to her, that had been so bright in her mind that she could return to it as if she were reliving the moment, was now a dark and foggy mystery to her.

The details were flawed. The image was grainy. The lights had been shut off.

Alexa was beginning to forget everything. Bright, lovely memories were being replaced by this darkness that Joham had infected her world with. The candle in the window had been snuffed out.

She needed to feed again. She knew that.

Did she even want to, though?

She felt guilty about the woman's life she had stolen. The man had been fine. However, there were only so many Johams that she could get away with killing before the Johams ran out and she was left to rob people of their lives, to steal a family member the same way Joham had stolen her from her family.

Besides, what was the point of vigilantism?

The problems of the world were insurmountable and perpetuating. There wouldn't be an end to war, corruption, murder, hate. There wouldn't be an end to it because she seriously doubted that anyone wanted the game to change. The solutions were so simple. Yet they weren't pursued with any interest.

She concluded that the Sixth Mass Extinction would arrive and, on the eleventh hour of the human race's existence, everyone would still be squabbling while they dropped dead.

So what was the point of living forever?

Who was she if she was compelled to consume nice people, like her cab driver? Miguel had been his name, she remembered.

Who was she if she couldn't remember the bright tapestry of love that she had created post Enlightenment? There was a great certainty that she couldn't return to forge new memories. An accident would happen. She wouldn't be able to stop herself from the unthinkable.

Who was she if she couldn't even forge a new life while living in a body that wasn't hers, that was torture to even exist in, that was torture to conceive of living forever in?

She doubted that vampires had any sort of society that could produce ways of existing happily despite her brain's best efforts not to. Joham had been able to just get away with creating her and dumping her. What sort of organised underground society would be structured in such a way that this could happen?

What was the point of living now?

She shook and choked on her breath, sobbing these odd sobs, as she watched the boiling depths of the liquid fire grave she had chosen for herself.

Alexa had once fancied herself a future geologist when she had been prepubescent. She would specialise in volcanoes, she had proudly declared to all who would listen with endearing grimaces.

This had spurred on an intense research effort, pouring over all the information the Internet had to offer. In the Colombian strip of the Andes mountain range, there existed a particularly active zone of the ring of fire. One volcano that had stood out to her because it had been an extreme was Galeras, or Urcunina amongst the ancestral populations of the land. In a previous eruption, it had killed six scientists who, ironically, had been attempting to predict future eruptions.

It was strange now that this information was being used after all these years and forgetting her desire to be a "volcanologist".

Alexa gained control of her limbs once more. She thought about her loved ones, said goodbye and I love you, summoned the feeling of them and that faint joy, and jumped.

Ashes to ashes.

Dust to dust.

Alexa's atoms were rearranged and reintegrated back into the world. Electrons dispersed back into the planet's core. Sound waves vibrated briefly through the air.

Alexa was no more.

But her story wasn't over.

She had arranged to speak with her parents the very same day of her disappearance. It was a check-in conversation as it was the first time her parents had released their daughter off to another continent that they didn't trust very well.

When she hadn't called first, her mother had. The mobile phone had rung out. It had rung out twice more. In an hour's time, her mother had tried again. When the call had rung out, her father had tried.

The next morning, the parents had tried again. By that evening, Alexa's sister had tried several times. By the end of the week, Alexa's friends had gotten involved.

With her social media dead and the hotel denying seeing her again after that morning, the issue was escalated to the Rio De Janeiro Police Department. With the police giving frustratingly little in terms of Alexa's location and possible living status, the issue was taken to the embassy and then the U.S. government. A newspaper sniffed out the story and then it was headline news on cable news networks.

TRANSPHOBIA RUNS RAMPANT IN BRAZIL

AS TRANSWOMAN DISAPEARED OFF THE STREETS OF RIO

That was the tagline of the whole case. The president of Brazil himself had to make a sweaty appearance on international television to renounce transphobia and promise that there would be a concerted effort to bring justice to Alexa's case.

Meanwhile Joham ran free, continuing in his attempts that perpetuate the myths of succubus and incubus among those too disenfranchised for society to care about.

His free rein would be short-lived, though.

Demitri, at the bidding of the Masters of the Volturi, would lead a hunting party all over the South American continent to apprehend the male vampire they had learned about in a clearing just below Mount Rainier in Washington, U.S.A. to bring him in for questioning.

Joham was found at the end of a long trail of brutalised women's bodies. The team had easily apprehended him, and transport to Volterra had been without incident.

Joham had been restrained in the Execution Chamber of the castle that the ancients inhabited.

With a single touch, Aro knew everything.

He knew of Joham's blasé attitude towards secrecy. He knew of Joham's god-complex. He knew of Joham's poor opinion of women. He knew that Joham was responsible for a massive international controversy that filled the headlines of the papers he read daily.

Having lived in and enjoyed the atmosphere of a progressive early Roman empire, Aro felt a certain amount of distaste towards those who actively contributed to the regression of society. He also felt contempt for someone who would react with such human biases. They were immortal! Such petty grievances belonged to the mortals!

Joham had been executed for his indiscretions. His actions and motivations endangered the secrecy of their kind. In the wake of recent nuclear aggressions between the U.S. and Russia, Aro felt it more imperative to stronghold secrecy than ever before.

A hunting party was consigned to South America to retrieve Alexa to introduce her to her new life properly. The hunting party sent news that Alexa's trail had ended on the precipice of Volcan Galeras.

Aro wished he had Joham tortured to death.

On the tenth anniversary of her disappearance, Aro had visited a memorial in dedication to her. He stood in the shadows on that cloudy grey day. In the evening, he had slipped into her sleeping parents' room and swiped their memories of their daughter. Next, he made off with her sister's. He never returned to her hometown.

Her parents died never knowing what had happened to their daughter.

On the twentieth anniversary, Aro had sent her sister a small condolences gift. This was also the last time her sister thought about her before she would lie on her own deathbed.

The last time she would be referenced would be on the thirtieth anniversary.

She lived on for a time in Aro's memory.

He wasn't sure why circular thoughts always found themselves on her face. Perhaps it was because she reminded him so much of his sister. She looked so similar and radiated the same sort of brilliant joy that would infect everyone around her. Maybe Alexa's case was particularly haunting because of all of his regret surrounding his sister. It was possible that he sought penance through enacting justice for Alexa.

But he had already enacted justice for Alexa.

And then the problem of climate change became pressing and he stopped thinking about her.

Existential privilege became trivial in the face of certain death. Everything became trivial in the face of certain death. Survival became the only meaningful pursuit. Survival became the only futile pursuit. Certain death is certain death.

That was the moment Alexa truly died, long after her time.

Entropy marched on.

Be kind to one another. Even if the world wasn't about to end, it is still the decent thing to do.

Much love,

Entropy

P.S. Thank you for reading this. It would be greatly appreciated if you let me know what you think.