Prey: Jealous inferior
A/N: I have been very busy lately, but I found a bit of free time to write this! Hopefully most concerns will be addressed. I'm going on vacation soon, so I'm going to try to get some really good chapters out.
Disclaimer: I own no rights to Twilight or any related characters, events, anything. Anyone who thinks that I'm trying to make a profit from this should seriously evaluate the setup of this website and try to determine if there is any way to do so.
Amanda was having an internal battle with herself.
She almost preferred the bloodsucking hobo to these conversations with herself. Violence, simple violence, with it's good sides and bad sides and simple solutions, such was much better than what she had to deal with when thought warred against thought, when her own ideals and desires turned against her, when all vestiges of sanity left her raving in the sewers, talking to the world in general and nobody in particular.
"You can leave the sewer! It's obvious. You just went out, carrying an injured human no less, a human who had blood dripping down his forehead."
"I licked his forehead! Does that scream "self control" to you? And it was a special situation. I could barely hold it together- All of those humans, so close. I was dying for a feast of necks, of blood that was sweet and clean and mine for the taking. I nearly broke down."
"You kept smiling, your fangs weren't there, and you won't ever need to encounter the same situation. When will you need to be holding bloody humans?"
"The more I'm out there, the greater the risk of slipping."
"You get used to it. Carlisle got used to it- he's a doctor."
"He's four hundred, give or take a couple decades. Years and years and years of practice. I've had, what, eight or so months? Clearly, I am not ready for the world."
"You're going crazy down here. No one to talk to, nothing to eat but rats... You need to get to a forest or something, and the sewer system will only get you so far. Pipes end somewhere."
"Maybe, but not now. I'm not ready. Why can't you see?"
"You're just fine up there. You're just chock full of all these expectations of the perfect vampire- you need to be patient. That stuff takes time. You're going mad down here, and you know it."
"I'm not crazy!"
"Look at the sludge- Who's the one yelling at a dead rat?"
She had a point there. Amanda grimaced. "Touche."
She sighed, setting down the rodent corpse she'd been clutching during the course of her conversation. "What can I do?" She muttered to herself rhetorically. Less rhetorically, her mind came up with an answer. "You can go out."
"Out?"
"Don't you even feign ignorance. Come up with a story of some kind- a kidnapping, those are always popular. You were sold to be a sex slave when you were out on that run. You managed to escape, however,"
"I can't do that! The media! Did you ever consider the media? They'll swarm to me, helpless humans. They will make me see doctors, which is a no. They'll want to interview my parents, who are dead. They're going to try to do a thousand things that can never work, not like this! I have to stay dead."
"So...You're a hobo."
Amanda winced, recalling the disheveled appearance of her opponent. "Yeah, a hobo. It's the best I can do without a computer for fabrication."
"You'll need to steal one post haste!"
"Agreed."
This is exactly the point where Amanda realized that she needed to leave. Bad.
She was having a perfectly sane, rational, reasonable discussion with herself regarding whether she should turn her vampire-self into the police and say she was a sex slave.
Living alone was taking it's toll on her.
Pretty soon, she'd be painting red handprints on volleyballs and naming them Wilson.
There was no hesitation. No reason. She saw that she simply couldn't go on the way she was.
Amanda Post left the sewers. The street was nearly empty- it was the middle of the night, and it was a long ways away from the inner-city squalor where she'd first been bitten. She was a lot closer to the upstate region, where various well-to-do residents were tucked in their beds, except for the few that were holding parties, and getting completely crunk.
Amanda took a deep breath of the air. It was full of its pungencies, and the ever-present smell of blood. But it was infinitely better than the stale, rancid air of the tunnels, and she wondered how exactly it had taken so long for her to leave. She was absently strolling toward the house of a sleeping family, and as she realized this she altered her course so as to avoid a bloodbath. Other than that, the night went without incident. She found a bag of clothes on someone's porch, sitting in a box marked with a sharpied label indicating that this haul was meant for the shelves of Goodwill. Knowing that her presence in society was nothing deserving goodwill, she felt the slightest bit guilty taking the clothes that would have otherwise helped a girl in need. But, she reasoned, better their clothes than their blood.
She wound back to town, where the bustle of cars and lights continued interminably. But in Central Park, there was a bench by a tree, and this was quiet. The clouds, hazy and indistinct, only partially shrouded the sky, and Amanda spent the night watching the stars.
A/N: Please review! I often experiment with my writing style while writing this, so any feedback could really shape me as an author!