"This is why we get along so well."
"Shut up," I heard Jesse say frantically, his voice much closer. "Susannah, Susannah can you hear me?"
I tried to say something, but nothing came out. It was as though I'd been cemented into place. Dreams played on the edges of my conciousness, a fluttering memory here, a dull flash of color there. This is the last time I make myself faint, I thought, slightly panicked. But soon, calm washed over me, dulling my panic into a lulling whisper of caution, the waves of my conscious pulling me back under. The lull of music I couldn't quite remember played in the echoes of my mind, and I saw the hint of purple playing along the edges of my conscious. Wherever I was, my mind wasn't in the real world.
My ears, however, stayed alert.
"Her head is still bleeding," Jesse cried, and I felt him move closer beside me.
"Make sure her head is elevated," Paul advised, with the smooth tone of the unconcerned.
"Have you no thought to consider the woman you supposedly love is injured?"
"She fainted. She is a little prone to be dramatic."
"And her head hit the floor twice as hard as you managed to strike me," Jesse said flatly. Dreaming, a thousand stars swirling round my mind, edges sharp and slicing, plummeting down my throat, proving hard to swallow. Wake up, this dreamland is too far away…
"If Suze wants a fluttering hen, then you are the perfect candidate." Paul shot back icily.
"Regardless of what I am, I am a better candidate than you."
Paul snorted. I tried again to reach full conciousness, trying to ignore the high ringing sounds filling my ears. The dark tugged me back like gravity, a tango of reality and fantasy.
"Better than me? Do the words 'class' mean anything to you?"
"Does relevancy to you?" Jesse muttered, his accent thickening with his irritation.
"You're nothing. You were born into nothing, and you died into nothing, and now, well, nothings changed much, has it senor?"
I felt Jesse stir beside me, the slightest of movements. A dark, maniacal laugh, the dark spirit is here, in the crevices of my mind. Blood runs down the walls, and twisted, mottled flesh fills the putrid air with its undeniable stench. I have to warn them. We have to get out of here. Darkness brews here like moss growing deep in the moist cracks of the earth.
"I wouldn't expect anything else from you, Slater. You're quick to stereotype the Hispanic boy as poor before you have time to check your facts."
Paul chuckled darkly. "I wasn't suggesting you were in poverty."
"I wasn't."
"People like you can't be fixed with money." Paul said with a venomous hint of condescension. "It takes class."
"If you have whats considered class, I want none of it."
"I have plenty of it." He drawled. "What I don't have is idiotic sympathy, this sentimental bullshit that everyone around here gets so high on."
"That's exactly whats wrong with you, you don't see the value of other people."
"I see her." He informed him. The words rang in my head, an echo of a distant memory. I see you…. I felt his lips, tasted the sharp sting of mint and saw the sapphire blue of his irises, swirling round like a whirlpool, faster and faster until it was a blur of ocean current.
"The only redeemable quality you have is what you feel for her." Jesse sighed. "Though selfishness also taints it. You want her for yourself, and will destroy her happiness as long as you get to keep her."
It will destroy us all if we stay here.
"Hardly. If she's not happy, she'll not settle. I want all of her. I'm not going to hurt her, Jesse, if you both just give up this struggle." All of the sudden, his tone was sincere, a hard intensity running beneath his words instead of malice. "I have the ability to destroy a lot of things to get her, you're right, and I will if I have to- if this ridiculous foreplay doesn't let up."
Let me go, Paul, you have my heart, and the grasp of your fingers bruise the surface black.
"And if I don't give up that easily?" Jesse countered.
"Then all bets are off."