FORTY ONE
I let the phone ring twenty two times before I answer it.
“Is it you?” Her voice hits like a gallon of acid wash to the face.
“Who were you expecting?” I know she’s calling for Masen. I also know that he’s off somewhere ushering in some sort of destruction. Blowing something up. Tearing something down. Guerilla warfare waged with teeth and rage. It comes off him so strong that when he’s close by, I get drunk on fury.
“I need you to come over,” she demands.
“Why?”
“There’s something wrong with my tits.” She doesn’t sound panicked or fretful. There’s no fear. No dread. She sounds bored. Unsurprised, like she expected this.
“They seem alright to me.” Sprinkled with a pebbled pattern of bite marks, but alright. Every time I see her, there’s more of them and they never really heal. If you took a marker to her and connected all those little dots, she’d be more complicated than the goddamn milky way.
“Just come over and look at them, will you?”
Masen might be gone right now, but he gets bored easily and I’m sure that his fledgling army of two won’t keep him occupied for long.
“I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
FORTY TWO
Bella’s apartment is a shit hole. Just like Masen’s, but Masen’s is so empty, drained and lifeless. Carcasses of furniture and years’ worth of neglect and abuse, piled in the corners like dirt. She has shit everywhere. Colors so bright my head spins. Collections of crap and piles of all those ridiculous clothes. She’s in a kimono that looks like it’s been stolen from someone’s dead grandmother. Frayed and stained, just like all the rest of her pointless junk. Moth bitten blankets and yellowed curtains.
Beautiful from afar. Fucked up on closer inspection.
“So, what’s up with your tits?” My mouth is dry and I try not to glance down at her chest.
“They just feel weird,” she shrugs.
“And you think I’m going to be able to tell the difference?”
She scowls at me and stomps three steps to her full length mirror, ripping off her sash and throwing it aside. It flutters to the carpet and I’m behind her before I even know it. An inch of space between us. Watching through the mirror as she lifts her hands to the back of her head. The kimono falls aside and her nipples are puckered, pointing right at us. Not pink like I hoped, but she does have nice tits. I fold my arms around her and put my hands to her skin, cupping them first for good measure. She doesn’t stop me, just squirms into my hands and rubs her thighs together as I begin to feel around.
Warm flesh, washed watercolor grey, all rough edges gone.
Like she’s been rubbed down with fine-grained sandpaper.
The freshly burned scar from Masen’s venomous tongue on the back on my hand is the only thing that distracts me. When I pull my eyes off our mirrored reflections, its unwelcome twin is right there in front of my face.
The lesion across the back of her hand like a fucking announcement. Territorial pissing.
Property of Masen.
FORTY THREE
“They feel fine.” I wrench my hands off her and stalk to the other side of the room, trying to put some fucking space between us. Trying not to get my feet tangled in her clothes, certain that they’ll swallow me. She blisters head to toe in rage and follows until I’ve got nowhere to go but down. Ass to her bed, which is the last place I want me and my dick to be.
Especially when she’s this naked.
She plants herself right between my legs and pushes the robe off, flashy black lace wrapped around her crotch. Her skin is littered with holes. Every inch of it ruptured, bruised around each puncture. A bolt of something like guilt flashes over my tongue. Stunned by the bleeding billboard of how completely Masen uses her.
She moans and I snap out of it.
Open my eyes and my lips are pressed to the skin near her hip.
Right over one of Masen’s bites.
“Fuck.” I pull away and she goes for my belt, frantic fingers and heavy breathing. She kisses me and her mouth tastes like a gasoline fire. Like napalm. I have visions of my house exploding when she pushes her tongue between my teeth. I yank her underwear to her knees and find her acid slick with my fingers, burying three of them to the knuckle and sucking blood from her wounds. She tastes different from me. I’m used to my own, the slightly sour flavor of it. Hers is a solid gulp straight from a bottle of corn syrup. Thick and sugary. The kind of sweet that makes every bone ache from the inside out.
I try to treat her decently, since Masen obviously hasn’t. Try to soften my mouth and and hold back my teeth, but she wants none of that.
“Come on,” she whines. “Bite me.”
“No.” I shake my head and grind my jaw around something soft and vulnerable so that I don’t tell her to shut the fuck up and just enjoy it. Stand up, spin her around and when her palms hit the mattress I shove myself into her, hoping to silence that infuriating mouth. Spread her cheeks to get a better view and pound.
Nothing but my ragged breath and someone’s manic heartbeat.
“You know you want to,” she taunts, bucking against me and I scowl at her mess of hair. Her back is riddled with bites, scattered like feathers. She hisses when I push my hands over them. I get a good handful of her hair and yank her head back. Plant my scarred hand in the sheets next to hers and bend down to get near her ear.
“No. I don’t.”
“Then fuck me like you mean it,” she spits.
Fuck it then. If she wants some Masen out of me, that’s what I’ll give her.
I grunt when I shove. Pant as I ram myself home and Bella turns her head to bite my arm, but I don’t even feel it. Every muscle from my lungs down constricts and I cum, shallow and sloppy and spilling out of her as I pull free. She growls, frustrated, and falls to her back on the bed. My dick aches like she set it on fire.
“That’s the best you can do?” she scowls. Her fingers slip between her legs and my knees give out.
From this angle, I can see everything.
The gleam of her skin. The thick white drip puddling to the sheets beneath her ass. The dark red color of a fresh bruise blooming around the deep dark hole. I want so badly to be inside of her again that I push her out of the way and shove my own fingers in to finish the job myself. Give in and finally bite her like she wanted me to. Clit between my teeth. Hard enough to bruise, and she screams. Twists around my fingers and everything I shot inside of her comes rushing out over my hand.
I can taste myself, but I ignore it.
Suck her dry.
Just like Masen.
FORTY FOUR
I don’t tell Masen about Bella, but he knows.
He ignores me.
Lets Angelface turn Emmett at fight club that night without even batting an eye.
FORTY FIVE
Everyday, there’s more of them.
Soon the extra rooms are carpeted with humans who are preparing themselves to die and the basement is stuffed full of newborns who’d just as soon kill you as each other.
I find Masen in the field out back, burning bodies in a big, stinking pile. Thick black smoke with the popping of bones when the marrow boils over. These are the recruits who didn’t make it, either the last fight they had as a human or their transition. Now that there are newborns involved, fight club has turned into an experiment. Participants turned into lab rats with the parking lot as a petrie dish.
Can a human fight a vampire? Can they possibly win?
So far, the answer is a resounding no.
This isn’t fight club anymore.
This is bite club.
FORTY SIX
I stand beside him and watch the bodies burn. The wreckage of the last few club meetings, humans falling like trees, piled in the backyard like stacked wood for winter. There are groups of reborns stirring stinking barrels in the shed and humans in the house, curled into fetal positions, writhing in pain.
“What are they doing in the shed?”
“Making napalm. Obviously,” Masen shakes his head as though I’m wasting his time. “Gasoline and kitty litter, makes for some powerful stuff.”
“How do you know how to do that?” I can taste the caustic stench of it, even over the burning bodies. The corrosive wipe off the back of your throat that’s almost like unquenchable thirst. Masen turns to look at me, smudged skin glowing nearly lifelike from the flames.
“Because you do.”
I don’t remember telling him that.
“What are you going to do with it?”
“I haven’t decided yet.”
“And the humans?”
“Burning off their fingerprints.”
“With what?” Certainly not napalm. Masen smiles to himself before turning it on me, terrifying in its morbid pleasure and extra sharp teeth. He looks downright fucking pleased.
“My venom.”
FORTY SEVEN
The moment the word venom slips from his mouth, the back of my hand starts burning.
“This is getting out of control. I don’t think you know what you’re doing.”
Masen narrows his eyes at me and they’re red. Redder than they’ve been for a long time, bleeding around the iris. “I’ve been doing this for longer than you think.”
“How long?”
Masen lifts an eyebrow at me. “Since that fucker Davinci tried to molest me in his studio, the bloody pervert. Since Jack went off ripping up humans and tried to pin it on me. Since Hadley.” He licks his lips as her name escapes. “I started three clubs right after she died.”
“Jesus, how many are there?”
Masen shrugs. “New York, Florida. Canada. Europe. The newest is in Seattle.”
“Newer than this?” I wave my arm at the bodies that are crisping off into the air, falling like snow. It felt like we’d been rushing headlong into the burning eye of god since the moment we met and I could barely believe he had time for anything else.
“Their inaugural session was last night. Decent turn out. Looks promising.”
I shake my head, stupid and scratchy eyed. Masen rolls his eyes and looks bored with me. Snaps his fingers in my face and makes me blink. “Focus, Edward. I was just there.”
“When?”
“Yesterday. Don’t you remember? I stayed at the Hilton.”
FORTY EIGHT
She doesn’t pick up until the seventeenth ring. Not until I’ve just about given up on her.
“Is it you?” she exhales and my insides boil.
“Who were you expecting?” I fume.
Bella sounds half in the bag and fully pissed off, which is normal for her. “The guy who fucks me senseless and tells me that I taste like shot straight from the vein. Obviously, I got the other one.”
“I have to go out of town for a while. Just . . . stay away from the house while I’m gone, ok?”
“Like I’d go there. That place is a shit hole.”
“I’m not interested in your opinion. I’m telling you what to do.”
“You are the worst thing that has ever happened to me,” she hisses.
“You sure about that?” I think about the puckered smear across the back of her hand that exactly matches mine. Think about her chewed-on chandelier earrings and ruby red chokers, gaudy gifts from Masen.
I can’t tell her that there’s an army of newborn vampires in the basement.
Can’t tell her that they’re mixing napalm and burning off their fingerprints. I can’t tell her that they bow out of fighting for a while before they turn so that they’re not forever stuck with their broken mugs, like Angelface. Can’t tell her that I let Masen beat me into the ground yesterday, right next to that pile of burning bodies.
I can’t tell her that I’m afraid of what he’ll do to her.
“Listen, I’ll call you when I’m back. Just stay low until you hear from me.”
“Why are you doing this?” She asks the one question she shouldn’t.
“I think I like you.”
I’m such a fucking jackass.
“Not love?” she asks.
“Don’t push it.”
FORTY NINE
I fly to Seattle.
Eat their prepackaged airline meal and throw it up in the tiny airplane bathroom, practically standing up. Stumble into the Hilton and throw myself against the counter. My nose won’t stop dripping blood and I can barely see out of my left eye, but the guy in company polyester doesn’t even blink.
“Good evening, Sir,” he says blandly. “What can I do for you?”
“I’m looking for a club,” I cough and scatter flecks of blood across the counter.
“There are several down on Bedford. Clean girls, but I didn’t tell you that.” The guy licks his mouth, probably tasting hooker on his tongue. I shake my head, the bones in my neck grinding.
“Not that kind of club. I’m looking for the kind you’re not supposed to talk about.”
His eyebrows rise clear into his hair. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I think you do,” I growl, trying to sound like Masen and it must work because he gulps.
“You might find what you’re looking for at the Diamond. It’s a bar on the North Side. Thursday nights, Sir.” He looks nervous and tugs at his tie.
That’s more like it. “Last week, there was a guy here. Probably looking for the same thing I am. Name of Masen. Mid twenties, needs a haircut, green eyes.”
I barely resist saying fangs.
The guys’ eyebrows tuck together momentarily before he smears a bland look across his face and shakes his head deliberately. Fucking space monkey.
“You haven’t seen him?” I hiss.
“No,” he says. And then he winks at me. “Sir.”
FIFTY
The Diamond turns out to be a fucking disaster.
I arrive when the club is in full swing and some guy is beating the fuck out of a scrawny kid with a mullet. The kid is making strangled noises and trying to fight back, but he’s failing. I storm into the middle of the crowd and yank them apart. Pull strength from nowhere and toss the one with the fists aside. The mullet is moaning into the pavement and when I roll him over, he has red eyes.
A vampire.
They’re all vampires and they’re all looking at me like I’m insane. “Who’s the head around here?” I ask and all of them shuffle, silent fucking space monkeys with burned off fingerprints and tongue-stained scars on the backs of their hands.
No one comes forward.
They all just stare at me.
FIFTY ONE
The first thing I do when I get back to Chicago is call the house from a pay phone outside of the airport.
Emmett picks up the fourth ring.
“Emmett, I need you to go check on Bella.”
“She’s fine, Sir.”
“Don’t fucking call me that!” I yell and some old lady glares at me from the curb. I tuck my hand around the phone and hiss into the receiver, my head throbbing like an overheated engine. “Where is Masen, have you seen him?”
“Masen is . . . unavailable.” He finishes slowly, as if it’s a question.
“Put him on the phone.”
“I can’t do that, Sir.”
“Will you quit fucking calling me that! My name is Edward, ok? Ed. Ward.”
“Whatever you say. Edward,” Emmett answers.
FIFTY TWO
The second thing I do when I get back to Chicago is call Bella to ask her if we’ve ever had sex. I might have made that whole tit encounter up. I might have made everything up, really, and I have to ask.
“What the fuck?” She sounds looped out on liquor and Masen’s venom. Mouthy and pissed off and probably just fucking gorgeous, as usual. In some tattered dress-up fantasy, chasing liquor with dick and nicotine.
“Have we?” I ask.
“You are such a little shit!” More screeching. “You love me, then the you hate me, it’s infuriating. If I told you I swallowed a bottle of pills, you wouldn’t even care.”
“Did you?”
She exhales heavily into the phone, her breath shuddering. She’s probably choking herself with the curly cord of her phone.
“I’m coming over,” I say before I slam the phone into the machine hard enough to crack the plastic in my hands.
FIFTY THREE
I don’t give either of us time to think.
I walk into Bella’s apartment and beat the shit out of myself in front of her.
Storm in the door and hit myself as hard as I can. Blood arcs through the air as my nose breaks, splattering across the wall. I crash through the coffee table and grind my hands into the glass-covered carpet to stand again. Fling myself into the bookshelves and take down most of them, something in my wrist snapping.
If Masen had just fucking bitten me by now, none of this would matter.
It would heal and I’d be like the statue of fucking David.
“If you’re doing this to prove something, it’s not working.” Bella stares down at me and that’s when I finally look at her, blinking away the blood that’s pouring down over my forehead.
So fucking beautiful, the way a car accident is beautiful. The way the steaming, slippery insides of a freshly gutted animal are beautiful. The way the colorful explosion of your house blowing up is beautiful. Her neck is still patterned with his bite marks, but now they’re silver scars.
Chocolate brown irises swim in the red-rose pools of her eyes.
“He changed you,” I gasp through blood.
“Who fucking changed me? If you want to talk about last week, you don’t have to talk in third fucking-”
“He doesn’t love you,” I tell her, pulling myself from remnants of her bookshelves. My wrist is definitely broken, a jagged end of bone pushing uncomfortably against the underside of my skin.
“Is that what you’re calling it? You have problems.” She’s so right and so beautiful and so fucking infuriating. I want to plow her into the wall and get my mouth onto every inch of her body but all I can think about is burying my fist in her face. Or mine. Ending this torture.
“I know I’ve been a little up and down lately.” I finally stagger to an upright position, leaving a constellation of bright red stars on her carpet.
“Up and DOWN?” Bella screeches. “Jesus christ, Masen! You’re Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Asshole.”
“What did you just call me?
She rolls her eyes. “I can’t believe I’m having this conversation with you right now.”
I grab her, shake her, bloody handprints to her arms, the glass in my palms grinding against her stoney skin. Her cigarette waggles in her mouth and I wonder why she’s even smoking. Maybe out of habit.
“What did you just call me? Say my name. Say it!”
I shake her again and she screams in my face.
“Masen! MaSEN! MASEN!”
FIFTY FOUR
The house is fucking crawling with vampires.
I have to press myself against the walls.
All of them look the same. No fingerprints, no fucking expressions. Just lifeless and frozen and in the way. There are twelve reborns and four humans in the living room, huddled around the shitty tv set. Watching the five o’clock news through a snowstorm of static. A building somewhere, found full of bodies. Battered and broken beyond recognition.
“What did you do?” I ask and they all look at me like I should have seen this coming.
“It’s all under control, Sir,” one of them says, but I don’t know which. It could have been any of them.
“This has gone too far,” I fume.
“Whatever you say, Sir.”
“It has to stop. Now!” I yell and most of them jump, but not all of them.
“You told us you would say that.” Angelface stands up from the crowd. “You told us you would say that and when you did, it was time to kill you.”
FIFTY FIVE
I blow up the house. The shed is just a given.
Ten more pounds of kitty litter and the second time’s a charm.
At least this time I know why.
FIFTY SIX
Masen finds me on the top floor of the tallest building in town. I knew he would, no matter where I went, so I picked somewhere I had never been before.
At least I thought I’d never been here. Only now, I wasn’t so sure about anything.
For the first time he is clean, free of grease and grime, in clothing that doesn’t look four months old. He looks nearly decent, fit for public consumption, and it makes him twice as terrifying. As though all this time he’s been masquerading for the sick, banal pleasure of it. He strides towards me and I lift the gun to heart level.
“I only have one bullet. It’s wooden,” I warn him as though he’ll care, which he doesn’t.
“What the fuck are you doing?” he grumbles. He paces in front of me like he’s plotting his next move. “I’m really starting to get tired of your bullshit.”
“I am not the problem here.” I waggle the gun at him and he growls when he tries to go for it, sudden as a snakebite. I press the gun to my chest, square up against my heart, and scowl at him.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” he cautions, stopping in his tracks.
“You think I won’t?”
Masen exhales as he rolls his eyes to the ceiling. “This has gone way too fucking far Edward. You have got to snap out-”
“You know, you’re the only one who calls me that,” I interrupt.
Bad decision.
Masen whirls back and lets his fist fly a million miles an hour before it grinds into my face. The gun clatters across the floor and, through the ringing milky way inside my skull, I can hear him laughing. He sinks a solid fist into my stomach and I collapse on the concrete with a wet smack.
“Because you’re mine, don’t you fucking get that?” Masen snaps at me, teeth flashing. “A little fucking piece of a greater whole. You’re just every meaningless part of my humanity, all smashed up together and tossed out into the world.” He stalks around me as I groan and try to roll over, my insides gone liquid. “I was sick of feeling that shit, so I let you go.”
“You are fucking insane,” I wheeze.
He picks me up and shoves me up against a wall hard enough to splinter the edges of my shoulder blades. My toes dangle inches off the ground. Blood drips from the tips of my fingers.
“No, you are insane!” he yells in my face. “You cannot even begin to fathom what the last twelve years have been like, since you’ve been gone. I’ve seen everything. Done it all. The sort of depravity that humans can only eroticize. And you?” He glances down at the puddle I’m leaving beneath me, blood and piss. “You’ve spent that whole time convincing yourself of this pathetic little life you’re living.”
He drops me in a limp pile at his feet and if he could spit on me, he would.
“What a fucking waste,” he huffs.
“So just fucking kill me!” I shout at the concrete and glance around for the gun. It glitters from a dark corner, light years away. Masen rolls his eyes and straightens his jacket.
“It wouldn’t do me much good to off myself, now would it?”
FIFTY SEVEN
I drag myself painfully to my knees, slipping in blood. “That make no sense.”
“What about any of this makes sense?” Masen screams wildly and then grits his teeth, speaking through them. “Let me just lay this down for you, Einstein. Plain and fucking simple. I am you. You are me. We are one and the same.” He spits venom and rage.
Right. My broken human body is barely holding itself together and look at him. As unblemished as ever. There’s nothing alike about us right now, and yet he’s telling me . . .
“But you’re a fucking vampire.”
“So. Are. You,” he says deliberately, lifting both eyebrows expectantly, waiting for me to catch up.
I hold up my arms, dripping blood as if that proves that I’m alive. Coughing up stomach acid as though it validates my existence. Sitting in a puddle of my own piss and blood, thick and sticky proof that I’m not dead. Yet.
Masen huffs in agitation.
“You bleed because you’re just human enough. Because you believe it, enough. This is a delusion, Edward. Your delusion. I let you go off into the world on the condition that you’d keep your shit together and you’ve been doing just that. Pretending to be human. But then you started fucking up,” he spits, irritated with me.
“I’ve never done anything wrong,” I strain through the blood in my mouth. It’s true. I’ve always been the shining, stinking example of all that is bland and boring and perfect.
“That bloodstain on your bedroom floor didn’t just magically appear there.” Masen walks to the gun and kicks it into another corner. Even farther away.
“You’re blaming me for that?”
“Well, not really. It was the girl who stained the floor.”
“What girl?” I don’t remember any girl.
“That call girl you picked up who looked just like Bella,” he snarls her name. “You didn’t go to insomnia group for two weeks and you fucking cracked in half. You brought her home and tried to fuck her but you killed her instead. Messy.” He licks his teeth, grimacing as though he’s disgusted. A rotten taste in his mouth.
“I did what?”
“You were so fucking sloppy, I’m only here because I had to come clean up after you. Why do you think we blew up your house?”
“You did that?”
“We did that,” Masen corrects me. “You just got all the glory.”
FIFTY EIGHT
“Bullshit,” I practically gag on blood. “Next you’re gonna tell me that we’re both fucking Bella.”
“That fucking girl,” Masen rolls his eyes. “We’re gonna have to do something about her. She’s caused too many problems.”
“This isn’t her fault.” I don’t know why I’m defending her. Maybe because I know he’ll kill her if he thinks she’s in the way.
“No, this is because of your complete fucking meltdown over her!” Masen shudders, shaking off the feel of her mouth. “I didn’t think it could be possible, but I’m pretty damn convinced you went off and fell in love,” he scoffs.
“Yeah, I know she’s pretty fucking unlovable, but it’s not impossible.”
“I’m not talking about her. It’s you. We’re not exactly the warm and fuzzy type. Falling in love isn’t something we just do.”
“You don’t fall in love?”
“No. Much less with a human.” He sounds disgusted again, like I asked him to drink his own piss.
“You’re the one fucking her,” I accuse, throwing explosives into an already raging inferno. Masen boils over, spewing vexation and venom.
“There is no me and you, Edward!” he howls. “There is only US. When I fuck her, you fuck her. When she fucks me, she’s fucking you. I’m ready for you to get this through your stoney fucking skull, I am not your goddamn imaginary friend!”
FIFTY NINE
If he’s saying what I think he’s saying, everything he’s been doing is mine. Every fight in a deserted parking lot, drowning in delusion and trying to beat it out of myself.
Every bite.
Every hard, fast fuck.
Every reborn.
Every club.
I use his moment of self indulgent ranting to re-arm myself. Slide across the floor on bloody shoes and scrabble for the gun. I can barely get a good grip on it and I stick it in my mouth.
“Now, you’re just pissing me off.” Masen glares, quaking with barely controlled rage. You can’t talk around the barrel of a gun. Everything just comes out in vowels so I pull it free, the tip dripping with bloody saliva.
“I’m not a vampire,” I argue.
“Keep telling yourself that, princess.”
“I don’t believe you!” It hurts my insides, but I yell at him.
“This isn’t contingent on your fucking acceptance!” Masen bellows. I see his move before he even makes it, the leap he’s poising to spring on me. I can all but taste the moment he sinks his teeth into my neck. In desperation I stupidly put up my hand up to stop him. When it doesn’t, I put the gun up against the back of my hand and blow a hole right through it.
Metal to bone in the most devastating way and I can see through a tunnel of flesh.
My single, wooden bullet lodging deep in Masen’s chest.
A gush of gilded blood as his immortality is pried loose.
Masen staggers and looks up at me, fingering the flood of sunshine that is slowly staining his shirt. Eyes half full of horror and relief.
“Now you’ve done it.”
SIXTY
I come to and the first thing I see is her.
Bella, kneeling beside me in a pool of my blood. A hundred life-time’s worth of blood.
Every drop I ever drank. Every cell I ever made. All of it swimming beneath my fingers. Dripping out of my body. Puddling beneath her knees. She’s leaning over me with her mouth to my wounds as though she could heal me. Licking every bruise. Lapping at every hole, but her venom doesn’t burn.
There’s no healing to be done.
Everything Masen said was the truth. She’s got it smeared all over her. Across her cheeks and arms. Creeping up the fabric of her skirt. Lips stained with blatant fucking fact.
My blood isn’t red.
It’s gold.
“I thought you were dead,” she whispers against my neck.
“I think I was.” I cough and liquid amber gurgles in my throat. “Where’s Masen?”
Bella shakes her head at me. “You make no sense half of the time.”
I could say the same thing to her. “Why did you call me Masen?”
“It was on your name tag.” She rolls her eyes and pets my hand some more. The blown through hole leaking sunshine like a super nova.
“That’s not my name.”
“What is it, then?”
“Edward.”
My stomach heaves and I vomit a wash of fool’s gold that seems to never end.
I must be dying, but this can’t be what dying feels like.
There is no fire and then never ending ice. No numbing to a dull pulse of light. No fade to black. There is just a gilded mess everywhere I look and it drips down my chin and into my lap. The ichor of my demonic soul spilling out of me in some sort of torturous rebirth. Again.
And it hurts just like the first time.
The hole in my hand is healing. The stigmata suturing closed around the edges until it’s sucking inward on itself like a black hole in outer space. My ribs grind back into place, the shattered bones of my face righting themselves only moments before they solidify.
I look up at her, both of us covered in a golden sheen of all my rotten insides. I might have killed Masen off, but I really hope that I retained enough of that humanity he hated so much.
At least the parts that belonged to her.
“You met me at a really weird time in my life.”
Bella shakes her head and licks my bottom lip clean before she kisses me.
“It’s not love or anything,” she says, “but I think I like you too.”
The end.
Acknowledgements:
Hadley Hemingway is my beta, but she’s also my shining star.
She pushes me to places I didn’t think possible and our countless conversations about napalm and bloody violence have surely gotten our phones tapped.
She told me to write something that scared me.
This is it.
----------
When I was 16, this cute, goofy boy gave me a book.
We watched the newly released movie on our first date and made out to it like a million times. Seven years later, I married him. Thirteen years in, he still quotes fight Club to me at random, typically inappropriate, times.
He’s my Tyler Durden.
Chuck Palahniuk deserves a thank you letter from me and in some strange way, this is it.
xo
HBM
brilliant bb
ReplyDeletethank you
MsLiss
I LOVED fight club, and I was really skeptical about the crossover...but THIS WAS BRILLIANT!
ReplyDeleteThis was awesome! :)
ReplyDeleteAmazing! I couldn't stop reading.
ReplyDelete