TWENTY ONE
We go back to the parking lot every week, Masen and I, and every week there are more of them. One. Then two. Then twenty. White collar business suits and blue collar grunts. All of them itching to find release with their fists buried in someone’s face. None of them alone in their chaotic flailing and broken bones.
Masen makes up rules. Maybe it’s a vampire thing. He orchestrates every meeting. Names himself the ringleader of this fucked up little circus we’re putting on. No shirts. No shoes. Two guys to a fight. If you knock someone out, the fight is over. If it’s your first night, you can’t fight.
And his favorite rule of all, don’t fucking talk about it.
I don’t sleep. I barely go to work any more. I don’t go to the hospital.
I beat up strangers for sick, seductive pleasure of it.
Masen never fights. He just stands off to the side and watches.
TWENTY TWO
“What is this?”
My boss is wearing grey, which means that today is Wednesday. His shirt is pink, which means that it’s the second Wednesday of the month. I haven’t slept in thirteen days.
I smile at him, sure that my teeth are stained red. My eardrum is freshly burst and I’m having trouble swallowing. Half of my face is throbbing hot enough to scald and I’m certain that at least four of my ribs are fractured to the point of disintegration.
If my body is the hourglass, I am the unstoppable drainage of sand.
He’s holding a piece of paper. Masen’s rules. The ones he said no one would remember and asked me to type up. The ones that came out in a glob of meaningless symbols strung together in chrysalis haikus.
The kind that wither up and die before they’ve even unfolded their wings.
“What have I told you about wasting company resources?” He asks me and I snatch the paper away and I tell him that it’s nothing.
I can’t fucking talk about it anyway.
“You look like shit. Are you on drugs?”
I wish. If I was, none of this would be happening right now. I hope that one day my boss will show up on Thursday night so that I can beat the fuck out of him. I can practically taste his blood when his cheek bursts open and can almost feel the gummy give of his bones under my fist.
He’s not even old enough to be my father, but he talks to me like I’m ten.
“Pull yourself together, kid. And go wash the blood off your face, you’re freaking out the girls.”
TWENTY THREE
I lose another fight.
Same old, same old.
The guy who works the graveyard shift of a liquor store beats me into the ground like an abandoned rag doll. My stuffing comes loose and the threads holding my eyes on break.
He’s an overachiever and I leave with a cracked face, a ruptured spleen and a re-broken nose.
TWENTY FOUR
Bella shows up at the house just as Masen is setting my nose.
Every time you try to fix a broken bone, the resistance is magnified and by the time you get to the third or fourth or even the fifth reset, everything fights against you. I can hear the cartilage grind painstakingly back into place, echoing through my eardrums. We both look up at the harassing sound of her knock bulldozing through the house. I wave Masen away as I hold my bleeding nose and head for the door.
“Stay here.” It’s the first time I’ve ever told him to do something and not the other way around. He scowls at me.
“Why?”
“Just do it, Masen,” I bark and try to gulp back the blood that’s pouring down my face.
“Are you ok?” She asks me and I glare at her as much as my broken face will allow. I could tell her I crashed my car. Fell down the stairs. Slammed my face into the wall enough times to crush the bridge of my nose and stain my face with blood red bruises.
“What are you doing here?” I ask her instead.
“You didn’t even come inside last time. Did you find someone else to cry on, sugar?”
“Fuck you, I have something better.”
“I can see that. Tell me.” She leans in the doorway, trying to peer down the hallway. I know for a fact that Masen is right around the corner, butt ass naked except for a pair of kitchen gloves and my old slippers.
Covered in my blood.
“I can’t talk about it,” I tell her, which is the truth.
“It’s another group, isn’t it? The insomniacs weren’t pathetic enough for you? What is it this time?”
“It’s exclusive. Not just anyone can join.” I hiss and try to choke down the overwhelming urge to push her off the porch. Masen doesn’t have a rule about girls, but I’m pretty sure I could make one up if I needed to.
“You look hot, all busted up.” She eyes me for a moment, licking her lips and scanning my face in all its twisted, swollen glory. “Come back. It’s not any fun without you.”
“I’ll think about it.” I slam the door in her face. Not as hard as I want to. Masen is standing in the hall when I turn around. Still naked, still gloved and bloodied and he asks the very question I hope he won’t.
“Is that her?”
TWENTY FIVE
Thursday.
I got the shit kicked out of me last night and I don’t know why, but I’m back at the hospital.
“Well, well, well. Look at what the cat dragged back in.” Bella drops her cigarette to the sidewalk and grinds the smoldering butt under her toe, again with the lip licking. Again with the tormenting. “My little pep talk must have worked.”
Masen is taking a piss in the alley and I have 24 seconds to get rid of her.
“I’m not here for you.”
“Sure.” She slips me a smile that is part sweet and part caustic, burning around the edges. As she flounces away Masen appears from the alley with a laugh under his breath, still tucking himself into his pants. He’s been wearing the same jacket for days now. Red leather, roughed up enough that it looks like it’s been put through a meat grinder.
“That girl likes you,” he says, watching her disappear through the doors.
“No she fucking doesn’t,” I huff.
“This is gonna be fun.” Masen rubs his hands together like we’re going to an amusement park and he’s planning which roller coaster to attack first. Which thrill he’s going to stay away from. Which addiction he’s going to ride over and over and over again until he’s sick with dizzy exhilaration. I know that he’ll fixate on Bella. She’s the thrill that hoists you high in the air then drops you face first into the concrete on a broken bungee cord.
“You have to stay out here,” I tell him.
“Why?” He looks put out, pissed off that I’m once again telling him what to do. “You really do like that girl.”
“It’s not about her.”
He doesn’t believe me.
I leave him sitting on the front steps and wander into the basement trying not to look suspicious. Trying to to cover bruises. Trying not to move my tongue too much. The hole in it still hasn’t healed and I’ve eaten for days is my own blood. Bella just chain smokes and twists her hair with her fingers. Eye fucks me while Jane sobs over her own hair, which has started falling out. Jane looks like the skeleton of Dakota Fanning if you put her in a dress and too much lipstick. Walking around the party smiling extra pretty at everyone to disguise her slow crumble.
I glare at Jane so I won’t glare at Bella.
Bella usually loiters around the coffee bar and scowls at anyone who comes near her during the one-on-ones. I make a break for her when she invites me with a tempting finger. She whirls out the door and I almost follow, but Emmett grabs me.
Presses me into his tits and starts to cry into my hair.
TWENTY SIX
Emmett cries forever. I don’t come home until midnight.
Bella’s dress is crumpled like a broken bird on the staircase.
She probably tripped over Masen on her way out of the hospital so I spend most of that night listening to them fuck each other down the hallway. I delete Masen. Insert myself. Drift off with my face in her pussy, sleepless dreams of eating her out. Dig my face into my pillow and wake up to my sheets stained with blood from my broken open nose.
It’s the first time I’ve slept in a month.
TWENTY SEVEN
Out of the thirty guys at fight club, I tap Masen.
I regret it for a week.
I’m so fucking angry, it makes me stupid. I’m so sick of listening to him yell her name when he fucks her, it blinds me. The single night of sleep slaps a flimsy band aid over a big, black hole and makes me think I’m stronger than I actually am.
I don’t even land a hit.
He almost kills me.
Puts a fresh hole in my tongue. Leaves my bloody wet faceprint on the asphalt. I can taste my spinal fluid burning the back of my tongue as he digs my face into the parking lot. He gives me one last pound to the back of the head before he gets off me and stalks off through the silent crowd.
It’s the first time since our initial fight that he’s actually participated.
TWENTY EIGHT
It takes four days for my bruises to bleed yellow and for Masen to show back up again.
I knock on his bedroom door and he answers it naked.
His dick is huge. Big the way improbable porn is big. It’s standing straight up and staring at me, wet and dripping from the tip. I looked over Masen’s shoulder and Bella is moaning into the mattress with her ass in the air.
Handprints and bite marks all over her.
Her eyes meet mine for a split second before Masen is laughing with the nearly manic one he saves for fight club.
“Care to join, Edward?”
“No,” I huff and pull my eyes off Bella splayed out in his sheets. I’ve been listening to him plow into her for hours now. “Can you try to keep it down? Jesuschrist,” I mutter.
“I don’t fuck quietly. Neither does she. You should know that.”
Masen slams the door in my face and I press my ear to wood, listening to them finish louder than they ever have before. Watching through the keyhole as Masen crawls back onto the bed and sinks his face into Bella’s splayed pussy. Wincing through her scream when she cums around his tongue. He licks her clean before he thrusts his dick up into her, telling her that her asshole is the tightest he’s ever felt. His fist grips her hair, yanking her harshly to her knees as she moans again. He whispers filth into her ear and rubs her clit as roughly as he thrusts. Her nails scrape four long ragged gashes up the length of his thigh that heal immediately and I shoot my load against the door.
I leave that shit where it lands and go to fight club alone.
There’s a first time for everything.
TWENTY NINE
I go to the parking lot without Masen and beat the fuck out of some kid. An angel face with blonde hair and blue eyes. The Texas state flag tattooed across his shoulders.
I press him into the concrete hard enough to shatter his cheek and dip-dye his baby blues in blood. Pull his arms back and dig my knee into his spine, feeling the bones grind underneath me. Slam him into the parking lot, trying to indent the concrete with his pretty, pretty face.
I want to destroy something beautiful.
I let them pull me off him only when he’s good and damaged.
THIRTY
Bella flounces into the kitchen, too pale and too lively for my taste. Her hair is snarled and her lips are swollen. There is a chain of bite marks around her neck. Costume jewelry punctures made by Masen’s teeth.
“Good morning,” she purrs at me and pours a cup of coffee. I glare at her behind her back and stab my cereal with my spoon. Her dress is pale pink taffeta and wilted tulle, stained and coming apart at the hem. Masen probably found it in some dumpster somewhere. It looks like the last dregs of someone’s cliched prom night.
“Your dress should be burned.”
She scowls at me. “Your mood swings give me whiplash.”
“Sounds like you were thoroughly fucked last night,” I grumble around my spoon, her moaning still echoing through the big empty rooms of my brain. Yes Masen. Fuck me Masen. Harder Masen. She probably smoked while she sat on top of him, flicking ashes off the bed and grinding away with practiced ease like she’d been doing it since grade school.
“You would know.” Bella hisses and storms out the door, taking our last un-chipped coffee mug with her. She’s probably accusing me of leering from the doorway last night. Staring at the dead jellyfish condoms in the toilet this morning long before I flushed them. The shitty, sweating palm of my hand. Hating myself for picturing her mouth around me instead of my fingers.
It felt so real, I was half tempted to ask her if we’d done it before.
THIRTY ONE
Masen appears the moment Bella is gone.
“Why isn’t she dying?” I ask.
Masen eyes me carefully. “I hold back my venom.”
“You can do that?”
“When I want to. Which isn’t often.”
I hate that fucking bitch. Without Masen, she would be nothing. Without her, Masen wouldn’t be so fucking ruthless at fight club. He’d nearly killed me last Thursday and the hole in my tongue just wasn’t going away.
“That girl is something else, Edward. You’ve got some fucked up friends.”
“She’s not my friend. She’s your toy,” I spit. “I thought it would be me but I guess I need a pussy and a pair of tits for that position.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Masen snaps at me, flashing fangs.
“I should have been the first!” I yell. “After everything I’ve gone through? All of this!” I wave my hand in front of my broken face and growl at him. “You almost kill me, but you don’t even try to bite me. She gives you a few fast fucks and you’ve got your teeth all over her. What the fuck, Masen?”
Masen unleashes his monster and I see all of his teeth.
Every single one.
THIRTY TWO
Masen grabs my hand and pins it to the table between us. He leans over and licks the back of it and it burns like hell is supposed to burn. Right through my skin and into my blood. Through my blood and into my bones. Volcanic pain. A hiss of smoke in the air as my skin starts to bubble.
I try not to think of chemical burns. Try not to think of searing flesh.
I am not here.
“Don’t do that Edward. Come back to the pain. This is the greatest moment of your life, the beginning. Everything up until now has been meaningless,” Masen hisses into my ear.
I am in Brazil.
On some tiny island surrounded by water. Sweet, clean, fresh water and there is so much of it, endless, but not enough to mask the smell of my skin starting to sizzle. Masen’s lick is branding itself into the back of my hand, venom scorching my flesh. An entire forest fire, concentrated into an inch of space.
“The pain is the only thing that you have now.” Masen grips me tighter when I try to pull away. I have cool blue water. “It is the only thing that proves you are actually alive.” I have clean, cool air. “The pain is your salvation.”
I am in Brazil and the breeze smells like salt.
“Look at it!” Masen demands. Yells. I try, but my eyes don’t work. I’m crying down my neck, the collar of my shirt gone damp. “You can cry, but your tears will only make it worse.”
I can smell myself, sweating, pissing. Barbequing.
I am not in Brazil.
“Can you feel it? The pain?” Masen asks.
I am not in the ocean.
“Yes,” I moan.
I am being burned alive.
“Good, because one day, you won’t be able to feel it anymore. You won’t be able to feel anything anymore, so you better fucking appreciate it now.” Masen leans over my charred hand and takes a solid whiff off the charcoal steam rising off my flesh. He splashes the last of a bottle of whiskey over it and the fire is gone. There’s a swollen swipe of skin, purple at the edges, puckering the back of my hand.
“You’re such an asshole,” I gasp, still burning in pain. “You have no idea how bad that hurt.”
Masen smiles slowly and holds up his hand, baring the back of it with its own puckered scar.
“You wanted it, you got it. You’re one step closer to becoming a vampire.”
THIRTY THREE
Angelface isn’t so angelic anymore, thanks to me.
His lips are twisted off to the side, face misshapen where the bones didn’t fuse back together just right. He comes back the next week and the stitches haven’t even had time to set, still pulling at his skin to hold it all together, a jagged black line from his hairline to his chin.
Cheeks so swollen he can barely see. Nose so big he can barely breathe.
He taps Masen for a fight and I wonder if I damaged his brain.
Even though I think he won’t, Masen agrees. It’s quick and dirty, literally. Over before it’s begun. Nothing but the sad, flat packing sound of Angelface getting more than he can take. The snap of stitches and the splitting rupture of teeth. Masen lifts him upright and throws him against the side of car while Angelface laughs and laughs and laughs through his beating.
“You crazy motherfucker!” Angelface howls, spitting blood. “You really are just as nuts as they say.”
Masen’s bloodshot eyes pool red, redder than I’ve ever seen them before. An ocean of blood. He pulls back his lips and bites.
Hard.
Ripping away a chunk of flesh from the boy’s neck.
Angelface goes limp and the crowd around me stiffens. Masen drops the boy at his feet, his face dripping blood and his fangs on full display, hissing at the the men around him like a cornered animal. He wipes his sleeve across his face, smearing the blood across his jaw.
“What’s the first rule of fight club?” Masen asks us and I can feel everyone around me shuffling their feet, mumbling the answer. “That’s right. You don’t fucking talk about it. Any of it. Ever.” He bares his fangs again. “Or I’ll kill you.”
Someone in the crowd behind me mutters a hail mary.
Behind Masen, Angelface is pulling himself to his feet. His neck wound is lazily pumping blood, slowing to a trickle and his skin is hardening around the wound right before our eyes. Blue eyes floating in a crimson flood. Color draining down his neck until it’s just pale skin and fiery red scars. He puts a hand to his mouth and growls in pain, but it isn’t from his smashed up face. We all watch in fascination as he pulls his hand away.
A fresh set of fangs where his canines used to be.
Masen grabs him by the shirt collar and gives us one last deathly cold stare before hauling the reborn Angelface away.
“See you next week boys.”
THIRTY FOUR
Masen is in the bathtub, which has seen better days. Someone must have tried to cook meth in here and everything went horribly wrong. It might explain the smell and the bathtub barely holds water. The enamel is burnt to a heavy grain sandpaper grit.
When your ass is made of stone, I guess things like that don’t bother you.
I sit on the toilet and start to clean the blood off myself. I got tapped after Masen left and I did alright, but I certainly didn’t win.
“If you could fight anyone in the world, who would you fight?” I ask him. I don’t want to talk about what happened anyway. I have no idea where Angelface is, but I’m pretty sure he’s somewhere close.
“Hemingway,” he says.
“Ernest?”
“Who else? His piece, Hadley, she wanted to fuck me. He was not happy about it.” Masen isn’t cleaning anything, just sitting in the warm water with his skin steaming. There’s still a bunch of dried blood caked around his mouth.
“When was this?”
“Mid nineteen twenties, I think. They divorced a couple of years later. Christ, that woman was beautiful. . .” He sounds nearly indulgent before he looks at me. “Who would you fight?”
“I’d fight Bella.” I reach into my mouth and touch a tooth which promptly falls into my lap, gooey with blood and the still-writhing tentacles of tendons.
“That’s fucked up, man. I think she’d beat the shit out of you.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence.” I pick the tooth up and contemplate shoving it back into place, but set it on the sink instead. “That girl is bat shit crazy.”
“She’s bat shit and crazy. About you.”
“She doesn’t like me.” I shake my head, still prodding at my jaw. There are four teeth loose on the bottom and three on the top. They wiggle in their sockets, bolts of fiery pain through my jaw.
I couldn’t kiss anyone right now, even if I wanted to.
THIRTY FIVE
I go to work with a hole in my tongue that just won’t stop bleeding, lacing my teeth with red. I can swallow a gallon of blood before I start to feel sick. I know this, because I’ve done it. I write epic diatribes instead of punching numbers and make copies of them while I prod the bruised bones of my face. No one talks to me anymore and I wear a mask of raccoon eyes to keep them away.
Masen does nothing but fuck Bella and show up to fight club.
THIRTY SIX
Angelface reappears at fight club in new form.
He’s still got those fangs and all of his color has drained away, even from the angry red scars that rip across his torn-up face. He looks like he’s been put through the same meat grinder as Masen’s jacket. The whites of his eyes are swimming in blood as though his head has been squeezed too hard.
He taps Masen.
Which has got to the stupidest thing he’s ever done, other than tapping Masen the first time.
“No,” Masen shakes his head.
“Fuck you, you cowardly shit! You did this to me.” Angelface rips off his shirt and lunges at Masen, power housing him into a car. The whole thing skids sideways in a squealing grind of rubber. He tries to get at Masen’s neck with those freshly sprung fangs.
“You owe me this,” Angelface yowls against his skin. “You turned me into a monster!”
Masen bows momentarily under the weight of the furious, resurrected boy, growling as he finally slams Angelface into the ground. Cratering him through the concrete and crushed stones. Smashing the boy through the surface and leaning into the hole to set his fangs into the kid for a second time.
A chunk of Angelface’s cheek comes away, his mouth now gaping twice as big. Masen spits out the remnants. It clatters to the asphalt and skitters loudly before it comes to rest.
“I gave you a gift, you ungrateful little shit,” he snarls.
THIRTY SEVEN
Masen makes a beautiful blonde girl piss herself in an alleyway.
Pulls her from behind the counter of a convenience store with a gun to her temple.
“What are you doing?” I ask, staring at the crack of her cleavage that’s heaving with every gulp of air. She’s crying and he’s holding her still with a fist through her hair, her neck craned awkwardly. He eyes her pumping jugular for a moment before throwing her to her knees and she sprawls into the gravel, whimpering.
“This is Rosalie.” Masen strolls around her, still pointing the gun at her head but he’s talking to me. “Rosalie here has the kind of body even I get weak over. Perfect tits, nice ass . . . baby face.” He tucks the barrel of the gun underneath her chin and forces her face to the sky. Her makeup is running clear down her neck but he’s right. She looks fresh and clean and brand fucking new. Not like Bella. Not like me or Masen.
“Why are you working in this shit hole, baby?” Masen sounds sweet, even though I know he isn’t. She blubbers, but nothing understandable, clutching her hands together in a delicate lace-up of fragile bones and gooey tendons. I can’t even appreciate a girl anymore without thinking about how the human body can be broken.
“What did you want to be, when you were a little girl?” Masen tries again.
More frantic stuttering.
“The question, Rosalie, is WHAT DID YOU WANT TO BE?” Masen snaps, voice echoing over and over and over as he stands back and pops the safety, gun pressed firm to the spot between her eyebrows. She’s shaking but he’s stone still and I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that he’d actually do it. Angelface rubbed him raw tonight and he’s unstable at even the best of times. I don’t trust him worth a damn and he looks too trigger happy for my taste.
“Answer him!” I shout at her. She doesn’t struggle, doesn’t even try to run, just glances around wildly like someone might be able to save her.
There’s no saving anything from Masen.
“A model,” she finally whimpers. Masen clicks the safety back and tucks the gun into the waistband of his pants. I wonder if he’d going to bite her instead.
“Rosalie, you have exactly fourteen days to resume that dead goal of yours. I know where you live. I know where you work. I will check on you, and if you fail . . .” He leans down right into her face and bares his teeth at her, flashing his pearly whites. Fangs and all. “I will kill you.”
He hauls her to her feet, gives her a sharp swat on the backside and she goes off like a shot into the night. The farewell wave of her hair and a trailing fog of sobs.
“Jesuschrist, Masen.” I watch her go and wonder if it could be that easy to just outrun him. Probably not. “What the fuck was all that about?”
“Imagine how she feels right now? The adrenaline and the joy and the fear. The relief that she’s alive.” Masen stares after her, nearly salivating. “That was the most important moment in her whole trivial life.”
“Her near life experience?”
Masen winks at me. “You’re catching on.”
THIRTY EIGHT
Masen and Bella take the gun to bed with them that night. I can hear them using it to assault one another for hours.
On your knees, you dirty fucking bastard.
Take it all the way, you filthy slut.
Yes. Jesusgod. Just like that.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
When a bullet finally rips through the wall and buries itself in the busted remnants of sidewalk across the street, I delete Masen. I insert myself and dig my dick out.
Roll onto my stomach, burying my moans like bodies into the pillow.
THIRTY NINE
I don’t go to insomnia group. I just stand outside and wait.
I tell myself it’s not for her, but I can’t think straight when she comes fluttering by. She waves her cigarette hand at me and all I can see is Masen’s mouth. The curl of his lips and the steaming acid pain he held beneath his tongue.
“What the fuck is that?” I grab her hand then drop it immediately, stomach roiling with disgust. Her skin is mangled, freshly burned in a delicate swipe across the back and I can’t believe he did it.
Let his venom go.
For her.
“What, am I not special enough to be in your club?” She glares at my hand and I shove it in my pocket to hide the scar. Bella pushes herself right up against me, all tits and lips and big bloodshot eyes and purrs like an overfed cat. “Haven’t seen you in a while, dollface. Did you get your fill of me last time?”
“Please. Like you would ever give me what I want.” I almost laugh in her face. What I want is her in my bed and not his. What I want is to kiss her until our lips crack. Blood blends. Bones break. To fuck her and then let her beat me senseless. The urge is almost too savage to contain.
It makes me feel more like Masen than I ever have before.
FORTY
There is someone standing on the porch when I come home. Emmett. With a broken nose and a tear in his lip. I watched a new guy beat the fuck out of him last night. Sit on his head and pound iron fists into his ribs until they cracked under the strain. From the wheezing sound when he breathes, one of those splintered ribs went through his lung.
He doesn’t acknowledge me, even though I stand right there and stare at him. Neither of us have been to the hospital basement in a while and I can’t even remember how to cry.
Masen is in the kitchen.
“There’s someone on the porch,” I say.
He sips from his coffee cup and adjusts his dick. “He’s been there all day.”
“Tell him to fuck off.”
“I can’t. It’s part of the process.”
“What process?”
“He’s here to be reborn. He wants to be part of this.”
“This?”
Masen tips his head toward the back of the house. “The shed.”
“What the fuck is going on in the shed?”
“Angelboy is out there.”
“Angelface?”
“Whatever,” Masen shrugs. “He’s just the first.”
“The first of what?”
“We’re building an army, Edward.”
“Can’t we do something simple? Like make soap?” I try, but Masen just shakes his head at me.
“We’re not making soap.” Masen shakes his head at me.
“What do you mean, an army?”
“This is the dawn of a new era, Edward. We are ushering in the future, can’t you see it?” He waves his hand in the air like I’m supposed to see what he’s talking about. I see nothing. “We have front-row seats to this rebellion. Enjoy the show.”
“You can’t create an army of vampires, Masen. What are you going to do with all of them? They’ll run rampant.”
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