So I posted this story a while ago and I ended up deleting it - and it wasn't popular- but I decided that it's okay! I can write for myself sometimes. I'm posting it here though because I know that some people actually enjoyed this and I hope that those people still like the idea I'm running with.
Thank you all!
Monsters - Conner Youngblood
/
Once upon a time, there was a girl named Isabella who danced among the stars, twirled between nebulas, and had a smile that could rival the sun's laughter. She was seventeen-years-old and cried for years when her orange cat died.
Once upon a time, her father came home with red eyes, whispering the stories of Titans into her hair and sharp teeth breaking into her neck, biting, biting, biting-
Isabella fell from the stars and into earth's harsh hands. And this girl? This girl died burning.
/
She learns that time passes, ages.
But she doesn't.
She awakes to the same fire that killed her, burning in her throat; she's dying again, relapsing into a forever pain that seems to move along with her.
Nails ripping at her mouth, she stumbles out of ash and dust and starts to run.
Colors blur in smears of charcoal and still simmering embers, and, she's still burning.
Warmth and rage and hunger hit her all at once, she falls to the ground in agony, clawing at dirt, growls sounding like roars culling out of her mouth. A heat throbs in her upper gums and slides out past her lip. Something under her fingernails makes her want to-
"Help." A voice, choking on red. He reaches towards her, hand half burned off.
She doesn't even hesitate.
Her teeth, (fangs?) rip into the skin of his throat, crimson splashing across her tongue. There's a deep crack somewhere that makes her grin, blood dripping from her teeth.
This man dies with prayers on his lips.
She pulls back, observing the gaping and ravished hole in his neck with odd glee. Her shirt is a thing of murder, soaked in the remains of this man's death and of her hunger.
She licks her teeth and looks at the man before her.
Fuzzy memories, but, she does know him-
Bishop Nichasin.
She stumbles back, horror painting a new flavor on her tongue.
She's known this man, has known him since she was born. She grew up with his daughter and listened whenever he would talk about eternal life.
And she killed him, she just- she just-
Another pained groan catches her attention. This time, the groan is from the butcher. From the weaver. From the alchemist. From the lord's son.
The fire alights in her throat once more, and, with a pained sob, she leaps forward to deliver death.
And again.
And again.
And again.
When the sun explodes into stars at the end of the day, you'd have to dig and dig and dig through and dirt and bone to find Isabella.
(She's under all that blood.)
(She finds her parents and her house. All that's left of them is ruined ash with deer footprints pressed into them. The house a skeleton, resembling her ribs.)
She turns, walks, away, away, away. And she keeps walking until she reaches the end of the earth.
Then? Then she turns around and starts in a new direction.
The world above her changes, ages, and she stays put.
/
It takes her one look in silver painted glass to understand what she's become.
(She almost remembers a girl named Isabella, the girl from the stars, died burning. Almost, almost.)
They talk about demons with red eyes and sharp teeth, the hunger for blood in their lungs. Vampires, they whisper into the night, torches lighting up their face and weapons grazing against trees.
She kills another tonight, and another, and another. She kills and kills until her entire existence has been drenched in the deaths of others.
It's so hard to breathe when you have murder on the back of your eyelids.
/
Days and days pass, but she sits in a cave, hungry and tired and watches in agony as snow drifts down from branches.
She almost wants to speak to the snow, use her voice that hasn't been heard in… a long, long while.
(She's lost count after the seventh decade.)
Eyelids start to close, welcoming death and remains of ash into her bloodstream with every breath.
She feels good, despite the promise of death, and it's because she knows she won't be able to hurt people anymore.
Can't- there's a soft pitter pattering crunch in the distaste, growing louder.
Can't hurt- warmth hits her side, burning her nose, her fangs out and awake, ready to rip into flesh.
A hunger, no no no please, I can't hurt another- A flurry of movement, and then the whimpering of a beast and a sick sucking slurp.
Can't hurt anybody anymore.
Black eyes glisten along with the red, glisten along with the wolf's blood and fur, against the backdrop of snow.
(The trees will later whisper, when the earth is dying, they will whisper that they've never seen anybody look happier than that demon did that very night.)
/
Her eyes burn gold now, gold in a place among a sea of brown, grey, blue, green. She's not normal and people talk about her, Death's daughter, they'll whisper, come to kill us all.
And at that, she'll laugh, but not behind alleyways, but in the streets, smile muffled by layers of her coat. She's done hiding now.
She hears now that the year is 1898. It comes as a shock. She's never heard numbers being used as years.
These humans ask her what her name is, who she is, where she came from, questions, questions, questions, and she finds herself tripping to keep up.
I came from London, she explains with a polite smile.
And your name, pretty one?
She falters, remembers burns and ash and death and her parents-
Isabella, blisters against her tongue, eyeing an ice cream cart wheeling down the road, Swan. Isabella Swan. Immediately they relax, smiling back at her.
They've humanized her, made her one of their own. She will now be known as the girl with a pretty smile and odd eyes, oh, but she's a darling, really. A little odd. Very nice, though; won't have trouble picking up a husband.
Isabella learns of customs quickly, watching through windows and from tree tops. She learns and adapts, plays humans so well that they have no reason to mistrust her.
She's good now, right? She's found a way not to kill? She's good?
(No. No, she'll never be- never be good. Even now, she's turning herself into something lethal, fangs behind her blunt teeth. And blood dripping red, red, red from her nails, her fingers, smile, teeth, eyes, just dripping, soaking in blood.)
A man tells a joke, she laughs, ducks her head.
Her mouth burns.
/
Lies, always always lies.
(Lies, lies. You are a lie.)
/
She slips.
She slips and it's all her fault and-
A man in the woods as she was hunting, slips and falls, bleeds, and Isabella? What are you doing out here? Why are you covered in-
A man she knows, Jeffery. He has a wife she's friends with, two sons and one daughter.
She snaps his neck, eyes rolling back in ecstasy. It's been such a long time since she's tasted the nectar of human blood-
A man, Jeffery dies gurgling prayers to his God.
Screams shake the earth that night. (Not his screams. Not his screams.)
She slips.
She slips and it's all her fault and-
/
Somebody, something finds her in the woods later, when the sun comes to rise and glare at her smugly. The rays saying, you don't belong in my light, creature of the night.
She's still crying, blood dried and brown on her lips.
She senses more than hears or smells the presence.
Guttural growls rip out, emotions still a raw thing, fangs out and ready to maim.
The man behind her is as pale as she is, eyes redder and fangs poking out from his lips.
He whispers in awe. "You're an Old One, too."
She freezes, fangs retracting into her gums. "I beg your pardon?"
He nods towards the red. "An Old Vampire."
Dark eyebrows frown, fear etched into her voice. "I don't believe I know what you're-"
"Look." The man cuts her off, baring his teeth and watches as his fangs drip lower out of his mouth. "I'm just like you."
/
He tells her his name is Bartholomew.
He asks her how she turned and she can't give an answer other than "fire." But he seems to understand anyway. And with sad, red eyes, he tells her about the fire.
He tells her about the Old Ones, about how they're gods pretending to be humans, ichor running through their veins. He tells her how the Old Ones started to evolve into the New Ones, the ones that didn't have fangs and shimmered in the sun, the ones with the powers.
And then he tells her about the Volturi, the royalty of the vampiric world. They are New Ones, with powers no man could imagine, trying to play gods. The Volturi got wind of the Old Ones, the ones who were immune to the powers. And because of that, the Old Ones were invincible, a threat.
The Volturi started gathering an army.
They eradicated the Old Ones with force and fire. Burned villages to the ground. Zeus against Kronos, the same old story for centuries.
"That's how my wife died," Bartholomew signs with heavy, heavy eyes.
"My family died the same way." Isabella mutters, anger and pain filling her veins.
He looks at her, reaches out and squeezes her shoulder.
They don't talk until the sun's mocking glares fall back into the moon's haunted smile.
"So," Bartholomew starts, helping her dig a grave for Jeffery. "How come your eyes are gold?"
/
Isabella teaches him how to hunt animals, how to get past the smell and the awful taste.
"Blah!" Bartholomew spits from his teeth, the neck of a deer in his hand. "These animals taste so bad."
She shrugs, hiding her smile behind her hand, and her cheeks hurt. "The meat-eaters taste a little more like humans. Try one of those, next time."
He makes a face that suggests he's absolutely appalled at the idea of a "next time," but he nods anyway, diving back into the deer's neck.
Later, he asks how she found they could live off animals.
"I tried to kill myself by starvation." Isabella shrugs, making her way further into the woods. "I like to think that it almost worked; but a pack of wolves came when my body was just starting to attack itself."
Bartholomew nods like he knows, and he does, oh, he does.
"How many times did you-"
"Once. It didn't ever occur to me that we could try to die." Isabella casts a look behind her, sees his scars. "What about you?"
His laugh, ice and gruff. "I've been trying to die everyday since Rebirth." He kicks a rock. It goes flying for miles and miles.
"And what else have you been doing?"
"Fighting in wars," Bartholomew chuckles a little. "I wouldn't recommend that, however."
"Why not?"
"Humankind is going to burn itself to the ground. War after war... Soon enough, no one will be left to claim victory."
/
"Are you scared of living? Of what you've become?"
"Yes. Are you?"
"Yes."
/
"Come with me." Bartholomew walking side by side with her the next week. People are glaring and watching, whispering. "You and I," his teeth glinting, looking oh so sharp, too sharp. "Let's leave and travel, become the people we want to be and just go."
Isabella licks her lips, tastes stars and her ears twitch, hears, "is that young man courting Isabella? Shame, my son was going to ask her this weekend. She would have given my family such lovely little ones."
"I don't know, Bat. I mean, can we just go? What if we attract the attention of the Volturi? Certainly it can't be safe for us to travel like this, in pairs."
His lips shake, hands twitching at his sides. "You're right. I'm sorry- so sorry." And laughs again, age on his breath and loneliness woven into his muscles. She sees it in the hunch of his shoulders.
"We can keep in touch." Isabella offers, gold eyes pleading. "I'm tired of being alone, too."
"You're leaving?" It's a tone of surprise. Isabella notes that his eyes are getting lighter.
"I have to. New York isn't really my cup of tea."
"All right, English." Bat jokes, nudging her softly.
"I don't even have an accent."
"You do." He insists. "When you get really emotionally overwhelmed."
"Liar." Isabella snorts, something that would have been called "unlady-like." "I've had roughly around four centuries to get rid of it, if you're right in your calculations."
They turn onto Isabella's apartment street.
"Almost certain. If everything your pretty little head told me is true."
Isabella sighs, vision blurring in red again.
Bat notices, sighs with her, "When do you leave?"
"Tonight."
"And where will you go?"
At this, Isabella frowns, watching as a little boy chases a ball down the end of the street. "I haven't got a clue."
/
She leaves in the middle of the night when Mr. Carthy's snores echo down the hall, when the moon feels nice and soft against her skin, nice and soft and understanding.
She leaves, doesn't look back.
/
In her story: she's chasing ghosts of who she once was, body made of teeth, her heart a violent thing, always finding ways to hook itself upon her own ribs.
She forgets herself easily, goldfish memory of the girl who thought she could dance with the stars, swallow them whole.
She finds herself a monster, mouth gushing red with all she's done, an ache that tastes like alone in her bone marrow. She's been smelling smoke for years, years, and
she doesn't even think there's a fire.
/
Blood on her feet as she walks away, stumbling blindly into an oblivion she can't yet name, drunk off the high of blood when she hears it.
Angry growls high strung like bees, the harsh pitter of paw prints that almost sound like the drums of death.
A bear sized wolf rips itself out of the trees and towards her.
She feels nails scrape against her stone flesh, sounding more like a knife against glass.
She shakes, feels her fangs grow out and then she lunges.
A match striking against the fireplace, champagne glass falling to the floor, blood matted hair stuck to her forehead. This is what it feels like to fight, to move and hold death in her hands.
When her fangs lock inside of this wolf's shoulder, she wonders how she went for centuries without fighting.
The wolf yelps, manages to kick her off and limps away.
Isabella watches as their bones shift, breaking and fuses again and again.
The fur sinks back into flesh and in its place is a boy.
Isabella blinks.
/
They watch each other warily, keeping track of where they shifted, where they're looking.
"Why don't you just kill me?" The boy asks, his voice gruff and low.
"I don't kill humans."
The boy's mouth drops in surprise. "What?"
"I feed off of animals," Isabella licks her teeth, tasting blood and fur. "Not you, because you taste bad, but regular animals."
He opens his mouth, closes, opens. "So you aren't a vampire?"
"I am."
"How can I believe you?" He barks accusingly. "How do I know you won't kill humans?"
Isabella shrugs.
"Well," He stands to his feet, holding his rib cage. He's still on edge. "You're eyes are gold for one thing."
She tilts her head. "How do you know they're supposed to be a different color?"
He grins, shakes as he bites his lip. "I've killed your section of vampires before. I caught him munching on some girl's neck by the creek. Your section is harder to fight than the ones who don't have fangs but," He shrugs. "I killed that guy just fine."
Isabella feels a pulse beating in the back of her throat, kind of naked, kind of raw. "Did you catch his name, perhaps? Or how he looked?"
The boy looks to the left. And then to her. "He had some really weird pale hair, and was kind of tall." He snaps his fingers. "Oh! Bartholomew. He tried introducing himself to me right before I snapped his head off."
Isabella swallows, feeling more like she gulped down acid. "Oh."
"Did you know him?"
"He was a friend."
The boy stiffened defensively. "Vampires cannot hunt humans on this land. He had to be punished."
"I know," Isabella croaks. "You don't have to worry about me."
He finally looks satisfied, only a little mistrustful. "Fine. I'm Jacob by the way."
Her mouth turns. "Isabella."
She should have left with Bat when she had the chance.
/
She finds that Jacob is not the only wolf in Forks, Washington.
He's the Alpha of a pack, and once they learn of her existence, they promptly draw boundary lines, add restrictions in the treaty they've decided was necessary.
Even though Isabella doesn't plan to bite or kill a human, she agreed to immediate death if she were to break the treaty, anyway.
Despite the mistrust of the other wolves, Isabella likes to think that Jacob and her have become something like friends.
Being around him is easier than breathing, and she knows it's because he's lonely, too.
He cracks jokes a lot, him and his wide smile. He calls her and old lady when she informs him that he stinks.
"I am a dog!" He yells at her, playfully shoving.
And later: "You should attend school here. If you're staying."
Isabella would be lying to say she hasn't considered settling here for a while.
"Maybe I will."
/
She has to leave before she gets the chance.
She hears Jacob's running paws, and smells him before she sees him.
"Bella!" Jacob yells, teeth bloody and skin shining. "You have to go. You have to leave!"
She hops down from a tree branch, eyes curious. "Wasn't it just yesterday that you wanted me to stay?"
"You have to go," He's frantic, eyes shifting wildly around them.
"Jacob what's wrong? What's happening?"
He grips too tight on her arm. "The Volturi are here."
Isabella freezes. "What?"
"The Elders set up a meeting with them- I don't know Isabella. But if they find you, they will kill you. Go."
And so she does.
/
She comes back, after the fear of being caught subsides, after she's hunted and attended some school in Chicago. Years and years later, but she does.
Jacob tells her, "Seventy- seven years, Isabella." And god, it has been, it must have. Jacob is older, "nineteen," He answers when she asks.
And then, he grabs her in a hug, tells her he missed her.
(She missed him, too.)
"You going to give settling down another chance?" Jacob wonders one evening.
"I don't know. Can I? Are the Volturi ever coming back?"
"No," Jacob shakes his head, smirks at her. "We're good at keeping people out of Forks." Something like 1938 burns in her chest at his words. She's missed so much.
The corner of his lips are lower than before and he has a little bit of stubble on his cheek that scratches her forehead.
She's missed so much.
/
When Isabella first entered school, she learned again that humans are ninety percent empty galaxies with hopes and dreams they can taste but never hold.
She learns again how much it hurts to live among them. Like putting cigarettes out against your own ribs.
"Come on," Jacob whispers. "Let's go," and he steers them over the a cafeteria table in the corner. Away from heartache and pain.
She already hears people whispering about how, about the pretty stranger with odd eyes, and it tastes too familiar. Far, far, too familiar.
"You're going to be okay."
Bella's not sure if she believes him.