Sealed

Today is the day that I might die. I never thought I‘d hope for my own death, but if it will save countless others, then it must be so.

“Alina?” my mother calls from her bed. Her voice chokes on the end of my name, and she falls into one of her coughing fits that have been growing steadily worse and more frequent.

I fasten the last button on my jacket and quickly pull on my warmest pair of boots.

“Alina… please… come in…. here,” Mother manages to wheeze out between her gagging coughs.

I run into her bedroom, breathless by the time I reach her side. I fear that every time she has one of these fits that it may be her last. She is so small under the covers that I can barely make out her tiny frame. Before she got sick, she was a strong, muscled warrior of a woman, but now the outlines of her bones peek through her crepe-thin skin.

I pick up the tin cup of water from the table beside the bed and pull the covers away from her face. I try not to cringe at the deep purple circles that run around her eyes. Mother looks up at me with a smile, despite that fact she knows she’s dying.

“Where are you going, baby?” she asks. She reaches up to run her fingers through my hair, and I feel a twinge of guilt. She doesn’t know what I’m about to do, nor will I tell her.

“I’m just going to see Ethan off. He’s in the Fight today.”

Her eyes immediately snap to attention. “That’s today? It can’t be time for that already…”

Her voice trails off, and the sparkle disappears from her eyes. I know I’ve lost her for now. Her lucidity never lasts very long these days. It’s why I have to win the fight. I need her to have the money pay for her treatments so she can finish her research and figure out how to stop this monstrosity forever. My life will cost nothing. Hers will cost everything.

I squeeze her hand and lean down to kiss her on the cheek. Despite being sick, she still smells like lavender.  I don’t want to leave her, but I have to. I can’t be late today. Plus, I still have to go tell Ethan goodbye.

As I pick up my gloves and slide my cold-numbed hands into them, someone taps lightly on the front door. I already know it’s Ethan by rhythm of it—only he knocks that way. I swing the door open with a smile, glad to see him—even if it may be the last time. But my smile instantly falls when I see the look on his face.

He knows.

I wasn’t going to tell him either.

“Alina. You cannot do this to your mother,” he pleads, barging through the front door and slamming it behind him.

We’ve already had this conversation, and he knows it’s the only way I will ever be able to get enough money for my mother’s medicine. I just never told him that I was serious about going through with it. Someone from the council must have called him. They don’t like it when women participate, even though it’s not illegal.

“I’m not doing this to her, I’m doing this for her,” I say. “You know good and well she’s the only one smart enough to figure out how to save everyone and stop this mess.”

His face crumples, and for a split second, my decision to Fight wavers. I don’t like it when he looks at me like that. It makes my blood go cold. I don’t blame him for being upset with me, but it’s my decision and mine only. I’ll sign my life over to the Council with a fingerprint of my own blood, and I will be sealed to them until I’m no longer breathing. Hopefully, anyway.

Because in the Fight, the only way to win is to die.

            Ethan steps forward and circles my waist with his hands.

            “Please,” he says, even though his mouth doesn’t open. He doesn’t need to speak right now. I know those eyes of his better than my own, and that is exactly why I refuse to look into them right now. I can’t let him influence my decision.

A piece of hair falls in front of my eyes and he lets go of my back to tuck it behind my ear. His fingers linger at the base of my chin, and his lips are so close to my own that I can feel the electricity of his skin burning in the air between us. I finally lift my eyes to his and it is the biggest mistake I ever could have made.

      Ethan pushes me against the wall and cups my face in his hands. He kisses me gently, like I am the only thing in the world that matters. He sucks my bottom lip into his mouth and I have to gasp for air, but it doesn’t do me any good. Not even oxygen will help me breathe properly at this point.

      "Ethan," I murmur against his mouth. His lips leave mine and travel to my cheek, down my chin, onto my neck. Soft, little kisses that barely feel like kisses at all.

      "Ethan, stop it," I say again.

      His body stiffens and he immediately pulls away. There are only about two inches of space between us, but it feels like miles.  Everything has changed. He knows he can’t save me from this anymore than I can save my mother without medicine.

      “I have to do this. You know I do,” I whisper.

      He swallows hard and takes another step away from me. I hear the faintest whisper of a “goodbye,” as he steps out of the door and closes it behind him.

      Panic wells in me as the realization of what I’m about to do seeps into my soul, and I know that I can’t let it end like this. I can’t let him leave like that. I yank my front door open, my mouth open with his name on my lips, ready to yell for him to come back. But a piece of paper crumpled on the top porch step catches my eye. 

      I lean over and grab it, carefully unwadding it as I stand back up. It’s a picture. A picture of a house scrawled out with a purple crayon. A picture that I have seen a million times before, hanging on the corner of the refrigerator. It’s a picture that I drew when I was five years old. But there’s now a bloody thumbprint on the bottom left corner.

      I drop the paper and sprint down the steps and into the yard. By the time I reach the town square, I lineup has already begun. I spot his brown, curly head at the front of the line, thumb poised and ready to bleed on the scroll of Fighter’s names.

      “Ethan!” I shout. “No! Please!”

      This was supposed to be me. I was supposed to be the one to save her. This isn’t okay. I try to push my way through the thick crowd, but there is no way I’ll make it to the front to stop him in time. He raises his head just in time to look at me as he presses his bloodied thumb onto the long scroll.

      He nods. Shrugs. Mouths, “I love you.” Then steps into the arena.

      And the Fight begins.

Ruby Red Psychosis

I turn off my car and absentmindedly rub the keys between my fingers. I don’t need to drive anymore. It’s about to happen. Too bad I have no earthly idea where I am. The snow is coming down pretty heavily now, and I figure I better let my therapist know that I won’t be making it to our session today. I am about to change, after all. My cell phone is dead though, so I'd pulled over at the first phone booth I saw. They’re few and far between these days, but this particular one is painted red, as if to shout to passersby, “I WORK! USE ME! I’m much safer than talking on your cell phone while you drive!”

            I climb out of the car, shivering a little as I jog towards the phone booth.  It’s too damn cold for anyone to be out here today, including me. A gust of icy wind slithers into my jacket, slipping up the holes around my wrists, down the opening around my neck, through the slits in the fabric that hug my buttons. I shove my hands into my pockets, even though they don’t really offer much warmth. I should have brought some gloves, but I don’t think I even own any. Guys like me don’t need gloves, because guys like me usually stay inside when it’s ten degrees outside.

 My coat flutters around my hips as the wind sneaks through the crack in the door, blowing small flurries of the falling snow into the booth with me, dusting my shoes like powdered sugar. As I grab the phone, someone bangs on the door. It’s a pretty girl with curly brown hair and a smile that matches the color of the phone booth. Her cherry red lips look like something I’d like to taste, but I don’t have time for that right now. I’ve got to get somewhere safe before I change.

Her eyes, which are the color of a dull nickel, slowly rise to meet mine.

“Where the hell did you come from?” I ask.

As I wait for her reply, I blow into my hands and rub them together, hoping that will warm them up a little. She frowns. Without a word, she reaches out and takes both of my hands between her own.

“Why don’t you have on gloves?” she asks me as she slowly starts to massage some warmth into my fingers.

It takes me a second to be able to force my mind to produce words. Her hands feel like the scalding heat of a flame on my near-frozen skin. My muscles are starting to twitch and clench under my skin, and it throws off my concentration. I need to get out of here.

“I… um… I just needed to make a quick call,” I finally manage to choke out. I slowly pull my hands away from hers and shove them back into my jacket pockets. “Didn’t think I’d need them for such a short time.”

“You live around here?” she asks.

I shake my head. “I have no idea where I am, actually. I just started driving, and this is where I ended up.”

She smiles and takes a deep breath. “This is probably the stupidest thing I’ve ever done, but you look like you could use a hot meal and a nap. I actually followed you here because I saw how you’d been weaving all over the road. I think… I think I can help you.”

Her voice trickles to a whisper and her gaze falls to my chest. She looks… hungry, or something.

“But I don’t even know you,” I say with a smirk. “What if you’re a rapist or a murderer?”

She raises an eyebrow, and looks me up and down. My 6’3 frame next her small one is almost laughable. “Yeah. Like that’s even possible.”

“Ok, ok. How do you know I’M not a rapist or murderer?”

Her red lips curl into a grin. “I can see the best and worst and people. And like I said, I think I can help you.”

There’s something about her—something that’s drawing me to her, something I can’t put my finger on. I figure it can’t hurt to have a pretty girl make me some soup and crash on her couch for the night, so I follow her out into the snow. Everything else can wait.

***

A cloud of dust flies up from the floorboards, as she drops her purse onto the floor of her tiny, old cabin, but the girl walks right through it. It blankets her silhouette like a choking hand, but she doesn’t seem to notice, or care. The cabin is unbearably hot, like the way her hands felt when they melted into my skin earlier. It isn’t pleasant at all. It’s like an electric shock to my system after being in the intense cold outside. The musty smell of the old cabin turns my stomach.

I really shouldn’t have let her bring me here. I’m about to change. I thought I could fight it for another day, but I don’t think I can. I don’t want to hurt her, or anyone for that matter. But the itching inside my bones is starting to get worse

            “Um…miss?” I say.

She snaps a glance over her shoulder. “It’s Jana.”

“Right. Jana. I think you should leave for a little while. I can’t… I can’t be… around people right now.”

I can barely finish the last sentence because my teeth are starting to shift and dance inside my gums, and the pain of my body contracting like a dying spider tears me from the inside out.

“Really…” I try to force the words through my lips. “You need to go. Now.”

The change of cold to hot so quickly has been my undoing. It has never affected me so quickly before. I close my eyes and fall to my knees as agony shoots through every cell in my body.           

Hands—hands as hot as fire—grab my cheeks, and pull me back to my feet.

“Man up, dude. I’m here to help you,” she says, her voice dark and low like it was sipped from a cup of fine espresso and spewed through her lips. How does she know what I am?

“Nobody can help me… This… curse… is permanent. I don’t want to hurt you, just go, ok?”

Her fingernails dig into my cheeks and pop into my skin like needles. I can vaguely feel a warm stream of blood run down my face. That doesn’t help with my problem. It just makes every hair on my body stand on edge. A shudder rips through me and I can’t stop shaking. It’s about to happen, I can feel it bubbling in my veins. This is always the worst part.

            Oh so I’ve always thought.

            Her hand explodes through my chest and wraps tightly around my heart. I fall to the ground again, and this time she lets me. She falls with me, landing on top of my torso as she squeezes her damn furnace fingers around my heart. I can’t even make a sound, a scream, a whine, anything, because her other hand is gripping my mouth like it’s been welded there.

            Fire rips through every pore, every vein, every breath, and I wish I would just die already. It’s not fair that I have to feel this pain.

And then she’s gone. I take a gasping, gulping breath and pull my hand to my chest, which is slick with my blood. But there is no hole, no wound at all. I press my back into the cold hardwood floor, and imagine my skin taking on the shape of the grain, my spine speckled and dotted with knots where limbs used to grow.

One of the boards has a sharp, unsanded corner, and every time I take a breath, it picks at the skin in the curve of my lower back. The slight irritation is the only thing keeping me awake at this point. I want to pass out, but I know I don’t really deserve that peace. I let my hand slide off of my stomach and onto the floor. I don’t even flinch when the blood on it spatters little droplets onto my side.

It suddenly starts to itch inside my heart like it used to inside my bones right before I would change. I lose myself in a coughing fit, and I’m afraid that this will make me explode into million pieces.

I squeeze my eyes shut, and when I open them again, I’m standing in a red phone booth. My coat flutters around my hips as the wind sneaks through the crack in the door, blowing small flurries of the falling snow into the booth with me, dusting my shoes like powdered sugar. As I grab the phone to call a cab since I have no idea how I got here, someone bangs on the door. It’s a pretty girl with curly brown hair and a smile that matches the color of the phone booth. Her cherry red lips look like something I’d like to taste, but I don’t have time for that right now. I’ve got to get somewhere safe before I change.

Cloaked

My father will not let me be beautiful.

             "Beauty is for silly girls," he says. "Beauty only causes pain to others."

             I avoid my reflection in the mirror as the familiar burn of embarrassment turns my cheeks a shameful red. My hair falls over my face and I let it stay there; the less of my face that anyone sees, the better. I know that that he relishes in the fact that I will never be beautiful. The doctors said they could fix my skin. They said they could turn the thick, leathery scars that covered my face and arms into skin that I could be proud of again.

But Father told them no. He told them that the scars would remind me of who I really am inside; that they would remind me of what we both lost the day of the accident. The scars are my lifelong punishment for my mother’s death.

             Of course everyone teases me at school.  Teenagers are usually merciless when it comes to pointing out other people's imperfections, and I had enough of them to fuel their entertainment for the rest of their immature lives. As I wash my hands in the girl’s bathroom, I feel the presence of another person walk up beside me. I avoid eye contact as usual, never wanting to give anyone a direct line of vision to my hideous face.

             "You know that Gabe will never go for you," I hear a sharp voice say to my right. I inwardly cringe and look out of the corner of my bad eye. I already know that it's Marilee, but I want to know if she is looking at me. The accident changed her as well, though her physical appearance was as beautiful as it had always been. Only her soul had been damaged that day.

             As always, she is staring straight ahead, avoiding me as she slowly runs a brush through her perfect blonde curls. I let my gaze fall back to the sink, and wash all the soap bubbles from my hands, ignoring her statement. I hope that she will let it drop, but it's in her newly defined personality to drive the knife a little deeper.

             "You know that he would never date a beast like you". She drops the brush into her purse and turns to leave. But not before she leans over and whispers in my ear, "So stop staring at him. You're only embarrassing yourself."

             She smacks her lips and leaves the bathroom, her platform heels clacking on the tile floor behind me. When I am finally alone again, I force myself to look in the mirror. Out of habit, I immediately want to look away, but I don't give myself that pleasure. The glass windshield had shattered into my skin, slicing it open like a ripe grapefruit. The right side of my face had looked like something akin to a lump of raw hamburger meat for months after the accident, and Marilee had felt sorry for me for a little while. Now she just shuts everything out so that she doesn’t feel anything at all. I run my fingers over the jagged lumps on my face, and watch as a single tear zigzags its way through the scars. It's my fault that I look this way. It's my fault that Marilee turned into a cold bitch. And it's my fault that my mother died. I pull the hood on my black jacket as close to my face as possible so I can block out the world and get through the day as best as I can. What else can a beast do?

***

After school, I begrudgingly climb into Father's car. He picks me up every day and drives me straight to our house on the outside of town, furthering my outcast status. I am allowed to go nowhere but school and home, school and home, school and home. The pattern grew old and annoying very quickly, and I frequently think about sneaking out after he passes out every night. But where would I go? I have no friends. Marilee was my best friend before the accident, and she has since turned everyone against me. Nobody wants to be friends with the town beast.

When we get home, I go straight to my room. Father and I have as little contact as possible with each other since Mom died. Having finished all my homework in study hall, I have nothing to do but read; just the way I like it. I settle into my latest favorite novel, when I hear the thundering rumble of a car.

 I walk over to the window and see a black Mustang sitting out front. My heart flutters in my chest because I know that Gabe drives a Mustang. But there’s no way he would be coming to see me, right? Surely he is just pulling over to send a text message or something. But the driver's door swings open and I watch in amazement as he climbs out.

Gabe.

             Gabriel Bell, the hottest guy in school, is standing in front of my house. I watch him indecisively walk back and forth between my house and his car, and I bite my lip in desire. I habitually let my hair fall over my face, wondering what in the world he is doing here. I watch him for a moment longer, and he finally begins walking up the pebbled path to my front door. I can read the curses spewing from his lips as he mumbles to himself.

What could that be about? I wonder as I fly down the stairs to answer the doorbell.

"Hey, Emmy," he says. My heart flutters as fast as a humming bird's at the sound of my name coming from his mouth. He knows my name! "Um, can I come in? We need to talk about something.”

"Of course,” I squeak. I cringe at the sound of voice because it seems to have gotten lost somewhere inside my throat. I know that there will be consequences if he comes in, but his eyes seem to have locked into mine, and I can’t help it. No one ever looks me in the eyes, and it’s like he doesn’t even see my scars.

I step aside and let him come in, hoping that he doesn’t sense the danger in my house. If Father finds out that he is in here, I will never be able to see daylight again.

“Can we go to your room?” Gabe whispers, and I am suddenly afraid that he knows my secrets. “I don’t want your dad to know I’m here.”

My voice lost again, I nod at him and begin climbing the curved, wooden staircase.  We enter my room, and I am suddenly glad that I keep it clean. Gabe makes himself at home and plops down on my bed. He looks so perfect there; like he was made to be a permanent ornament in my room.

“Emmy,” he starts, sounding like he doesn’t want to say what he is about to. “I have something to tell you.”

His sea green irises are burning into mine and I can’t look away. After years of not seeing my reflection in another pair of eyes, it’s like a drug to me.

He drops his gaze and stares at my carpet for a few moments, so I decide to break the aching silence. “Um, Gabe? Why are you here?”

“I… I am the one who killed your mom,” he finally whispers, so low that I almost don’t hear him.

“No. I fell asleep and hit a tree. No other cars were involved.”

He lifts his eyes to mine again, and I am suddenly not so sure that I am right. “I was drunk. I shouldn’t have drove, but I did. I didn’t see you, and my car must have drifted over into your lane, and I freaked out and left the scene… It’s… It’s all my fault.”

My legs suddenly feel like noodles and I fall to the floor. I don’t feel it; I only hear the thump my body makes as it lands in the plush carpet. For years I have blamed myself for killing my mother, and it was never my fault.

Gabe is beside me immediately, carefully cupping his hands on my face, crying for me. He wants me to feel better. He wants me to forgive him.

I want to scream at him. I want to tell him to take his hand off me, to never ever touch my scars, but it is too late.

I hear another thump as he hits the floor beside me. A single tear runs out of my undamaged left eye, and I roll over to face him. I run a scarred finger over his lips and consider kissing him. I have never kissed anyone before. But I can’t bring myself to kiss a dead person, no matter beautiful he is.

I hear footsteps in the hallway and my door slowly creaks open. Father lets out a disappointed sigh behind me, but I ignore him. I just want to lay with my beauty for a little while longer before they have to take him away.

“Emmy, how could you let him touch you? You know why I had to do that—why I had to curse your scars. Beauty only causes pain to others.”

I continue to ignore him, hating him with every fiber of my being for doing to this me. I hear his heavy footsteps retreating down the hallway, probably going to get a shovel. Gabe’s green eyes stare eerily back at me, and I can’t help myself. If no one can touch my scars without dying, then I will never get my first kiss; my lips were torn into pieces during the accident.

Father won’t let me be beautiful. He doesn’t want me to fall in love and end up filled with emptiness and horror for the rest of my life like he is. So he cursed my scars so that anyone that touches them meets the same fate that my mother had to face all those months ago when I—no, when Gabe—killed her. But what Father doesn’t know, is that I have cast a curse of my own. He forgets that he’s not the only one with special blood running through his veins.

I lean over Gabe’s face, careful to not touch him until the moment that I choose for our lips to meet. I hover over him for a second, trying to will myself to not do what I am about to do. It’s wrong. But I can’t help myself. I softly press my lips against his.

Gabe suddenly gasps for breath, and he violently throws me backwards into the wall.

He stares at me in horror. “What have you done?” he chokes out. He knows what he is now—that he’s no longer human. He knows I have turned him into something dark.

A slow smile spreads across my leathery lips, and I crawl towards him, cupping my hands around his face, just as he had done to me earlier. “Don’t worry, my beauty. Now we can be together forever. Now we will always have each other to love without consequences.”

He grimaces and pulls away from me, but I know he will come around eventually. He will have to. Being undead is never easy. But now I have my beautiful Gabe who will have to stay with me always. The curse that now wraps around his un-beating heart will be forever bound with the curse that intertwines in my scars.

Beauty and the Beast. Two hearts forever lost in a scarred world.