Twilight
"One more day," she said, and patted her stomach.
I couldn't help the pain that shot through me in a sudden, stabbing burst, but I tried to keep it off my face. I could hide it for one more day, right?
"All righty, then. Whoops—oh, no!"
The cup Bella had left on the sofa tumbled to one side, the dark red blood spilling out onto the pale fabric.
Automatically, though three other hands beat her there, Bella bent over, reaching out to catch it.
There was the strangest, muffled ripping sound from the center of her body.
"Oh!" she gasped.
And then she went totally limp, slumping towards the floor. Edward caught her in the same instant, before she could fall.
"Bella?" he asked, and then his eyes unfocused, and panic shot across his features.
A half second later, Bella screamed.
It was not just a scream, it was a blood-curdling shriek of agony. The horrifying sound cut off with a gurgle, and her eyes rolled back into her head. Her body twitched, arched into Edward's arms, and then she vomited a fountain of blood.
Her body, streaming with red, started to twitch, jerking around in Edward's arms like she was being electrocuted. All the while, her face was blank—unconscious. It was the wild thrashing from inside the center of her body that moved her. As she convulsed, sharp snaps and cracks kept time with the spasms.
Edward was frozen for the shortest half second, and then he broke. He whipped Bella's body into his arms and, shouting so fast it was hard to separate the individual words, carried her up the staircase to the second floor.
I sprinted after him.
The room I followed him to looked like an emergency ward set up in the middle of a library. The lights were brilliant and white. Bella was on a table under the glare, skin ghostly in the spotlight. Her body flopped, a fish on the sand.
"Morphine!" Edward yelled at me as he pinned Bella down, ripping her clothes out of the way and stabbing a syringe into her arm.
How many times had I imagined her naked? Now I couldn't look. I was afraid to have these memories in my head.
"What's happening, Edward?"
"He's suffocating! The placenta must have detached!"
Somewhere in this, Bella came around. She responded to our words with a shriek that clawed at my eardrums.
"Get him OUT!" she screamed. "He can't BREATHE! Do it NOW!"
I saw the red spots pop out when the scream broke the blood vessels in her eyes.
"The morphine—," Edward growled.
"NO! NOW—!" Another gush of blood choked off what she was shrieking. He held her head up, desperately trying to clear her mouth so that she could breathe again.
In the bright light, Bella's skin seemed more purple and black than it was white. Deep red was seeping beneath the skin over the huge, shuddering bulge of her stomach. Her face was turning blue, her eyes wide and staring.
"CPR?" Edward growled at me, fast and demanding.
"Yes!"
I judged his face swiftly, looking for any sign that the blood was getting to him. There was nothing but single-minded ferocity.
"Get her breathing! I've got to get him out before—"
Another shattering crack inside her body, the loudest yet, so loud that we both froze in shock waiting for her answering shriek. Nothing. Her legs, which has been curled up in agony, now went limp, sprawling out in an unnatural way.
"Her spine," he choked in horror.
"Get it out of her!" I snarled, flinging the scalpel at him. "She won't feel anything now!"
And then I bent over her head. Her mouth looked clear, so I pressed mine to hers and blew a lungful of air into it. I felt her twitching body expand, so there was nothing blocking her throat.
Her lips tasted like blood.
I could hear her heart, thumping unevenly. Keep it going, I thought fiercely at her, blowing another gust of air into her body. You promised. Keep your heart beating.
I heard the soft, wet sound of the scalpel across her stomach. Blood dripping to the floor.
The next sound jolted through me, unexpected, terrifying. Like metal being shredded apart. The sound brought back the fight in the clearing so many months ago, the tearing sound of newborns being ripped apart. I glanced over to see Edward's faced pressed against the bulge. Vampire teeth—a surefire way to cut through vampire skin.
I shuddered as I blew more air into Bella.
She coughed back at me, her eyes blinking, rolling blindly.
"You stay with me now, Bella!" I yelled at her. "Do you hear me? Stay! You're not leaving me. Keep your heart beating!"
Her eyes wheeled, looking for me, or him, but seeing nothing.
I stared into them anyway, keeping my gaze locked there.
And then her body was suddenly still under my hands, though her breathing picked up roughly and her heart continued to thud. I realised the stillness meant that it was over. It must be out of her.
It was.
It was a magnificent mirror, with an ornate gold frame and two clawed feet. There was an inscription carved around the top: Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi. I moved nearer to the mirror, wanting to see myself.
I had to clap my hands to my mouth to keep myself from screaming. I spun around, my heart pounding furiously—for I saw not only myself in the mirror, but a whole crowd of people standing right behind me.
But there was no one else in the room, except Bella and Edward. Breathing very fast, I turned slowly back to the mirror.
There I was, reflected in it, pale and exhausted, and there, reflected behind me, were at least ten others. I looked over my shoulder—but still, no one was there. Or were they all invisible? Was I in fact in a room full of invisible people and this mirror's trick was that it reflected them, invisible or not?
I looked back at Bella. I watched as her eyes rolled back into her head.
With a last dull ga-lump, her heart faltered and went silent.
She missed maybe half of one beat, and then my hands were on her chest, doing compressions. I counted in my head, trying to keep the rhythm steady. One. Two. Three. Four.
Breaking away for a second, I blew another lungful of air into her.
I couldn't see anymore. My eyes were wet and blurry. But I was hyperaware of the sounds in the room. The unwilling glug-glug of her heart under my demanding hands, the pounding of my own heart, and another—a fluttering beat that was too fast, too light. I couldn't place it.
I forced more air down Bella's throat.
"What are you waiting for?" I choked out breathlessly, pumping her heart again. One. Two. Three. Four.
"Take the mirror." Edward said urgently.
"Throw it out the window." One. Two. Three. Four.
Tearing his eyes away from it, he threw it across the room. It hit the doorframe and fell to the floor silently.
"Move your hands, Jacob."
I looked up from Bella's white eyes, still pumping her heart for her. Edward had a syringe in his hand—all silver, like it was made from steel.
"What's that?"
His stone hand knocked mine out of the way. There was a tiny crunch as his blow broke my little finger. In the same second, he shoved the needle straight into her heart.
"My venom," he answered as he pushed the plunger down.
I heard the jolt in her heart, like he'd shocked her with paddles.
"Keep it moving," he ordered. His voice was ice, was dead. Fierce and unthinking. Like he was a machine.
I ignored the healing ache in my finger and started pumping her heart again. It was harder, as if the blood was congealing there—thicker and slower. While I pushed the now-viscous blood through her arteries, I watched what he was doing.
It was like he was kissing her, brushing his lips at her throat, at her wrists, into the crease at the inside of her arm. But I could hear the lush tearing of her skin as his teeth bit through, again and again, forcing venom into her system at as many points as possible. I saw his pale tongue sweep along the bleeding gashes, but before this could make me either sick or angry, I realized what he was doing. Where his tongue washed the venom over her skin, it sealed shut. Holding the poison and the blood inside her body.
I blew more air into her mouth, but there was nothing there. Just the lifeless rise of her chest in response. I kept pumping her heart, counting, while he worked manically over her, trying to put her back together. All the king's horses and all the king's men...
But there was nothing there, just me, just him.
Working over a corpse.
Because that's all that was left of the girl we loved. This broken, bled out, mangled corpse. We couldn't put Bella together again.
I knew it was too late. I knew she was dead. I knew it was for sure because the pull was gone. I didn't feel any reason to be here beside her. She wasn't here anymore. So this body had no more draw for me. The senseless need to be near her had vanished.
Or maybe moved was the better word. It seemed like I felt the pull from the opposite direction now. From down the stairs, out the door. The longing to get away from here and never, ever come back.
"Go, then," he snapped, and he hit my hands out of the way again, taking my place this time. Three fingers broken, it felt like.
I straightened them numbly, not minding the throb of pain.
He pushed her dead heart faster than I had.
"She's not dead," he growled. "She's going to be fine."
I wasn't sure he was talking to me anymore.
Turning away, leaving him with his dead, I walked slowly to the door. So slowly. I couldn't make my feet move faster.
This was it, then. The ocean of pain. The other shore so far away across the boiling water that I couldn't imagine it, much less see it.
I felt empty again, now that I'd lost my purpose. Saving Bella had been my fight for so long now. And she wouldn't be saved. She'd willingly sacrificed herself to be torn apart for that mirror, and so the fight was lost. It was all over.
I shuddered at the sound coming from behind me as I plodded down the stairs—the sound of a dead heart being forced to thud.
I wanted to somehow pour bleach inside my head and let it fry my brain. To burn away the images left from Bella's final minutes. I'd take the brain damage if I could get rid of that—the screaming, the bleeding, the unbearable crunching and snapping as the newborn mirror tore through her from the inside out...
I wanted to sprint away, to take the stairs ten at a time and race out the door, but my feet were heavy and my body was more tired than it had ever been before. I shuffled down the stairs like a crippled old man.
I rested at the bottom step, gathering my strength to get out the door.
The mirror was leant against the wall. It was larger now, spanning almost all the way up. Strength and hate and heat—red heat washing through my head, burning but erasing nothing. The images in my head were fuel, building up the inferno but refusing to be consumed. I felt the tremors rock me from head to toe, and I did not try to stop them.
Sam had been right. The thing was an aberration—its existence went against nature. A black, soulless demon. Something that had no right to be.
Something that had to be destroyed.
It seemed like the pull had not been leading to the door after all. I could feel it now, encouraging me, tugging me forward. Pushing me to finish this, to cleanse the world of this abomination.
My trembling was getting tighter and faster. I coiled myself, preparing to spring at the mirror, to smash through it. I leaned forward and felt the heat begin to change me while the pull towards the killer grew—it was stronger than I'd ever felt it before, so strong it reminded me of an Alpha's command, like it would crush me if I didn't obey.
This time I wanted to obey.
The murderer glimmered back at me, my own face staring back through. Warm brown eyes, the color of milk chocolate—the exact same color Bella's had been.
Everything inside me came undone as I stared at the mirror, glancing across the faces of the people standing behind. All the lines that held me to my life were sliced apart in swift cuts, like clipping the strings to a bunch of balloons. Everything that made me who I was, my love for the dead girl upstairs, my love for my father, my loyalty to my new pack, the love for my other brothers, my hatred for my enemies, my home, my name, my self—disconnected from me in that second—snip, snip, snip—and floated up into space.Notes
Text from Breaking Dawn by Stephanie Meyer, and Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by J. K. Rowling. The text was mutilated fairly heavily afterwards, though. Copyright theirs.
The reader has just as much right to assert their interpretations over the text as I do for this piece. My role in composing this piece was much more as a reader and a mechanic of text than as an artist. I'm not even fully sure what I was trying to achieve, or to what extent I succeeded.
I was, I know, exploring ideas of the simulacrum, specifically with reference to the idea that dreams or images unlived can act as vampires, draining the energy from the victim, often until there's nothing left.