make me

50-mask

I felt free.

I ran after her like there was no tomorrow, this was the most fun I've had in while and it felt so good. I was getting closer to her, when I saw her look over her shoulder and smile in a devilish way. She swerved herself in an instant, just in time for me to see the tree I would run into in a fraction of second.

I opened my eyes to find myself on the ground with Raven hovering over me. She was laughing so hard. I don't think I had ever seen her smile that brightly and the sight was truly beautiful and warm. It's like her pale white skin had a bit of colour for once and it really fitted her. I found myself smiling at the sight of her, until I started to feel the throbbing pain in my head.

I held it as a reflex and when Raven finished laughing, she held her arm out to me.

"First lesson: always look in front of you AND your opponent." She chuckled as I was lifted from the ground.

"Oh, and don't worry about your head, it'll go away in a few minutes," she added.

"Why did you do thatttt?" I asked, whining.

"Because it's funny, you have a problem with that?" She lifted one of her eyebrow as I did no sign of protest, "besides, now that you've seen how it can be sudden, you'll be way more alert if you ever need to run away from someone."

She did make a point. I know that I'll probably never run into a tree again, I don't usually do the same mistake twice.

"So, now that you know how to run like a vampire," she turned around so she would be walking backwards to look at me, "you can learn how to hunt." She smirked. I was kind of scared, but I guess I didn't really have a choice.

"First thing you need to do : find a prey. And that's done for me." I looked at her confused, then looked around us to see nothing, but the emptiness of a forest.

"Smell, Bee." I sniffed the air around, but couldn't detect anything right away. I closed my eyes and took a deeper breath in and that's when I knew exactly where it was. Not too far from us was a baby deer without its mother.

I looked at Raven with fear in my eyes. I couldn't kill a baby.

"Raven, I- I can't..." her face remained expressionless. She looked at me for a while without saying a thing and then ran off towards it. I ran after her to try and save the baby, but when I got to her, she already had taken the deer by its neck, holding it in place.

"Raven! Let it go! I'll find something else..." I tried to stop her.

"Oh Bee... you really need to turn that humanity of yours off sometimes. Look at how much you want it." She pushed her finger in a quick motion into the fawn's neck and ripped it apart slightly. She was looking me right in the eyes, still emotionless as ever with warm blood dripping down her fingers.

I could feel my heartbeat starting to go faster. My breathing was getting heavier and it's almost like I could feel my fangs growing faster than normal. My vision became darker, almost like an infrared camera. Everything was black except the outline of the objets surrounding us which were white... and the deer, that was a bright and tasty looking red.

I found myself slowly approaching the small animal like a predator ready to bounce on its prey. I looked into its eyes and every bit of mercy I had for it had gone out the window in an instant.

Before I knew it, I had bitten in its neck, sucking the blood out of the poor animal like it was a cold drink in the middle of summer.

When I stopped, my vision went back to normal and my heartbeat and breathing became stable again. I looked at the corpse in my hands and a tear went down my cheek.

I saw me standing in the mirror. I had just seen my grandma being executed and rage was filling my body.

"If you EVER become one of these monster, end yourself." I said looking at my reflection with pain filled eyes.

I snapped out of my flashback when Raven touched my back as to comfort me. I noticed that tears where streaming down my face uncontrollably, but I wasn't making a sound. I looked up at her, with numb eyes.

"I'm becoming the thing I've always dreaded most," I said still looking at her, "why Raven, why wouldn't you let me die instead of turning me?"

She looked at me in shock, unsure what to answer as
I had never been this emotionless while asking a question like this.

"I was selfish... but if I had lost you, too... there's no way I would've made it." Her voice was screaming regret. I could hear every small voice crack she was letting out as I could hear the unsteady beat of her cold heart, if she even had one.

"I want to die, Raven... and I don't care if you do, too." Those words seemed to bring me back and that's when I saw her expression.

Her face was crumpled up slightly, afraid of showing any emotions, but you could tell that, what I had said was hurting her more than any weapon would ever.

Raven was strong physically, but mentally, she was one of the weakest I had ever seen. Someone that hides behind a mask, has no idea how to live without it. And if they're unlucky enough and someone ends up seeing right through it, their words can become poisoned dagger. At first, the masked one will push the pain of the dagger aside, thinking it's nothing and that they're used to it. But slowly, yet surely, the poison starts to spread through their body, until not a single part of them is left unhurt. They let people take them down, because to them, they're only comfirming all the awful things they had already told  themselves. Maybe it's a way to confirm their own feelings, the hatred they have against themselves. Maybe they think that, if other people hate them too, then they truly have a reason to hate themselves.

So that's what they do. They hurt people all around them, causing hatred and despise to rise into the ones that used to love them, until all they have left, is the mask they thought would be the solution.