Dogteeth.

†

     Despair. . .is the ultimate development of a pride so great and so stiff-necked that it selects the absolute misery of damnation rather than accept happiness from the hands of God and thereby acknowledge that He is above us and that we are not capable of fulfilling our destiny by ourselves.

     Stephen Adly Guirgis.

I wonder if you'll understand any of it.

These words, these feelings—they weigh heavier than they should, like stones at the bottom of a river, pulling me under, deeper and deeper until there's no air left. I can't pinpoint the moment it all began, when the air around me thickened with a kind of sadness I could never name. Maybe it's always been there, circling, waiting. But it's real now. So real, I can feel it in every breath, in the tremor of my fingers as I write this.

Leonie Magdalene. That's who I am—or who I was. The name still sounds too sharp, too clean, like the person attached to it hasn't been chipped away at yet. But I've been worn down, like stone under wind. A slow erosion, bit by bit, until there's barely anything left that looks like me.

I once believed in softness, in light, in things that warmed the skin. But the truth is colder. The truth slithers under your skin, lodges in your throat, refuses to be swallowed. And I—what have I become? A body. A vessel for something darker, something old and untamed that pulses under my ribs like an animal with teeth. The blood. That's where it all begins and ends. I didn't ask for it—this... ability. Can you even call it that? It's more like a hunger. It has teeth, sharp and wet, gnawing at the edges of my mind, waiting to be fed. But it never feels full, no matter how much I give it. It's always there, throbbing under my skin, whispering, pulling.

I still remember the first time. I wasn't paying attention, not really. That's how it works. You're never really looking when the world decides to shift beneath you. She stood there, like any other day, like any other face in a crowd of faces I could never quite bring myself to care about. I remember thinking she looked too happy—bright in a way that felt false, like a painting hung crooked on the wall. But her blood... it was so loud. I could feel it, humming under her skin, the rhythm of her pulse against the air, soft, persistent, alive.

I didn't mean to reach for it. Not at first. It was instinct, like breathing.

I thought maybe, if I just held on for a second, I'd feel something—some connection to the life she carried, the warmth she had that I'd lost long ago. But I held too tight. I always do. The blood in her veins shifted, like a river diverted from its course, slow at first, then faster, urgent, wild. Her body didn't know how to respond.

She touched her throat, a small frown creeping across her face, confusion in her eyes like she couldn't quite figure out what was wrong. As if she could stop it. As if her hands could hold her together when I was already pulling her apart. It happened before I even realized. Her body crumpled, folded in on itself like something fragile, like paper in a storm. She didn't make a sound, not one. Just that soft collapse into silence, into nothing. I didn't even know her name. Maybe it should have hurt me, seeing her fall like that, so still, her blood pooling where I'd let it rest. But all I felt was the quiet. That deep, sinking quiet that follows after you've taken something you can never give back. There was no relief. No horror. Just... emptiness.

People like to believe in good and evil, in things that can be named, that fit neatly into boxes. But what am I? There's no word for this. No name for the thing inside me that stirs when I see a pulse, a heartbeat, something that breathes without knowing how easy it is for me to stop it. It isn't power. It isn't mercy. It's just what is.