The thing about Rasheen Perpetua is this: though he leaves with apprehension, he always returns willingly.
-
He hadn't noticed before, but there is a certain silence in observation. In his time before as a student, he'd have to go out into different fields of terrain to conduct experiments, collect data, come up with results, and other things of the like, but it was never this quiet. He supposes it was because he was an environmental science student, and nature is never quiet. And even when he ran with his team or went solo, he'd still hear the crunch of gravel under his shoes, the roll of sweat slipping down his face, and his deepened breaths. He supposes it was because he was always active, and athletics require the exertion of the body.
This time it's different.
There is something serene in watching the child on the floor, even if she is convulsing and twitching without a possible end coming anytime soon. Her legs rampage, jutting out and messily kicking her possessions everywhere. The rest of her abdomen reminds him of a worm, or the way a free-style swimmer moves their body underneath the surface of the water, before they break into their stroke. Her arms stay mostly still, though her fingers work wonders a person with arthritis or a disability could only hope to image – he'd go as far as to say even able-bodied people with functioning hands wish they could force their fingers to dance the way hers do.
Her face is pale brown, and it makes him reminisce over the flushed skin tone she and her sister share – or shared at one point, he supposes. No longer does she have skin the color of the darkest earth and richest spice, and no longer does it shine with tears as it did some time ago – there is only stained porcelain. He notes the rolling of her eyes underneath her lids, the way they move in sync with her crazed fingers.
There is one more twitch, then the dancing and the rolling stop; her hand reaches out to him abruptly and her eyes open.
He doesn't know what to do, but what he does know is that the girl before him has eyes darker than his: they are the inkiest midnight, the abyss of the void, the qualms of regret and innocent desire turned into something more – something more than toxic and noxious, a living menace. But her eyes are past dark; they are red, too. They have glowing and illuminating red-rimmed sclera, both with violent pupils and accusation overall.
She has eyes much like he does; no – like he had. Though he didn't turn into a human, his blood thirst quickly lowered (until a few moments ago, at least), and the red from his eyes mostly disappeared. In his last two years as a student, his roommate Francis pointed it out constantly, and his reply was always the same. "I didn't get enough sleep," he'd say. And it wasn't a lie, either. But now, when applied to the child before him, he knows sleep deprivation won't be a good enough half-truth.
What have I done?
What has he done, in the grand scheme of things? What has he done, in the minority of this child's bitter-turned life?
What have I done?
This is what he's done: his eyes have gleamed with mischief and its most reverend friend, dubbed adversary, but also named revenge, and they have looked down upon her; his hands have pushed her down, held her from moving with one arm across her chest and the other gripping her hair; his teeth have sunk into her delicate skin, ripped two pinpricks into her neck, had venom rush through her like saliva from a desiring mouth.
(He supposes he did desire her in a predatory sense, but only because she was prey to a vampire; never because she was prey to a man. Of all things which have changed within and through him, he's glad this idea and ideal has not been one of them.)
