Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
FOUR YEARS AGO
IN THE DARK, a boy with hair the colour of sunlight crawls towards death on his hands and knees, begging, begging, begging. Gaping hole in his throat, flesh riddled with pain, veins flooding with venom. Blood. So much of it, staining his palms, slicking the ground, stinging his eyes, pouring from his wounds like crimson cataracts, thick and dark and tainted. It burns him from deep within, something diabolic, Hell tearing through his blood, damnation blackening his soul. Begging for what? Prayers don't go answered, at least, not anymore. He doesn't know if it's because he's never been religious, or if it's the woman who holds him captive with the devil's red in her eyes, glowing like tiny rubies in the sunlight. After all, she'd been the one to rip out the foundation of everything he was—human, son, brother, soft—and rebuild from the rubble and ash of his old self what he would grow (not in the biological sense) to become: monster, lawless, bloodthirsty, lost.
With the hellfire pouring through his veins, he'd been forced to confront every sense of reality he held before. He didn't really understand most of what'd happened, or what she'd done to him. Only that he'd been changed. That whatever the woman had done to him hadn't been an act of destruction like he'd initially believed—in its stead was an improvement. Indomitable strength coupled with invincible flesh, the razor-sharp eyesight and heightened senses and speed had taken some time getting acclimatised to. Ensuing the transformation, freshly broken out of the resurrection's chrysalis of newborn hunger came a strange calm, as if he was standing in the eye of a hurricane lurking offshore and the world around him moved around him at a snail's pace. Even breathing had become redundant. Between the things he felt and the things he wanted to feel, a gap had been carved out and it was growing.
All that time spent in mindless stasis, blood-starved and desperate to pillage and desecrate until the hellfire burnt out, he'd been afraid of that rift. Afraid of what would become of him once the void swallowed his old shell whole. On the more unbearable days, the sight of his own reflection on any surface would drive him mad. In a surge of spite, he'd try to tear out the ugly bite mark scarring the base of his throat, but no matter how hard he dug his nails into his cold, marble-stubborn flesh, the skin would knit itself together, and the wound would vanish. Desperation was a funny, primal thing, he'd discovered, as he drove his fist into the mirror, and watched the glass shatter. Amongst the shards, he'd select the sharpest one. And then he would begin to cut. Dissect was the word used to refer to dead things—cadavers. Vivisect was meant for the living, a writhing, animate thing on a cold operating table. But what if he was both and neither all at once? What word could he use then? Those days, Victoria would have to wrestle the weapon out of his hands as he screamed the ugliest things at her, as they writhed and fought a savage battle in his black blood slicking the smooth bathroom tiles.
These days he sees the mark of Cain on his throat as holy, even if the lore reminds him that his soul is destined for damnation. Even though he was dead, he wasn't decaying. Just suspended in time, a relict of the years he would never get back, even though his reflection mocks him with a constant reminder that seventeen years is all the experience he will have of being warm-blooded, of being a brother, a son, a soft touch. Seventeen years was the last of normalcy. After that night, he'd woken up alone with everything. Every injury inflicted on him had been erased, and he'd been given a clean slate to start over. All the wounds in his throat, the Judas bruises on his broken ribs that'd vanished while his bones cracked back into place, healed, rejuvinated. With the biological clock frozen at seventeen for all eternity, every atom of his being felt new and old at the same time. Nothing hurt anymore. When you factor pain out of the equation, you think yourself something close to a god. And now that Luka had exchanged his fragile mortality for the arduous trek into eternity, forever sat in his cold palms, awaiting.
