Vanity and Patience: A Rosalie Hale & Emmett Cullen Story

Prologue: Turned

April 1933, Rochester, New York.

The beginning of the end.

Shock.

Shock is defined as the sudden or violent disturbance of the mind, emotions, or sensibilities.

In medicine it is a critical condition brought on by a sudden drop in blood flow through the body.

I was experiencing shock in every sense of the word.

Complete shock.

Even more than the pain that throbbed all over me.

I was lying on my stomach, my limbs in an awkward position.

The street felt horrible to my prone body, but anything would be more comfortable after what I'd endured not even an hour before.

I knew I was bleeding—bleeding in places a woman shouldn't be bleeding.

My cheek lay pressed against the abrasive mortar and large, smooth pebbles that formed the street's surface. I stared at the cobblestone just inches from my nose. The lines that formed where each stone began and ended started to blur within my vision.

My tears were just beginning to dry, my sobs getting smaller and more silent as time went on. My sniveling had quieted down. I wasn't wailing like I had been moments ago, crying from the simple shock of what had transpired. Reality came crashing down on me like a tidal wave.

The voice of the devil still rang in my ears loud and clear. What did I tell you, John. Isn't she lovelier than all your Georgia peaches? The irony was eerie, the voice I'd fawned over for the past few months had been the same voice to bring atrocities upon me I couldn't have imagined before tonight. It was the same voice I'd been preparing for the same amount of months to worship for the rest of my life.

The voice of Satan.

My body shivered at the recollection, appraised by his friends like I was a horse to purchase. A friend of a friend who I'd never met before had just come in from Atlanta. It's hard to tell, his sick friend, John, answered in a thick southern draw. She's all covered up.

Show him what you look like, Rose! My memory could hear him slur, his breath lousy with cheap whiskey.

I could still hear my buttons fly loose as he had torn my jacket off. I could still feel the bobby pins that held my hat in place pull hair and skin from my scalp as he had ripped my hat off of my head.

"I hate you," I tried to growl out loud in the present time, into the empty darkness of the street, but the sound was gone from my voice. A raspy breath was the only sound that I could make.

They'd enjoyed my screaming voice that night, with every cry for pain that they caused me. All my cries and screams had wasted my vocal abilities that night.

Waste.

Everything had gone to waste that evening.

It was insane to want to die, but I had no choice. There was no way I wanted to live after the disgrace he and his friends had done. I couldn't marry him after this, and I doubted anyone would believe me if I tried to tell them what happened.

I barely registered the hazy white falling down around me, like cotton. I thought I was hallucinating until I felt them fall on my hand and melt away quickly. It was fluffy little snowflakes, so quiet in their fall, swaying in the strange winter breeze as they descended to the ground... and on me.

I called it strange because of the time of year. I was sure when I had set the wedding date for late April that there wouldn't be a chance of snowfall. Boy, was I wrong. The large flowery wedding of my childhood dreams had been so close, just within reach of my fingertips. But then, the wedding was the least of my worries now.