By Ouanessa Nana
Physiological Analysis.
The assessment lasted exactly nine seconds.
I grip the edges of the cold metal seat, my blue paper gown bunched between my fingers. My teeth are bone deep inside my bottom lip, grinding against my jaw. If only I hadn’t drained the excess from my hips.
I have not considered myself as merely weaving a series of supernatural terrors. Tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth, my mind a yielding novelty of a crippling passion.
It was a paralyzing substance.
Aro would not have contemplated the examination and brutally backed me into a corner as he interlaced a string of psychic attacks and electric hellion probes with a searing metal helmet he found in a dumpster behind the pawnshop.
Forrester pokes my chest and it melts gold.
My lungs are a seesaw, vacillating and alternating between aches, his fingernail gnawing my ribs as he continues to pick me apart. Snippets of my mind stagger on mangled underpinnings already deteriorating, fizzling to dust from milliseconds of trauma and pressured breaths against beating hearts.
I should scream. Slam my hands against my chest and snap at his face.
But I don’t. I stay numb, holding my tongue against the roof of my mouth.
Even as his face is inches from my nose, a smirk dances along his lips. I don’t recognize him. My mind probes. Dizzying.
I just want to hold Aro against my chest. Purr against his skin when he slid his big strong arms around me. When I was buried beneath him, I could almost pretend my cells weren’t sharpening into warfare inside of me.
It was my favorite lie.
His voice clicks and I blink, pushing back the pieces of my memories. Forcing myself to believe that this is what is best for me.
Detect, descry, don’t squirm.
The doctor finally pulls away from me, his cherry red eyes crusted over with a substantial, exquisite, bloodthirsty, and pale glide that lacerated through my defenses. I found myself reaching for my throat, clashing at it as he turned his back to me for a second and retrieved a long sliver syringe filled with a clear blue liquid.
He grins. It’s wicked and cruel and chilling. “This should fix you right up,” He rasps.
I flinched, pressing myself flat against the chair, hoping that if I shoved myself against the hard metal despite the pain, I could disappear from this room.
“Please,” I stammered. “There has to be another way,”
He shrugs. “This will heal you,” he says. “I will save you. It is the only way. It’s just medicine,”
His face altered, slathered with a sheath of velvet. My feet slipped against each other and I almost fainted when Aro walked into the room. His dark hair is disheveled, shoved into a gray baseball cap.
He barely glances at me, breathing hard and grunting as his fingers fumble with the edges of a corkscrew. His tongue hangs out of his mouth and I pressed my forehead against my knees, feeling my heart stir back into place, the beats a little more steady.
Finally. He was here.
“Baby,” I breathed, my lips feeling weary. “Let’s go home,”
His gaze snaps to me, a flicker of irritation flashing in his eyes. I swallow as the cap of the beer bottle, scatters to the floor.
“I’m not sick,” I whispered.
He was so far away from me, yet I could still feel the searing warmth of his piercing white eyes in the space between us, the way his chest rose and fell as his vexation ceased to a flickering halt, incinerating my heart and ripping through me. It was enough to leave me stunned breathless and begging for him to forgive me.
“Hmm?” He grinned, his eyes focused on his drink as he put it to his lips. I grimaced as he chugged. I could see the yellow liquid surging through him, swishing his brain chemistry, electrifying his veins.
The clear panel encircling me sputtered. Bent fractures sutured into peeling wounds. Its voices chattered into me and I raised my chained hands to my ears and dug my fingers into my skull.
I can feel the ghastly tissue, the deep web of flesh, agony, and grief as I puncture through the loss, my nails getting caught at the frayed edges.
He wipes his hand, satisfied, and finally looks at me. There are still dribbles of beer on his chin, his hands wet with perspiration.
The deck is sinking and the gloom has fangs.
His head inclines and he sighs.
I want to kiss him, press my lips against his, and wish this all away.
I stared at the beer droplets on his skin. They seemed to surge alive. It was erroneous and sickening.
“I need you,” I stammered, on the verge of tears, my lips trembling.
My throat was tight, breaking in on itself and he was just standing there, tossing back a drink while his eyes raked over my body.
“Can you not do this right now, Stye?” He retorted, pulling his cap off and running his fingers through his hair.
His voice was stunted, lethal, a growl that nipped at my skin. I am not going to bend for you.
I gasped when he carefully put his cap back on, throwing his bottle on the floor and I flinched as it shattered, the shards the same shape as the clutter that fills my heart.
What the hell was I doing? I thought as the crackle from the glass reverberated through my ears like a roar, sharply smooth and crawling with a painful, plugging edge.
Why was I here?
I turned to the metal table filled with a variety of different types of sharp weapons, each one stained with my peculiar blood, the shimmering light of gold. My eyes looked tired in the reflection, defeated.
I dipped my tongue around in my mouth, my teeth feeling foreign, my breaths ragged, as I tried to find something else to say to him, to convince him not to do this to me. The silence was squeezing my chest, pressing shattering bones up my throat.
“Please Aro,” I finally managed to say, the tears rolling down my cheeks, hot and fast. “No one else will help me. It’s supposed to be you,”
He pretends not to hear me, half of my words etched into my throat. A freshly opened beer hits his lips and I bite down on my lip when the doctor plunges the needle into my shoulder.