Twilight: But it's a Thriller and I Never Read Twilight

Chapter 44: The Dead Woman in the Mirror

I didn't manage to get outside again after that hike with Esme. In fact, I was rarely alone anymore the longer I spent pregnant. Alice or Rosalie accompanied me everywhere when Edward wasn't there to watch over me. The Cullens even staggered their hunting trips so I would never be left alone with Esme again. I had never been part of the conversation, but it was obvious that Edward had told the rest of the Cullens about my conversation with Esme.

So as long as Alice couldn't see my future and I was still pregnant, I would be watched like a child in need of a babysitter. All while I waited, the fetus growing more and more inside me, I felt weaker. My body seemed to betray me with the growth of the child, shaping out of my very blood and flesh into something I wasn't sure I would recognize as a baby when it was born.

The kicking grew harder and more constant, slamming against the inside of my body like a prisoner trying to break free. I thought once, while I was lying in bed, rubbing a slow hand over my belly that I saw a shape peak through, like a hand grasping at the edges of my skin. The hand reached for mine and in my panic, I screamed loud enough to send Alice running into my room. Nothing about it felt like a baby, like how a pregnancy was supposed to feel, growing gently over many months. Instead, within a month of my being back, my belly was stretched into a distended bump that my shirts did not fit entirely over the top of.

I breathed in and out, trying to steady myself as Alice rushed to my side. Even as she came to my side, I couldn't stop staring at that spot on my belly as if the hand would reach through again and burst the skin holding it inside. My face grew hot and sweaty as terror set in. This wasn't me and it wasn't my body. Whatever I was pregnant with was a monster and I was sure it would take me with it.

"Bella, its okay," Alice said as she reached for my hand.

I slapped her away and tried my hardest to sit up. As weak as I was, I could barely hold myself up by my own strength. Everything of myself had been sapped. The world spun as I tried to stand. Alice held out a hand to hold me up, but I batted her away even more as I moved toward the bathroom.

"Bella," Alice snapped to me. "Are you okay?"

Alice didn't usually have to ask if I was okay. She always knew what was happening before it was happening. She was always keeping an eye on me, but no one could really keep an eye on me now. No one knew what was really happening. Even Carlisle with all his medical knowledge was at a loss.

I shuffled into the bathroom and turned on the light, finding the sink which I rested my frail hands against. Looking down at them, they didn't look like my hands anymore. The fingers were too narrow and boney, the shape of a skeletal hand poking through at the skin. I swallowed back my fear as I looked at them, the nails chipping off and bleeding. Bleeding in a house of vampires was dangerous enough.

When I finally got the courage and looked up to the mirror, the woman before me was not myself. The features of my face were no longer plump with youth and color. I was grey, the color of the light through the clouds and under my eyes, the darkness of night. My skin had turned to wrinkles, hanging from my face where there was no fat or muscle to hold it in place. In the last week, my hair had started to fall out in clumps and now what was left of it hung in grease and grime to my shoulders.

I looked more like a corpse than a person. All the life had been sapped from me, little by little everyday with the growth of that thing in my belly. Even my eyes had lost some of their green, turning more grey than anything. All of me had been drained, all except my belly, which sat plump and fat, growing by the day. I held the edges of the sink with all the strength I could muster and stared at my belly, willing it away, willing all of this gone.