The Dead of Night

Recoup

Chapter Twenty Six: Recoup

The taste of muscle is sour. Especially sour when you're staring down on the person you tore it from. I sat up from my starfish-like position on the mat and spit the hunk of flesh and blood into my hand, where I inspected it more closely. Blueish veins, and red veins hung down, between my fingers and the ends of them caressed the mat--the muscle was warm in my palm and looked like raw beef that was overly tenderized, and it laid in little piles together. The tissue, however, was pink with creme colored, tree branch spindling all through it! It also had a darker pink, miniature veins, and it hung the length of my forearm, smearing her lukewarm blood onto my cooling skin. 

I shook my head and tossed the chunk down, next to her still body, and took to my feet, stumbling over to the rope and catching hold--staring into the abyss which was the darkness where the Vampire disappeared. "Hey!" I called, after clearing my throat. I put the whole weight of myself onto the ropes, pushing out what I had just done. "I killed her--is everyone happy?! Huh? Wasn't that what I was supposed to do!?" I cried, before falling back on my butt--the realization of killing her, hitting me again, this time, harder. 

I looked over to her body, and tears gathered to my eyes, falling over my lids and trailing down my face, catching her blood on the way down and turning the salty water a faint pink as it kissed the mat below me. From that one tear forwards, I sobbed. I gathered to my knees and I screamed when I sobbed. "Wake up!" I screamed, dragging her body towards me and shaking it violently.

 "Please, God, wake up!" I yelled, breaths catching in my throat as tears, two by two and sometimes, three by three, came hurtling down from my eyes and over everything in their path. "Wake the fuck up!" I shrieked, slamming her against the mat now. "No! I couldn't have killed you, I couldn't have!" I tried to reason, but she did not talk back. 

I turned away from her body and hunched over, my hands running through my hair at the sides of my temple, and grasping onto it as I leaned my body forwards, to where my elbows touched the mat also, I squeezed my eyes shut...and I let out the most tortured scream I could--tears following the curve of my cheeks until they slipped into my mouth. I screamed again and again and again (between sobs)...until my voice was sore and I couldn't breathe. My knees slipped out from beneath me and I laid face down with my eyes closed, and shaky breathing slipping between my lips. 

"June" A soft voice murmured from above me--I could put a face with the voice, it was the Emperor, his raspy, yet somehow warm, voice was unmistakable. "June, come now, it's over." He said, his voice getting closer, until I felt a weak hand touch my unharmed shoulder. When I did not answer, he shook me a little and I pushed myself up, my eyes staring into his--he, honestly, looked shocked, I guessed it was because I was still covered in her blood. 

"I killed her" I said softly. 

"Yes, but--" 

"I killed her!" I yelled, balling my hands into fists, anger beginning to bubble again in my stomach. The Emperor held his worn and wrinkled hands up, in surrender. "..Brutally" I added, hissing between my teeth. He knelt down to me, his hand touching my shoulder and entering me into a odd state of instant calm. 

"Those are both incredibly and unanimously true, however, she would've done the exact same to you, had you not fought so....hard." He said as gently as he could, offering his other hand to me. "Come, we  need to get you to your master, and a hot bath, how about that?" He asked, offering me a wrinkled smile--like a grandfather would smile to his granddaughter. I could only nod, but I could not return the favor of the smile. 

**I was returned to the room with which the Vampire and I both shared by the Emperor, who actually ran a bath for me and told me he was to send for drink for me. We sat together on one of the beds and he told me stories of his first years as a vampire--they were mostly problems of trying to fit in to vampire culture, he said, it was a problem I would face later. He was a very skilled soother, and easily talked the guilt, anger, and resentment right out of my mind, and replaced it with serene thoughts of warmth, sleep, and fairy tales. His fairy tales reminded me of the kind Jack would tell me before bed--especially the one about the Little Mermaid. I never had the attention span, nor the patience for him to read me the book by Hans Christian Anderson, but he would spin it to me in such a binding way, that he would have my attention, for hours on end while my imagination would conjure up visions of mermaids--a whole culture of them--living under the sea, and one especially beautiful one falling in love with a sailor!