Dangerous Creatures

Lonely Creature

Mackenzie was lying in her bed, painfully crying in her pillows, trying to keep quiet. Everything hurt. It was hard to breathe. She could barely keep her face buried in the pillows now stained with blood, but she knew she couldn't make any noise, she couldn't take the risk to wake him up. The pain in her arm was so awful she was afraid to move. It was broken, she was certain, the noise she heard when Robert twisted it still sent shivers down her spine.

How ironic was it? She was (supposedly) the most powerful creature on the planet but she was still incapable of defending herself. And if she couldn't defend herself against a drunk human, she didn't stand a chance against a vampire. It wasn't ironic, it was just stupid.

Incapable of sleeping, Mackenzie couldn't help but replay the fight in her head. She flinched and winced every time she pictured his fists approaching her face, every time she heard him yell, blaming her for his bad day, his inexistent love life, his stupid bosses... It wasn't a first for Mackenzie and she had been through worse. But something was different that night. When he started yelling and she knew it was going to end badly, the lights started to flicker. She knew she was tampering with the electricity of the house, she could feel it even though she couldn't control it. When he punched her the first time, the lights went out for a few seconds. It didn't stop him. He was either too drunk or to eager to take his anger out on her to notice. When she ended up on her hands and knees, blood and tears dripping from her face, it went dark for over a minute during which he blindly started to kick her, hitting her stomach and chest several times. At this point, the house started to shake. Again, he didn't notice, but she could feel it despite the enormous amount of pain she was in. When the lights came back, he seized her by her left arm, forced her to get back up and broke her forearm. She screamed in agony as he contorted her arm and as the pain only grew unbearable by the second the bottles of beer scattered around the kitchen burst out. He let go of her then, as the loud noise of the many pieces of glass suddenly caught his attention. He was too drunk to even try and make sense of it. But at least he wasn't angry anymore, he was just confused and tired. "Clean this up," he growled, before he stepped into the living room and slumped on the couch. She quickly, and painfully, did as he asked, trying to be as silent as possible. She almost passed out in the stairs on her way to her bedroom. It wasn't often bad like that, but every other month Robert had a crappy day at work, there wasn't enough beer in the fridge – or there was too much – dinner wasn't ready or wasn't to his taste, or Mackenzie dared answer his question or dared keep quiet and all of it combined turned him mad and turned her face into mush.