Nova

Heterochromia

(SIX MONTHS AGO)

The trees shuddered from my involuntary animalistic bellows. I had awoken to soft darkness and scratched my way to the surface until I saw the constellations of the nightsky. I was drinking in moonlight after having clawed my way out of the ground. The dirt of the earth caked into my hair and had stained my skin as the remainder of it's grain etched into my fingernails. My mind was an abhorrent haze of confusion as I fled the hole I climbed out of.

Winter's bliss saturated my skin, yet the cold was barely acknowledgeable to me, even as my shallow breaths misted into midnight's ardor. The stars were smiling through the soft speckles of snowfall and the only sound was the rapid crunch of my footfalls marring it's perfect layers. The night was marvelous, yet I was miserable and trying to escape from the bad memories in my head of the events that transpired before I was buried.

Shouldn't hypothermia have caught up to me by now? How was I even alive after being buried? WHY was I placed deep into the soil?

Thunderbolts of remembrance frayed what little composure I had. Blood spatter, heart-shattering screams, prolonged teeth, a sapphire-eyed forearm tattoo, and haunting blue eyes ascertained my recollection. As I rushed through the surrounding woods, a noise had interrupted the somber darkness.

The hard edges of static to a walkie-talkie. Voices chirped mechanically.

"Come in. Get back to the base now." It was of masculine proclivity.

"I'm okay. Don't know where the sound came from, but I'm heading back now." A man answered back and his voice was clear.

I could trace the noise of his footsteps and listened intently to the way he nervously flipped the holster that held his radio with his thumb. My sense of hearing had overtaken my sight and I could practically envision his movements. The fluctuation of air around his actions was like a tangible symphony to me. I followed his orchestration of sounds, like following a red strand to a ball of yarn that was unraveling.

(What was happening to me?)

That's when the resonance of his heartbeat fell upon my ears for the first time and sped up as he laid eyes on me. He was startled at my presence and stumbled backwards with a gasp as he reached down towards his belt.

"What the fuck is that thing?" His walkie talkie blared with panic.

The stranger was wearing night vision goggles and my reflection permeated the glass. Where my face should have been was a strange blueish glow instead. My presence was frightening, even to me. "Shoot it!" His comrade commanded as he pulled his gun out and flicked the safety off. He rose it to eye level between us, poised to take the first shot. "What are you waiting for?!" The static screamed.

A foreign hunger burned my throat and my stomach in a way I had never experience. I could hear the condensation of nervous sweat forming in between his thumb and trigger finger. His heartbeat fluttered like a hummingbird's wings as I neared closer; my speed unnatural and surprising. I latched onto him with my hands on both his shoulders, my teeth-- at his neck. His scent was of ashes mixed with the spray of the ocean. It enamored my hunger and my tongue basked in pools of my saliva. We fell into the soft snow, with my hold on him still strong. (Why were my teeth bared? Why was I attacking an innocent man? Strange instincts had taken hold of me) I felt his heartbeat echo and coagulate at his jawline, it's pulsation vibrated along all my teeth. "ORION. SHOOT IT." His radio screeched next to his gun that laid helpless at our feet.

The flickers of tragedy that I was trying to outrun had stumbled back in my mind. (Blood spatter, heart-shattering screams, prolonged teeth, a sapphire-eyed forearm tattoo, and blue eyes.) The blood spatter was my own and belonged to me, and the forearm tattoo belonged to the perpetrator who had orchestrated the attack. And here I was, about to mirror the monster and do the same to another innocent. A whimper escaped my lips after I released my hold on him and retreated against the nearest tree. I scrunched my body into the fetal position and tried to understand the memories that haunted me.

The stranger recovered and I listened as he reached for another item in his belt.

"Orion? Orion!" The transmission warbled on as he removed his glasses and threw them into the snow.

"I am sorry for what I must do next." He says while pointing his new weapon at me.

I glance up at him with tears marring the edges of my view. A gasp left my lips as I fully took in his features. His eyes were as kind as the stars with an aberration of one being blue and the other a gilded brown; the blue color rippled and spilled halfway into the brown. We wordlessly revelled in my relent with our tangible breath tickling the edges of each other's gasps. Our thoughts spurning the same question: "What are you?"

If death was delivered by his hands, that was okay with me. I finally closed my eyes and leaned my head against the tree bark as a sign of full surrender. My mind retraced the image of him and the thought of dying was the only solace I've had since waking. I awaited the inevitable while tracing the sounds in the frigid air--

the flutter of a hummingbird's wings against our ragged breath, and then the harsh thunder of a bullet ripping through the space in between us.

And then there was sweet, sweet darkness.