"My powers are weakening," she whispered so hoarsely it was almost inaudible.
The two still lay practically naked, with only their underwear back on after their ravenous rounds of sex. The sheets were wound around them to cover their most secretive parts, wrapping around their ankles and even between their legs. Of course it was the finest sheets available— Celestial Blue 350-count combed cotton linens, scalloped embroidery with three solid initials tattooed onto each piece, CLK.
"Powers? What does that mean?" Of course he knew what she meant, but were they really powers? Powers had always been reserved for superheroes, right? And Talia was far from any sort of hero.
She was more like a villain actually. Causing mayhem and imposing trouble, all while with a smile on her face pointed to yes. Yes, Talia was a villain, but still he laid next to her, his hand wrapped in hers and their legs intertwined. No matter how much he tried to stray from her, he always found the aching in his gut pulling him back.
A perfect example, when Talia fled from his house in the early morning before anyone in the house had awoken.
He should've just left her alone then. He should've let her become someone else's problem. Then again, that problem became Jen's problem and he couldn't let that happen either. At that point he didn't know if he was chasing Talia or protecting Jen.
"Powers. Advantages. Clairvoyant tendencies... whatever the hell you want to call them." She whined, releasing Colter's hand to slam her fist to the velvety sheets.
Leaning up on his elbows, Colter drunk in the sight of Talia. He started at her pink painted toes, working his eyes up her slim, tan legs, up over the parts the sheets unfortunately covered to her lean stomach. It wasn't particularly muscular, but robust nonetheless. His gaze continued up to her full chest he'd just kissed for the past hour and a half, to her neck that just recently gained nearly a dozen little bruises; he couldn't help himself. Finally his stare rested on her beautiful face.
How had something once so innocent been destroyed by the acts of a few teens who held nothing but jealousy? Maybe in the later years it'd never been about jealousy, but he was sure when Jen and her friends decided to pick on Talia in junior high it was because of what Talia had.
Pretty face, good grades, and surely a bright future ahead of her.
Sure she might not have dressed the best or been the most sociable, but that shouldn't have meant anything. She had everything any normal person would've ever wanted. Her successful future was right there, just nearly out of palms reach and a select few got to it just before she did. They ripped it from her vicinity and threw it to the floor, crushing it to pieces under their hatful scrutiny.
Had Colter been one of those to rip her success straight from her hands?
"Watch" she whispered, sitting up in bed on her elbows too. She pointed to the ensuite across the room from the bed they both occupied.
Nothing seemed to be happening and when Colter thought maybe he just couldn't see what she was doing, he trained his stare harder on the empty, dark bathroom doorway.
"Nothing's happening," Colter said and with that, Talia whined out in frustration. She was trying to slam the bathroom door closed to maybe prove herself wrong. In compliance, the bathroom door moved to close only about an inch before she gave up.
"I know," she sighed out.
She was going to try again.
Raising to her knees, she couldn't care less when the sheet fell from her upper half, exposing her chest to his greedy eyes. Like before, she brought a knee over him, straddling him and clearly rolling her eyes when his breathing increased. It was if he hadn't ever seen her naked.
"Kiss me." Without hesitation, Colter leaned up to capture her lips with his own. Talia was quick to push him away until his back slammed into the pillows behind him. She surely hadn't lost her strength.
Colter's furrowed eyebrows and pouted lip only confirmed his confusion. "I should've known that wasn't going to work." She muttered to herself, giving a sideways glance to the hormonal boy she sat atop.
"We're gunna try this again," she chuckled all while leaning over to Colter's nightstand where she remembered seeing scissors not too long ago. Ripping open the top drawer and finding their handle, she smiled, replacing her fingers from the handle with Colter's.
"What?" His question was quickly interrupted by her shushing.
Looking deep into his befuddled orbs, she placed her hands over Colter's like an adult assisting a small child, pulling on the separate handles to open the scissors to their fullest potential.
"Colt...I want you to cut my finger off," she lifted her hand that once laid over his, offering out her pinky finger.
Right after hearing such a crazy idea, Colter's plump lips opened to immediately decline her dare, but her orbs connecting with his caused him to shut up instantly. Her eyes were suddenly red, the lava red they always were when she handed out a demand.
"Cut it" she demanded, accentuating it with the forward gesture of her finger
Opening the scissors, Colter brought them up to her pinky. Placing the tip of her finger right between the sharp blades, he began closing them. The feel of it was like a paper cut when he began; he was close to squeezing harder until the color of her eyes faded and the red became so dull, you couldn't tell red from her usual brown.
They were still red, most definitely, but more like the red of the city's dirtiest brick walls, coated in a grimy layer of the city's muck; a nasty, boring red.
"No!" Colter snapped back to reality, flinging the scissors to the wall across the room, bringing some of the paint off in the process. "Are you fucking mental?" He threw Talia off of him, standing from the bed in a rush, bringing nearly all the sheets with him.
"Chill out will you? You didn't even do it!" Talia yelled, reaching to the floor to grab her bra which she quickly put on. She was nearly shocked herself and not about nearly having her finger cut off, more like she had no idea what was happening to her.
"You just had me almost amputate your finger, what the fuck?" Colter looked around his room to make sure he really was here and not in some lost, parallel universe.
"Almost, Colter" she sighed, rolling on one of the shirts from his bedroom floor over her head. "Keyword being almost, I would've stopped you before you really did anything." She laughed.
"Talia this isn't funny!" He was sure he was overacting, but he couldn't stop his anger from climbing.
"You're right, it's not!" She was up now too, walking around the bed until she and Colter were close enough to feel each other's breath fan across the other's face. "It's not funny. I'm losing everything I have! Even though it's quite possibly the sickest thing I've ever heard, my only purpose for being here is being snatched away from me!"
Her breathing was heavy too. Both her and Colter's, but hers was simply because she was crumbling from the inside out. Even before she was dealt the deal of no emotions, she'd never cried as much as she had within the last month. But she truly couldn't help it.
"I feel physically and mentally sick" she cried out, unintentionally earning Colter's sympathy. Finally he understood what she had just tried. Before he flew from the bed like a madman or even screamed the word 'no', he remembered how her eyes had dulled out until he was able to think his own thoughts.
"I feel like someone's sucking the energy right out of me, and I don't know how much longer I can fight it." The thought struck her hard and she fell to the bed, crawling back to the place she'd been laying before as she curled into a ball.
666
They were back to square one only twenty minutes later, except they weren't holding hands and instead of being a mere inch from each other, Talia strayed to be as far from Colter as possible without falling off the bed. Now, Colter sat up, looking over at a fully clothed Talia who'd been muttering things to herself for the past ten minutes. She still took the form of a ball, with her knees to her chest as she laid along the edge of the mattress.
"Talia" he sighed, scooting across the bed to approach her.
He earned no response, but still he tried. "Talia who are you talking to?"
"The voices," she whispered as if speaking any louder would disrupt the fluent speech of the voices in her head. "They just kept getting louder, but when I decided to listen, they stopped screaming."
"What are they saying?" He quizzed.
"They're telling me how I can end all the pain." She smiled at the thought of not feeling anything ever again. Not even the serenity the feel of Colter's kisses and touch brought could stop her from never wanting to feel again.
"Tell me, Talia." Colter pulled on her shoulder, removing her from her curled position until he could scoop her up. She lay in his arms like a swaddled infant, her head to his chest and his arms wrapped around her in comfort.
"They love the sound of a beating heart," her hand reached up to feel the shutter of Colter's rhythmic heart. "It means life..." She wasn't talking to him that time, he was sure of it.
Colter's own hand reached up and landed where her heart should be. When he couldn't feel the solid pump of her heart, he began to move his hand around to find it until her words stopped him. "You were right the first time, it just doesn't pump. It doesn't have to."