DEAR Self,
You're actually going to die three times.
Weird, I know, but hear me out.
The first time was metaphorical, right? Your sister gets taken, your whole world gets upended, and you spend three years in some sort of suspended hell that feels like real life but reads way more like a movie script. Seriously. That is the stuff of horror movies. Of three-part miniseries dramas. Of heart ripper chick flicks, except the hot guy who swoops in to save you isn't some prince in disguise, or a heartbroken rock star, or even a nice cowboy with a nicer horse.
He is actually a vampire, and he didn't save you.
He killed you.
Which brings you to death number two. The literal one. The one where said vampire/hot dude up and bites you because he gets a hard-on for your blood and can't stop himself. The one where your eight-year-old sister uses you as an appetizer, then goes and destroys the last family member you have left. The one where you wake up after three days ready to eat an entire herd of elk.
The third death— that's the one happening now.
This is the orchestrated death.
The one you plan.
You're in the middle of the 101 at 3:42 am. You've taken off your shirt and one sock. You've fucked up your hair. You've wandered aimlessly around the edge of town, stopping at random intervals, staring off into space. Standing slumped in the middle of the Calawa bridge, hoping to draw attention to yourself.
This is when McClean shows up.
He always has spectacularly shitty timing, and if this had been any other sleepwalk, he would have been about an hour too late to stop you from getting naked. Any other night, he would have been right on time to watch you strip off your pants and continue on your merry, sleeping way.
"'Sup, Greyson." He rolls his window down and winks at you and keeps on chewing that disgusting wad of gum, but you can't let your gut instinct kick in. Used to be that gut instinct meant some sarcastic remark and an eye roll. Now it means you have to bite your tongue in half to keep from jumping in through his window to snap his neck or maybe rip out all of his guts in a fit of rage. But you keep walking instead. Face limp. Arms limp. Feet limp. Everything is a shuffle, a drag, a heavy blink.
You're supposed to be asleep, remember?
"What the fuck are you doing out here, kid?" McClean asks, shaking his head at you. "You're totally asleep, aren't you?" He sounds chock-full of awe. Like he can't believe his luck. He leans on his window and leers at you, your naked stomach and your bra and the waistband of your too-big sweats hanging precariously from your hips. "Damn, kid. I'd love to get a look at the rest of you. Go on, and take it all off, huh?"
You keep walking. Slow. Steady. Imagining a hundred different ways to kill the bastard but reminding yourself each time why you can't do that.
"You know what I wish sometimes, Greyson?" McClean just keeps talking, even though he's well beyond the point of reason. He rolls the cruiser along beside you, so slow the odometer doesn't even register. "I wish me and you could've made it. Like, fucked in the cell block or on your dad's desk or something. Fast and furious, you know?"
He peers at you, a sudden thought dawning across his face. "You ever been fucked before, Greyson? Or are you a virgin? Because shit, that would be something now, wouldn't it? God, I bet you are. Bet you're just new and tight and—"
He's twelve miles away, waiting for you, but you can literally feel Harry bristle with rage.
"You know, I used to sit up at night thinking 'bout you. Wanting to get my dick into you so bad, but your old man would've killed me. But now that he's gone…"
That's when he does it. Totally crosses the line. Undoes his belt and digs out his dick and spits into his palm with his eyes fucking literally every single inch of your body.
You can't take it for a single second longer.
You're gonna wish, you're gonna wish so hard for the rest of your thousand years of existence, that you could have seen the look on McClean's face when you suddenly veer to the right and tip yourself right over the guardrail, off the edge of Calawa bridge.
Sincerely,
Yourself
* * *
"That was pretty damn convincing. You should be an actress."
Harry is smiling when I pull myself out of the water, just as pale and cold as a drowning victim. I shake the water off and look upstream. I floated for three miles before I saw him standing on the bank, waiting for me.
The town is so quiet this time of night, so peacefully sleeping, it's almost hard to reconcile what we're doing. It feels as though nothing bad could ever happen here, a bubble in the middle of hell, untouchable in the face of tragedy. The doves aren't up yet, and the elk are huddled asleep at the far end of the grass, but I don't even care about their heartbeats right now. I don't care about their musty blood pumping slow and soft and steady through their veins as they sleep. I don't care about the kids in their beds half a block away or miserable Matthew Blanchard, wandering back to his shithole trailer after his nightly post at the bar.
In a matter of hours, my name will be on every tongue in town.
I wonder how far they'll drag the river. Wonder how far they'll send the dogs down the banks. Wonder if McClean will ever 'fess up to his buddies that he was ready to jack off to the sight of half-naked Violet Greyson just before she slept her ass right off the bridge. I wonder if they'll hold a ceremony for me when they give up on finding my body, or if they'll all just be grateful that the last remnants of the tragedy that was the Greyson family are now out of sight and out of mind.
I wonder if anyone will ever tell my mother.
I wanted Sadie, to barter or beg, or even just flat out steal her from Laurent, but Harry forbade me to act. In fact, he was pretty specific about not making any sort of reference to her at all.
"If he knows she was ours, the hell we'll have to pay will be the stuff of nightmares, Violet."
"What is he going to do with her?"
"He'll keep her for a few decades until he gets tired of the memory."
"Like a fucking trophy?"
"Exactly."
"That's sick, Harry." I gulp down something that feels like my stomach. "It's so wrong."
"Humans hang their kills on their walls." Harry's eyebrow rises slowly, and all I can think about are the fish dipped in plastic my dad had hanging in the living room. "Be grateful he doesn't have a home with a wall to mount her on."
This is the moment where, if I was still human, I'd throw up. Black out. Scream out loud. I can feel it, the long-ago remnants of the bodily reaction to such an idea, but they're faded and dull. Instead, I'm covered in a full-body itch that feels something like my skin peeling off.
"What are you thinking, your face is so—"
"Are you going to keep me hostage for a decade? Like Daniella?" I interrupt him, not even caring what my face could possibly look like.
Harry sighs and runs a hand through his hair, his face drawn. "Laurent and I are from opposite ends of the spectrum, Violet. I would never."
"What he's doing to her is sick." My mouth tastes like shit just saying it. I wish I could bleach out my brain.
Harry nods. "He is an animal. He always has been."
"Did he keep you?"
"Yes." Harry nods with his face pinched in such a way I dread asking exactly what that meant.
"Do I want to know?"
"No." He answers short and rough and shakes his head.
"Am I your first?"
Harry shakes his head. "I wasn't always so mild. There was a time when I relished in the turning… Lived for it, even."
"So, I'm nothing but a conquest. Another turn for you."
"That is quite literally as far from the truth as you could possibly get." Harry shakes his head. "Isn't it obvious yet? I can't be so subtle that you haven't noticed."
"Noticed what?"
"I want you be my… " He falters, glaring at me for a moment before glancing away and grumbling under his breath. He shakes his head once, twice.
"Your what?" I repeat.
"Inamorata," he says, still staring off at the trees.
"I don't speak that language, whatever it is. English, please."
"A sweetheart. My sweetheart."
"I don't want that." I shake my head.
"You don't?" His brow furrows, and his eyes tinge curious around the hurt.
"No. I don't want to be someone's sweetheart." I spit the word like it tastes of rotten fish. "I don't want to be their girl, or their lover, or their wife.
"What do you want to be, then?"
"The love of their entire, miserable life," I sigh.
We stand there on the riverbank for what feels like a millisecond but is probably hours. Time is all fucked up now, a slow-down warp speed I still haven't figured out how to deal with. Shadows start to form as the sun rises, birdsong starting tentative and soft. My clothes have long since dried, and my hair is only damp at the very ends. I can hear the search team far upstream, the dogs and the shouting and the trampling of bushes. They're so far away, underestimating the river currents, looking for me tangled up in the trees, face down in the shallows, shivering on the muddy river bank. They're still hoping for the best, ambulance on call, but they're about to be sorely disappointed.
"You terrify me, you know?" Harry muses soft and calm, still not looking at me. He hunches down by the water and stares at the ripples lapping the stones at our feet.
"I'm not the scary one here." I shake my head.
"You are. You've made me question everything. I was fine, before you. Miserable, but fine. Now I'm wondering if I wasted a century, if I'm not as hard as I thought I was." He glances up at me, eyes thoughtful, forehead creased. "I am the rock, and you are the water."
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
"You've carved a canyon right through me. Impossible, but true."
"What was impossible?"
Harry stands, his eyes pinched, the hard line of his mouth breaking as it falls lopsided into an easy grin. His feet overtake the small distance left between us.
"I love you," he exhales. "I didn't think I'd love anything ever again, but it's true."
I stare at him. A blank stare, which is about all I can manage. If my heart still worked, it would be hammering hard enough to break my ribs. If my lungs still worked, I'd be choking on not enough air and way too many words. If my blood still ran, it would be racing. I'm cold, freezing all over, except for a small spark of something a million degrees warm nestled right behind my silent heart.
Harry's face falls. "You don't have to say it back. I just need you to know." He shrugs and turns away.
"Are you fucking with me?" I ask.
He shakes his head.
"Never."