March 10th, 1919
March 10th, 1919
My newborn senses ran wild. Cursed I am by my young nature. It is an agony that gnaws at each minute detail that your heightened senses take in, battling to rule your complete being; and that compares nothing to the demon thirst; it is my silent, persistent companion, always walking on my heels with no hope of outrunning it, tripping me up and making me stumble, and stumble I have… Immortality is all so perfect because it is the soul that bares the marks of the sins you commit in your eternity. Carlisle says with time these things get better, easier to handle but…
Carlisle says a lot of things.
‘Be patient’
‘This too shall pass’
‘don’t give up so easily, my friend’
‘you are stronger than you give yourself credit for’
And my person favorite
‘I’m sorry’
Carlisle has a lot to be sorry for, and from his thoughts I know that he is trying to atone for what he has done to me every day. Every day since that horrific day when I woke up in a waking nightmare with no chance of sleep for escape.
Flashback: September 1918, Chicago, Illinois. Abandon Masen Residence.
My family was never an overly religious one despite the social customs of the times, having the century turn less than twenty years ago, and while society held fast to the worries of sin and questioned hell there was nothing that would make me doubt the existence of perdition any longer, not with it right beneath my skin, potent and fresh as the fire was. I lay in my pyre, burning.
I could understand dying before the fire started, knew it was happening no matter how slow. And at a subconscious level I worried for my immortal soul because I had given up, had stopped fighting the virus that left my small body weak and all but lifeless. But when you have lost your entire family what more is there to fight for. My mother left us first, her immune system not able to handle the blow that the illness did strike and my father’s health was failing him despite being a healthy and strong man and all that was soon to be left is me, a fourteen year old girl with no sense of the world, wasting away from influenza.
And ever the one the comparison, as I lay dying, I thought about living as well. No man would want to marry a girl from an orphanage, and I won’t be able to afford to get the formal education I would need to become a nurse even if I weren’t already expiring so surely I would live a beggars life.
I’d had plans you see, in traveling overseas to help out in the cause. WW1 raged during my adolescence and I longed to become a field nurse in the heat of battle, patching up our boys so they could fight another day. My mother hated the idea of it and would sooner see me as a Milliner than being anywhere nears a battlefield. But I was a force of nature and when I had my mind made up very little change it, a trait I got from my dear father whom between the two, I favored.
In my childhood I had many conquests of the purest of nature; I danced and sang, I even ran relay races as sport in school though my mother loathed it (she still found her way to every one of my meets) and above all I was an accomplished pianist at the age of ten, having played in symphonies and great halls. My father’s wealth and status as a prominent lawyer meant that life was a circus to be attended continuously and like any young girl in a wealthy family I was doted on and given anything my heart desired but I was also taught the hard work from which that money sprang. My beloved father traveled often leaving me home with my mother whom didn’t quite understand my carefree nature and defiant spirit despite having married a man with much the same ways about him.
But never mind the money, the accomplishments and conquests won, none of it mattered when you’ve come to the end of your line.
My father had contracted influenza while traveling and brought it home unbeknownst to us all and the shadow of the reaper appeared and grew larger and larger as time passed. The hospital became home as we each fell to the plague. With my mother dead and my father soon to follow, with grim acquiescence I swallowed my fate.
God must be as wise as they all said, a man all knowing, and he was a cruel God for what his plans were for me next.
As I lie there knowing I was all I had left in the world I stopped struggling for breath, I opened my eyes to take in the last thing I’d ever see; the crème white of the infirmary ceiling and the curtained privacy panels. The light seemed to be dancing away from me slowly as if saying goodbye and I willed it away with all that was in me, afraid of death but too tired to fight it any longer. The hand of death reached for me and nothingness was a cold blanket snuffing out the small flame that was my life.
There was the sharp dull scraping pressure to my slender fever hot neck, then a suspended second when everything seemed to stop, and then hell reigned dominion over my mortal shell.
Of course my martyrdom would not go unpunished, my selfish desire to not struggle had befallen me and I was no longer allowed in the graces of God.
But I bargained anyway.
I promised to live a miserable life alone without my family if this burning would simply stop and leave me. I promised to go to church every Sunday and get married and have babies like my mother wanted of me. I’d do anything for a chance out of this hell I was in. I scrapped my nail beds raw and tore at flesh to get to the source of the fire and pull it out but even my nails tearing into the column of my throat felt like a gentle caress compared to the molten rock running through my veins.
Pain ruled my mind into delusion and in my agony I saw the devil, and he was as beautiful as the bible said. I must have been a horrible person, I must have been the worst of the worst kind to warrant his company but the blonde demon with black eyes never strayed from my side as I thrashed and wailed through night and day.
When I was able to abstain from screaming I would count the ticking of the grandfather clock, an accurate measure of time passing. After approximately One hundred, seventy two thousand and eight hundred seconds later Lucifer shifted closer and inhaled, his nostrils flaring. At that very moment the pain receded from my fingertips and toes and moved inward, the fire in my chest burning that much brighter. Each relief weighed down by the increase of excruciating pain in my hearth.
My arms and legs were free and my heart felt like the sun was burning a hole through my chest. My face and torso were free and I was clawing with all my might at my chest, struggling to get it out, to stop the focused agony that enveloped my heart. And then it took off like a speeding locomotive, my heart chugging for all it was worth. How the small organ continued at such a frenzied pace I do not know, my entire being wrapped in the contrast of lacking pain and yet being consumed by the heat in my heart. And then with one faltering chug, it collapsed in on itself and did not beat once more.
‘Where did I leave my-‘ ‘PUT YOUR HANDS UP AND DON’T MO-‘ ‘I heard the whole family died from-‘ ‘hush little baby don’t say a-‘ ‘Ms. Sally sure is spending a lot of time with that colored man down the-‘ ‘I need more time to study-‘
NOISE, Noise everywhere. Never ending it infiltrated my mind and built into such a pressure, filling my mind with endless chatter, its source foreign and intrusive to the usual quiet tenor of my thoughts. It was insistent and never ending, some louder than others, and some coupled with images and flashes of times since passed. Others the mere stirrings of emotions like a haze. Worst were the flashes of the most vulgar of things, couples in lewd positions, sights trained on women’s backsides, flashes of very young girls in compromised situations. They continued in as if swept in by gravity or some current, all leading to me. The anguish peaked, and then subsided all to a dull hum in the back of my mind.
‘She looks like an angel, Mr. Mason was right.’
The voice itself was soothing, if not a small bit raspy, but it was the words that pulled me from my state of collapse. Before I could contemplate the idea of shifting my weight from leaning against the arm of the chaise and sitting up I already had. Lucifer still sat on the mahogany coffee table in a white button up and black trousers with navy suspenders. His sins also included travesties in fashion.
Hell seemed to look quite a bit like my home which confused me. Perhaps purgatory was being surrounded by the home filled with memories and being forced to long for those that I loved. Surely my Father and Mother would have been granted into the gates of heaven, clearly not as selfish as I was. Looking around it was clear to see how absorbed I was in myself. The walls were covered in my likeness, the shelves held records of my most prized compositions and the piano my father took a mortgage out on the home from sat on a handmade platform in the corner of our large sitting room. Oh how I deserved to be in hell, honestly and truly deserved to be damned.
My lip curled into a sneer and I was moving. The pictures came down first, shredded into fine nothingness once I was done with them. I tore the walls bare down into their bones. The records were hurled and crushed against the floor. I was breathing heavily with anger while my eyes were wide with shock, the space in my head big enough that the two emotions each had room to be over bearing. No girl my age should have had the power to tear through thick wooden portrait frames let alone the very foundation of a strongly built mansion. And the speed! I somehow knew that only five seconds had passed between my sitting on the chaise and me having destroyed all of the sitting room. Shock was slowly replaced by fear as I stared down at my hands covered in a fine powder from plaster. I must have been a demon! Hell wasn’t enough; purgatory was just the start, Lucifer’s company made so much more sense now that I was one of his. I was damned.
‘I must comfort her… she must be so confused…’
“Edeena?” Satan’s silky rattling voice curled around me and I moaned in despair.
“Get thee behind me.” I moaned, voice holding trepidation and loathing. “What would you know of comfort? What would you know of caring for another, You Serpent?!”
“Miss, I know how confusing this must be… please let me explain.”
‘I have made such a mistake… her young mind must be warped… maybe the fever caused some type of insanity and now she is stuck in a deranged state of existence… dear God’ His voice was persistent honey melting over my ears.
“GET OUT!” I screamed. Rage was building quickly, so quickly, overtaking my body and mind.
“Edeena I’m sorry.”
A part of me would like to say that I wasn’t capable of what I did next. I’m still horrified of myself really.
Fury clouded my senses and despite my fear and sense of self-preservation that told me that I could not possibly win this fight I sprung at the blonde devil and sunk my teeth into the closest patch of skin my teeth could find. There was a crunching sound like metal being peeled a part and then it got dark very quickly.
Not much time had passed, my somehow superior mind told me that, just like it told me even before I became fully conscious that I was outside surrounded by trees and it was an hour past sunset. My senses also told me I wasn’t alone. Slowly sound drifted into my mind, a voice, the voice of the devil who made me into this thing.
‘I knew she was too young. I knew it. Carlisle you are a selfish fool. Fourteen years of life taken by your hands. What would your father say?! What would God think of this? Bringing a precious little girl into this dangerous world, so small and delicate… She could have been my daughter... my mother had hair that color… But she is so savage. And what is wrong with her mind? Surely newborns are hostile but she seems to think she’s in hell-‘
“Who knew Satan talked to himself.” I quipped, a half smirk tugging at the corner of my mouth. I was past fear now. I had already died surely, what more could be done to me.
“Pardon me?” Lucifer’s voice held confusion and I couldn’t help but laugh. Oh my! The giggles that burst from my lips sounded like the gleeful ringing of small bells.
I leaned up on my hands from where I lie on my back and studied the devil. He was an averagely built man, or at very least his clothes made him seem as such, probably a size too big.
‘She’s round the bloody bend, Carlisle, you’ve done it now. Best to come at her from the side-‘
“Who is Carlisle? And I most certainly am not around the bend. If you’d died and then had your soul razed to ash only to wake up in your family home next to Satan I’m quite sure you’d have something to say about it so don’t you go treating me like no date, you hear me?”
‘By George! She can read minds! I feel faint…’
“You talk to yourself, you think I can read minds and you referrer to a man named Carlisle who clearly isn’t there. You aren’t Satan” I said, ever more confused and slightly fearful of where the hell I was and what exactly had happened to me. “You’re a loon!”
“I most certainly am not, Miss! You’ll have to forgive me I didn’t count on this being anywhere near as eventful.” His tone held mind rebuke along with abundant confusion and to have seen his face. Ha! Squalling babies looked less vexed than this man. “My name is Carlisle Cullen and you are right about me not being Satan whilst you are wrong about reading minds.”
“Well, Mr. Cullen.. If that really is your name” I gave a skeptical look. “I will have you know that reading minds is an impossible feat and only charlatans and kooks claim such false-hood.”
‘Then why aren’t my lips moving.’ And the words were there… clear as day, clearer than I had ever heard anything. But his lips hadn’t budged, not an inch.
End Flashback
Carlisle Cullen, my sire, would later go on to explain all that I had gone through and why he did what he did. I was now a part of the undying world, a girl of fourteen frozen forever in time. I sobbed for weeks at the news of my orphaned status. Then weeks more finding out I was beyond aging and would never grow to become a woman. At one point Carlisle gave me the courtesy of all his knowledge and so in one sweeping blow I gathered all there was to know about my new place in the world of the undead. I wept and raged for days, growing angrier at the lack of tears and then repulsed by my violent streak and weeping some more.
It would appear as well that not only was I now an undead monster, condemned to draining the life from innocent creatures, but I was a malfunctioning one.
After several tests it was determined that my vampire strength averaged at seventy five percent of what it should have been while my agility was double what it should have been and my speed triple. Carlisle claimed that I moved at the speed of ancients and with dexterity beyond that. He theorized that it was my youth that kept me from being capable of full vampiric strength, not having developed the muscle mass of an older adolescent, but to compensate my body developed the access agility and speed out of self-preservation. On top of this as well I was gifted with the unnatural ability to read minds; something that caused great headache between Carlisle and I. His mind was a place without judgement but it was his fatherly affection towards me that set my nerves ablaze.
I had one father. And he was dead.
As it were I settled into immortality quite fine. I hunted when I needed to and otherwise spent my time in solitude, doing all that I could to forget my existence and avoiding the thoughts of others. Of course some things are not so easily avoided.