All Monsters Are Human

You are the reason🎵

Chapter

Rosette sat on the bed with Caelum beside her. She faced him while he applied antiseptic on her bruised fingers.

She drew in a sharp breath as he touched the cotton to one of the deepest scratches.

"It stings right?" he said softly, "That's what you get for loving someone with unhealed wounds. Your love will make you stitch their cuts even if the needle pricks your skin before it touches theirs."

Rosette shook her head slightly, "When you're in love, the needle pricking your skin before theirs will also feel beautiful."

Silence hung heavily in the room as he carefully bandaged her fingers with gentle hands.

"What if this love is an illusion that you're living in?" he asked.

"Illusions don't feel this real Caelum." she smiled but it did not reach her eyes, "if anything then you are the biggest illusion in my world."

He kept quiet. He knew she wanted nothing more than answers.

She continued, "You don't love me, yet you won't let me leave.. can't tell me about yourself... What is this if not an illusion?"

"If I told you everything, would you be able to stay?" he asked, looking straight into her eyes.

Rosette could see the promise of darkness in his words. She was scared of what she might hear, but she didn't think anything could change the way she felt for him.

"And what if I leave? Will it matter? Won't you forget me in a week or two?" she replied with a small smile on her lips but the pain that that little curve hid was enough to fill a hundred oceans.

Caelum's soul scoffed at that question. 'Forget me' she said as if the ocean could forget the coast or a bird could forget the sky... as if his heart could forget hers.

His eyes softened, "I want to tell you this story without having to confess anything... I want to tell you this story without being in it."

Rosette swallowed her last bits of hesitation, "Throw the words out. I'll put them together if you can't."

He smiled at her words, but the smile flickered and burnt out as he started speaking,

"I.... I had an awful childhood." He said, "My dad was the head of the British mafia and my mom was a German winemaker's daughter," he fidgeted with Rosette's fingers that were still in his hands,

"My dad was cruel, very, very cruel and my mom,..... she was crueler." Rosette flinched at his words.

"My mom had spent her early years plucking ripe grapes and fermenting wine but then my dad ... did something awful to her that resulted in my birth. She had had her entire life crushed by that man and then crushed again by my birth because after me, her conservative parents proposed a marriage to which the heirless mafia obliged." He let out a deep breath, as he continued gravely,

"My mother hated me and found me responsible for the abuse she suffered. Mother's are humans, who sometimes give birth to their pain instead of children..." his voice became softer and heavier,

"And then Noah was born.. and the sight of two eligible heirs only drove him further into filth. He abused my mom and beat me up whenever he wanted.. Noah had to suffer since he was nine.."

He let go of her hands and dared not meet her eyes, for he could feel how dark they were.

"At the age of fifteen, I was introduced to the mafia... to bloodlust." He gulped, "I had been terrified the first time I held a gun, I wanted to throw it away before I could ever use it but I didn't. Instead, I used it and when I did, it became a part of me..."