The Rite Twins

6: Over

Over

There’s a point in your life in which you decide to take a new direction, live a new life. Sometimes it’s just a dream. Sometimes it’s just talk. And then there’s the rare occasion that a person goes out and starts over. It’s like there’s just a drive in that person to be something else that they have to make their entire fantasy world a reality. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.

Wednesday, February 11th, 2004, we arrived in Merriton, New York, northwest of Albany. It was a was an oddly large community by Rock Pond and Salmon Lake. A small city rather than a large town. We stayed at a quiet inn on the outside of town, where we saw a stable to keep our companions. I tried to smell the fresh air, but the only smells I now knew were blood, flesh, and fear.

Blood, that was the smell I now lived for, the smell for which I hunted. There was a new smell. A smell I recognized, and yet was strangely new. The smell of birth. Not human birth, but my birth. Marlina knew it, too. It was Adrian.

“He’s near,” she said, and turned away. Quietly she landed on the ground from the window of our second story room. We had roomed together to understand each other. I knew Davis. I had made him. I knew Marcus. Not only had I made him, but he was my brother, my twin. But Marlina I did not know. She was one of us, from the same creature, and she knew him better than any of us could.

In my mind I cried out to him, and he answered. Where are you?, I wondered. I knew he was here somewhere. Where are you?

For once, Davis was quiet and alone... standing on the corner of an alley watching the boys and bois walk by him. Whenever a large group of girls walked by he stopped and stared... watching for her. Why he was watching for her I did not know. Was she here, too? Were they all here? Adrian and his crew? She was the most recognizable. He knew her well enough to spot her. He could spot the many small differences between women and girls, but now men were the hunt... no longer the love. He could no longer love.

Marcus stood by my side. He wrapped his arm around my waste as I watched Davis from across the way, wondering if Adrian would walk past. He took my earlobe in his lips. Marcus had never loved so much as when we became one. I felt for him, but I was afraid. Society had left it’s mark on me. I was the smart one during life after all. I couldn’t help but think about how wrong this all was. But somehow it all seemed right.

Davis’ eyes focused... I could see it as well. I saw through my eyes, and his. A young girl in skin tight jeans, stiletto boots, and a black leather quarter trench. Dark red hair flowed past her shoulders and moved with the wind. It was Cassandra. Once and for all, we were face to face with the one who chased us. She knew it, but it wasn’t us she was after. It was Marlina. It was Adrian.

Without a moment’s warning, Marcus was gone. He very much enjoyed the fact that the normal rules of physics no longer applied to him, the non-living. Now that he had branched away in this city, I was free to roam, but carefully. I nodded at Davis, and he smiled, without a single look in my direction. Take care, my son, my friend, my lover.

I stepped into “Five”, a strange club that seemed to take me to the top story of a very desolate building. When I reached the top, the dim red lights moved around the room. I focused on the darkness so that I could see which humans (or non-humans) were moving around. In such a crowded place, it was hard to keep track of one person, but somehow I saw her. Maybe she wanted me to see her. No, it was not Cassandra. Her name was Lilias Marial. The girl who first took my essence and lead me to the life I am living now. She was standing there, staring across the distance to nowhere. She turned around and walked into nowhere, and I followed.

Across the room, or whatever this large space was to be called, there was a spiral staircase leading back down to the second floor in which there was no viable entrance where I had come into the building. I walked down the stairs, and, the moment my feet hit the floor, there was a sudden silence and darkness. There was the smell again. Birth. I was alive, and free. And there Marial stood, smiling at me. She turned around and the glass crashed, and she was gone. I saw nothing. I flew towards the window and out, and landed on top of the building across the street. It was one story, and no one seemed to notice me flying over there heads. I was standing alone, once again.