Venom

19: A Heavy Request For A Good Cause

To live is to hunt, kill, eat, sleep, mate, and repeat until death knocks upon your door or you find another trying to break your pattern. 

There are moments in which everything you considered vital to live is put into question, and when that question is answered, you may find yourself rearranging somethings in your life. It is rare when everything must be redefined, but when that happens, it tends to be because who you were would not be able to handle who you shall be reborn as.

I have always believed myself to be a simple creature of habit and reason, especially when I was pretending to be more than a creature. A person of rationality and ideas that were conveyed in words and images. But at this very moment? I was not.

The moment I caught sight of that wretched mark, all reasoning and ideas left my mind as a rage so profound it filled my belly with fire and set me ablaze from within. Who I wished to be and who I could become were tethered on a thin line. A part of me, the majority wished to rip and tear anything and everything apart until the world was colored a deep and vivid red, until every step rippled within a pool of blood and the earth could not wash away the existence of my fury. Another wanted the world to go silent, for the cold and tranquil sway of waves and the never ending bottom of the abyss. I wanted time. Time to think and figure out a way out of the moment I was forced to live in. There was a humming sound, a shaking and shivering within my own mind, a tightness to my chest that made this flesh and small container feel claustrophobic. 

It was too soon. Far too soon for the mark of death to be appearing on her skin. She hadn't been back for longer than ten days. Blood, I recognized, was pooling within my mouth. My own teeth lengthening to sharpen points that had pierced the flesh within my mouth and torn it to shreds. I retracted them and tried to recall the shape of human teeth, straining to focus on this task as my mind raced with a destructive edge. Air welled within my throat, wanting out to stain the air with death and destruction. I was not blind, my sight could still clearly see the discolored mark upon her brown skin, the raised mark of something that had once pinned death to her chest, like a calling card for the grim reaper. I could see, and yet it was as if I was blind to all that was not that damned scar. I knew there was more, but I could not look away from something so small. 

Mykela. Mykela. Mykela. Mykela. Mykela. Again and again, her name whispered within me like an echo brought to life. Why was our time always marked and broken? She never smiled, not truthfully. She was just beginning to become lively again. How? Why? Thousands of questions, but not enough time. When I got my hands on the person who dragged her soul into this never ending loop of purgatory...my teeth shifted back from the small human teeth I had barely managed to hold together to a smaller version of their capable monstrosity. All I wished was to take her somewhere where no one would look her way, a place to lay her worries down as she slept, with the tranquility of knowing I would be there to prevent harm from ever whispering her name to the wind. How could I comfort a woman stronger than I? She was not the one frozen in rage. No, she held still before me.  My hand was on her shoulder, I knew not when I moved, but the sight and feel of her brought a sense of comfort. She was here. With me now. She had been gone for so long, but here she was. It was nearly exhausting, dragging my sight away from her chest, that mark of death beneath her clothes, but I forced my eyes to her own.

There was no fear, no panic, her rich brown eyes were solely focused on me. I thought it to be terrible, she had just been marked by death far too soon, and yet there was almost a hint of acceptance. As if she were used to having terrible luck. It was true in a sense, and I hated the world for it. How unlucky it was to know someone who you knew deserved it all, but seemed damned to be beneath the worst of the world had to offer.