Page 14 of The Bleeding Woods

She is seconds from surrender. Her lithe arms dangle in my direction, following the gravitational pull luring us to one another.

If I were to allow it, she’d tip forward into my arms, her body providing the reverberant yes I yearn for.

Everything about her is bewitching, but the outpouring of trust from her heart triumphs over all.

She knows it is safe to be so helpless and vulnerable in my grasp.

Her instincts speak louder than her doubts.

With the others, she is a carefully curated bloom in a bouquet.

With me, she is a wildflower.

Her face moves in small, clockwise spirals, mimicking the fractalized pulses of light in my eyes.

She dizzies herself, perhaps as enthralled by the vertigo as I am to watch as she succumbs to it.

Those plush pink lips part in preparation, but instead of a yes, they become the gateway for an airy giggle.

It moves through the space like bubbles, each one popping with a sound wave that strokes my senses.

Suddenly, she’s not alone in her helplessness.

Suddenly, I am but a humble breeze cradling the sanctity of her petals in the gentlest of whirlwinds.

I could listen to her laughter outside space-time.

I could live in a singularity, encased in eternal expressions of her joy.

I fall to my knees, and her gaze drops to maintain contact. Just as she’s surrendering to me, I surrender to her. This submission must be mutual. Our hands become entangled, just like every desire I’ve ever held in my heart becomes entangled with her her her.

“Stay,” I whimper. “Please.”

Hesitance clouds her perfectly euphoric smile. It falters like a fissure in the earth, her cheeks tectonic plates moved by a mantle of fiery futility. She doesn’t quite frown, but her body stiffens and sobers. “Jasper, I . . . I can’t. This place is beautiful, and you’re . . .”

I’m terrifying, and I’ve terrified her.

“I’m sorry about what happened before. I shouldn’t have been so forward. I was nervous, you see. I’ve never met another of my kind. Up until this afternoon, I was the only one.”

She swallows hard enough to make every muscle in her throat visible.

At the very back of my mind, a sinister question stirs.

How has she broken free from my telepathic influence?

My suggestions are meant to manifest in her consciousness indistinguishable from original thought.

I even urged her neural signals to release a dose of dopamine alongside each one.

For all intents and purposes, she should be high on this hypnosis, addicted to the pleasure of being mine.

She should be as ensnared by me as I am by her.

She should be saying yes. Why isn’t she saying yes?

“I need my pills.”

What a curious development. “Pills?”

“They keep me human. I need them. I need to go.”

I see it now. The red in her eyes has shifted.

My hue is carmine and candy apple. Hers is rubies and roses.

The difference is slight, but I’m thorough in my observances.

If these pills she speaks of keep her human, they must also keep her distant from the genes that imbue us with strength.

Humans are weak. Their capacity for telepathy is dreadfully underdeveloped, the gates of their minds left wide open for monsters like me.

The more her true self emerges, the more equal we become.

Soon her brain will be wrought with trip wires, and my suggestions will catch on each one.

“Will you come back?” I squeeze her hands, still kneeling at her feet, a thrall to her dark divinity.

“I don’t know.”

“Are you afraid?”

“Not of you,” she says sincerely. “I’m sorry. This isn’t about what you . . . what we are. You have more control of it, but I don’t.”

“What exactly is there to control?” Before she can slip her delicate hands from mine, I rise up to block the moon rays falling on her rosebud eyes. She becomes a silhouette in my shadow. “We aren’t meant to be controlled.”

She quivers. Her skin, smooth as silk, looks even more lovely shimmering in darkness than it did under the blinding sunlight. Beneath it, her bones writhe, swimming through flesh, desperate to take their most natural form. With a gasp of horror and a glower of hatred, she watches them.

“It . . . it h-hurts.”

“Of course it does. How long have you been fitted to a form, and what do you know about yourself? What do you really know?”

“This isn’t myself.”

“Out there, I’m certain that’s true. Out there, it’s their world. Here, it’s not.”

Her spine emits a loud snap, causing her body to heighten and hinge at an angle unnatural to humans.

She stretches and twists, suddenly given access to a completely new range of motion.

If she wanted to, she could turn her torso in a circle.

Now is when she yanks her hands away, staggering back with a silent scream.

“I need to get back—I need to get back right now—”

I slip smoothly into my proper movement pattern, dropping to the ground and letting all four limbs spiral in their sockets. Like a triple-jointed spider, I weave around her feverish footsteps, then stack myself back into an upright position, blocking the path back to the road.

“Let me help you,” I insist, my voice more crackle than cords. “I can help you.”

Her gaze goes glassy. The light that falls from it gets caught in the teardrops that hang from her lashes, sending prismatic rainbows onto her cheeks.

I could stop her. I could keep her here long enough for the transformation to complete, for her to shift into a mirror image of my monstrosity.

She would see herself in me, and I in her.

For the first time ever, I would cease to be alone.

I would cease to be a pitiful spot on the perfect portrait of beautiful humanity.

Together, we’d be a pair of shredded nails, raw to the cuticle, on the manicured hand that owns this world.

Yet some enigmatic anomaly urges me to the side, leaving an open route for her to tread on.

Another harsh swallow tightens her throat.

Words have escaped me, so I don’t bother to chase them.

All I do, for her sake and mine, is nod.

She scans me. I feel exposed, a gaping wound being gnawed at by the air.

“It’s not you.” Her words are a gauze doused in antibiotics. “There’s nothing wrong with you. It’s me. When I change, I hurt people.” Her hand comes over her heart, thin, elongated fingertips brushing the curve of her shoulder.

“You won’t stay,” I drone.

A new infection spreads, creeping like ants under my skin. The blood in my veins has gone frigid, carrying ice-cold clumps of congealing fluid to my brain. It floods me with hazy grief, dulling my ocular fires until they are steaming, smoldering embers.

I once thought of love as a flimsy construct meant to make life more bearable.

I didn’t need it, what with all its abstract edges.

Then I met her her her, and suddenly there was a chance to be held.

To be understood. She’s more than a flame fueled by the same gasoline as I am.

She’s much more, and yet, she’s not mine.

“You won’t stay,” I repeat.

“I won’t tell anyone about you, I promise.”

“You won’t stay.”

She pulls her lips into a line, her head shaking from horrible left to horrible right. She grabs my hand, and though hers is still disguised beneath a fragile layer of skin, it fits to the curvature of my palm with uncanny accuracy.

“Thank you for introducing yourself to me. It was brave. I’m sorry about how I reacted.

It was hypocritical. Unfair. I’m glad we got the chance to speak again, though.

It’s good to know that it’s possible to be what I am without causing others harm.

” Our palms slip away from one another, hers like the string of a balloon released to the sky.

As her silhouette, a petite hourglass of flesh snapping itself into new shapes, disappears into the gloom, only one thought echoes in the darkening void of my mind. All stars extinguish, leaving only an all-consuming black hole at the heart of a system in need of a sun.