twispitefic

Title: The Price of Illusion
Author:

gehayi
Fandom(s): New Moon
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 413
Chapter Inspiration: Chapter 1 – Party
Author’s Note: Written in response to Bella saying she doesn’t care that she isn’t sure what she’s asking for when she constantly demands to be turned.

* * * * * * *

“Bella, you have no clue what you’re asking for.”

“I don’t care! I want to be like you—so that we can be together forever!”

He frowned. “I’d hoped I’d never have to show you this, but--since beauty is so much a part of your requirements for immortality--you should see it.”

He closed his eyes. A ripple passed over his face. And he changed.

I shrieked, scrambled backward and tried not to lose my lunch.

The thing in front of me was a shriveled, hairless mummy in Edward’s clothes. Its eyes--still golden, I noticed--were flatter, sunken into the skull and almost deflated, and its nose had collapsed. It looked as if it had been born ancient.

Hideously, it was smiling.

“You get used to maintaining the illusion after a while, even around others of your kind,” it said in a parody of Edward’s voice. “Looking like idealized human beings--well, it’s nature’s way of luring the prey closer so that we’ll survive. But that’s all it is--a flawed illusion that can’t be photographed, filmed, or seen in a mirror. This is what we all look like--this, or worse.

“Do you still want to be a vampire, Bella?”

I shook my head, backing away on legs that felt as if they were made of wet spaghetti.

The Edward-thing nodded—and then suddenly it was right in front of me, its taloned hands shoving me into a corner of the living room.

“What are you doing?” I screamed, trying to push the thing backward. I might as well have tried to shove a mountain. “Get the hell away from me!”

It favored me with a gruesome grin. Nothing human about those teeth. It seemed to have a mouthful of serrated knives. “I can’t hold back any longer. And I don’t want to.”

Oh, this did not sound good. “What are you talking about?

“It takes a great deal of effort to maintain the illusion,” it said. “More so if we’re not eating properly. I feel as if I’d just put down a boulder I’d been carrying for a hundred years.” It knelt down before me. “And I’ve just realized—I’m extremely hungry.”

I shrieked again, pounded my fists on its shoulders, tried kicking it in the chest, wailed and begged. “Edward, Edward, please, I thought you loved me—”

Ignoring me, it ripped open my femoral artery.

The last thing I heard before I died were the slurping sounds.