Spitefic: A Few Home Truths
Jan. 25th, 2011 05:02 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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twispiteficTitle: A Few Home Truths
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
gehayi
Fandom(s) New Moon/Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2,213
Chapter Inspiration: Chapter 6 – Friends
Author’s Note: Written in response to Bella condescendingly talking about how nothing has changed in Forks since she got there.
* * * * * * *
“It was a year ago yesterday that I had my first day here,” I mused.
“Nothing’s changed much,” Angela muttered, looking after Lauren and Jessica.
“I know,” I agreed. “I was just thinking the same thing.”
Lauren must have overheard me, because she turned around then, smiling. “Nothing’s changed much?”
“That’s right,” I said, lifting my head proudly. “Not a thing.”
“Oh, you’re wrong about that,” she said softly. “So very wrong.”
Angela gave her an uneasy look. “Lauren, I don’t think we should say anything.”
Lauren rolled her eyes. “Why not? Everyone who should know does.”
“What are you getting at?” I said sharply.
“Oh, quite a lot’s gone on since your nervous breakdown,” she replied, smiling. “Eighteen babies have been born, five people died, our football team won its first season in the past twelve years, Angela and I got early acceptance—she’s going to Stanford, I’m going to Oberlin—”
“Congratulations.” I couldn’t have cared less.
“—but the thing that I think you’ll really be interested in has to do with the vampires.”
I knew she couldn’t be talking about the Cullens. She had to be referring to a horror movie about vampires. “Was it a good movie?”
She laughed. “I’m talking about undead corpses who drink blood. Some of whom wear magical glamours that make them glitter like diamonds. You know...the Cullens?”
I stared at her. Of all people to know. And neither Jessica nor Angela was laughing at her. I had to stop this. “How did you get such a ridiculous idea?”
“Because it’s not ridiculous. Everyone knows about the Cullens. Everyone’s known for ages. Since they moved in the second time, in fact.”
“…second time?”
She motioned me to a chair. I sank into it. She straddled one backwards, placed her elbows on the back of her own chair, leaned toward me, then grinned.
“Vampires? They’re really stupid. It’s not just their outward bodies that get frozen when they die, but their brains as well. It’s not that they can’t change, but they have a hard time doing it; their minds default to being what they were when they died. Which is usually angry and scared, ergo, very willing to kill to survive. That desperation, combined with the demon inside them, can make for pretty unpleasant creatures.”
“Not all of them!” I snapped. “Some of them are decent—”
“Wow, didn’t take long to get you to admit it,” Lauren retorted. “And I presume you’re talking about the Cullens being decent? Yeah. They’re not. Like I said, this isn’t their first time in this town. They were here fifty years ago. That’s not long. Lots of the older people remembered them. More to the point, they left records. Probably medical billing and taxes, but we couldn’t get a look at those, not even on the Internet. But the town hall had records of who had owned their house back in 1949. One Carlisle Cullen, doctor, and his wife, Esme. And four of their five kids were in town then—Rosalie Hale, Alice Cullen, Emmett Cullen and Edward Cullen.”
“The Cullens’ kids wouldn’t be listed in the town hall!”
“Well, duh. Of course not. But they were listed in the school yearbook.” Lauren grinned. “No one ever thinks about school yearbooks when they’re creating a new identity. They had different names back then, sure. Emmett was Leonard Frost. Alice was Irene Frost. Rosalie was Lois Hartshorn—the story was that she was a cousin, not a sister. Edward, and I think this is the perfect name for him, was Ernest Frost. No Jasper—he hadn’t joined the group yet. But it was them. And, like I said, people remembered them.”
“Old people,” I said. “They wouldn’t necessarily remember clearly—”
“Oh, shut the fuck up, Bella!” Jessica snapped. “For once in your self-absorbed, selfish life, just listen!”
I stared at her. “You think I’m selfish and self-absorbed? Me?”
“Yes,” said Lauren, “because you are. Oh, you’ve been playing the martyr card for a while. But you know what? It got old pretty fast. All this fuss and whining over a guy you barely talked to and who treated you like shit most of the time—telling you what to do and what not to do and getting seriously pissy if you didn’t obey. Okay, you like playing out the master/slave dynamic, I get that—but seriously, Bella, he’s not the only dom out there. Port Angeles does have a BDSM scene; not my thing, but you could get into it. You might even find a guy—or girl—who would indulge your massive kink for body glitter.”
She sighed. “And trust me, the middle-aged and old people around here remember the Frosts and their cousin. One of them lost an arm to poison when ‘Irene’ lost control and bit him. Nice, huh? But they seemed to be mostly harmless… And then the state police found eighteen bodies of humans in the area where the Frosts hunted on weekends—all of them exsanguinated and drenched in that weird venom that Nasha vampires have—as opposed to, y’know, the more standard variety of vampire—and it was all over.”
“They don’t hunt humans,” I said, struggling not to scream. “They hunt—”
“Large predators. The worst ones out there. Yeah. Use your brain for a minute, Bella! What animals are the most dangerous to vampires?”
I stared at her, horrified. “Werewolves.”
“And humans. That’s what they hunt, Bella, and that’s what they eat. Werewolves and humans. Most vamps don’t consider werewolves to be anything but animals, and humans—we’re just Lunchables. But both species are predators, which means that getting rid of us is a good thing.”
“But they have golden eyes,” I moaned. “That proves they don’t eat people—”
“Bella,” Angela said gently, “you need to consider the source.”
Lauren was blunter. “Edward Cullen and his ‘family’ lie through their fucking fangs. If you ever used the Internet, you’d find that buying gold contacts is easy. Acuvue. ExtremesFX. Coastalcontacts.com. Grimmbrothershalloween.com. I’m more interested in the fact that they can walk around in sunlight without imploding—most vamps can’t. Probably some variant on the Gem of Amara. Makes vampires invulnerable.”
“You said—everyone knows. Charlie doesn’t.”
“He’s a cop in a town where vampires are just barely in hiding and the werewolves are a viable economic demographic,” Angela retorted.
Lauren nodded. “Hell, Billy Black is practically a deputy. He used to be the equivalent of the werewolves’ sheriff before he lost the use of his legs! And you think your dad doesn’t know? He hasn’t talked to you about this because you’ve been acting all ‘Oh, la, sir, I have the vapors!’ and collapsing. But he’s been trying to protect you, Bella, for a long, long time. No superpowers. No special weapons like flamethrowers or rocket launchers that will help him kill vampires. But he’s still trying to keep you from being killed or turned—no thanks to you, chasing after your animated corpse-boyfriend.”
“How do you know all this?” I demanded. It couldn’t be true, none of it could be true. I didn’t think I could live with so many lies battering at my memories.
Lauren sighed, gazing at me with exasperation. “Well, because we actually talk to people, for one thing. Unlike you, who only speak to people when it will get you something you want. And because the Cullens are careless; they’re vampires, after all. Why should they be careful what they say or do around mere humans?”
“Which is why they ended up having to leave,” Jessica added. “They screwed up a lot. Like the stocks they kept playing. You know, people on Wall Street notice if you purchase stocks and never lose money. There are words for things like that. Insider trading. And fraud. The Feds don’t like that. At all. Carlisle and Esme were in serious trouble with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Not to mention the IRS. And then when their house was searched, the Feds found all those drugs that Carlisle had appropriated from the local hospital. You just can’t do that and get away with it.”
“But…but they can’t put the Cullens in jail!” I shouted, not caring now if anyone heard me. It seemed that everyone knew the truth, anyway. “That’s not possible! They’re vampires!”
Angela grimaced in disgust. “Being a vampire doesn’t mean that you get to do anything you want. Stealing and defrauding and murdering humans are bad no matter who does it.”
“And they did leave a few bodies lying around this time, too,” Lauren added. “Not here. Alaska this time. Fortunately, vampires tend to be careless about physical evidence. Hair. Blood. The venom—which is as individual as fingerprints. Fibers from clothing. Bite marks.”
“They…they must have been hungry,” I whispered. “They must have been carried away.”
“Carried away?” Lauren repeated, glaring at me in hatred. “I’m sorry, but did you just make an excuse for a vampire murdering a human being?”
“Vampires…vampires need blood. They get hungry…”
“Does this look like ‘hunger’ to you?” And she clicked on her cell phone messages and passed it to me.
I stared at the twisted, broken, hollowed-out corpse in the photo on her phone and tried not to throw up.
“Want to know who that was?” Lauren said in an overly jovial tone. “Mrs. Edward Cullen.”
“No! That’s not possible!”
“Oh, sure it is. If he’s pretending to be a kid from Forks—well, his birthday is in June, so he’s of age. If he’s using one of his previous identities—like Ken Jordan, dentist or Doctor Patrick Trout, gynecologist—he’s supposed to be in his late twenties to early thirties. Which would work even better. So he’s a young-looking twenty-something. That’s not a bad thing.”
“But he loves me,” I mumbled.
Angela cleared her throat. “Bella. From what the Watchers have been able to tell us, her name was Tonilee Chime Young, and she was from Provo, Utah. She had just turned eighteen. And she eloped with Edward to Las Vegas. There are pictures.”
“And after that,” Jessica said grimly, “he took her to Alaska. For a wedding feast.”
“She was one of five,” Angela said. “This time. All of them just eighteen. All pale girls with long brown hair and brown eyes. And all of them willing to elope with Edward Cullen on a moment’s notice.”
“All of them girls who resembled you.” That was Lauren. “Don’t you find that interesting? I find that interesting.”
“He tortured them to death,” said Jessica. “And he recorded the screams. The FBI found the audio in a CD case for the Unfinished Symphony.”
“All of this has been in the papers, by the way,” said Lauren. “And all over the news and the Internet. If you’d been a bit less busy being melodramatic because oh noes, the boy you’ve been crushing on just moved out of town, you’d have noticed. I guess that being pitiful and being fussed over was a lot more important than, oh, getting on with your life. Okay, you didn’t know all this, but you did know that you weren’t the first teenager to get dumped by a guy, sheesh.”
“I love him!” I wailed. “We’re like Romeo and Juliet!”
Lauren considered this. “A killer who has to flee after one of his murders is discovered and a delusional, naïve girl who’ll do anything to be with her guy, including killing herself. Yeah, that fits.”
“How do you know all this?” I demanded.
“Because,” Lauren said, “we’re Slayers.”
“Slayers.”
“Vampire slayers,” Angela explained. “Chosen Ones. Or, to quote Buffy, ‘they who hang out in graveyards.’”
“There was a near-apocalypse last May,” Jessica said, sounding disgusted with me. “All the Slayers were activated at once; it was the only way to keep the world from dying. About a million girls, worldwide. We’re three of the eight here in Forks.”
“We’d have gone after the Cullens ages ago,” Lauren grumbled, “if it weren’t for the treaty the Quileutes have with the vampires. The treaty made the vampires the responsibility of the werewolves, not us. They do a good job, by the way. It’s just that the Cullens kept slipping in under the radar. Until it came out that they were breaking laws and hurting humans.”
“Which made them the responsibility of Slayers,” Jessica said. I didn’t know why Jessica was spelling it out for me. I could certainly figure out that much.
“The Quileutes feel disgraced,” Lauren continued. “So they sent the equivalent of a Slayer after the Cullens. We were told to stay here and protect you...God knows why. It’s not like you want to live anyway. And you’ve been an unholy bitch to the immediate world for four months because the entire universe didn’t stop because of your failed romance with a serial killer.”
There might have been more, but I didn’t hear it. Everything I thought I knew was collapsing around me. There would be no wealth, no eternal youth, no immortality. I wouldn’t be the girl everyone envied; I would be the one they pitied for loving a multiple murderer.
I would never be important again.
And I would grow old.
I needed six shots of Xanax before I stopped screaming.
Author:
gehayiFandom(s) New Moon/Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2,213
Chapter Inspiration: Chapter 6 – Friends
Author’s Note: Written in response to Bella condescendingly talking about how nothing has changed in Forks since she got there.
“It was a year ago yesterday that I had my first day here,” I mused.
“Nothing’s changed much,” Angela muttered, looking after Lauren and Jessica.
“I know,” I agreed. “I was just thinking the same thing.”
Lauren must have overheard me, because she turned around then, smiling. “Nothing’s changed much?”
“That’s right,” I said, lifting my head proudly. “Not a thing.”
“Oh, you’re wrong about that,” she said softly. “So very wrong.”
Angela gave her an uneasy look. “Lauren, I don’t think we should say anything.”
Lauren rolled her eyes. “Why not? Everyone who should know does.”
“What are you getting at?” I said sharply.
“Oh, quite a lot’s gone on since your nervous breakdown,” she replied, smiling. “Eighteen babies have been born, five people died, our football team won its first season in the past twelve years, Angela and I got early acceptance—she’s going to Stanford, I’m going to Oberlin—”
“Congratulations.” I couldn’t have cared less.
“—but the thing that I think you’ll really be interested in has to do with the vampires.”
I knew she couldn’t be talking about the Cullens. She had to be referring to a horror movie about vampires. “Was it a good movie?”
She laughed. “I’m talking about undead corpses who drink blood. Some of whom wear magical glamours that make them glitter like diamonds. You know...the Cullens?”
I stared at her. Of all people to know. And neither Jessica nor Angela was laughing at her. I had to stop this. “How did you get such a ridiculous idea?”
“Because it’s not ridiculous. Everyone knows about the Cullens. Everyone’s known for ages. Since they moved in the second time, in fact.”
“…second time?”
She motioned me to a chair. I sank into it. She straddled one backwards, placed her elbows on the back of her own chair, leaned toward me, then grinned.
“Vampires? They’re really stupid. It’s not just their outward bodies that get frozen when they die, but their brains as well. It’s not that they can’t change, but they have a hard time doing it; their minds default to being what they were when they died. Which is usually angry and scared, ergo, very willing to kill to survive. That desperation, combined with the demon inside them, can make for pretty unpleasant creatures.”
“Not all of them!” I snapped. “Some of them are decent—”
“Wow, didn’t take long to get you to admit it,” Lauren retorted. “And I presume you’re talking about the Cullens being decent? Yeah. They’re not. Like I said, this isn’t their first time in this town. They were here fifty years ago. That’s not long. Lots of the older people remembered them. More to the point, they left records. Probably medical billing and taxes, but we couldn’t get a look at those, not even on the Internet. But the town hall had records of who had owned their house back in 1949. One Carlisle Cullen, doctor, and his wife, Esme. And four of their five kids were in town then—Rosalie Hale, Alice Cullen, Emmett Cullen and Edward Cullen.”
“The Cullens’ kids wouldn’t be listed in the town hall!”
“Well, duh. Of course not. But they were listed in the school yearbook.” Lauren grinned. “No one ever thinks about school yearbooks when they’re creating a new identity. They had different names back then, sure. Emmett was Leonard Frost. Alice was Irene Frost. Rosalie was Lois Hartshorn—the story was that she was a cousin, not a sister. Edward, and I think this is the perfect name for him, was Ernest Frost. No Jasper—he hadn’t joined the group yet. But it was them. And, like I said, people remembered them.”
“Old people,” I said. “They wouldn’t necessarily remember clearly—”
“Oh, shut the fuck up, Bella!” Jessica snapped. “For once in your self-absorbed, selfish life, just listen!”
I stared at her. “You think I’m selfish and self-absorbed? Me?”
“Yes,” said Lauren, “because you are. Oh, you’ve been playing the martyr card for a while. But you know what? It got old pretty fast. All this fuss and whining over a guy you barely talked to and who treated you like shit most of the time—telling you what to do and what not to do and getting seriously pissy if you didn’t obey. Okay, you like playing out the master/slave dynamic, I get that—but seriously, Bella, he’s not the only dom out there. Port Angeles does have a BDSM scene; not my thing, but you could get into it. You might even find a guy—or girl—who would indulge your massive kink for body glitter.”
She sighed. “And trust me, the middle-aged and old people around here remember the Frosts and their cousin. One of them lost an arm to poison when ‘Irene’ lost control and bit him. Nice, huh? But they seemed to be mostly harmless… And then the state police found eighteen bodies of humans in the area where the Frosts hunted on weekends—all of them exsanguinated and drenched in that weird venom that Nasha vampires have—as opposed to, y’know, the more standard variety of vampire—and it was all over.”
“They don’t hunt humans,” I said, struggling not to scream. “They hunt—”
“Large predators. The worst ones out there. Yeah. Use your brain for a minute, Bella! What animals are the most dangerous to vampires?”
I stared at her, horrified. “Werewolves.”
“And humans. That’s what they hunt, Bella, and that’s what they eat. Werewolves and humans. Most vamps don’t consider werewolves to be anything but animals, and humans—we’re just Lunchables. But both species are predators, which means that getting rid of us is a good thing.”
“But they have golden eyes,” I moaned. “That proves they don’t eat people—”
“Bella,” Angela said gently, “you need to consider the source.”
Lauren was blunter. “Edward Cullen and his ‘family’ lie through their fucking fangs. If you ever used the Internet, you’d find that buying gold contacts is easy. Acuvue. ExtremesFX. Coastalcontacts.com. Grimmbrothershalloween.com. I’m more interested in the fact that they can walk around in sunlight without imploding—most vamps can’t. Probably some variant on the Gem of Amara. Makes vampires invulnerable.”
“You said—everyone knows. Charlie doesn’t.”
“He’s a cop in a town where vampires are just barely in hiding and the werewolves are a viable economic demographic,” Angela retorted.
Lauren nodded. “Hell, Billy Black is practically a deputy. He used to be the equivalent of the werewolves’ sheriff before he lost the use of his legs! And you think your dad doesn’t know? He hasn’t talked to you about this because you’ve been acting all ‘Oh, la, sir, I have the vapors!’ and collapsing. But he’s been trying to protect you, Bella, for a long, long time. No superpowers. No special weapons like flamethrowers or rocket launchers that will help him kill vampires. But he’s still trying to keep you from being killed or turned—no thanks to you, chasing after your animated corpse-boyfriend.”
“How do you know all this?” I demanded. It couldn’t be true, none of it could be true. I didn’t think I could live with so many lies battering at my memories.
Lauren sighed, gazing at me with exasperation. “Well, because we actually talk to people, for one thing. Unlike you, who only speak to people when it will get you something you want. And because the Cullens are careless; they’re vampires, after all. Why should they be careful what they say or do around mere humans?”
“Which is why they ended up having to leave,” Jessica added. “They screwed up a lot. Like the stocks they kept playing. You know, people on Wall Street notice if you purchase stocks and never lose money. There are words for things like that. Insider trading. And fraud. The Feds don’t like that. At all. Carlisle and Esme were in serious trouble with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Not to mention the IRS. And then when their house was searched, the Feds found all those drugs that Carlisle had appropriated from the local hospital. You just can’t do that and get away with it.”
“But…but they can’t put the Cullens in jail!” I shouted, not caring now if anyone heard me. It seemed that everyone knew the truth, anyway. “That’s not possible! They’re vampires!”
Angela grimaced in disgust. “Being a vampire doesn’t mean that you get to do anything you want. Stealing and defrauding and murdering humans are bad no matter who does it.”
“And they did leave a few bodies lying around this time, too,” Lauren added. “Not here. Alaska this time. Fortunately, vampires tend to be careless about physical evidence. Hair. Blood. The venom—which is as individual as fingerprints. Fibers from clothing. Bite marks.”
“They…they must have been hungry,” I whispered. “They must have been carried away.”
“Carried away?” Lauren repeated, glaring at me in hatred. “I’m sorry, but did you just make an excuse for a vampire murdering a human being?”
“Vampires…vampires need blood. They get hungry…”
“Does this look like ‘hunger’ to you?” And she clicked on her cell phone messages and passed it to me.
I stared at the twisted, broken, hollowed-out corpse in the photo on her phone and tried not to throw up.
“Want to know who that was?” Lauren said in an overly jovial tone. “Mrs. Edward Cullen.”
“No! That’s not possible!”
“Oh, sure it is. If he’s pretending to be a kid from Forks—well, his birthday is in June, so he’s of age. If he’s using one of his previous identities—like Ken Jordan, dentist or Doctor Patrick Trout, gynecologist—he’s supposed to be in his late twenties to early thirties. Which would work even better. So he’s a young-looking twenty-something. That’s not a bad thing.”
“But he loves me,” I mumbled.
Angela cleared her throat. “Bella. From what the Watchers have been able to tell us, her name was Tonilee Chime Young, and she was from Provo, Utah. She had just turned eighteen. And she eloped with Edward to Las Vegas. There are pictures.”
“And after that,” Jessica said grimly, “he took her to Alaska. For a wedding feast.”
“She was one of five,” Angela said. “This time. All of them just eighteen. All pale girls with long brown hair and brown eyes. And all of them willing to elope with Edward Cullen on a moment’s notice.”
“All of them girls who resembled you.” That was Lauren. “Don’t you find that interesting? I find that interesting.”
“He tortured them to death,” said Jessica. “And he recorded the screams. The FBI found the audio in a CD case for the Unfinished Symphony.”
“All of this has been in the papers, by the way,” said Lauren. “And all over the news and the Internet. If you’d been a bit less busy being melodramatic because oh noes, the boy you’ve been crushing on just moved out of town, you’d have noticed. I guess that being pitiful and being fussed over was a lot more important than, oh, getting on with your life. Okay, you didn’t know all this, but you did know that you weren’t the first teenager to get dumped by a guy, sheesh.”
“I love him!” I wailed. “We’re like Romeo and Juliet!”
Lauren considered this. “A killer who has to flee after one of his murders is discovered and a delusional, naïve girl who’ll do anything to be with her guy, including killing herself. Yeah, that fits.”
“How do you know all this?” I demanded.
“Because,” Lauren said, “we’re Slayers.”
“Slayers.”
“Vampire slayers,” Angela explained. “Chosen Ones. Or, to quote Buffy, ‘they who hang out in graveyards.’”
“There was a near-apocalypse last May,” Jessica said, sounding disgusted with me. “All the Slayers were activated at once; it was the only way to keep the world from dying. About a million girls, worldwide. We’re three of the eight here in Forks.”
“We’d have gone after the Cullens ages ago,” Lauren grumbled, “if it weren’t for the treaty the Quileutes have with the vampires. The treaty made the vampires the responsibility of the werewolves, not us. They do a good job, by the way. It’s just that the Cullens kept slipping in under the radar. Until it came out that they were breaking laws and hurting humans.”
“Which made them the responsibility of Slayers,” Jessica said. I didn’t know why Jessica was spelling it out for me. I could certainly figure out that much.
“The Quileutes feel disgraced,” Lauren continued. “So they sent the equivalent of a Slayer after the Cullens. We were told to stay here and protect you...God knows why. It’s not like you want to live anyway. And you’ve been an unholy bitch to the immediate world for four months because the entire universe didn’t stop because of your failed romance with a serial killer.”
There might have been more, but I didn’t hear it. Everything I thought I knew was collapsing around me. There would be no wealth, no eternal youth, no immortality. I wouldn’t be the girl everyone envied; I would be the one they pitied for loving a multiple murderer.
I would never be important again.
And I would grow old.
I needed six shots of Xanax before I stopped screaming.
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Date: 2012-02-09 09:43 pm (UTC)