Dear
Diary,
I
watched as the man I loved became a stranger. Tobias finished a spell where we
all gave something important and then Vincent was free of Samael. Of everything
Samael. The book turned to ash and the world turned back to what it would have
been if Samael had never had his grasp on the Godfrieds. Only Vincent was the
only one who didn’t remember.
There
were so many emotions in me I couldn’t breathe. I was drowning in my own relief
and sadness and betrayal and sickness. It took me only seconds after to realize
that we wouldn’t be together, not really, ever again. He wouldn’t remember the
burn on my neck, the way he stabbed my mother, the first time we were together,
the Christmas we spent laughing, or the fact that I had given him everything I had
to give. My body was shaking. I watched Israel begin to help Vincent to the bed
and I grabbed the cement block that was Samael and took off. There was no way
my skin could be in that church any longer.
Darkness
had crept into the sky by the time I made it to the post office. In my bag I
had Vincent’s journal, the cement block of Samael, and anything I had to take
that would remind Vincent of Samael’s being. That meant letters I had written
to him, and the couple songs I had recorded for him. It was all there. I wrote
a simple note with just my initial on it and taped it to the cement block
before I mailed it, despite the fortune in shipping it cost, to Natalie. I
wanted her to know I had done something. I wanted her to know she had pissed
the wrong girl off. I wanted her to know I would kill her if she drove me to
it, if she dared to come near him again.
Then
I drove to the school. Only because I didn’t want to go home. For the last
while I had been staying at Caleb’s sometime, given his lack of parents, but
even that didn’t seem like a place I could go after today. He looked at me with
so much tenderness and all I could give him was the emptiness I had inside of
me. I showed him how much I loved Vincent, even when he wasn’t asking for
anything in return, and I felt disgusted with myself for leading him on.
For
awhile I sat in the dark in the parking lot on the hood of the car and watched
the tree near where the fairy circle was. I wasn’t really looking at it, not
really. I was just listening to the sounds of night around me. I don’t know how
much time passed as my thoughts ran back and forth to Vincent and my mother. My
hands had power now. I could hurt things. I could kill things. I had made the
deal. I had given up the only person I had loved other than Vincent to get it.
For
days I had been avoiding the truth. That three days before my mother’s funeral
I had sat beside her and injected a syringe into her IV tube. Dad had always
talked about killing himself on his binges. I had listened, terrified, but something
of it had come back to me when I had read the book of hunters. You see, to
become a hunter, you have to give a sacrifice for the power. I think somehow
the hunters in the past didn’t have many loved ones left, so they killed
someone they thought the world wouldn’t miss. Me? I had a mother in intensive
care who had a real chance of never waking up. So I did exactly as my
neurosurgeon father had said he would kill himself and I did to my own fucking
mother. I knew dad wouldn’t order an autopsy. Why would he? She was dying,
mostly.
It
didn’t take long for her heart to stop. I held her hand and told her I loved
her and begged her to forgive me. At the last moment I changed my mind, pulled
the call bell, said her heart rate was dropping. They tried to help her. Tried
to resuscitate her once she had faded, but they couldn’t help her. The doctor
called the time and I threw up before I collapsed on the floor. I just remember
waking up at home. I don’t really know what happened between A and B. I just
know I killed my mother. And I did it for the power to kill Samael.
But
I didn’t use it. My friends killed Samael. It was a sacrifice I never had to
make. I killed her for fucking nothing. She died because I was stupid and
selfish and didn’t know what I was doing and made the worst mistake of my life.
But now she’s dead and Vincent doesn’t remember me and there’s nothing left.
Nothing. As I sat on top of the car all I could think about was the great void
I had laid out before myself. And then I threw up again and got back inside.
Once inside I screamed. And screamed some more. I let the rage and the fear and
the tattered bits of me that were left pour out in sound until there was
nothing left and I felt empty and raw inside.
Hours
passed before I felt anything other than the numbness that had eaten my body.
Using my journal, I wrote Vincent a letter and tucked it into his journal. I broke into the school. I took a shower in the girl’s
locker room, got dressed, and then went home. My dad wasn’t there. I prayed
Jack wasn’t. As though I couldn't see it anymore without it burning me, I shoved Vincent's journal behind the painting in my room then collapsed onto the bed. And I fell into a sleep like none I had had before. The kind of
sleep I imagine dead people have. At least I don’t dream anymore.
