Cadence continued to look down, beginning to cry. “No. You can’t make me. I won’t participate in your sick little game. No matter how much you enjoy building me up just to break me down. You’re beyond horrible. You’re—”
“Look.” He grabbed her by the chin and cranked her head up. “Open your eyes.” She kept them closed. “Or I can make you.”
“Or I can kill you,” Cadence returned, her lips trembling. “Strangle you like a baby in his crib. Or I can make you my puppet. Make you do what I want, when I want, so you can’t keep on trying to—”
“Go ahead and give it a shot.” David held her head in place and shook her. “Get it over with already. Kill me so I don’t have to meet you another time. So I never have to know love, or hope, only to have you snatch it away from me again. Maybe the shadow will let you, but I don’t think he likes me that much. And you’re one to talk. I may be horrible, as you say, but at least I’m honest about it.” David wiped the tears from beneath Cadence’s eyes and smeared them to the side. “And if you ever want Brent to see you the way you so desperately want him to? If you ever want that, you’ll use me to your full advantage, like you always have. Why is it a problem now? It evidently wasn’t when we were younger, or when you needed a ‘helper’. Use me so you’ll see what I see, so you can begin projecting that image his way. So he’ll finally find you beautiful. Now open your fucking eyes and look. It’s the least you can do for me.”
“Fine.” Cadence’s features drooped and tears began to stream down her cheeks. “I suppose you’ll have your fun no matter what I—”
When she opened her eyes and looked in the mirror, Cadence saw the most fascinating creature she’d ever laid eyes on. The way she felt in her dreams. That woman was staring back at her. Looking terribly sad. Hurt. But, even with puffy cheeks and bloodshot eyes, looking absolutely beautiful. The body in her mirror was delicate and white and had stunning features. The kind she imagined most men lusted after. The kind she’d always wished she’d had. So the men would lust after her. Or at least pay her attention that wasn’t vicious or cruel. She touched herself. Pinching her flesh and running her hands along the sides of her face. Untying her robe and letting it drop to the floor. Marvelling at her naked figure. Her porcelain skin and her body. Muscular and fat in perfect proportion. Like a dancer.
“Do you have any other mirrors in the house?” he asked. “In case yours is a liar?”
“Don’t be silly, David. Mirrors never lie. But...” She looked around at her room. At Juno still laying asleep in bed. “How is this possible?”
“You’re seeing what I see,” he said. “I see who you are on the inside. At least, what I feel about you. Or who you used to be. Maybe I’m projecting my perception of you onto your mirror? Maybe because I’m blood rare, as you told Brent.” She blushed and looked down. “Everyone else, including you, saw... Maybe they still see how you feel about yourself when you’re near them. Your own self-image. That’s what the world sees. How could you appear one way to me and a different way to everyone else? Unless you were all those things?”
She shook her head and looked over at him in confusion.
“I think the world, and your uniqueness, made you feel like a freak,” David continued. “Like an outcast. Like you didn’t belong and you were never good enough. Maybe for your whole life. Long enough for you to start believing that about yourself. And you, with your supernatural abilities. You became everything you believed about yourself. How much energy, do you think, have you been wasting your entire life, creating so many mirages for the rest of the world? How much of your life force, do you think, have you wasted convincing the world and yourself you’re not a beautiful thing? If you don’t need the provision, maybe that’s why you’ve been so sick, as Brent says, for so long. All to make yourself appear unattractive so other people can feel better about themselves? Why is their happiness more important than your own?”
“But...” She shook with fear. Almost horrified at the beautiful woman who now stared back at her from her bedroom mirror. “What difference does it make how plastic I look, or how good I look, if I smell like—?”
“You smell gamy...” He whispered into her ear. “Because you spend your evenings bathing in rotting meat to keep everyone else fat and happy. Stop killing for them and that problem’s solved. Fixed. Like that.”
“No. I’ve always smelt bad. Doctors have told me. It’s genetic. Surely you recall how bad I smelt when we were young for this world. My hormones, or pheromones, are foul smelling.”
“Wake up, Cadence. Melody. All of you,” David said. “This is me. What doctor told you? When?”
“When I was a child,” she replied, losing track. “I mean... When... Okay, never. I am the way I am and I smell how I smell. What difference does it make to you how I say what I say?”
“I’m just trying to get you back on track. You were someone else when you were younger. When I knew you, I mean. Just... I’m trying to keep you grounded in the middle of all your made up history.”
“Well thank you very much for fixing everything. You’re just so kind, aren’t you? I’ll be sure to thank you again when my problems never go away. You just—”
“Look. It doesn’t matter, okay? Those are attraction scents,” he said. “Those scents are meant to attract mates and stimulate others. God knows they hooked me when I first met you, Melody. They’re not things that can be smelt. Not in the sense that your skin smells. They’re things that can be felt. I don’t know for sure, but I can virtually promise you this. If you stop eating people and converting them into lunches and suppers for the lovely folks who live in this town, you’ll stop smelling after two or three showers and sweating it out. At least, you’ll start smelling like you again.”
“But there have been times when we had no provision. And we had to ration. Wouldn’t the smell have gone away?” she asked.
“It’s been seven years. Maybe you didn’t smell during those times, but everyone already associated the smell of the raw meat with you. Maybe the smell won’t go away overnight. But it will get better over time. Faster than you think if you start caring about yourself and your hygiene. If you make yourself a priority and quit sulking and resigning yourself to a life of misery and loneliness. Maybe next time it won’t be so long.”
“What?” she asked.
“It’s been so very long. What you said when we finished talking on the patio. What was it you meant when you said that?”
“I meant...” She tried not to smile. “I meant, when I met you, I could feel you wanted me. Just like before. When we were just learning to... Though I’m beholden to Brent, it’s still something I need. To feel wanted. Desired. To be in this place—on this earth—with someone like me. Who understands and accepts me. Just a little. Feeling that inside, even if it’s coming from someone else. That’s not being unfaithful. And I’ve never known it. Not since I can remember, except from you. It’s been so very long.”
“I think Brent, and everyone else, thought it meant you’d found someone else who could provide.”
“No,” she said. “They couldn’t—”
“I honestly believe they think you live to do their dirty work for them. That it brings you satisfaction. That you require nothing more. That you want to keep them fed so badly it causes you physical and emotional pain when you can’t. That you’re less than human.”
“You’re being hurtful again. Why?” she asked.
“Putting aside that you’ve just admitted to lying to me about lying to myself ever since I met you, again... I don’t mean to be.” He looked into her eyes. “I’m just being honest. I don’t fully understand your history. Or this town’s. Why you did what you did to me. I just see you’re miserable and lonely and you want to be happy and loved. I see someone who deserves to be happy and loved. We’re not so much different, really. God knows what I deserve, and Junie... If she treated me like Brent treats you, I would have left her a long time ago. But she fed me just enough to keep me on
her chain. Though I know, as you say, she despises me. But since I met you—since I began feeling inside that the world was giving me another chance—that chain no longer exists. Even if you don’t want to have anything to do with me when this is all over.”
She flushed again, becoming stiff, shaking harder, and turned to sedate Juno even further.
“Don’t put her in a coma.” He pulled Cadence back to his side.
“She’ll be fine,” Cadence said. “She doesn’t look so beautiful anymore, though, does she?”
David looked at Juno and, to him, she appeared rugged. Not ugly, but not as attractive as the woman he’d fallen asleep close to the previous night. Perhaps even a little mean. “What?”
“Now you only get to see how everyone is thinking and feeling inside, at any given time,” Cadence replied. “At least until you figure out how to change that about yourself. But I’m not going to show you that trick, though you possess the ability to use it at will.”
“That’s. Seriously? Though you still haven’t given me that explanation you keep promising me. Or even apologised for continually lying to my face. That’s the thanks I get?”
“No. This is the thanks you get.” Cadence took his head in her hands and kissed him softly on the lips, gliding her tongue into his mouth and transferring a jolt of pleasure through him. Letting her tongue linger. Pulling it back into her mouth slowly, filling him up. Making him crave just a little extra. “And no more. Not until I’m able to talk with Brent this evening.” She picked up her robe from the floor, threw it in her closet, and began dressing herself in her antique-looking underwear and a house dress. “I promised myself to him. Maybe he never heard it, or he didn’t want to and he keeps me around because of what I can do for him, as you say, but I owe him the opportunity to explain himself. You’ll see he’s a good man and, deep down, he loves me.”
“I never said he wasn’t a good man. I do, however, still have reservations.” Cadence looked at him quizzically. “Because the last time we met, and you were bruised that badly, the guy you were with was using you as a punching bag.”
Cadence looked over her shoulder, quickly turning her back away from David. Then noticing he could still see her bruising in the mirror and spinning back around, threatening to make herself dizzy. “That’s not. No. He doesn’t hit me. You saw. That’s from where my... The way I am.”
“You mean your wings?” Cadence nodded and David rubbed at his chin. “And Melody’s bruises? The same?” She looked down, then back up and nodded again. “That makes sense, out of context, I suppose. But you still owe me that explanation.” She smiled weakly. “Now?” She shook her head and David heaved a sigh. “Well, until then, I’m going to assume the worst. He hits you, he stomachs your presence to get what he wants and, when you present this face and this body to him when he gets home from work, he’ll magically want to get down on one knee. After he hurries us out the door and finally shares your bed with you.”
“No. You’ll see he won’t change drastically when he returns home from work tonight. He may begin to see what you see, but he won’t start drooling all over himself and humping my leg like a simple animal. Though I’ll present him with this face and this body. I’ll exercise so I sweat, and then take several showers to get the smell of last night’s kill washed off me. He’ll be a gentleman and, if things go as I expect, our courtship will move to the next phase. He’ll speak his devotion to me. Then you’ll see nothing has changed and everything has always been the way it had to be.”
“Well, okay. Glad I could be of assistance.” He walked out of the room, punching himself in the kidneys to keep himself from becoming aroused as she shook her head with disdain while still fighting to keep from smiling. “It’s not that I want you to be wrong, Cadence. You’re a good woman. A good... entity? You always have been. You’re decent and proper. You’re better than I ever was. Probably better than I ever will be. I hope he is what you think he is. I hope he’s what you deserve.” He looked back as he left the room. “And by that, I mean I hope he’s something really good. Something special. Because you deserve that. And, even though I don’t understand how I could have, I’m sorry if I hurt you back then. And I’m sorry if I hurt you by stumbling back into your life.”
“Please don’t apologise for those things, David.” She pointed at Juno. “Don’t you want...?”
“No. I have to talk to the people who are coming after us. She may as well be asleep while I take care of that nasty business. She’ll only get upset and worry herself into exhaustion. I’ll come by for lunch?”
“Yes. I’d like that,” Cadence said. “You’re so very dear to me. It’s hard to describe, and it made me act irrationally. I apologise for lying to you. I only did so because I didn’t want you to experience any hurt when you realised I was promised to someone else, but... Are we still...? Are we friends?”
David shook his head and began to walk toward the door. “We were never just friends. And I can’t forget what you were. What you’ve been to me. What you are. I can’t pretend it away. Friends isn’t in the cards. If your relationship with Brent continues, I’ll have to leave. Lying to myself—really lying to myself—about you would only hurt us both even more. And I won’t be a backup plan.” He paused, seeing the disappointment on her face. “You still look and feel beautiful to me. It must be how you’re feeling inside, yeah? You should have a tonne of extra energy now.”
“Then you don’t want to test me any further, do you?” She grinned and shuffled her feet like a school girl. “I’m... This whole morning... You’ve made me confused. And if you upset me much more, I’m going to have to handle you. Almost equal or not, I’ve been doing this a lot longer than you have, I’m something you can never become in this life and I know lots of ways to make you wish you’d never met me.”
“I already wish I’d never met you, Cadence,” he said. Her face turned sad for a moment. “Because now, if you’re right, I’m going to have to learn to deal with missing you for the rest of my life. Again.”
The room grew slightly darker as her face lit up and she smiled. Genuinely. With sadness. “I tried to warn you. But you insisted.”
“And I’d do it again in a heartbeat. I’ve never met anyone like you. Not what you are underneath. What you really are. What you showed me and made me feel back then, and now. I have a feeling I never will again. At least I hope not. If you are right, I pray you’ll be able to find it in your heart to let me leave and never come anywhere near me again. A man can only take so much disappointment.”
“David?” she asked as he reached the doorway to her room. He stopped in place and turned around, waiting for the rest of the question. “Why?”
“I’m sorry?” He looked at her with uncertainty as she shifted in her shoes. “Why what?”
“If you’re... I mean, if you do want... If you really are the one, you could stop me. All you’d have to do is tell me to leave him and be with you. And I wouldn’t be able to deny you. If you do truly love me, why are you helping me seduce another man?”
“Why do you never call me ‘Davey’?”
“I don’t understand. What has that got to do with—?”
He silenced her, which she didn’t bother to reverse. “If you really believe he’s the one... I mean... I think you answered your own question. And you’ve made your point.” She squinted her eyes, trying to hear his thoughts as they became distant. He shook his head as he backed out of the room. “How could I knowingly deprive someone I truly love of their happiness? Love has to work both ways. If it doesn’t, if it’s not returned, then it’s just infatuation, or dependency or desperate... Forget it. I’ll see you later.”
She blushed heavily, and as she turned her face away and looked at herself in the mirror again, more tears flowed from her eyes. She stood looking at herself in utter disbelief. But something inside her had changed, and the reflection in the mirror never switched back to the homely girl she’d gotten so used to seeing. Not even after David had been
gone for a good while.
David walked back to his home and changed into his next pair of clean underwear, blue jeans and a tee shirt. The house was still almost completely empty. He thought, perhaps, he should have woken Juno so she could go shopping, as she so desperately wanted to. But that would have to wait. There was plenty of food and they hadn’t worn out their welcome at the Strange household yet.
He walked into the kitchen, opening the blinds momentarily and looking out the window. Wondering what Cadence was doing. If she was enjoying her new look. Hoping she was. Feeling a bit conflicted about having done what he’d done to her. But, at the same time, feeling good about it, and still wanting a full explanation from her. He knew what he’d done was self-serving, but he also knew, in his brief time being near Cadence—Or Melody, if there was a distinction to be made—something inside him had changed. Before she’d turned him into whatever unearthly being he was still in the process of becoming now. She’d touched him in a way he’d never known before, from the first moment he saw her. Perhaps shown him a side of himself he never knew existed. Made him feel that there was a decent man hidden deep inside him. Something the lonely young man he’d once been was originally meant to become. Like the disaster he was could be fixed.
Although it had only been three days since he’d first made her acquaintance once more, the thought of Cadence being ridiculed by others, and the total acceptance of that derision by a woman he could only allow himself to believe was a loyal, loving and beautiful person, was something he couldn’t let stand. Even if it did end up backfiring and hurting her more than it helped.
He picked up the phone and dialled Paul’s warehouse.
“Hello?” Richard asked. “Is this—?”
He hung up. So many thoughts swimming through his mind. How was he going to play this? What was his angle? Did he continue to dodge bullets? If he decided to end his own nightmare, did that mean he wouldn’t be a provider anymore? Would that hurt Cadence in any way? And why did that still matter if he was really letting her go? Most importantly, why had he lost his connexion with her? Her thoughts weren’t in his head. As if she’d cut him off, or he’d unwittingly done the same to her when they’d parted. And, for an instant, he felt afraid and alone.
fiX - A ParaBnormal Fairy Tale Page 32
