by S.J. Finch
***
Vanessa awoke with a start. Something had roused her. His rumpled imprint on top of the comforter remained, but Ryan was gone. She rolled off the bed and checked her hair in the closet mirror before leaving the bedroom.
She walked slowly down the hall and tried to force herself awake. The early-morning cry and mid-morning nap had left her drowsy, and she was still feeling the effects.
Sunlight flooded through the French doors and splashed onto the table and part of the kitchen counter. She looked down and saw Ryan sitting at the dining room table with his eyes fixed on something in front of him. Vanessa smiled and moved closer. Ryan wasn’t moving. He hadn’t moved since she’d entered the room. He hadn’t looked up at her or even blinked. It didn’t look like he had even breathed.
Vanessa moved closer and the focus of Ryan’s unblinking gaze slid into her own line of sight. Lying there, between Ryan and the fruit bowl centerpiece, was her mother’s gun.
“I couldn’t do it.” He said in a flat voice. He didn’t look up.
Vanessa rushed to the table and grabbed the gun away from him.
“Ryan! Holy…what the hell are you doing?!” She demanded as her voice teetered on the edge of panic.
“I thought I could do it…I was so sure. I was wrong.”
Vanessa tipped the single bullet out of the revolver and put it in her pocket. She set the gun back down on the other side of the table, out of his reach, and sat down across from him. She was furious.
“Ryan, you’re going to tell me exactly what is going on here or so help me, I will call the cops.”
He didn’t say anything. Didn’t move, didn’t blink.
“RYAN!”
Vanessa had kept her voice under control until now, but that was the end of it. She screamed at him in an expulsion of adrenaline.
It seemed to snap him out of it, and Ryan looked at her.
“You don’t have to shout, V.”
“Don’t you dar- you don’t get to call me that! Not right now!” Her eyes were brimming with tears of equal parts anger and fear. Ryan felt bad, but he knew that there were more important things right now than comforting Vanessa.
“I’m sorry I scared you, but I need to talk to you. I need to tell you something.” His voice was still flat, almost robotic.
“Damn right you do. You need to tell me what hell you’re trying to pull.”
“It’ll make more sense if you hear it from the beginning…but I don’t want to start until you’re ready.”
She glared at him, one hand on the gun and the other balled into a fist at her side. Slowly however, her breathing evened out and the tears began to dry themselves.
“This better be one doozy of an explanation.” Vanessa said through gritted teeth.
And so Ryan began. He started with the woods and the truth about what he had seen attack him. He showed her the bite that had never fully healed. He told her about the fistfight with the man. He told her about the transformation, the hunt, and the kill. Then he told her about the bathroom and the strange, alien rage he had felt well up inside him for no reason at all. He told her she was in danger. He told her he was a werewolf.
When he had finished, silence settled between then and the only sounds were their breathing and a few chirps from the birds in the backyard. Vanessa’s gaze had never shifted from Ryan’s eyes and her face had never changed from the seething mask.
When she finally spoke, her tone was quiet and determined, as though she was using all the power she had to keep her tone neutral: like a parent trying to entertain the notions of an unruly child.
“But if you were…I mean, wouldn’t that only be at the full moon?”
“All I know is what I felt. What I did to the mirror, I don’t react like that. I’ve never reacted like that. It wasn’t me.”
Vanessa swallowed hard and cleared her throat.
“Ryan, I know you very well. I know you well enough to be able to tell when you’re lying, and you…you really do believe you’re a werewolf. That leaves two problems: either it’s true and you could turn into a monster at any second, or it isn’t true, but you still believe it is.” She lost her momentum and her breath caught in her throat. She swallowed, exhaled, and continued. “Either way, if you killed somebody, I-”
And then Vanessa’s composure shattered. Her face, her tone, her demeanor, all went from steely calm to unrestrained tears. There were no cries, no sobs, just streams of silent tears. She still held the unloaded gun, but she put both hands to her head anyway and stared at the wood of the table as her tears splashed upon it.
“Vanessa, I need you to look at me.” Ryan said softly, still calm.
She did, through bleary eyes.
“I need you to look into my eyes. I need you to look at the bite on my arm. I need you to believe me when I tell you that I am a monster.”
Vanessa set the gun back on the table with trembling hands and wiped tear tracks from her cheeks.
“Why?” She asked.
“Because if you think I’m crazy, you’ll try to get me help, and then more people will get hurt. Time is the one thing we don’t have. I need you to believe that I’m a monster because…” And then Ryan’s voice broke too. He didn’t cry, there were no tears, his voice simply cracked and dropped to a whisper. “Because I need you to kill me.”
She looked at him with an expression halfway between fury and disbelief.
“Don’t be ridiculous. Of course I’m going to get you help. We’re going to-”
“No. We’re not going to do anything. Look, even if I am just crazy, you said it yourself: that doesn’t change what I’ve done. Nothing can change that. I can’t take it back and I can’t make it right, but you…you can do…you can do what has to be done.”
Ryan watched her face and it hadn’t changed: the mix of pain and confusion and self-doubt, the hurricane of conflict behind sea-blue eyes. He began again.
“I don’t know how to convince you that I’m not insane. All I can do is ask you to trust me. If you don’t do this, if you make me live with what I’ve done…it’s worse than death. And we both know I’ll do it again. Maybe next time it’ll be my parents or Eli or you. This has to end now, and you have to end it. You have to end it before it takes over again. It’s not a life I can live.” He finished. Ryan prayed that he had convinced her. He didn’t have any arguments left, and it was taking all the self-control he had to remain in his seat. Ryan didn’t want to sit here and die, but he knew that’s what had to happen.
“And what about me?” Vanessa asked. “You can’t live with what you did to a complete stranger? How am I supposed to live with doing this to you?”
“Because you’ll be doing a good thing. This world, your world, it’s a better, safer place with me out of it. Someone like me doesn’t belong in it. You’re not killing me, Vanessa, you’re saving me. Saving yourself and everyone else I care about who is now in the line of fire. You’re saving lives.”
She shook her head. “No way.”
“Vanessa, we don’t have time to argue about this. I love you more than anyone in the world, you are my closest, dearest friend. I want you to be the one to do this.”
Her hand had fallen back to the gun as part of a subconscious effort to keep it from Ryan. Now however, the pistol had taken on a very different character and she drew back her hand suddenly as if the gun had become white-hot. She didn’t want to touch it now, she didn’t want anything to do with it. Still, Ryan could see her mind struggling to process all the information. He only hoped that she made a decision quickly: he could feel himself losing his nerve. Ryan wanted to be dead, but he was getting nervous about dying.
Vanessa didn’t say or do anything for a long time. She stared out the window, then down at the gun. Seconds ticked silently into minutes.
Her gaze remained fixed on the small pistol for what felt like an eternity. Ryan slid his hand across the table and into hers: it was limp and lifeless and did not return
his reassuring squeeze.
The only reaction Ryan registered was a tear that slid down the side of her reddened cheek. A tear to match hers dropped from one of his eyes, then the other.
Finally she looked up at him, and Ryan felt Vanessa squeeze his hand with all her might. He squeezed right back, then let his eyelids fall.
Birds flitted from branch to branch. Dying leaves lost their grip and spun slowly to the ground. Squirrels scampered carefree up one trunk and down the other.
There was silence, utter and complete, and then a bang.
