This Beauty That I'm Faking [Ch. II]

Chapter Two

“So how was school?” Tom asks me, as I dump my school stuff on the couch.
“I got an A for an poem we had to write in English class,” I shrug.
“That’s great, I’m happy for you. What did you have to do?”
“Use a lot of imagery. Touch, smell, taste, sound, sight. To describe a place. I described the waterfall. Well, behind the waterfall. In the cave. It was nothing, really, the teacher just grades really nicely,” I shrug, pouring myself a tall glass of iced coffee.
“No, I don’t believe that. You’ve got this real artistic mind. I really admire you on that aspect, because I would never be able to write as beautifully as you do. My brain is just too scientific to think of half the metaphors you use. You’ve got a talent in language, Petra, you should acknowledge that. Your style is unique, dense, yet it flows with ease. One can only wish to be able to write like you. I’m telling you, you should show it off.”
I blush slightly. People complimenting me on my work always brings a shade of pink to warm up my pale cheeks. The only person who can give me some decent, constructive criticism is my English teacher, who knows exactly which buttons to push to challenge me.
I like challenges. Otherwise, everything would just be dull and boring. But it just seems that, when it comes to my writing, nobody is actually mentally capable of criticizing it. Which makes me blush to know that I’m actually good, and people aren’t just being polite to make me happy.
That’s really the only thing I’m good at, the only thing I treasure: my writing. Nothing else would matter if I could just have music, papers, pens and coffee.
“Thanks, Tom,” I smile.
Tom Shepard. After the death of my father, I was sent off to live with an aunt who I’d never heard of. She didn’t want me; she already had five kids to take care of. She didn’t care about me or for me, and was nearly ecstatic when Tom showed up at her doorstep. And then just like that, over three cups of tea, I ended up in the passenger seat of Tom’s black BMW.
He told me his story on the way to Lee Rush. Of how he saw his brother brutally murder a man: my father, to be precise. He said that he knew my father, and from the way he talked about him, I knew that he wasn’t bullshitting. He admitted to me that he was a schizophrenic, just like me. That’s how what he saw altered him. His story was parallel to mine, and that night, I found out that all that he told me on the trip to this village? None of it was lies. It was the whole, complete truth. That’s how I came to trust him. Petra and Tom, friends, housemates…
Then there’s Bella and Thomas. Lovers. Partners in crime. Monsters who have an invisible force that pushes us down to our knees.
“You guys should totally hook up,” Bella appears on top of the stairs, her face stretched into a smile, as always, an evil smile that makes you want to punch her teeth down her neck. “We can be like… twin couples! Wouldn’t that be just so badass?”
“Go away!” I roar, my fists trembling. “You’ll be able to be me soon, so just shove it!”
“I love the way you talk to me, it’s just so adorable,” she giggles, making her way down the stairs, and in her dress, she looks like a dancer on her way to perform at a cabaret, in a movie or something. “Thomas is so nice to you, Petra, he compliments you, and right now he’s thinking of how amazing it would be to savor you, the touch of your smooth, soft skin beneath his hand, he’s imagining your frustrated moans and delighted screams…”
“Bella?” Tom glances at the, through his eyes, empty space on the first step of the stairs, where my gaze was fixed, shooting daggers with my piercing dark eyes.
“That’s her, alright,” I reply, not taking my eyes off my mirror image, taunting me incessantly, running her fingers through my friend’s hair, placing pouty kisses along his jaw line. “And she’s a slave to your body.”
“Who isn’t, when I’m this gorgeous?” Thomas answers to my comment, his emerald green eyes gleaming, shifting from their usual clear shade to a darker, more opaque one. And it’s not even because of the light.
“My darling!” Bella squeals, grabbing Thomas’s face in her hands. “Wouldn’t you agree that he just looks so… deliciously evil, Petra banana?”
She advances, striding to where I was standing, like a helpless, vulnerable prey suddenly small against its predator, with nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.
It would be useless to run, anyway, and useless to hide. But what’s even more useless is wasting my energy on resisting it, fighting it so hard. I feel her presence all around me now, pushing in, and I feel like I’m drowning in the suddenly hot and heavy air. Claustrophobia takes the wheel and steers me back and forth, left and right, stumbling over myself, sending me crashing down to my knees, groaning in pain because of the way she’s trying to reach inside, break the iron door of my resistance, my whole body throbbing with the blood that’s starting to boil inside my veins, shaking and flexing all my nerves and muscles, making sweat bullets race down the sides of my face. Won’t… give… in…
The reason why I suffer to force her to fight is to show her that if she thinks I’m weak, she’s wrong. I’m getting stronger and stronger everyday and I’m not… letting… her… take… control…
Kicking out, unleashing screams more freely now, fiercely rolling around on the floor, unaware of all of my surroundings, the house has evaporated, the floor has corroded away, the threatening, tall silhouette of Thomas standing over me blurring and whisking away. My teeth grind against each other and I breathe out in yells of pain, my head exploding, tears streaming down my cheeks to join the blood leaking from the crescent-shaped slashes on my hands from digging my nails into them so hard, trying to manifest against the beautiful death…
Clawing my own neck… a part of me just wants to give in… exhausted… surrender and finish the endless battle where I already know who will triumph… but I still push on anyway… however, the power that she possesses… the omnipresence of her is slowly conquering every square inch of my body… and I know that she’s only pushing on with only a fraction of her power…
My heart is pounding so loudly against my ribs that its vibration is felt in my spine… my ears ringing with the boom, boom, boom of it… accelerating and knocking harder and harder against my ribs that it actually hurts and aches… I just want to rip my chest apart and tear my heart out so it will stop bruising my bones… I’m losing and my body knows it… I start to loosen my grip… I start to lose my senses…
I’m slipping away now, the monster sliding slowly into my skin… I just hang there limply, letting her enter and take over… hot and cold my blood runs through my body, pumping a newfound energy that does not belong to me into a black heart that has restarted to work.
I let out a final cry of agony, but it comes out an amused laugh.
Then I was no longer Petra Gallagher.

“Welcome back, Bella Muerte.”