Deadly Beautiful. - Vivian Vargas (the beginning after the end read novel .txt) 📗

The thought made me feel remorseful. I will be leaving her. Her every effort to help me stay strong and alive will be for nothing. She would believe that I was dead. I was betraying her.
And my parents. I have once believed that they did not care for me. I strongly believed that in fact. I was naught but a ghost to them as I roamed the halls, sick and specter-like. They paid me little attention. For a long time I had craved that dearly. Surely I had enough love from Sue, but was it so much to ask that I needed some love once in a while from my mother and father, or were they so prim and busy that they had no time for their little sick daughter? No, I promised them, I would not feel any harsh feelings towards them. Before I leave them today, I will tell them that I love them, that I always understood the pressure laid on their shoulders, being parents of a child that was doomed to die before their time.
In fact, I was going to do that right now. I got up from the pillows of my bed and stretched. All my brittle bones cracked and popped. I was so pathetic it was frightening, but I soothed myself with the notion that soon, I will be stronger than steel.
There was a light knock on the door. “Come in.” I answered, and then the door opened. Sue came rolling in with my breakfast tray and a steaming mug of her potion. Her round, wrinkled face was tired and pudgy, her hands sore, knobby and red. When I die, will she have work to do besides this? How was her life before she met me, a constant worry? Why did she have to grow so attached to me? Why must I have grown so attached to her? This was not helping the process of so many weeks of preparing me to live without my family!
She set the breakfast table on my lap and then without a word, proceeded with her morning duties of checking my temperature and then giving me my medicine. I stared at her the whole time. I could not help it. Sue was so beautiful in her own way. Everyone had to be, in one way or the other.
“I love you, Sue.” I said suddenly, unable to contain the feeling inside of me. She stopped, pausing midway upon pouring some brown syrup into a spoon. The spoon overflowed and the liquid dripped onto my bed sheet covers. Hastily, she scrambled to clean up her mess meanwhile I watched her. I knew that I have taken her breath away. I knew that I have flustered her. But I did what I did because I must. I cannot die and then never leave her with anything to hold on to when time passes on.
“Why, Morgan,” she said finally, sounding quite teary, “I love you too.”
She fed me the syrup and kissed me on the forehead, afterwards imploring me to eat my breakfast and drink that hated potion. My heart was racing with sorrow. I was going to miss her, my pedantic little Sue.


I dressed for the day. I put on a nice blue taffeta dress that my mother had given me a while back. Maybe this would turn her to my favor. Maybe this little act would help her take me seriously. After all, how could I tell her that I was planning on dying? How would that make me look like? I was not particularly close to her and she knew that too.
To warm himself to my father, who was a tad deal more docile than my mother, I put on my sweet sixteen crown. I like how the tiny diamonds on it shone and accentuated all the prettier areas of my face. My father would like that. My quiet, morose father. How I would miss him.
I exited my dressing room. I will be leaving this house behind. All of its forlorn riches, its despondent childhood memories. This was to be the very last day that I would ever walk these hallways, decorated with the portraits of my ancestors, its high Victorian windows festooned with rich maroon curtains, gamble trim, Italianate decorations and exterior. The smell of ancient dust and old things and death clung to my nostrils, a smell I was so accustomed to. It was the scent of my death, soon coming. It will be my memories that would inhabit these halls. Will they haunt those who loved me, as they walk in my very same footsteps the next day?
The idea was presentiment. What I will do in due time will hurt everyone. If they ever find out that I became a vampire, or my mother would say, gave my soul to the devil, they would see me as a traitor to our Christian family.
They cannot find out. They won’t. I will make sure of it. I will run with Liam in the dead of the night, and leave my family behind. It was a selfish thing to do, but they had no idea…
They never really did.
I found my mother and father in the tea room as I thought I would. They were not facing the entrance to the door, and so I found myself looking at their backs. I approached them quietly, my heart thumping louder than anything else in the room to a point that I would not b surprised if they heard it with their unremarkable human ears, I cleared my throat, announcing my presence. My mother was the first to look around with a calm, welcoming expression, but was it because that the morning was so lovely outside that it was practically impossible to be forlorn like she usually was. She usually looked upon me with a disapproving grimace, but not today? Was it the dress? Maybe it was.
“Good morning Morgan. Happy Birthday.” She commented in her velvety, throaty voice, eyeing my garb thoughtfully. My mother was a beautiful woman, with soft, dainty hands, a slender white throat, and a pretty, peachy face set with large gray eyes, the same as mine, and a tiny, pedantic mouth. Her long ginger hair was tied back in a tight chignon, making her look serious, not a person to mess with. She wore a red hobble skirt and a mid-collar ruffled shirt coat tied at the neck with an ivory cameo. On that cameo was a picture of a face, but I could not see who it was. When my mother caught me looking at it, her little elegant hand flew up to her throat, covering it.
My father had since turned around to look at me. I looked more like my father, for we both possessed brown locks and a fuller, plum-colored mouth. I also had my father’s cleft chin and dimples, and slightly darker skin. His eyes were mysteriously black. My father was a very handsome man, though he has lived a lifetime in the face of abuse despite his wealth. My father’s mother was a Gypsy, and his father was a Scot, both races who were not very accredited in Britain. His large green eyes pierced mine in a way that made me look away.
“Happy birthday Morgan.” He said. He rose from his seat and approached me with his arms extended. I fell into his arms and embraced him. I breathed in his musky scent, the strong aroma of his favorite velvet undercoat, the slightly burnt odor of gunpowder, probably from his usual early morning hunt. The smell made my eyes sting with tears, and I did my best to keep them from falling.
“Morgan, look at you. Eighteen already. You are a woman now.” Mother said. She rose from her seat, pouring me a small cup of tea and handed it to me. I took it gingerly. Her beautiful hands were warm. “You look so beautiful.” She added, curling a lock of my hair around her finger, pulling it gently, and then letting it go again like it was a spring. I wanted to say that I was nowhere near as beautiful as she. My mother was an elegant woman.
“Mother…” said quietly, unsure how the next words would come from my mouth. What I had thought about saying before in my room seemed to easy then. It was too hard now.
“Yes?” she urged me to go on. Her gray eyes, smoky and pretty, pierced into mines. Mines were not smoky like hers. Mines were dull and steely. I waited for a bit, and then brought the cup of tea to my lips and drank to buy me some time.
“I love you. Both of you. And I understand. I understand everything.” I said so quietly that it felt like I was barely breathing. I finished my cup of tea quickly, quite un-ladylike, and then gave the cup back to her. She was staring at me with confusion. So was my father. But what else can I say to them expect that, without giving myself away? I had a sickening feeling that if I were to say anything else; the truth would spill from my mouth like an overturned sack of beans.
When I left, I did not mind when neither of them repeated my heartfelt annotations. I knew, deep in my heart, they were wanted to say the same thing, but went for so long without actually saying they no longer knew how.
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Publication Date: 05-10-2010

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