A/N: Hi, guys! So, for july month my summer job is going to get pretty crazy (50+ hours a week plus about 14 hours of transport) so I’m not a hundred I’ll be able to post every Friday. I’ll try though, but no promises 😉
Anyway, here’s this Friday’s story: Enjoy and comment!
It wasn’t that Meredith was bullied or anything. After all; in order to be bullied she would first have to be noticed, and Meredith was… well, she was as close to invisible as you could get without it becoming kind of cool.
She spent her days in school sitting in the back of the class, never raising her hand or in any other way drawing attention to herself. After school she went home to be ignored some more by her parents because they were too focused on the many problems of her older brother. Alcohol, drugs, theft, you name it. It was no wonder that they didn’t have time for the daughter that didn‘t give them any trouble. They were busy enough with one of their children as it were.
The point was that Meredith had gotten used to being lonely. Truth be told she couldn’t remember being anything but. She’d just never been comfortable around other people.
Which was when she discovered the internet.
Cyberspace to be exact.
Suddenly talking with people was just so easy. Hidden away behind a screen, communicating solely through her fingers movement over her keyboard… it was liberating. And Meredith discovered to her big surprise that she was… funny. And smart. And even flirtatious at times.
Behind the computer she was an entirely different person. She made friends, online dates, even took up sexting. For the first time ever she felt like she actually had a life. That it was a virtual one didn’t matter. For the first time in her life Meredith was happy.
And that was when she met Gabriel.
According to his profile Gabriel was Greek, twenty-six and currently studying history. He was extremely well-read, wicked funny and in his profile picture he was drop dead gorgeous. Meredith was hooked.
They chatted for months, and for the first time Meredith knew what it felt like to be in love. When Gabriel asked for a photo of her, she spent two days panicking. She knew that she was no beauty queen, but even though it was ever so tempting to photo shop herself into being one, she decided to be honest and send him an unfiltered photo. To her great delight, he wrote back telling her that she was as pretty as he had imagined.
In her own mind she had the perfect relationship. True sometimes she wished that she could kiss him, but who needed physical touch with the connection that they had? Sex had always seemed so undignified, and it never seemed to bother Gabriel either.
It wasn’t long before their messages became declarations of love. Meredith imagined this was how a wife whose husband was off to war would feel. They were passionately in love, but tragically separated by thousands of miles. It was really rather romantic.
Meredith wasn’t lonely any longer. She’d found someone, and she was in love, and she was happy. Everything was perfect.
At least until Gabriel wrote her telling her that he came to the States. Suddenly there was no hiding behind the screen.
Meredith had three weeks until his visit, and she used them as best as she could. She started out by beginning a diet, hoping those three weeks would be time enough to lose at least five pounds. She also started exercising, and even stole a fifty from her mother’s purse to help her buy a new outfit.
One thing was a picture, but in real life she couldn’t stand the thought of him seeing her in jeans and a hoodie. She wanted to be… well, as pretty as she could be with what she’d been given.
When the day came she didn’t tell her parents where she was going. She was seventeen after all, and as usual they were going through yet another episode with her brother.
So she skipped school and took the train to Boston to meet him there. He’d already sent her his address. Rented a small apartment somewhere in the city. She took a cap there, unable to stop herself from smiling the entire ride over.
It was frightening knowing that she suddenly had to speak rather than write, but it was also exhilerating. She hadn’t felt alive like this outside of the virtual world before.
When the cap stopped, however, she was sure for a second that the cap driver had driven her to the wrong place. Only his vehement assurances made her realise this was indeed the address Gabriel had given her.
There could be no doubt that this was what one would deem a bad neighbourhood. The kind that consisted of dark alleys and ignored screams.
But Gabriel had mentioned that money was a bit tight, and she so wanted to meet him, so Meredith bravely went to the apartment building that the cap driver had pointed out and went to the third floor. It stunk of pee and garbage, but still Meredith knocked on the door with a hopeful smile on her face.
The Gabriel who opened the door was just as gorgeous as his picture had been, if not more so. Tan skin over tight muscles, impossible white teeth and deep, black eyes. Meredith fell in love all over again if only it was possible.
“Meredith,” he said, sounding pleased. “I’m so glad you came.”
But Meredith couldn’t communicate properly without a keyboard in front of her, and so she only found herself able to smile insecurely in return.
It didn’t seem to bother Gabriel as he busied himself making her a cup of coffee, which Meredith accepted because she was too shy to tell him that she in reality didn’t even like coffee, let alone the strong, black kind that Gabriel served her.
“I have to admit,” Gabriel told her just as the silence between them began to feel awkward. “I wasn’t sure whether or not you were going to come.”
Meredith forced herself to speak. “Of course I was going to come. I had to see you. I love you.” She blushed. Somehow it felt more real when you said the words rather than merely wrote them.
Gabriel sat down his cup of coffee and knelt down next to her. “I love you too,” he told her, before gently kissing the palm of her hand. “I love you more than I can find words to describe. But I have to admit that I’m not sure you really love me as much as you say you do.”
“Of course I do! How could you possible think otherwise?!” To think Gabriel didn’t love her only made sense, but believing the opposite seemed positively ludicrous in Meredith’s mind.
Gabriel smiled bitterly. “Perhaps it would be more appropriate to say that while you love me now, will you still love me when you know the truth?”
“What truth?”
“I’m not quite like you, sweetheart. My people are different.”
“You mean Greeks?”
Gabriel laughed. His laugh was as hauntingly beautiful as the rest of him. Slowly he leaned forward and kissed her. The kiss was short, chaste even, but Meredith suddenly found it hard to breathe just the same.
“I’m not human,” Gabriel whispered in her ear.
Meredith frowned. “What?”
“I’m not human.” Gabriel grinned at her, except rather than the blinding smile from before, all his teeth were an inch long and sharp as razors. In front of Meredith’s eyes the blackness in his eyes grew, until there was nothing left but blackness, and his skin tightened around his bones. She was looking at a monster, but Meredith didn’t move.
Gabriel moved forward and kissed her neck. She couldn’t feel his sharp teeth as she’d expected. Just the languid movement of mouth and tongue. She felt dizzy.
“What are you?” she whispered.
“Isn’t it obvious, sweetheart? I’m a monster.”
Meredith sighed and shifted slightly to make it easier for him as he kissed his way down her throat. “You’re not a monster,” she told him.
“Oh, but I am. I feed off love like a parasite feeds off blood. And you love me, sweetheart. Don’t you?”
“I do,” she whispered, moaning as his teeth scraped against her skin.
“I know,” Gabriel murmured as long, clawed fingers grasped her arms tightly. It hurt, but Meredith didn’t complain. “I can’t get any substance out of it if you don’t love me.”
“Out of what?” she whispered.
Gabriel nibbled at her ear. “Your blood, sweetheart. Your sweet, sweet blood.”
“Blood.” She should be terrified, she was terrified, but mostly she was just exited.
“I can have it, can’t I?” He gently bit down upon her neck, his teeth breaking her skin so a single drop of blood trickled down her neck.
Meredith moaned. “Yes. God yes. You can have everything.”
His tongue flickered against her skin, licking up the drop of blood. “I knew you’d die for me, sweetheart,” he told her. “You’re such a good girl. So loyal. A kicked dog. My little sacrifice. My meal. My sweetheart.”
And then he bit down, hard, and Meredith moaned in a confusing mixture of pain and pleasure. Somewhere in the haze she thought she saw blood splatter, and Gabriel kept biting her, kept tearing out flesh.
It didn’t hurt for long. Soon she couldn’t feel much of anything. She knew that she was dying, but she didn’t care much. What could be better than to die for love?
She knew, realised, that Gabriel didn’t love her, not really, but at least she could give him this. She could give him her love. She loved him.
Gabriel kept tearing at her flesh until bone showed. He savoured the mixture of the bitterness of her raw flesh with the sweet nectar of her blood. This had been worth the wait. Had been worth the tedium of having to deal with her boring little problems until she finally fell irrevocably in love with him.
Soon her body fell towards him, but Gabriel barely noticed that it was now a corpse he was holding in his embrace. Her flesh was still warm, and her blood still flowed freely, and so he ate until he was satisfied, before he left her behind without a glance back at the girl who had loved him and died for it.
Meredith would be found two days later. They used a closed casket for her funeral.
She would hardly have been recognizable, and the sight of her half-eaten body did nothing to comfort her grieving family.
mariasjostrand 