What did you do to your friends, Marshall?
an excerpt from Halfborn
“Hey, Marshall, do you ever miss
your old life?” I asked timidly.
A jolt of confusion flowed from
him. He quickly reined it in before he answered. “No,” he said, slightly angry.
“Why would you ask me that?”
“Because . . . I think you should
miss it. At least a little.” I sat down across from him. “I mean, there has to
be something you're upset about losing.”
“I can't think of anything I
wouldn't mind losing if being with you is what I get in return. I was a college
student with no major, and I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. Now,
I have a brand-new start with no need to know what kind of job I'll need to die
at—just trying to scrape by and survive.” He glanced out the window, and some
feeling I couldn't figure out revealed itself briefly.
“You didn't have any friends? No
one you cared for? No one you miss?” I asked, pushing him to show
something—anything—for everything he must have lost.
“Yeah, I had friends; not that it
matters. Besides, they're better off I'm gone.” He looked at me, and then down
to his hands.
The feeling I couldn't identify
slipped to me from him, again. Regret? Then it was gone. I thought back to the
night he'd killed his parents—to the car ride home. He'd been so racked with
guilt, with remorse, and then it was gone. I wondered then: did Marshall know
he was controlling his feelings or was it merely by accident and some sort of
survival instinct?
“What did you do to your friends,
Marshall?” I asked before I could stop myself.
The regret flowed back,
accompanied by anger. I didn't really want him angry with me. I'd seen what he
was capable of, but he needed to work at least some of his issues out before he
turned me into an uncontrollable monster.
He brought his eyes back up to
meet mine. His eyebrows pinched together above the bridge of his nose. “Friend.
What did I do to my friend, because I really only had one true one,” he said.
“Well, Marshall?” I urged.
He shook his head, and the
corners of his lips turned down. “I slept with his fiancée . . . Is this what
you want to hear? That I'm a backstabbing asshole that fucks his only friend's
girl.”
Out of everything I could've
thought, the words he spoke seemed far from any of it. I didn't know why. I
didn't even know Marshall, really. We'd been thrust together by a mystical
occurrence. I was shocked by what he'd said, but I also felt betrayed. Though,
I had no right to. He hadn't wronged me, and I didn't even know him when he'd
done it.
He seemed so . . . loyal. Maybe
the betrayal I felt was because I didn't want to believe he could do something
like what he said he'd done. Like he had lied to me, but I could tell what he'd
said was the truth.
He gave me a minute to process his
words. When I hadn't responded, he continued, “That's why I was at that stupid
burger place. I was breaking things off with her. Jared, my friend, had found
out and was falling apart. He wouldn't speak to me, and I didn't blame him. I
hated myself. Maybe I still do.”
“Damn it, Marshall,” I said as
his self-loathing and hate washed over me. “I didn't know. Why didn't you say
something sooner?”
“Why would I? I'm not going back
to that life. It doesn't matter anymore.”
“But what if it does matter,
Marshall?” I asked. “What if you holding these feelings back, hiding them
inside, is keeping you from being able to control more important things? Even
if you don't realize you're putting in an effort to block these things, you
are, and I think it's making it harder for you to block other things. Like, I
don't know, your bloodlust? At least that's what I'm beginning to believe. You
need to deal with this stuff.”
“I have. I put it behind me. It's
been forgotten. Well, until you brought it up!” He slammed his fist down on the
table.
“You're wrong. Or else you
wouldn't be so pissed right now.”
“God damn it, Coral! When I was laying
there, thinking I was dying . . . I resigned. I decided I deserved death. That
I'd brought it upon myself. I made peace with everything.”
I placed my hands on his and
tried to comfort him, but he was so angry. “But you didn't die. Not exactly.
You're still here. And then, you did something far worse than having sex with
someone you shouldn't have.”
He jerked his hands away and
stood up, taking several steps back. “Don't! Don't fucking do this, Coral! I
can't. I won't.” The remorse, the sadness, the undeniable despair that rolled
between us was short lived and was quickly replaced by a rage that burned so
hot it began to draw out both our bloodlust.
Shit, that wasn't what I
expected. Sadness, grief, tears. That's what I expected. Not for me to be touched
with my own fear that my life could be in danger. I had the thought that I
should have ended the conversation, that I should have quit pushing him, but I
knew not dealing with these things would only allow everything to stay as it
had been. No control over anything, just mindless killing, and that was going
to do something to me that scared me more than death. I had to try.
I mentally clawed my way through
the rage and past the bloodlust that boiled below the surface, and I found the
things Marshall didn't want to feel. I let those feelings flow into me, and I
tried to push them back at him. This made his rage grow more, and the bloodlust
leaked through further.
“You just keep getting angrier,
Marshall, but we are going to talk about this. You are going to confront this!”
My voice got louder as I spoke, as the anger seeped past my barriers.
A manic laugh bubbled from his
lips, and the wildness, I'd grown familiar with when we fed, filled his eyes.
“You think you can make me do something I don't want to do?”
“I don't think you'll do anything
to hurt me, Marshall!” My words came out more confident than I felt.
More manic laughter filled the
small space. “You don't think so? Keep this stupid shit up and see what
happens.”
It's not that I didn't believe
him. I did, but the facts weighed too heavy on me not to finish what I'd
started. I ripped the band-aid off, and I said what I should have said weeks
before, “Marshall, you killed your parents! That has to have some kind of
effect on you. Ignoring it isn't going to change what happened.” At some point,
I had stood up, and I was staring into Marshall's eyes, issuing a challenge,
when my words ended.
A sound, I could only describe as
a growl, rattled up from his chest and left through his clenched teeth. I
didn't move. I wouldn't back down, but I also didn't dare give him reason to
think I was fleeing.
“Marshall, you need to calm down.
Get yourself under control!” I shouted at him.
“What? This isn't the reaction
you wanted?” he asked, his rage and bloodlust spiked so high that I nearly
leapt at him.
I composed myself as much as I
could. “You need to grieve your losses. You need—”
My head hit the dining table as
my body fell to the floor from Marshall's weight on top of me. I didn't even
see him move; he was just there, attacking. Everything was going dark as I felt
his teeth rip into my neck.
*Halfborn is available on Amazon. Grab your copy, ebook or paperback, here. Thank you for your support! I love my readers. 💖
