rot

The teeth never come out easily.

Of course, they’re not supposed to come out, past the baby years. Evolutionarily, those whose teeth fell out would be at a severe disadvantage. Doesn’t make the work any less annoying, though. It’s only ever satisfying when they come out with a pop, blood gushing from newly-empty holes.

Which means the current state of affairs, standing over some barely alive human’s body with a pair of pliers – rusty from continuous use – is deeply fucking unsatisfying. Even the groans don’t help.

I feel the aura of one so achingly familiar behind me, near the doorway, but I do not turn. I have to get this fucking tooth out.

“Mysti,” they call, voice wobbly. Something is definitely off. Normally they’re just in here to talk. Or try to get me to hang out with them.

I look up to meet their - no, his this time – eyes. As ice blue as ever. Once upon a time I thought they were pretty. Now I just wonder what it would look like if the veins in there popped and filled the whites with blood.

Blood. All I’ve had for the past two weeks. It makes one awfully hungry.

“What do you want?” I ask. The voice scrapes along the edges of my vocal chords.

“Can we…” He pauses. I think about the times he woke me up with a knife to my throat, back in that little house. It intermixes with memories of his head buried in the crook of my neck. My chest aches. “Can we talk?”

“We are.” I huff, looking back at the near-corpse. Its life force is fading. I don’t want to heal it. Not with him here. Nothing about this conversation seems right. I can’t figure out why.

“Can we talk somewhere else?”

No, I want to say. But I don’t. I know he hates this room – he isn’t fucking depraved. Like I seem to always be. “…Fine,” I ground out. I toss down the pliers. The coat I am wearing – black leather and smelling so strongly of cloves – feels off. I readjust it and walk to him. “Where to?”

His eyes widen, pulling back a bit. He seems so withdrawn from me these days. Though frankly, I’m really the one withdrawing, studying bodies in my lab. Everyone is simply too irritating. He turns and walks into the hallway, footsteps almost invisible. I follow, and seal the door behind me. It booms, stone slamming stone and suddenly forced into a stop.  There’s a wince afterwards, making strings of annoyance twist in my gut. He’s heard it a thousand times, it’s fucking irritating that it spooks him now.

“Here, I guess. I just didn’t want to talk with all those bodies around.” He says, and I notice the way he’s scratching at his fingers.

“Pussy,” I chuckle, but it’s as hollow as all my other amusements. “So tell me, what did you want?”

There’s a shimmer in his eyes before they move to the floor. Like he’s about to fucking cry. Again. “Mysti, I…”

He’s hesitating. “Spit it out.”

“I can’t be with you anymore.”

A wave of emotion, something sharp and spitting arises in my chest and claws its way through my throat and jaw and wraps itself around my skull. On impulse, I frown, then bite the inside of my cheek until I am quickly blank once more. “Alright, it’s your loss.”

“This will be the last time we talk, then.” He looks at me with those shimmering blue eyes. I wish he wasn’t fucking here. “…I’m sorry.”

It is all I can do, biting on my cheek until I taste iron, to keep myself blank as much as possible. There are thorns sticking into every organ in my chest and in my throat and all the way down to my hands. Puncturing every organ, every vein, every bit of me. I suck in a breath, and speak in a tone void of anything but words. “There’s no need. You were only a distraction and a hindrance anyway.”

“I know.” He looks away, sending up more emotional tendrils into my flesh.  “Goodbye.”

“At least do the dignity of looking at me,” I ground out.

He looks into my eyes and I am haunted by the thought that he used to look at me like I was the only thing that fucking mattered. Those blue eyes show nothing but acknowledgement now. “Goodbye, Mysti.”

He turns and walks away, leaving me to… whatever this fucking emotion is. I open up the lab door and close it behind me, carefully enough that it does not betray my mask of nonchalance.

I feel like I am being punctured by a thousand fucking needles. My eyes water.

There is a moan from some half-dead human nearby. I pick the knife off the rack next to me and walk over to them, then stab them. Again. And again. And again.

The corpse is a mangled mess when I’m through, and I sink to the floor. I feel no better, but stare at my handiwork anyway. Blood oozes from everywhere, running down every piece of exposed flesh and pooling onto the floor.

I want to fucking mangle the flesh from his bones, rip him apart with my bare hands. Taste angel flesh in my mouth, angel blood down my throat. But it is senseless. Useless.

Instead, I stare at my handiwork, trying not to think of how I am giving myself over, slowly, to this hunger. To this rot. That all of this isolation is my fault.

Try not to. There is nothing.

There is nothing.