Writer’s Haven Finalist Entry [Isaac’s Promise]

Rocks sprayed up into my face, pebbles and dust hitting my eyes as I flinched back. I was turning, she was grabbing another handful of the charcoal up from the freshly spent fire and throwing it back in my face.

"You foul-"

I could hear the words starting to leave her lips, the anger coursing hotly through her. "Shut up, Jess!" I screamed back at her. "Listen to me for a second!"

"You told me this was the last time!"

I knew. I knew it was supposed to be the last time, but I had lied about that. I had lied about a lot of things and I knew I was fully in the wrong and she was completely within her right to feel indignant.

"Everything you've ever told me was a lie!" Jessica screamed at me, tears falling down her face as she picked up another handful of ash and gravel, having dug a little beneath the charcoal and wood bits before she flung another handful at me.

I flinched, feeling a few tiny hot coals sliding down the back of my shirt, into my hair and more powdered black hitting my face. I could taste it on my lips, making me flinch back. I was putting up a hand, unable to laugh, unable to sneer or crack the crooked smile she hated so much when we argued.

"Five years! Five-motherf**king years I waited for you to return to me after you were kidnapped!" Jessica screamed.

"Jess- I'm sorry!" I yelled back, coughing and spitting the black from my mouth.

"Isaac, do you have any idea how I felt! I watched them drag you away! DRAG! I was horrified. There was nothing I could do, you told me to leave it! You promised you'd be back in days and it was nearly five years before I saw you again! I thought you DIED!"

My fangs were aching as the emotions bubbled up. I could recall the previous five years. The first, I had been drug into the LGS as a test subject. They had cut me open, drained my blood and then cycled it back into me. They burned me with UV lights, sampled squares off my skin and then threw me in a white cell before pairing me up with a boy who barely knew anything outside of the white walls of his 'play room', but he wasn't a boy. No, he was a seventeen-year-old young man that seemed to have grown up in it all. The pain of seeing someone grow up that way made my heart squeeze, my teeth ache at what he possibly saw and I shut up about the torment after a while. I think my lack of a reaction was probably what kept me alive as they figured I was a good enough candidate that they paired me up with him as his companion. Sinclair. That was his name. What hurt more was knowing the kid was, the head scientist, Dietrich Volkov's very own biological son. At first, it was a soul-sucking feeling, but then hearing directly from the man himself - when he was scolding Sinclair for his fear of needles - that he was nothing more than a failed experiment that he was going to have work out the kinks on made my heart sink. Even if my parents weren't the best, they never... They never gave birth to me for the pure sake of being used as a tool. What the hell kind of sh*t excuse was that? That wasn't the only thing I went through with Sin. No, that was only the beginning.

"Jess, you have to listen to me! Please! Just hear me out!"

"What? What? So I can hear another excuse about how you're going to leave me alone? What? You're doing drugs, Isaac!" she screamed. "We're vampires, we don't even get high! It's hard enough to get drunk! You're telling me you experimented with- with- with some stupid drug to see if it was enough to sell... ARE YOU INSANE! It could have had Wisteria in it and it could have been the end of you! What am I supposed to feel if you die on me? You turned me! You told me we'd be together forever!"

I winced at that, knowing exactly what that meant. I had promised her forever. I had promised her more and for the better part of the last decade prior to my disappearance, I had maintained that. We had skipped our homely little small town, rode out into the night in my small, beat up black BMW, and then ate at diners till our cash dwindled. What went wrong was that one of the dinners had a guy named 'Shim' that promised quick and easy work. He said he'd pay well. Well- He didn't pay well, in fact- He didn't pay me at all! He also didn't give me work either. He was just looking for the quickest sucker and I was it. Bit me, turned me out of pity because he pretty much killed me then left. I struggled for weeks with that and he didn't even tell me he was a vampire. No. I had to figure that out the hard way.

I had to nearly attack Jessica who knows how many times. Bury myself in shallow graves off the side of the road if a hotel wasn't close enough and eventually get the hang of it till I was fully able to handle it. The compulsion was the niftiest trick of it all, giving us free passage wherever I wanted and gas. Sure, Jess had her misgivings about me stealing, but was it really that bad when no one remembered it? Remembered us? The bulk of it wasn't even the worst of it. The worst of it was when I tried to compel a cashier to a small grocery mart in the middle of nowhere. My mistake was thinking there wasn't any other supernatural types like myself. She nearly shredded me to bits when she found out we didn't have money. What's more, she wasn't a vampire like myself. She was a werewolf and as I lay in the parking lot, bleeding out as she slapped the Closed sign on her window and locked the door, shutting out the lights... Jessica kept calling my name while I bled out. What I don't remember was how she got me back up. I just remember my fingers digging into her wrist, the blood pouring in and the relief. Oh, the relief was so good, but she was so very much near death. I had nearly killed her that time and that's when I desperately made the promise before turning her, before desperately trying to fix my wrong for the final time and shoving my blood into her lips, hoping I could replicate the very thing done to me. Well- it worked. And here I was now, eating my own words as she cried at me.