𝐇𝐚𝐥𝐟-𝐁𝐫𝐞𝐞𝐝

Serpent Heart Hid With A Flowering Face

Don't try to play God. It becomes addictive.

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And her brother is standing beside her as she's cleaning her hands in the sink. Red drips from her fingers like wine, although she knows that they don't taste the same. Scrubbing and scrubbing. If only she could peel the skin off and toss it away. All the water and soap in the world couldn't wash the blood off her hands.

He pleads; "Please, Birdie. . .no more fighting. It'll only bring you closer to death."

Naïve. Pure and golden and naïve.

"I walk with death every day."

He steps closer, concern cutting into his face when she flinches away. "It doesn't mean you have to keep walking,"

Yes, it does.

"Well, why not? I fight back, I don't start it. If they want to behave like feral animals, then I'll gladly put them down."

"You sound like mother,"

Mother, mother, mother. She comes closer like a snake, with needles and a cutting smile, 'my little beast, my monster.'

"She had one thing right, you have to be bloodless to survive."

"Stop all of this – please, Aurora. You can't go on like this."

Lovely Golden Boy, Aurora thinks, so willing to ignore the truth. If he just looked closer, peered into her brain, held her eyes and searched them the way he used to when she was a child, then he might understand.

What was it that Macbeth said?

'Stars, hide your fires;
Let not light see my black and deep desires.'

If only Golden Boy understood.

.

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Don't try to play God. It becomes addictive.

The first time is always the scariest, you could say. The blood is always thicker and redder than one had supposed, and the last look of life – regret, fear, anger, shock – that quickly flashes through the wide orbs stay with you until the shock wears off. You watch as the light slips away, you know you caused that. You shed tears, perhaps, you sob and shake. We can forgive such emotional performances; it is your first time after all. You can capture the universes' pity, for a day, maybe a week.

But the universe will not be so generous the next time.

And there will be a next time. It is the way of things. You start to crave it. Having been human – and weak – for so long, one taste of that supreme power is enough to set your heart aflame. If you can do this, if you can survive this, you can do anything. Who is to stand in your way? Let them come, a whole mob of angry moralists. The second time is different though. You swipe the knife, you slice the flesh, you cut the blue veins open and watch as blood runs from it like water from the Nile, but you don't blink. You've seen it before. You already know what it looks like to watch a man bleed to death. It no longer causes wonder.