Alley Cat

My werewolf bite takes hold of my body at a rapid pace. The venom hitches a ride through my veins, circulating around my organs, and shuts down every vital area it passes. I can see the effects in the back of my eyes. One by one, switch by switch, the lights are turning off. Soon, my flame will be snuffed. Exhausted. I’ll be gone...this time for good.

But I still have time. Daphne’s left her office door unlocked, granting me easy access to her whereabouts. I enter her domain with staggering footsteps and am surprised by the sight before me.

I had expected bodyguards and death traps. I had expected to be ambushed upon arriving. I expected gunshots, charging wolves, and possibly explosions. Instead, I found myself staring down at a disinterested Daphne sitting at her office table. There’s a vacant look in her eyes as she gazes at a Newton’s cradle perched nicely in front of her. Her vast blue eyes rock back and forth, following the outer silver balls at the end of the cradle. When one ball slams against a row of its stationary sisters, it sends the opposite outer ball flying on the other side.

Click. Click. Click.

The cradle succeeds in captivating my attention and lowers my guard just enough so I could process my pain. My legs give out from underneath me, and I fall flat on my face. The fall crushes my nose, sending waves of pain throughout my crippled body. My muffled groans add to my humiliation.

“Aww...you got bit.” Daphne says from the comfort of her chair. Her flat intonation reveals her boredom at my pathetic attempt to play hero. My current position leaves me vulnerable to an attack. If she wanted to, she could have jumped me right then and there. I wait for a sound, for a clue that indicates a sudden change in movement. The stillness in the air means that she’s chosen to stay right where she is.

“Hell yeah I got bit.” I pull myself up to a kneeling position. Rivers of blood stream through my nostrils, so I tilt my head back. “Hurts like a bitch, too. Say, if I didn’t know any better, I would have thought that you were expecting me.”

“You should have trusted your instincts because I’ve been waiting for you.”

Daphne removes her gaze from Newton’s cradle to meet mine. Her eyes are a mesmerizing sapphire blue. They shimmer under the flickering office lights. They’re gemstones. Deceiving and worthless. At the end of the day, every jewel is a rock no matter what price tag you stick them with. That’s all gems are; they’re pretty little rocks for people to gawk at.

“Waiting to finish me off?” I say with a proud scoff.

“Eager to.” Daphne stands from her seat and makes her way towards me from around her table. I see that she’s dressed in business woman attire. Her shoulders stick out like plates underneath her heavily padded blazer. Her dress pants are iron pressed to create crisp lines sharp enough to cut a bitch. And the length of her heels are so thin that they resemble hypodermic needles. One press of her foot can stab straight through my heart.

“But not yet.”

Daphne’s sapphire eyes flit back to her Newton’s cradle. Each click the balls dazes her out. She sucks in a deep breath like she’s trying to inhale the cradle’s essence, its consistency, its steady rhythm. The cradle is law abiding. It is constant. Without any interruptions, it could swing forever.

“Why?”

Pain shoots up my arm and I wince. I accidentally bite down on my lips in the process. My mouth tastes like lead.

“At this rate, I’ll die before you get to do anything. Don’t you want your revenge after I foiled your plan? Your humans are gone. This building is going down. Your brother has betrayed you. And telling from the absence of your father, it wouldn’t be far fetched to say that I ruined your tight knit family, too.”

Daphne continues to watch the balls swing. Her expression is devoid of emotion, empty of anything that can express how she feels (if she feels anything at all). Stray blonde hairs escape from their tightly pinned prison to frame the harsh angles of her face. Her cheeks sink in on themselves. I don’t think she’s eaten in days. It makes me wonder if this is really the girl that I’ve been searching for. Is this the same girl who is capable of monstrous things? Is she really devoid of ethics, morally destitute like the she-devil I think she is? Because all I see is an empty shell ready to be wiped from existence.

“What did you say to him?” Daphne speaks so softly that I mistake her speech for breath. She repeats herself again. This time her voice trembles on the verge of breakage. “What did you say to him? To Luka?”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“Luka would never have killed our father on his own.” Daphne’s revelation steals the air from my lungs. My knuckles whiten when the truth clicks in. “You put the idea in his head. You’re the reason why my father is dead and why my brother hates me.”

So much for strength without violence.

I close my eyes and release a sigh of disappointment. I should have known that it would happen. I should have known that Luka would beat me to it. Like Daphne, the idea of kind-hearted Luka killing anyone, let alone his father, seemed preposterous. But I know that Luka has done terrible things in the name of love. As a child, he sacrificed his sanity to please his father. As a man, he killed his father to save me. Without pain, he could not have produced the melodious howl of agony I heard moments before. Without pain, we would not be in the precarious situation I am in now.

Daphne towers over me. The discrepancy in our circumstances is incredible. Whereas I am lying on the floor staring at the soles of her heels, Daphne stands tall and glowers down at me. Her polished lips warp to create a messed up smile. As I’ve predicted, Daphne lifts her foot into the air only to press down on my hand in full force. I let out a shrill scream as her heel punctures my flesh. The heel frees itself on the other side of my palm. She continues to stand on my hand as if to gloat.

I groan in agony as blood pools around my hand. The pain is so blinding that I almost pass out. Almost. It’s Daphne’s malicious visage that helps me cling onto the little life I have left inside.

“Of course.” I say through my tears. My tears distort Daphne’s face, giving me some relief. “Blame it on Helene. It’s always easier to take your anger out on a scapegoat, isn’t it?”

“You’re vermin!” Daphne growls and squashes my hand harder. I howl in pain, but the paralysis in my legs keeps me still.

“Yes!” I say, spitting blood. “I’m the vermin that told you to collect humans off the streets to harvest their blood! I’m the one that stood by when your father disowned Luka! I’m the one that devalues life at my disposal, the one who takes advantage of the weak, and uses violence and blackmail to get my way. Come on, Daphne! Own up to what you’ve done!”

“Never.” Daphne’s eyes glow to a neon blue right before she kneels down to wring my neck. She squeezes harder and harder until my airways are blocked. I can’t breathe. My face turns hot as tears stream down my eyes, wetting Daphne’s hands. Every show of weakness disgusts her until she can no longer touch me. She lets go, and I roll over. I gasp for air and choke on the smoke infiltrating through the door cracks.

Daphne takes a deep whiff of smoke. Her nose twitches with every sniff, and she turns to me with a deep growl rumbling in the back of her throat.

“Clever cat. You sealed off our only means of escape with fire.”

“I think that’s the biggest compliment you’ve ever given me,” I retort back, grinning.

Daphne’s expression sours upon the thought of doing me any favors. With my hand nailed to the floor with Daphne’s heel, I swallow hard. I taste the new power the tables have turned for me.

“There are three ways this can go down,” I say while noting the steadily increasing clouds of smoke blackening the air. “We can burn to death when the fire consumes the infrastructure, causing everything to burst into flames. Or...the ceiling will collapse on us when one of my friends shakes this place to the ground. And there’s also the possibility of drowning when another of my feline friends opens the floodgates.”

Daphne leans in to choke me again, but I object.

“OR! Or...we can come to another conclusion if you let me live long enough to tell you about it.”

“Do I get to live in this fourth conclusion of yours?” Daphne’s tone rises at the end to convey her interest.

I nod. “Yes.”

“That’s stupid.” Daphne huffs. She turns to cough into her shoulder. The smoke in the air thickens and suffocates us. “Why would you allow me to live after everything I’ve done? How do you know that I won’t go after Luka? How do you know that I won’t do something incredibly worse? I’m never going to stop hurting people.”

I choke. I cough which spurs a coughing fit. Every time I inhale, I gather more and more smoke into my lungs. Tears sting my eyes. My mouth fills with ash. The temperature in the office rises to the point of baking my skin. Daphne coughs as well, but she refuses to let oxygen deprivation get to her. She spirals into a frenzy, hungry for answers. She stumbles towards me, dragging her feet as she does so, and punches me in the cheek. The dull pain I feel in my face doesn’t begin to compare to the tightening of my chest.

“ANSWER ME!”

The smoke has blinded me, forcing me to shut my eyes to ward of the pain. I hack up smoke only to inhale more into me. “You deserve a second chance. Your father broke you at a young age and you lost the ability to feel. You were deprived of sorrow, of remorse, of love. How could anybody expect you to crave joy when you never felt it?”

“Don’t you dare act like you know me.” Daphne says in a flat and cruel voice. “You and I are not the same.”

“But aren’t we?” I wheeze. I run a dry tongue across my cracked lips and say, “I’ve had my fair share of dysfunctional families. My entire life, or should I say ‘lives’, were governed by deceit. I’ve known what it’s like to love the people who hurt you and hurt them back in return. I have been cruel and numb. I’ve grown bitter and frustrated just like you. And I’ve tried to fill my sadness with blood and money only to find myself falling deeper and deeper into the pit I’ve created myself.”

Daphne stares at me with red rimmed eyes. Her lip begins to quiver. Tears streak her cheeks, bringing life back into her barren face. She doesn’t notice the pain, and I don’t want her notice. Pain is gradual like rain. We forget how powerful it is until the dam breaks.

“Somewhere deep inside your soul is a part that has gone untouched and uncorrupted by madness. I need you to cling onto that. Hold on and never let go. That strength, that goodness, is going to be the only thing that will help you get through this. It’s going to hurt.”

“W-What’s going to hurt?” Daphne catches her own stutter and panics. Only now does she register the tears on her face and her trembling hands. Emotions, new and foreign, bombard her psyche and take siege of her thoughts. “I’m crying. I never cry!” Daphne pulls me by the fabric of my top and yanks me to her face. My head nods off to the side and I drift and out of consciousness. Daphne slaps me awake and I groan.

“Boy, you’re rough.”

She tugs at my hair, slaps me, claws me in my thighs. She tries anything to keep me awake. I can feel her fear through her. I pity her. I can’t imagine what it’s like to feel fear for the very first time in 400 years.

“What do you mean ‘it’s going to hurt’?” Daphne screams.

I rouse from my sleep of death and blink back ash from my eyes. Telling from the temperature in the room, the flames have already burned down the door. Daphne and I are surrounded by blazing orange embers. It’s the only bright spectacle to light up the darkness of smoke.

“Oh yeah...the merger.”

“Merger?” Daphne says with the whites of her eyes exposed.

“Yeah. Before I infiltrated your building, I went to visit a witch. Long story short, that witch was the same witch you fired three years ago and got her son hooked on human blood.”

“Jessie.” Her name drains Daphne’s face of color. Her body stiffens like a corpse.

“I just had the misfortune of killing her son. Now, she agreed to help me if it meant punishing us both. Even as we speak, it’s already happening. Our souls are merging. When I die, a part of me will become a part of you. It’s kind of romantic if you think about it. We’re soulmates.”

“NOOO!” Daphne curls into herself and cries. She convulses with violent shakes as she hits herself in the head. If I had the strength, I would catch her wrists to restrain her but my body is wasting away. It’s getting harder to think. I am living in a nightmare. Hellfire surrounds me, trapping me with a girl gone mad. I can only lie helplessly as Daphne flails in a fit of insanity.

Who is this girl who is so deathly afraid of feeling? Who would rather die than taste the bitterness of guilt? I once thought that some people were born broken. But now I understand that they are created that way. They are created by others, by tragedy, by trauma. But ultimately, they create themselves through the choices they make and the paths they choose.

People like Daphne Russo create themselves to be numb and ruthless as an attempt of self-preservation. People like her believe that it is better to be feared than to be loved. Because if you are feared, people cannot hurt you.

Or so they thought.

What people like Daphne don’t realize is that once you are feared, you become a threat. And all threats are inevitably destroyed.

“You cannot do this to me!”

Daphne grabs me by the hem of my shirt, pinching my skin underneath. She bares her teeth at me, itching to rip my throat out. But she can’t at the cost of her own life.

I flash her one last smile before drifting off. I can feel Daphne shaking me awake, but each sensation grows duller until I feel nothing at all. All the pain I feel disappears as the world darkens around me. The fire becomes comfortably warm.

“NOOO!!!”

I’ve never been so relieved to rest.

“WAKE UP!!!”

My breath slows to a stop.

“WAKE UP!!!”

My heart ceases to beat.

“HELENE!”

I’m gone.