Chapter 14: Solaris

After I'd returned to my bed last night, I felt him join me. Not to sleep, I don't think he does that. His hand raised the back of my cardigan and slowly, I felt his cold hand massaging the soreness in my back. It had hurt when he threw me to the edge like that so it felt nice.

He was being very careful and gentle, kinder than he was earlier and when he was done, he carefully put back my cardigan down but before he could slip back out, I turned to him, laying on my side. He paused, staring at me. I didn't say a word but he seemed to understand what I wanted as he laid back down, staying on his side so we could face each other.

I was sure he had many things to say then, perhaps an apology but I didn't need that. He seemed to know that or suspected it so when I curled into his body, he held me close and stayed quiet all through it.

Now, I don't think I'm in a very good mood anymore. He's all smiles as I walk out of my room. I feel like shit and my hair is more frizzy and chaotic than usual. Calisa brushes against my leg but I don't pick her up this time. Instead, I say a small hello and move to the island then sit on a stool before placing my head on it.

I smell him cooking but I don't bother raising my head, not until I hear a plate being slid towards me and his voice saying, "I did not have to wake you today. Should I be worried, Miss Mont?"

I look up now, my chin on the table. He has his hair packed with a smile on his face. I remember how he was yesterday when he strangled me, noticing that the person then and the person now are completely different, not that it matters, they're both hot.

His hand rests on my forehead, a confused look coming to his face as he retracts it, "And you don't seem sick. Is something—?"

"How would your blood taste if I… You know, tasted it?" I ask. He stares, an eyebrow of his raising so I try to clarify the statement, "Just like how my blood tastes good to you, may be yours—"

"I am a vampire. I have nothing else that might catch my interest," He answers this like he's speaking to a child. Half amused and half lost but I don't mind it. "You, on the other hand, have numerous choices that you can wish to dine on at whatever time you desire it."

"Except blood?"

He nods. I stay quiet for the first few seconds before asking again, "But I'm a… Transitional vampire, right? So blood should—"

"You're human but you have a Vampire's venom inside you. This will last for quite a while but will fade away in time and you would be purely human again. That is, of course, you aren't killed before then." He says, "Or do you wish to be a Vampire?"

"No. You don't get ice cream." I say. That makes him smile a little. "And I didn't know all of that. Makes things… Less complicated."

"Hmm," He says, then pushes the bowls of food closer to me. "Eat, so we can discuss." I don't try to refute the order as he walks away and I eat. As always, his food is impeccably cooked and it's hard to stop shoving it down my throat. At least, that is until he returns with a photo album that he slides towards me. "Is this you when you were younger?"

I pause, my eyes staring into the pictures. It's coloured so it's easy to tell that it's me in the picture but I don't… look the same anymore. My hair is black, and straightened to fall over my face and I'm wearing glasses that cover half of my face while standing next to other children, a boy and a girl that looked similar to me.

I remember that it is the last picture I ever took with my siblings.

"What were you? Eleven?" He's behind me now, his body inches away from mine as he towers over me, his hand now keeping in one position. "Are those your siblings?"

I say nothing. I want to go back to eating but I can't seem to move. My eyes won't turn away from the picture even though it's unsettling. He keeps turning the pages and I notice the changes which he says, "Why— Why are you no longer in any of them?"

I don't say anything but I'm looking at the pictures. There's a picture of a happy family with two children. They look very grateful, and pleased. A memory flashes through my head of them here in the kitchen, eating as they share jokes and laugh, no one noticing that I wasn't seated there. Or perhaps, they did notice, but they preferred it that way.

Solaris didn't exist to them.

I feel my stool being turned till I'm facing him now while my back rests on the island counter. His eyes stay on me, searching for any type of reaction on his face though I know he'd find none as he asks, "Will you tell me why your Family stopped taking pictures of you but did so with your siblings?"

I don't say anything. It is a life I never wish to speak of. A part of me that had taken a while for me to kill but I finally did. Though I feel… Discomfort staring at them, it is the only thing I can remember. My memories are fuzzy, which is good.

I don't wish to be that person again.

"You know, I have gone through every room in this house," He's close and I realize that he still smells like roses. It's pleasant. "And yours… Yours is relatively smaller with barely anything in it. There are signatures of your younger siblings everywhere in this house, their marks and there is nothing of you. Like they were trying their hardest to erase your existence."

"I don't remember."

"What were your siblings' names?" He asks.

"I don't remember." I know how it sounds, but I truly don't. I never… Had any reason to speak to them. And they were kept far away from me. I respected that. I keep to the rules though they never did. Not that it mattered.

"What can you remember about them then?" He asks, "The camping trip? Do you remember how you all were before they attacked you? What happened that night? What—?"

"You're asking too many things, and I don't know the answers to any of them." I cut in.

"Did they hurt you?"

"No."

"Abuse you?"

"No."

"Did you hurt them?"

I open my mouth to answer but nothing comes out. Instead, I stay that way for a while, my brain going radio silent before I shut my mouth. I watch as he lets out a breath and crouches, keeping his hands on my thighs as he asks, "Do you love them?"

"I am grateful to them." I say, "Just as I am grateful to you for cooking for me."

"Love and appreciation are not the same." He says, "With love, there is no feeling of… Debt or selfishness. Not that I am an expert on it but—"

"Do you miss your Family?"

He stops and when he looks at me, there is a hint of an emotion so old I cannot determine what it is as he says softly, "I cannot remember them."

"Would you have loved them?"

"I do not know. Family ties from what I know tend to be… Complicated," He says, "Is that what you shared with them? A complicated relationship?"

I don't want to think or try to remember but I'm pulled into a memory that I had fought so hard to bury down. I'm in my room and the twins… They're twins. They look nothing like me, no one does. My parents had given up on dying my hair and straightening it so they let me grow it out without trying to fix it anymore. In truth, they've given up on everything with me. They have a new focus now. On the children that fixed their marriage.

They're saying mean things but I'm not listening. I'm sketching something. Drawing but it's nothing reasonable. It's scribbling, like a violent scratch over the pad but I understand what's happening. I'm trying to take myself out of the noise, out of my room. Eventually, they go away and I cry.

It's an odd thing to remember myself crying because I can't recall the reason why I would do something like that but when it's late at night, I'm calm. There's a tranquility in my room that even I can feel through the memory. And I watch myself walk out of my room to the twins. They're sleeping peacefully.

And I remember that it used to be my room.

I look around. They are all my toys. My own. And they gave me the storage room. Things would have been so much better if they didn't exist. Though times like that were hell but they never ignored me like they did at their birth. Maybe if they were gone, they would talk to me. Maybe—

"Solaris!"

I realize I'm being shaken and I try to open my eyes but it's hard to. I feel the thick liquid rolling down my nose to my lips and on instinct, I know it's blood. I feel my body being pressed into his cold rock hard chest as I begin to shut down, a final memory hits me so hard that I remember why I'd forgotten it before I black out.

I tried to kill them that night and it had been the last time my family acknowledged me as a person.