Page 78 of Cloak of the Vampire
“My son is bleeding. Bleeding!” she yelled, pointing at the emergency room door. “And there is this horrible thing stuck there, covered in blood ...” Her face turned purple and red. “What the fuck ... what were you two doing ... WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO HIM?”
I trembled. “I-I’m sorry, w-we were just—”
“Ella, the doctor finished checking him,” Logan’s dad said, eyes empty with shock. “It’s ... I can’t believe it ... he was ... she ...”
After he whispered, Ella sucked in a breath and whirled around to me, fury and terror written all over her face. “She did what?!”
I’d tried to do to him what I’d seen my father do for years. I later learned that what I had done was considered abuse. That the things my father had done in the name of love were anything but. And while the things Logan and I had done were consensual, I realized now that he had no power in the relationship. That I had assumed authority over him as my father had done to me and the other little girls. That I had used my father’s ways of doing things, horrible, horrible things, to show the boy I loved that I loved him.
Logan had trusted me because we had been dating for four years, since we were thirteen. I trusted him too. I trusted him to allow me to find pleasure in using his body in ways I shouldn’t have. I was too broken then to know that what I was doing was wrong. That it was not normal. That this kind of blood play was something to be engaged in by mature, responsible adults. That my cravings, my desires, my needs were not wrong but, in the wrong hands, were dangerous.
As Ella, Logan’s mother and my foster mother, screamed at me, restrained by her husband so she wouldn’t physically attack me as we all stood in the ER corridor, waiting for news, I couldn’t help but feel the filth clinging to my skin. The filth of what I was just realizing I’d done.
I hurt Logan. I all but sexually abused him. It might’ve been consensual, but it didn’t make it any better.
It didn’t make me any better than my father.
“My parents don’t want me to see you anymore.”
We were sitting on the grass in the backyard of my home. Logan, who seemed to have grown three times larger and more mature than the last time I’d seen him months ago, refused to look me straight in the face. I knew why. Our last time together had been bad. So bad, he’d been hospitalized for weeks.
“I want to touch you,” I told him with frankness I usually avoided when I was with him. Because it was the horrible truth; despite everything, despite what I’d done to him, I still wished for his love.
I was selfish; I knew that. A better person would’ve set him free.
But I didn’t want Logan to be free from me. I wanted him shackled to my side forever. And even though I knew I was a monster, I couldn’t help but wish for it.
“I want to touch you too,” he said softly, and a tear ran down his cheek. “I love you, Aileen. I’ve never loved anyone before, and yet ...”
I raised my hand, was about to touch him, when he recoiled away from me and faced me, his eyes wide. “Why did you have to do that?” he asked, his voice accusing. “Why did you have to ... to—”
“It’s what I know, Logan,” I said, my voice cracking. I thought back to my therapist, to our long sessions, and felt my chest ache. “It’s the only way I know to show you I love you—”
“When you love someone, you don’t send them to the hospital!” he snapped. “When you love someone, you make sure they’re safe, that they’re ... they’re—”
“I was lost!” I cried out, lips trembling. “I was stupid, and lost, and goddammit, Logan, it happened right after everything went down with my father—”
“We’re not fucking kids anymore, Aileen!” he shouted back. “You’re acting like you’re still Daddy’s little lost girl—”
“Don’t you dare,” I hissed, my hands curling into fists. “You don’t know what happened—”
“Then why don’t you ever tell me anything?” he screamed. “In the past four years, I’ve been dating a fucking ghost. A ghost, Aileen! I know nothing about you or your circumstances—heck, I only know the dry fucking details because I fucking googled it! And you told me shit-not! What did your father do? What the hell happened before you were brought over to our house?”
I was about to speak, but I couldn’t utter a word. Everything that happened ... despite it all, I could never disclose this information. Despite what I logically knew, I still wanted to keep my promise to my father.
And Logan had seen, experienced, far too much of what I’d gone through. What I’d witnessed. The nightmare that was my childhood.
But I saw it on Logan’s face. I would lose him if I said nothing. So all I said was “Teach me how to love you properly, and I promise you—I will tell you everything.”
Logan looked at me with disgust, but behind that disgust hid another emotion, bigger and warmer than anything I’d ever seen. “Love should come naturally, effortlessly,” he spat out. “It should never be forced or taught. That you wish for it to be this way ...”
Something burned inside me. Fear. “Don’t leave me.”
He let out a bitter laugh. “That’s what you don’t get about love, Aileen. Even though I’m so fucking angry with you, and even though you hurt me more than anyone else in this world, I will never be able to leave you. This is love in its most honest and brutal form.”
He then put his hands on my shoulders, pushed me to the ground, ripped off my clothes, closed his mouth over mine, and gave me what I wanted.
I woke up, tears burning in my eyes.
