Page 44 of Once Upon a Fable
“Different.”
“How is that different?” She glared at me as if her hatred had just grown a thousandfold.
“I want the strawberry. I don’t want you.”
Her shoulders went to slouch, only for steel to force her straight. “You wanted me last night.”
My hands curled around my plate. “That won’t happen again.” Those four words were spoken in honesty, but they tasted like the worst lie I’d ever told. Would I be able to end her life before touching her a final time? Would I truly deny myself the chance to be inside her before she turned lifeless and cold?
She studied me silently, dropping the strawberry back onto her plate. She scanned the breakfast I’d generously provided, her eyes slowly filling with an empty darkness.
Once again, I was familiar with that look.
I’d seen it staring back at me in mirrors before I’d smashed them, and I’d seen it in the eyes of my prey. She’d stopped fighting against the inevitable. Her instincts sensed there was no way out. She was dead, regardless if she wanted to be or not.
Normally, with that realization came a hollow kind of peace. But in her case, she looked lost, terrified, and painfully alone.
Eating another snow pea, I tried to ignore the tug in my chest. The sensation of empathy that I’d long since crushed.
She placed her plate silently onto the floor.
That affected me to the core.
She’d been so grateful for the food only moments ago. And now, even in her immense hunger, she refused to take a single thing from me.
A stalemate sprang between us.
Her despondency made impatience and annoyance fill me, but beneath that, a minor trace of compassion burned.
Silence ticked for a while.
Her stomach grumbled.
I snapped, “Nothing is poisoned.”
It was her turn to ignore me.
“Would I be eating if it was?” I growled.
She didn’t look up, staring at her hands in her lap. “You could have just poisoned my share.”
“I value food too highly to ruin it. On that you have my word.”
Her hair slid forward, obscuring her face.
Needing her to look at me, I said coldly, “And why would I poison you, anyway? It would deny me the pleasure of squeezing your delicate neck again.”
She swallowed hard, her swirling eyes flashing up to mine. “You’re a monster.”
“No, I’m dealing with a problem.”
“Let me go, and I’ll no longer be a problem.”
“Let you go, and you’ll bring a thousand problems in return.”
She crossed her arms, trembling hard. “Go on then. Finish the job.Killme.”
I tore off a piece of bread, a sudden coldness flashing through my heart. In the few short minutes of conversation, I’d remembered something that I’d so successfully forgotten.
