Immortal: Chapter 1

Something was unreal. That was all I knew. Everything was colored too vibrantly while at the same time being extremely dull. I had never seen so much red and that was the part that scared me about the dream. Despite the fact that I knew exactly where I was, I knew that everything was wrong. The walls had never been a bright, bloody red before and neither had the carpet, nor the bed, nor the trees outside the window. It wasn’t just that everything was red but everything seemed to be oozing the color.  Bleeding it.

I reached across the gigantic bed that I had always thought was superfluous, my hands frantically grasping for the comfort from the stone body that I knew was lying next to me, was always next to me. He had to be there.

My hand bumped against his cold skin and I pulled myself over to him, mentally begging him to wrap my arms around him. I needed him more than anything, especially in that moment. But he was strangely rigid against me, almost as though he didn’t even feel me there next to him, clinging to him.

“Edward?” I whispered, worry flooding my voice.

I sat up, staring at him. His red eyes stared past me, unseeing and unblinking. He didn’t seem to be breathing either but somehow I knew he was alive, just unwilling to move at the current moment. But more was wrong than just this though. He, too, was covered in the awful red that surrounded me. And there was something splattered against the bedspread, red still but darker. Almost like…like…dried blood.

I looked around the room, frantic. That’s when I saw her, lying on the bed where I had been just moments ago. Her normally pale skin had an even more ghostly pallor to it and she was covered in blood. There was a frantic look on her sweet, heart-shaped face and her brown, thick hair was in a wild mass around her. Her body was in a weird position, her arms and legs tossed out at weird angles as though she had just fought for her life, and failed. Her neck was ripped up, the skin bloody and destroyed. And her eyes – they were the most unnerving of all. Unseeing and unblinking, just like the man’s next to me, but also glossed over. Dead.

The girl was me.

***

There was nothing left for me to do but scream. I screamed like – not like I had just seen a ghost, but like I had just learned I was one.

I sat straight up in the bed and hurtled myself out of it, ripping the gold comforter off of me. Edward woke with a start but I had locked myself in the bathroom before he could say anything. I was going to be sick. I had been dead. That dream had felt more real than most things that happened to me when I was awake and I had been dead. Not just dead but murdered. And murdered at Edward’s hand.

I dry heaved into the toilet, partial thankful that I didn’t really unload my stomach into the porcelain bowl. I pushed myself off the ground on shaking legs and stared in the mirror, my worry-wrinkled forehead covered in beads of sweat. I was awake now and everything was back to normal. I didn’t see any red around me except for Edward’s red toothbrush which he had left lying by the sink.

Someone pounded on the door. “Bella? Bella, are you alright?” Edward yelled. “Bella, open the door. Please.”

I leaned over the sink, trying to keep myself under control. The dream had been so terrifying, so real. Edward had killed me, ripped out my throat and drank my blood. I had been dead. Tears welled in my eyes and a sob escaped my throat.

“So help me god, Isabella Cullen, let me in,” Edward called through the door.

I reached over and twisted the doorknob quickly so that it would unlock as I sank to the ground. Edward flew into the tiny bathroom. He stood frozen, puzzled, as he assessed the situation – me, on the ground, covered in sweat and freaked out, on the verge of tears.

“Oh, Bella, Bella,” Edward cooed, sitting down and scooping me into his warm arms.

Warm? Wait a minute. In my dream, he had been cold, almost as cold as death but not. And that was something I had accepted in the dream, been used to. And his eyes had been red, not because everything in my dream had been red but because they just were red. Another thing I had accepted as if it were normal for someone to have red eyes. I pulled back and stared into Edward’s emerald green eyes, not sure what to make of how my dream was now mixing with reality.

“Bella, love,” Edward said soothingly, kissing my perspiration-covered forehead. “What’s wrong?”

“Just…just a dream,” I said with a tiny sob.

“Must have been one hell of a dream,” Edward said, smiling his crooked smile.

I simply shuddered in his arms, too freaked out to do anything else.

“Want to tell me about it?” Edward asked, pulling me in tighter to him and kissing me, his lips moving against mine.

“You...you – I died,” I said, deciding last second not to tell him that he was the reason I had been dead.

“You know I will never let anything happen to you,” Edward said.

“Of course,” I whispered.

“Now, let’s get back to bed. You don’t want to be tired for your finals tomorrow.”

I groaned, momentarily forgetting my terrifying nightmare in replace for being terrified at the prospect of my finals I had tomorrow. The last grades I would get before going off to college. Of course, Edward would pass. I was pretty sure he was hiding from me the fact that he was a certifiable genius. I, on the other hand was, not.

“You know, Esme will be disappointed,” Edward said with a chuckle as I snuggled into his arms. “I thought for a second we were going to be able to tell her you had morning sickness.”

“Your mother knows that we’re only eighteen, right?” I said. “That we haven’t even graduated high school?”

“That doesn’t mean she can’t hope for a grandchild,” Edward said. “Now, sleep, my love. And no more nightmares?”

I nodded. Little did I know that the nightmares were soon going to become reality.