Skip to alternative ending to avoid explicit self-harm.

While in jail, Henry began to count the stars. They were the same stars he's seen hundreds of years ago. They were the same stars he's seen thousands of years ago. He still remembered up until the day his mind was obliterated how Lady Fenring had been there all those years. After thinking about her, he felt a slight disappointment that he didn't call her to the stand to testify how he became a vampire against his will all because of her.

The vampire he found in the pit was more of an animal than the pigs and donkeys that stayed in the pens. If only the Lady Fenring had talked about how he was unwillingly changed but soon learned to accept his life, maybe he could have convinced the court that with great power comes great responsibility, and that Edward had made the decision like Veronica did to live the life of an immortal.

Maybe he could have convinced them that he shouldn't have been able to change his mind after such a difficult decision.

But then again, he didn't believe any of that. If Edward wanted to abort immortality, he had it in his choice to do so. He remembered a young boy he had bit in 1920 and how Veronica told him how it should be the boy's choice to turn, not his. He believed her then, and he still believed her now.

Of course, nine days later, he was convicted of unsolicited transformation and harassment to the human race and vampiric community and was sentenced to an eternity of self-imprisonment: the facility a small room full of mirrors.

NOTE: CONTENT WARNING. GRAFFIC VIOLENCE. Consider yourself warned about self-harm. The whole purpose is to put a physical meaning to "you're tearing me a part."

Naked and confused, Henry sat staring at himself until he entirely dissociated from his reflection. The man in the mirror wasn't him anymore, but this tired, parched, flakey-skinned individual. Hell, it wasn't even human-like anymore. He felt a tingling sensation rise inside him. First, it was faint and easily unnoticed, but then it rose and rose and rose to an irritating tickling. He scratched himself all over, enjoying the relief it gave him, but then, it worsened. The cavity beneath his skin itched and tingled, and Henry pulled at his taut skin, stiff from dehydration.

"Get out." He hissed, for he could have sworn he felt ants running up and down his body beneath his skin. "Stop it!" He tried ripping his skin off, feeling his nails dig into and mesh with it.

Then, there were spiders: teeny tiny spiders that dug their fangs into the underside of his connective tissue, tapping their eight little legs up and down his bones.

"Agh." His body convulsed, cowering in anger. "Stop it!" He screamed. "Get out! I beg of you!" A rush of centipedes, ants, spiders, and other insects gathered, flooding and pushing past each other. They were trapped under his skin and were fighting against the walls that imprisoned them, biting, scratching, but it was their tiny legs that dug into the backside of Henry's skin that made him unclothe himself even further.

"I'm suffocating!" He belted. Henry clasped his neck, feeling his trachea collapse. Those damn insects and arachnids had made their way to his throat, breaking every bone in his body, including his calcified trachea, collapsing his windpipe.

Henry fell back in anguish and proceeded to make a hole in his chest with his nails. Upon opening the cavity, he pulled out his infarcted heart, seeing it rot before his eyes. There was little blood for he hadn't fed in months and not properly in over three decades. First, he snapped all of his ribs, ripping them from his chest wall, and then punctured both of his lungs in the process. He felt them deflate upon the puncher and listened to the air rush out of them. The tears were messy and uneven, and with every fiber in his body he ripped, they individually snapped on his accord, tearing away his ribs bone by bone, and pulling his lungs out so the bronchial stretched and then snapped, releasing his lung. He ripped the other one out in pursuit.

With his bloodied nails, stuffed with tissue and skin under them, he picked them clean with his teeth, and upon feeling his fangs, he pulled all of his teeth out, chipping them and then fully pulling them right from his gums. He pulled his lips taut until they too ripped from his jaw. He dropped them, feeling them stick to his legs. Henry then broke his jaw by hooking his fingers into his mouth, and pressing his palm against the bottom of his head and snapped it loose. From there, he easily ripped it from his head, feeling the skin stretch to a painful length till it tore.

He threw his bottom lips at the mirror, hearing it smack and hit the floor. From the top of his open chest, he pulled down so his entire abdomen, ripped it open and all of his organs flopping onto the floor, spilled past his hands like jelly. They were a deep grayish color that faded into a dark black within several seconds, curling up and drying out against the dryness of their coming of age. Falling to the floor after slipping on his large intestines, Henry pulled the rest of his organs out, separating them from his interior wall cavity and slicing through his colon with his sharp broken ribs. After pushing his organs away, he reached down to his leg and twisted them, listening to the snapping of the bones and the tearing of the muscles and tendons. Crusted old blood dripped from them, clotted and dry from lack of movement.

With one leg, he beat his heart to a pulp, grunting in pain as he did. With every denouncing thwack, he let out a cry. He threw both of his legs at the mirror after taking the other one off. With one hand, he ripped one arm off, and with the other, he ripped his hair out. Clumps and tuffs of hair flew everywhere, and soon, it covered the flooring like feathers from a pillow flying in the air after a silly game of fighting.

With the fangs he snapped earlier, he looked up at the ceiling as he jabbed his eye. A scratch was left, but no damage other than that, so he drove the fang further, sawing at his eyes until they popped and burst opened with his lens and fluid rushing out.

The eye fell in on itself and wrinkled closed.

At the sight of what he just witnessed, the guard placed down his cup of holy water and reached for his gun, and through the slot beneath him, shoved it into the cell. With his one good eye, Henry saw the gun slide across the floor. His free hand (free from attachment of his wrist that had pulled itself free from) it inched over to the still black gun against the white walls. It reached its fingers out, pulling the palm forward, and then reached out again until it picked up the gun, and with one hard pull, it shot Henry right between his eyes.

"You missed, damn you." He said, or that's what he intended to say. To others, it was just a gurgle of nonsense.

He shot himself again and again until the gun was empty, and his brains were splattered across the back mirror. Yet still, he had fleeting thoughts. Simple ones, and not so complicated, like just a feeling of despair, and nothing else. With his same hand he shot himself with, he smeared his brain tissue, separating each cell from each other so they could no longer speak together.

And the last thought of Mr. Henry Dogwood, Henry, the man who used to own a home in Italy, the man who lived in England and Rome and Ancient Greece and sailed the seven seas with his band of pirates, was that he had torn himself a part for Edward.

You're taking me a part. He breathed, and then seemingly proceeded to no longer exist.

Ending

0 Comments