Myth Breaker

09| Homines Nocturni

NATHANIEL POV

I felt suffocated by those walls, like people were reaching for me, trying to strangle me and bring forward memories and thoughts that I would rather leave in the path. As soon as Annie's office door closed I was running, sprinting down the stairs, through the halls, and out into the fields behind the school. The open-air wasn't enough though, the school was like a dark shadow watching over me so I took to the forest as well. As soon as I entered the darkness of the forest I felt like I could breathe like a calm that came from the quietness of the empty forest finally stopped the emotions and thoughts trying to explode out of my brain.

As I slow my sprint into a jog I finally allow my brain to think back to what had just happened inside those walls. I have been in Morgan's shoes before, sitting in that office filled with more power than I had ever known. I try not to remember, every moment trying to forget the moment my already horrible life had felt like a complete lie. When someone tells you supernatural things exist you want to laugh it off but when that same person promises that you are supernatural it feels like the world is fucking you, chewing you up into something no longer recognizable in the mirror.

I stopped walking, bending over, taking deep panicked breaths, this time had been different. I had been the one to deliver the most horrible blow to Morgan, telling her about this world can only go one way, it will change her whole life.

"Myths hold more truth than you know?" God even saying it out here to the forest trees sounds pretentious and stupid but I had said it to her. I had watched as her world crumbled in on itself. Just like so many of us Morgan now has to come to terms with no longer being normal, forcing us to pretend and act in a way that is so abnormal now that we know the truth.

As I walk through the forest not paying attention to where my feet are taking me I'm not shocked to find myself standing in the middle of the waterfall clearing, the place I had first seen Morgan and all of her fiery passion and of course anger. Remembering that sends a new jag of pain down my chest, now Morgan was sitting in front of Annie's desk, drained and the fire that once blazed hot behind her eyes falling into a puddle of dirty water.

A choking sound echoes around the clearing and it takes me a horrible moment of panic to release that sound is coming from me.

I can see myself when I look at her, I can feel the pain she's feeling right now like a sharp knife stabbing into my chest because I had been in her position before watching the world fall. I shake my head trying to dispel the thoughts but they don't stop and suddenly I can see something in the way Morgan looked in those last moments before the door closed on us, her eyes so filled with pain and loss like she's traveling through the world and suddenly the path she's following is ripped away from her and she floating alone and afraid with nothing holding her to this world. She looks like she might simply float off into the sky at any moment with no way of bringing her back down.

I have been the way before, when I had first come to Westtown Peaks, and now that it's started there's no way to stop the memories from coming forward.

I was the youngest the school had ever accepted at the age of ten, living in an orphanage with a hundred other kids with practically the same backstory as me. Nothing about me was spectacular or amazing compared with the other kids. My mother died randomly one day, it took my father just a couple of days before following, I don't remember much about them but how much love the pair shared for each other. Now I guess I know something else, the fact that both of them were vampires.

It was a late sunny afternoon when Annie came to the orphanage, at the time she was just a teacher at Westtown Peaks but she was the first person I had met and instantly felt safe with, she is easily the most loving person I know. When they brought me to her she smiled so happily telling me that they had finally found me. Someone had been searching for me, looking for me, and at that time of my life - at that age - it felt amazing to be wanted like that.