Walk in the Forest

It was a misty evening. Aiden was bored, so he left his room for the first time in hours to take a walk outside. He walked downstairs to the kitchen and told his mom he was leaving, but she didn’t even look up. He wanted to scream. They didn’t know what happened to him last school year, or what he was harboring inside of him. He figured that even if they did know they still wouldn’t really care. They never did. He left the house, making sure to let the door slam behind him. He hummed to himself as he walked through the yard, sort of aimlessly wandering. He really enjoyed this weather. It sort of reminded him of school. He was excited to go back to school, and excited to see his friends again. He slowly walked the long winding path through the gardens of the estate, casually inspecting the different herbs and colorful flowers, all covered in dew and drooping from the weight. One bed of flowers caught his eye. A beautiful pink color that struck him quite ferociously. The bleeding hearts. He picked a stem of them off, bringing them closer to his eyes to look at the flowers closer. They were beautiful. They reminded him of… himself. The yellow-to-pink gradient was very similar to the progression of his eyes, before and after they changed color. Realizing this, he stood up straighter, almost suddenly, and stalked off. He didn’t exactly remember what happened to him during the fight with Sam, but it bothered him to think about it. He didn’t like dwelling on it, but unfortunately, that’s all he had been doing as of late. Weirdly enough, he didn’t really feel any sort of negative feelings toward Sam. He knew she used him to get what she wanted, but a lot of people had done that to him in the past. The only difference was that… she actually cared about him. He loved that feeling. It was so rare, and he clung to it like a man hanging off of a cliff. He would do anything to feel that way again. He was walking into a wooded area now, on a beaten path beside a river. He was very familiar with this area, as he had walked it about a million times. This would be where he would go to escape his family and think. He approached an offshoot of the river, slow-moving and speckled with different stones. He set the branch of bleeding hearts down onto the rocks to gaze at them again and was suddenly filled with an unfamiliar rage. He stomped down onto the flowers, grinding down on them as best as possible with his shoe. He hated everything. He hated being home. He just wanted to be with Sam again. Looking down at the crushed petals he felt no satisfaction. The pink carnage slightly spread out over the rocks and on the bottom of his shoe. He needed something more than this. He was feeling compelled to kill. To feel the final satisfaction that he… was robbed of… during… the fight…? He shook his head. This wasn’t Aiden. He had never felt this way before. The Aiden he was was more docile, and would never kill anyone without reason. He walked over and sat at the river’s edge, which was calm enough to where he could see his reflection clearly. Studying himself, Aiden brushed over his sharp horns, his dark blue hair, his curved nose, and… his lips. This brought him back to the kiss. His first kiss. He didn’t remember all of it, but he did remember the love he felt that night. He gazed out across the river and dipped his hand in the icy cold water, wishing he could relive that moment again. He tried to bring back that feeling of the kiss, the hypnotism of that love, the mischievous attitude that Sam had, and to his surprise, he could still feel it. Inside of him, curling in his stomach, branching up to his heart, and curling up his neck to where he could feel the tingle of it all the way in his horns. He loved that feeling. He loved that no matter what happened he would still carry that feeling with him. It was almost unnatural how strong it was in him though. He glanced quickly down at his reflection again, just to make sure he was imagining that it was visible on his skin. The only place on Aiden that held marks of anything that had happened last year was the change of his eye color. He shrugged it off and stood up and brushed himself off. He then began the journey back to the house, dreading returning to his room.