When liberty comes with hands dabbled in blood, it is hard to shake hands with her.

It's taken him decades to find the composure he's needed to go through every day human life and not feed on them. There certainly were humans in the past he though deserving of death - after all death was what life brought them. Rapists and murderers, Ann Rice once wrote a book where a certain vampire chose the same path instead of drinking animal's blood. Of course, that vampire was fictional. Who had ever heard of sleeping in coffins or burning in the sun? He liked the sun and there was a reason why most vampires weren't vegans. Animal blood is foul. It's not even close to the decadence of another human lying helplessly in your arms as you feed from their neck, or wrist, or breast. The worst of society was his game and he could find them easily. With the gift he had to a lesser degree before he had been changed, the thoughts of anyone he could easily pick up on.

It was those thoughts he couldn't shut off. He had seen the darkness inside life, he had stared into the eyes of humans as they died and yet the facts remained the same in the end. In death, everyone's last breaths are the same - pedophiles or not.

Perhaps he though there were ways, reasons that could justify his own soulless need to take others' lives. He certainly saw why Carlisle practiced what he did. He certainly knew that after years of hearing the slowing of hearts and the dying of thoughts that there were reasons why it was so painfully obvious he would never be able to continue this for the rest of his born-again life.

He thought of himself as the prodigal son coming home to a father that had taught him well. One he betrayed with blood smeared over his hands and the smell of death sunk into his skin and teeth. The guilt alone was enough, but he never forgot a single face, nor a single thought.

It was clear to Edward then and it's clear to Edward now. Humans are the only beings with souls. His was flushed away long ago.

Muse | Edward Cullen
Fandom | Twilight Series
Word Count | 423

He who angers you conquers you.

Jacob makes him furious. The scent of him disgustingly over Bella, makes him want to heave violently. He loves Bella with his entire being. He's never found anyone who has made him feel more complete in this lifetime or the last lifetime that he's had than Bella. She's it for him and it's taken him a hundred years to find her. It's not Jacob, himself, that makes him furious. Edward is well aware that Jacob is her best friend and that he cannot compete with some dog that can keep her warm at night. Warmth, a simple necessity among things, is one that Jacob would provide for her that he cannot. It makes him feel utterly incompetent which isn't something he feels often, nor enjoys to. In this way, Jacob has conquered him; but not in the way that he has Bella's heart.

Muse | Edward Cullen
Fandom | Twilight Series
Word Count | 178

What makes your life complicated?

It is her blood that gets to him. Smell of her tender skin wafting through the air with a gust of wind from the air conditioner, he almost loses it right there and then. Clutching the edges of his seat and struggling with his desires to hold her body tight against his and press his mouth against the arch of her neck until she moans lightly, he imagines his fangs sinking down and deep and uncontrollably into her throat so the only thing he tastes is her. He hasn't felt this much of a sway since he was just a brand new vampire, his smell and strength and speed heightened to a degree he could barely stand. A hundred thoughts in his head, and none of them his, he could hear the pumping heart beats of every single student in the class, but especially Isabella Swan. Her heart, singularly, giving a pur rum pum pum pum to the sound of the clock ticking and time passing, he can hear everyone's thoughts but hers.

Muse | Edward Cullen
Fandom | Twilight Series
Word Count | 188

What was your first day of school like?

This day is like any other day for Edward, it is tedious routine to attend classes simply because he looks like a seventeen year old. It was the age he had died and was reborn as a vampire years ago and it is the age he will forever be.

High School. One hundred and six years old and still attending and repeating his years in just a new place - a new town with new people who still look at him and his family as... strangers, freaks. Edward Cullen has stopped caring and listens to this utter human useless drabble for amusement. With the answers known by heart, each place's curriculum looks the same - what is more so disturbing is the fact that so do the students.

The students and their thoughts. He's heard it all. Some of the most entertaining inner dialogue from simple one track minded humans that thought of blowing up these institutions of education. None of them have been serious enough yet, and - truly - it is the lethargy of watching the simple clock tick as the students watch the hours pass by with each second.

Edward supposes they should call it purgatory - involving the consumption of words in a book to merely vomit it up later - since this is surely his hell. High school would surely drive him to madness.

The worst part - the very worst part - was the monotonous nature of it all. Everything is precisely the same as it always was. Everything, including the students and the teachers have begun to look alike.

His siblings, too, know the uselessness of another first day of school. He finds himself in a classroom, concentrating on not a lesson, but the thoughts of his brothers and sisters around him. Jasper is still thinking of how delicate humans are, how easily taken they are and how easily - how very easily - he could simply press his mouth against the nape of the neck of one of these girls and sink his teeth into the fine skin with blood pulsing under. Edward knows that they've all been there, but Jasper is very nearly reckless now.

Edward has attended many first days - so many that he's nearly forgotten his own back in Chicago in the early 1900's. This one "first day of school" is like any other, including the involvement of yet another new student in a new crowd. He dismisses this new girl like any other, for she is simply just a girl, hearing the endless drabble of Jessica Stanley's jealousies regarding anyone who would take away the attentions of Mike Newton.

Useless.

Boring dramatics that could put him to sleep if he could indeed rest.

Many people never got a second glance, but Edward does look up again - at this new student, Bella; her cheeks flushing pink underneath his scrutinizing gaze. Her mind is a black cloth where there should be a mirror. He hears nothing when he looks into her, but this blackness - black as a moonless night. Bella stares back for a moment, her eyes flat in this darkness, her ears barely listening to Jessica's incessant babbling.

Unease settles into Edward's stomach on the first day of school, for a dreadfully unexceptional girl.

Muse | Edward Cullen
Fandom | Twilight Series
Word Count | 637

I thought of introducing myself, but often enough I have no need with others having so many words or thoughts regarding myself or my family. My name is Edward Cullen and the latter name, the surname, it is not the same one I carried in life.

I suppose one would have to define life in regards to myself and my family as something else entirely. While I speak of another life in which I had a heartbeat and two biological parents, my life didn't begin until I met one Bella Swan - a girl who is, without a doubt, the most extraordinary and infuriating human being rolled up in one.

Bella, short for a name she dislikes so, is clumsy and - for god knows what reason - seems to prefer the idea of being a vampire for eternity rather than carrying out a human existence and all the accomplishments that come with the need to keep blood flowing through one's veins and pumping in and out from one's heart. It's an idea I haven't quite gotten used to and, even though I will doubtful never approve, I have agreed to change her - Happily, after we are wed, after she can embrace some of her human life.

It may be old-fashioned, but we both grasp for our own important ceremonies. It's to protect virtues and customs that have been around long before she or even I have. While, I can't approve of her choices (her wants or wishes), I do what I can. My own struggle to be apart from her - to shelter her from this life - was proven disastrous. The very essence of her sings to me and we will be together eternally. There is no choice in the matter.

Bella - through marriage, even without marriage - has become an intricate part of my family. She is my family along with my Carlisle, the man that changed me and became a father to me; Esme, his wife and a mother to myself and my "siblings"; Rosalie, who Carlisle once hoped would be my mate; Emmett, who is Rosalie's husband and true love; Alice, who is uncannily unique and irreplaceable (surely planning my wedding to Bella this instant); and finally, Jasper, who is the newest addition to our little family.

One hundred and six years in - What is that saying again? Oh, yes, a nutshell.

Muse | Edward Cullen
Fandom | Twilight Series
Word Count | 461

There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are messengers of overwhelming grief and unspeakable love.

Washington Irving

There had been once a time that I hadn't followed Carlisle's practice of "vegetarianism" - drinking strictly from animals rather than humans. Man is what it is and if our souls are the only things that keep us from committing ghastly acts then there is a large mass percentage humans that have lost their souls along the way. I know and truly believe in only one way which is why I've refused her request to become one of us so many times.

Ten years after I was changed, I used my gift to hear thoughts as they came (as if they were my own) to seek out those that were deserving of death. It was merely the only justification I could give myself to take another life. I found the worst of society: murderers, rapists, child molesters and those who cheated their way through life.

From the perspective of a human, life is not a gift. It is not much of anything and perhaps it is true that the only way we can regret is to not possess such a tremendous and powerful gift.

It was just a few years in a century, but years I will not forget soon or for however long I go on in this immortal life. Most of us, more than anything, I remember the faces - words unspoken with tears of remorse or loss facing those that wasted a commodity that cannot be so easily given as taken. There are hundreds of ways to die and I can think of hundreds of ways to kill - and yet I can only think of one way to give life.

Such fragile careless humans, if they only knew what power they possessed in their weakness.

Muse | Edward Cullen
Fandom | Twilight Series
Word Count | 317