Cracked chapter 3
Title: Cracked
Fandom: Twilight
Genre: Humor/Parody
Rating: T
Main Pairing: Bella and Edward
LJ Chapter 1, 2
Also on ff.net
Summary: Welcome to an experiment in dark humor, with alternating emphasis on the "dark" and the "humor." I present to you, in no particular order or relation to each other, rewritten scenes from the Twilight series. I have no set posting schedule-this is purely for my own amusement and steam-letting, although I hope you'll be amused as well. My thanks to Ms. Meyer, for creating such memorable characters and for not minding that we all play with them.
From Midnight Sun Chapter 1: “First Sight”
Edward sat in the cafeteria with his siblings at lunch time, moody as ever, pretending he was trying to drown out the human thoughts around him. He wasn’t. He looked bored, and acted bored, and perhaps he really was bored, but as it was “sort of” his responsibility to know how humans reacted to his family, he couldn’t actually afford to ignore them, now could he? That would be a contradiction.
His brother Emmett and his sister Rosalie were thinking about sex. Again. Whenever Rosalie wasn’t thinking about how beautiful she was, and whenever Emmett wasn’t thinking about kicking ass, and if they were in each other’s presence, they were thinking about sex. Edward swore they did it on purpose just to screw with him. It was irritating, and if it weren’t for the fact that the Forks High campus was too small for any part of it to be outside of his mental hearing range, Edward would be encouraging them to avail themselves of a faraway janitor’s closet just so he didn’t have to hear them fantasizing.
Alice, her mind working at its usual mile per minute, was simultaneously concerned about a number of superficial things (but in a wistful, I-can’t-remember-what-it-was-like-to-be-human-so-that-makes-me-not-shallow-like-the-human-shopaholic-image-obsessed-teenagers sort of way), along with a few deep thoughts about the meaning of life, the universe, and everything, which she overheard a cluster of nerds discussing a few minutes ago. Apparently it had something to do with an incorrect multiplication problem (what kind of profound truth was based on 7 x 6 = 48? Was it something to do with base-8 math?). She was also apprehensive about Jasper and his appetite today-he hadn’t fed in two weeks.
While she and Edward had their silent discussion about Jasper’s thirst, and even while Jasper himself was imagining satiating said thirst with the help of a nearby student, in a hidden corner of his mind Jasper wondered why Alice and Edward thought they could fool him. Alice’s distress was always plain as day, and Edward’s blatant lack of confidence was almost its own shade of black. Jasper held back an urge to whisper aloud, “For the love of god, would you two shut up already? Your mental conversation is louder than human screams of terror.”
He quite missed human screams of terror. Not the terror itself, of course-talk about a total downer-but from far away the screams always did whet his appetite.
“Jasper!” Edward hissed, disgusted by memories of Jasper glutting himself on an entire camp full of vaqueros. “Do you mind?”
“Not at all,” Jasper replied lazily. Even after fifty years together, Edward still didn’t get why Jasper lived as he did-not just abstaining from human blood, but living among vampires who valued human life. Edward would say of himself that he was a vegetarian because that was the way Carlisle taught him, because he’d learned the error of his ways through personal experience, because he sympathized with the humans as much as any vampire mind-reader can, and because he had a conscience. Jasper didn’t have a conscience, at least not in the same way Edward did. Jasper chose not to feed from humans because their emotions made him uncomfortable, plain and simple, and he hated feeling that way. Edward suppressed his natural urges for the same reason, at the root of it, but he felt the need to aggrandize his choice with lofty ideals about the preciousness of human souls. Hell, if that’s what it took to make the thirst easier to bear, Jasper wasn’t going to disillusion his brother, but that didn’t mean he shared the same philosophy. He wasn’t even confident that Edward believed his own bullshit, not with the way Edward was always claiming that human thoughts were insignificant. If he genuinely believed humans’ thoughts were worthless, why were their souls precious? And if a creature’s soul was precious regardless of its thoughts and feelings, why was it less of a moral crime to feed on a mother bear protecting her defenseless cubs than a human female doing the same thing? Edward’s code of ethics was just…confusing, and if that made it harder for Edward to not hate himself, it was all his own fault. For Jasper, vegetarianism (a ridiculous misnomer if he ever heard one) was much simpler mentally but more difficult to endure physically: humans were food, but Jasper was on a diet.
“The thing about diets,” Edward said with a frown, “is that they’re something one doesn’t necessarily feel committed to when the temptation is strong. Which is why you tend to have problems, Jasper.”
“The thing about mind-readers,” Jasper answered smoothly, “is that they can’t distinguish between a private thought and an invitation for conversation. Which is why right now I have a problem with you.”
“Jasper,” Alice began, hoping to soothe her irritated, hungry husband, “would you like me to pick up something for you to drink?”
He hummed thoughtfully, absorbing his wife’s positive vibes and letting her bring back his smile. One benefit of having an almost perpetually cheerful mate-she made being an empath into a good thing. “Sounds nice. Something from Don Carlos, if you don’t mind?”
Don Carlos Carnicería was the local butcher shop, owned and operated by the human Carlos Rodriguez and his wife who, like half of the I.C.E.-harassed* Mexicans in Forks, were actually born in Washington. He took great pride in his work and was well-liked by both the general public and the proprietors of every reputable slaughterhouse within two counties. The owners of Thriftway grocery, well-known and avoided for their terrible meat selection, had actually tried to have their competitor deported (secretly, of course). Upon discovering that Mr. Rodriguez was a U.S. citizen who tended to laugh whenever some idiot shouted la migra at him and expected him to run, they attempted to buy him out. It didn’t happen, and the residents of Forks continued to shop at Don Carlos for both their mundane and specialized carnivorous needs. Mr. Rodriguez, proudly servicing a population of Anglos, natives, Hispanics, blacks, and even a Vietnamese family, was accustomed to customers asking for steak, ground beef, filet mignon, fajita meat, various fowl, venison, cow stomachs, intestines, cow heads, pig heads, pig feet, liver, tongue, brains, blood sausage, the occasional rabbit, and chicken feet. Whenever a Cullen came in and asked for a quart of blood, it didn’t faze him in the least-the aforementioned Vietnamese family asked for it all the time to make tiết canh (which resembled coagulated duck blood gelatin sprinkled with peanuts), and families from Monterrey made their own savory version of blood soup. So clearly, obtaining animal blood for human consumption was not only perfectly acceptable in several non-American cultures, it was available for sale and regulated by the FDA. The only problem the Cullens had was getting it while it was still fresh-chilled blood had to be reheated, and good luck not getting funny looks in the home-ec classroom for trying to stick that in the microwave.
Alice rose, looking ahead to see if anyone would notice her ditching school for half her lunch break, while Edward sighed and returned to his incessant brooding. He wished Alice had offered to get him a drink as well-it had been two weeks for him, too, and he was every bit as thirsty as his brother.
Edward Cullen.
Edward turned toward the source of the thought, an annoying reflex he couldn’t seem to shake, even though he had successfully purged himself of every other physical reflex he ever had. Be that as it may, upon looking in the direction of his name being thought, he locked eyes with a human, her eyes being the color of chocolate. Or fecal matter. He wasn’t sure which, not having taken much time to examine either in nearly ninety years.
The chocolate/shit-brown eyes belonged to the new girl, Bella Swan, who every student had been thinking of all day. Because clearly, this is a school populated by people who think of others more than themselves. Edward smirked at his own inside joke. Everyone noticed the new girl, and three or four males in the junior class were clearly contemplating asking her out while three or four females were deciding if she would be worth making friends with or not (she not prettier than me, but attracts attention in my direction, which is perfect versus her dad’s the police chief, she’ll totally rat us out if someone brings a joint to a party). But beyond that, most people speculated about her when they had nothing better to think about, then went about their usual business. Many of them were still recovering from the raging kegger they attended over New Year’s weekend, the lightweights.
It was a full minute before Edward realized the thought he’d heard was not coming from Miss Swan herself, but from Jessica Stanley.
Jessica prattled on to the new girl about the Cullen family and their barely legal incestuous relationships, which for some reason Chief Swan chose not to arrest them for, most likely because the benefit of having a fancy, big-shot doctor in their underequipped Podunk hospital outweighed the negative impact of dancing around the technicalities of a little thing called Revised Code of Washington 9A.64.020. As Edward relayed to Emmett the highlights of the human conversation he was eavesdropping on, he reflected on the dichotomy of human nature. They were instinctively afraid of vampires, so they gave the Cullen family a wide berth. But they were also attracted to vampires, so they fantasized about the Cullens, too, sometimes in normal pairings, sometimes in orgies, the sick bastards. Pick an instinct and stick with it, Edward often wanted to shout, I don’t even care which one anymore, just make up your minds already!
But he did care, to some extent. Edward sighed, reluctantly remembering Jessica’s fantasies about him. He was glad she’d stopped. He couldn’t tell his brothers he was glad she’d stopped, because a) he was supposed to be maintaining the position that her human thoughts were of no value, and b) he knew he’d be accused of homosexuality, which wasn’t the case, but it still grated on his nerves. Mostly, his problem was that Jessica just didn’t do anything for him, but also, having been privy to nearly a century of human and vampiric sexual thought, he knew her expectations were almost comically unrealistic. Virgins.
He sighed again, wishing he wasn’t lumped into that category, too.
Then he wondered if the new girl met the criteria as well. She seemed so shy, but those shy ones could fool you-at least a third of them were sexual freaks or social deviants behind closed doors. If only he could hear just a whisper from her mind. She obviously kept looking in his direction, but what on earth did she think of him? Did she find him attractive, or repulsive? Was she comparing him to human boys? Did she want him to bend over so she could check out his ass? Wait; did he want her to want to check out his ass?
By the time lunch was over, Edward was thoroughly frustrated with the new human and her invisible, inaudible, obviously significant thoughts.
He was so preoccupied, in fact, that he didn’t notice Jasper noticing his irritation. Jasper frowned, but said nothing, turning his own thoughts to Alice, who bounded up to him with a 32-ounce lidded Styrofoam cup and straw. Don Carlos didn’t give her the straw, of course; that would have been weird. Edward kept a supply of straws in his Volvo. It wasn’t the strangest thing he had in there-if anyone ever asked why he had a stash of mortuary bags in his trunk, his prepared answer was they’re left over from my family’s Halloween decorations.
“Mmm,” Jasper smiled, took a sip from the proffered cup, and immediately began to feel less grumpy. “Fresh. Thank you, Alice. Is this pig?”
“Milk-fed baby goat,” Alice grinned. “Apparently there have been requests lately for cabrito.”
“I’ll be your chupacabra**,” Jasper flirted.
Alice laughed and threw an arm around Jasper’s waist. “You’re such a tease. Can I have a taste?”
A freshman boy, who was walking behind them, ducked into a nearby bathroom to dry-heave and silently repeated the mantra I have an overactive imagination, the Cullens are just weirdoes, I have an overactive imagination, the Cullens are just weirdoes…
Edward really should have been paying attention to that panicked thought. Instead he was battling his own thirst as Bella Swan’s scent wafted his way in biology class. All thoughts of her “precious human soul” vanished as he held himself in place with all the willpower he could muster, lest he gorge himself in front of God and everyone. It would have been so easy to kill the entire classroom of people just to have the peace and time to enjoy his meal, but that would be bad. Wasteful. Better to wait until class was over, he reasoned. After all, if he was going to cheat on his diet with a bona fide feast, it was best to indulge in private.
No! No, no, no, this is so wrong, I am not a monster, she can’t make me kill her…he told himself as he tried to hold his breath and prayed Mr. Banner wouldn’t call on him to speak. Because Edward, being the self-pitying, responsibility-shirking prick he was, chose to make this everyone else’s fault in his mind, not his own. Later, when his head was clear again, he would chastise himself for that, but for now his self-flagellation was nowhere to be found as he focused entirely on not behaving like the predator nature formed him to be.
The girl looked upset, though whether that was out of fear or anger Edward couldn’t be certain, and he didn’t dare scrutinize her further to check, lest he bite her blushing face right off. Meanwhile, Bella took notes on the biology lecture, occasionally doodling in the margins to distract herself from the impossibly rude boy sitting next to her. All Edward could do was cling to the table for dear life and wait for his fifty-five minutes in hell to end. Oh, damn this girl and her intoxicating, delicious…
Edward was mercifully distracted from his burning throat by the girl’s doodles and nonsense words. Perhaps, he decided, getting a glimpse into her thoughts this way would remind him that she was a person and thus spare her life. Or, if that didn’t work because her thoughts turned out to be just as insipid as Jessica’s, he’d at least feel reassured that he wasn’t killing someone who was likely to find the cure for cancer or anything.
Bella, sensing that the stare of the well-dressed, sour-faced jerk-off was now focused on her paper instead of her, recovered some of her composure. Grinning wickedly, she drew a picture of a showerhead and a bar of soap. Hint, hint, asshole. Rich boys should be able to afford daily showers. And some manners. After all that hype Jessica fed me, I have to say I’m unimpressed. As an afterthought, she began artfully inking and embellishing the word that had entered her mind the moment her hypersensitive nose caught a whiff of Edward Cullen.
Wait a minute, Edward wondered, who the hell is Consuela?
~|~
* I.C.E.: US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Slang term for this agency is la migra. 13% of the population of Forks is Latino.
** chupacabra: (Spanish) Goatsucker, a mythical creature said to inhabit the Americas, believed to attack and drink the blood of livestock, especially goats.