Baptiste|Lalia } this is, this ain't right

Baptiste Descartes

Truth be told, you've never been terribly fond of summer. The days are long and hot and dull, the challenge of finding ways to pass the excess of time often more tiring than relaxing. You much prefer the lazy ease of the school year, countless opportunities lined up for your amusement like cattle for slaughter as you casually walk the halls, taking your pick of the wide-eyed darlings that look ripe for your particular brand of fear mongering. Of course, there are still the evenings, where these warmer months coax naive minds into staying out past the safety of their bedtimes and you always find them, the clickclickclick of your flashlight morse code promising pretty distractions in the dark. They never see the tall threat of your shadow coming until you've cornered them, luxuriating in the simple terror that radiates off their blinded skin until you feel sated enough to make it through another day and... walk away. All you wanted was to see them shake and plead and give in to you without ever knowing what you even wanted from them and when you're gone, you know they feel thankful. They were not raped nor mugged nor beaten to a pulp and they are grateful to you for that.

You sleep so soundly those nights, but the next day you are twice as restless. This is the hunger of an addict.

What you so desperately need is consistency — a playmate for your twisted games who will be there whenever the minutes of your day feel too empty and boring. Your pretty, secret-keeping stepsister is an altogether tempting promise, but you have to take things so slowly with her. Carefully. Patiently. Sweetly. It's fucking frustrating. (The garden shears in your hand bite too harshly into the rose bush you're trimming and a flurry of red petals whirl through the air of your tightly-strung temper. Messy. Negligent. Unacceptable.) The extra measures of precaution are necessary with her, however, to pry out whatever it is she's keeping so stubbornly hidden, clutched preciously to her chest like a second heart.  You will have it. It is only a matter of exasperating time and when she surrenders, like the others, she will thank you for it and this time you are devoting to her will be repaid to you two-fold.

In the mean time, you waste your useless mornings away in your stepmother's garden. You like the way the flowers need to you trim away the dead parts of their lives in order to flourish, picking through the buds and clipping away whatever you deign to be unnecessary, and it comes with the invaluable benefit of endearing you to new mummy Antoinette. It is important to nurture these shallow little human connections of yours for future use, after all. So here you are: shirtless summer sweat and a dirt-stained pair of old jeans, mollycoddling roses and daffodils into opening up for you as you wait for Fyffe to show her frustratingly pretty little face or the freedom of night to fall. You are so busy sulking you don't even notice the unfamiliar girl peeking over the fence until she begins murmuring to herself.

Easing out of your crouch like the true predator you are, it takes less than a moment for you to make your way over to the girl. You are dangerously over-eager, but daylight so rarely brings you gifts like this and you are not in the mood to let such a lucky chance pass you by. With a sharp, sudden snip, you cut the gardenia she's admiring free from the rest of the bush and hold it out to her, twirling it slightly between your fingers as you grin with just a few too many of your teeth showing. If only your innocence were sincere, you could be devastatingly charming. It's a waste, really. "Hello, new friend." This is what you've been waiting for though and it's all you can do not to reach over the fence, seize her by the wrist, and menacingly inform her that she belongs to you now. Like this flower in your hand, you will convince her to open up to you and regardless of the means you take for this to happen, in the end, she will thank you for it.