Xo Novel
Chapter 1: Book 3: Zero
Chapter 1: Book 3: Zero
Zero
Beauty and I, the Beast
Once upon a time I met a girl, I loved her with everything in me.
My love was something that happened so sudden, like a real fairy tale.
She was my beauty and I, her beast.
When she stared in my eyes I was lost in her black soulless depths, forgetting the soul I didn't see.
When Beauty looked into my HEART I saw the future in her cold hard stare. Exclusive content © by Nô(v)el/Dr/ama.Org.
Her body was my glory, I ignored the weapon it showed me.
I was obsessed in the slope of her curves, the movement of her hips as she put one foot in front of the
other.
Her touch blinded me.
When Beauty touched me she awoke the beast, called to the killer and hummed to the sniper, until she
was where my heaven began and my demons ended.
I remember the day when just a glimpse of her gutted me in the chest.
Beauty was where my madness sang and in less than a month I was hers.
My pops once told me that every man has his falling point.
Every brother has a day to mourn.
I thought I mourned when I put my club brothers to rest in the ground after our second tour.
I convinced myself I mourned when I lost the woman I almost called my wife after she chose a needle
over my vow and overdosed on crack.
FUCK, I thought I mourned when I almost lost my blood brother, but nothing takes the stakes like it
does now.
Nothing better compares to mourning than the agony I feel at the betrayal of the one person I gave
myself to.
The woman who made sense of my madness.
“How could you!!” I scream in to the nothingness of cold stagnant air.
A foolish man looking for foolish answers, hoping to hear a voice I would never hear again.
Once upon a time I met a girl, I loved her with everything in me.
My love was something that happened so sudden, like a real fairy tale, she was my beauty and I, her
beast.
But Beauty had a secret, another life, and in the end she betrayed me, and chose him.
There is no description to the betrayal I feel, to the hollowness I endure.
Darkness, once just an entity, now my home.
This blackness, here is where I see her- on the hillside looking over the water.
I still feel her essence, still taste it on my tongue in the air.
And if I really stop and stare at the darkened water I see the silhouette of her body that I once
convinced myself was shaped just for me.
The taste of the burn down my throat brings the numbness I force upon myself from bottoming a bottle
of shitty whiskey.
This is my coping mechanism.
“BEAUTY,” I yell from the top of the hill.
“BEAUTY.”
I keep thinking, like a foolish man, in love with a foolish thought of a girl that was all fake, that she will
slip out of the water like a siren.
And like all fairy-tales she will have the craziest story to tell me, explaining why she betrayed me, the
reasons she used me.
Why she chose him over me.
Time goes, as it always will- passing and stealing my darkness which is now my home.
It fools us with the sun, its light.
I hate this time- morning, sunrise; because then reality sinks in.
There is no more pretending that she is here.
I can't convince my eyes, the reflection of the moon is her shelter.
No, I am forced to remember our last night together.
I am reminded of who she is- A trained killer, a wanted fugitive who used me to kill my brother.
She, the girl who played me.
“Zero, it's time to go brother.”
I feel Knight's right arm slip under my left side as the sun brightens my small reprieve.
I should expect him by now. It has been two weeks since Beauty left.
Fourteen nights of sitting on this hill, drowning my sorrows, hoping to catch a glimpse of her.
Fourteen mornings since Knight has picked my drunken ass off this hill and taken me back inside, to
what was once my home, now just my own personal hellish reminder of her.
He gets me up.
My bare feet and stiff legs protesting from finally changing position.
“I keep saying I ain't no kid and still you keep comin',”
I gripe at him as we begin the slow walk back to the four story face brick building we call our clubhouse.
Most of my weight is shamelessly on the brother.
Truth is, I would probably be rolling down this hill if it weren't for him.
“And I keep saying that you need to cool it with the booze, if you were a kid I would have belted your
ass the first time and made sure you listened.”
I snort at the idea of Knight belting my ass.
Tightening my arm that's gripping his neck, I say, “You won't even kill a bee, how the fuck are you
gonna belt a kid.”
“That's because the bee is innocent, just minding its own business, a naughty kid is minding everybody
else's,” He points out as we continue our trek back down.
“You need help man,” I shake my head as I voice out the obvious.
Knight's way of thinking should really be evaluated.
“As long as my name is not Killer or Texas I think I'm good, are we going to the kitchen or straight to the
shower.”
“I could do with a meal,” I tell him, and we change direction toward the back door, where the kitchen is
located.
“Left overs or eggs?” Knight asks me as he pushes the kitchen door.
And it feels like a sucker punch to the gut as I enter this kitchen.
It brings back memories of Beauty scrubbing the floor, her body shaking on the ground from her terrors.
I should call her Beggar now as morning comes, as reality washes over my clouded fog, because that
was her name she chose, Beggar.
When I met her that was exactly what she was, a woman who lived on the streets.
Maybe that is why I convinced myself that she wasn't a danger.
Maybe it is the reason I let my guard down.
The door separating the dining area from the kitchen swings open.
The big beef of a man named River, with slight leathery skin from riding the hard way through life,
stares at Knight and me with his wide awake deep, yet fucking light blue eyes that says more than he
probably would.