Take Me With You

by Nina G. Jones

They call it fight or flight, but there's another option, when the fear is so paralyzing that you submit.

I am a monster. Monsters don't live under the fucking bed or the closet. They don't appear in a puff of smoke. No, monsters are like me: the quiet guy who walks a drunk woman home, a protective uncle, that unassuming guy with the friendly smile who fixes your porch. We do our work in the dark, we lurk in the shadows, but we roam during the day, scouting our next prey.

You may judge me for accepting it, but I don't live in the world of options you do. I need to reinforce his gentleness. I need comfort.

pure predator—as if he was pulled away from society and its norms. As if he had evolved only enough to look like us, but inside, he doesn't understand what it is to be human.

logic has no place in my life any longer.

realize that there are things—no matter how much I watch, no matter how many times I scour these people's homes, no matter how invasively I insert myself into their lives—that I will never know.

I thought being loved was the most gratifying feeling. No, it's being obsessed over. It's having someone so infatuated with you that they would risk everything to have you. That is a high that love can't touch. Love is a slow burn, a stockpot simmering to soften the heart. But this—this is a flash flood, it's the smoke billowing when a steak hits a hot pan. It's threatening, but its fierceness is the very thing love dilutes.

He's killed me a thousand different ways. Stolen countless breaths and hopes. Slaughtered the girl who had plans to marry a nice doctor. Killed the dream of helping people for a living. Snuffed a piece of her soul by pulling her out of her little brother's life. Pillaged her pride. And out of those tiny little deaths, someone else has been born.

“And you…are my obsession.”

It's the most thrilling thing to be told you are precious. That you are so valuable it puts you in danger. Nothing of such high regard can exist in this world without causing a storm. When a man covets something so strongly, he is its greatest threat.

My guardian and my stalker. My lover and my enemy. A stranger. The father to my child.

She glows right now. My own little angel in a white box. My seed growing in her. She's pure, fertile ground on which we could grow a life.

inserting myself into the Sears catalogue snapshots of their lives.

What Sam and I have is unnatural. It's aberrant. It's abhorrent.

“No one loves you like I do.”

I didn't have her at the ranch. I didn't have her until I let her go. Until I bloomed into the monster that she felt only she could save.

Carter was a breeze. Soft and comforting. Safe. But it doesn't move things, it doesn't shake things. I am the storm. Strong and violent. Dangerous. I will tear down anything in my path to have her. When I roll through, you see evidence of me all around. You will see branches broken, windows shattered. I will move obstacles that seem insurmountable.