Mark Reads 'Midnight Sun': Chapter 1

In the first chapter of Midnight Sun, we're introduced to a new narrative form from our favorite author of all time. The book is essentially Twilight but retold from the point of view of Edward. And let me tell you: it is psychotic, creepy, and horrifying on a level that you are literally not prepared for. This is some fucked up shit. Intrigued? Then it's time for me to start reading Midnight Sun.

CHAPTER 1: FIRST SIGHT

You are not fucking prepared.

• This was the time of day when I wished I were able to sleep. High school.

  Or was purgatory the right word? If there was any way to atone for my sins, this ought to count toward the tally in some measure. The tedium was not something I grew used to; every day seemed more impossibly monotonous than the last.

• Rosalie was thinking, as usual, about herself. She’d caught sight of her profile in the reflection off someone’s glasses, and she was mulling over her own perfection. Rosalie’s mind was a shallow pool with few surprises.

• Jasper was letting his imagination get away from him. He was picturing it— picturing himself getting up from his seat next to Alice and going to stand beside the little girl. Thinking of leaning down and in, as if he were going to whisper in her ear, and letting his lips touch the arch of her throat. Imagining how the hot flow of her pulse beneath the fine skin would feel under his mouth.

• Now I recognized the ‘voice.’ Jessica Stanley—it had been a while since she’d bothered me with her internal chatter. What a relief it had been when she’d gotten over her misplaced infatuation. It used to be nearly impossible to escape her constant, ridiculous daydreams. I’d wished, at the time, that I could explain to her exactly what would have happened if my lips, and the teeth behind them, had gotten anywhere near her. That would have silenced those annoying fantasies. The thought of her reaction almost made me smile.

• I turned my head away to hide my smile. Jessica and her classmates had no idea how lucky they were that none of them particularly appealed to me.

• I was a predator. She was my prey. There was nothing else in the whole world but that truth.

  There was no room full of witnesses—they were already collateral damage in my head. The mystery of her thoughts was forgotten. Her thoughts meant nothing, for she would not go on thinking them much longer.

  I was a vampire, and she had the sweetest blood I’d smelled in eighty years.

• She walked more quickly now, as if she understood the need to escape. Her haste made her clumsy—she tripped and stumbled forward, almost falling into the girl seated in front of me. Vulnerable, weak. Even more than usual for a human.

• I knew what had to happen now. The girl would have to come sit beside me, and I would have to kill her.

  The innocent bystanders in this classroom, eighteen other children and one man, could not be allowed to leave this room, having seen what they would soon see.

  I flinched at the thought of what I must do. Even at my very worst, I had never committed this kind of atrocity. I had never killed innocents, not in over eight decades. And now I planned to slaughter twenty of them at once.

• If I killed the girl first, I would have only fifteen or twenty seconds with her before the humans in the room would react. Maybe a little bit longer, if at first they did not realize what I was doing. She would not have time to scream or feel pain; I would not kill her cruelly. That much I could give this stranger with her horribly desirable blood.

  But then I would have to stop them from escaping. I wouldn’t have to worry about the windows, too high up and small to provide an escape for anyone. Just the door—block that and they were trapped.

  It would be slower and more difficult, trying to take them all down when they were panicked and scrambling, moving in chaos. Not impossible, but there would be much more noise. Time for lots of screaming. Someone would hear...and I’d be forced to kill even more innocents in this black hour.

  And her blood would cool, while I murdered the others.

• My former irritation at being stymied by her soundless thoughts was weak and pale in comparison to the need—and the hate—that possessed me now. For I hated this frail woman-child beside me, hated her with all the fervor with which I clung to my former self, my love of my family, my dreams of being something better than what I was... Hating her, hating how she made me feel—it helped a little. Yes, the irritation I’d felt before was weak, but it, too, helped a little. I clung to any emotion that distracted me from imagining what she would taste like.

• The office was empty except for the secretary, the one I wanted to see. She didn’t notice my silent entrance. “Mrs. Cope?” The woman with the unnaturally red hair looked up and her eyes widened. It

  always caught them off guard, the little markers they didn’t understand, no matter how many times they’d seen one of us before.

  “Oh,” she gasped, a little flustered. She smoothed her shirt. Silly, she thought to herself. He’s almost young enough to be my son. Too young to think of that way... “Hello, Edward. What can I do for you?” Her eyelashes fluttered behind her thick glasses.

• “Of course, Edward. How can I help?” Too young, too young, she chanted to herself. Wrong, of course. I was older than her grandfather. But according to my driver’s license, she was right.

• Bella Swan stood with her back pressed to the wall beside the door, a piece of paper clutched in her hands. Her eyes were even wider than usual as she took in my ferocious, inhuman glare.

  The smell of her blood saturated every particle of air in the tiny, hot room. My throat burst into flames.

  The monster glared back at me from the mirror of her eyes again, a mask of evil.

  My hand hesitated in the air above the counter. I would not have to look back in order to reach across it and slam Mrs. Cope’s head into her desk with enough force to kill her. Two lives, rather than twenty. A trade.

• “Oh,” she said again. The picture grew more specific. I saw the inside of Chief Swan’s house for the first time, saw Bella in a small kitchen with the yellow cupboards, her back to me as I stalked her from the shadows...let the scent pull me toward her.

• I accelerated back toward town, and I knew the visions in Alice’s head would be flashing from dark to bright like a strobe light. As I sped back to Forks doing ninety, I wasn’t sure where I was going. To say goodbye to my father? Or to embrace the monster inside me? The road flew away beneath my tires.

omg why does this exist there is no god oh shit oh my god oh my god