~Beauty~

"Have you seen Teigan this morning?" Bethany asked while getting up to wash the dishes in the sink. They were left over from breakfast. Carina swatted her away and took over. 

"He's been moving things into the shed since the crack of dawn. You'll catch him any minute now." She rinsed a plate and then set it to dry. There was a dishwasher but it appeared the women actually enjoyed doing the chore. "Why? Do you two have plans?" 

Bethany settled onto a stool, feeling a rush of heat towards her face. "I guess you could say that." 

"Ah, I see. And none of you thought to invite me to tag along! I mean, it figures . . . I'm the maid after all. No one wants to hang out with the maid." 

"Carina! You know that's not true!" 

She cackled, throwing her head back. "I'm just messing with you, darling! The more you distract him the less sweeping I'm inclined to do!" 

"I thought you liked sweeping. You always seem jolly when you clean." 

"No, no, no. Don't get it wrong! I love doing the dishes, organizing, even mopping but sweeping?" She shook her head, pursing her lips. "What is it? Medieval times? Buy a vacuum cleaner!" 

"Oh, I see. I think I agree with you there."  

Beth waited around for Teigan for a bit longer. She expected him to hold up on his promise from the day prior. There weren't many ways for him to avoid doing so unless he decided to stay out in the shed forever. She walked to her room then back to the living room. She tied her shoes again, turned on the tv, then turned it off. She redid her ponytail going from the top of her head, then again to the side, and finally to the nape of her neck where it remained. 

One her third trip to the living room, she found Teigan sitting on the bottom step of the stairs. He had his arms around his knees, chin tucked on top of them. She was coming up behind him when he asked,"Are you ready?" 

"Yeah . . ."  

He uncurled himself and strided over to the backyard. "I have something to show you in the shed." 

"Oh, alright." 

Was that what he had been preparing all morning? 

He handed her the coat she borrowed during their snowball fight. It was still a little damp from laying in the snow. He put up his hood and slid the screen door open. Beth gulped when she saw the stony look on his face as he closed it behind her. For a second, she wondered if he had killed all of the criminals and the shed was the dumping grounds. She shook it out of her head with the swish of her ponytail. She knew that wasn't true. 

The snow crunched under their boots and it was the only sound within earshot. Beth still hadn't gotten accustomed to the silence that came with being in upstate New York. She usually liked it but the honking of a taxi or the whoosh of a subway train passing underground would have been comforting to hear with the grave feeling that clung to the air. 

The shed was the size of a room - not a NYC room but a spacious one. The door had a padlock on it which he unlocked. He opened the door and held it open for Beth. She gave a forced laugh. 

"You got me alone and away from the house . . . Did you lower me out here to kill me or something?" She was joking - mostly. 

Teigan remained expressionless. She deduced he didn't find it funny. 

The shed was pitch black. Only a single ray of light shined through the glass portion of the ceiling. She imagined there must have been a light switch in there somewhere - she could barely see her hands. 

"We finished fixing the hallway and soon we'll have to fix up the other bedroom. It was cluttered with things that I moved into here this morning." 

Her hip bumped into a table with a wood saw on it and immediately after she stubbed her foot on a stack of boxes with clothing spilling out the top. She recognized one of the sweaters as the one Carina gave her to wear her first day at the house. 

"Bethany." 

She spun around to face him. He pulled out a box from a shelf above them. In it, laid two roses. One was the same sunset red one she first saw on the night Ryan Daniels disappeared. The other one was red with traces of yellow on it's tips. It's bud was more blossomed, it's petals reaching out towards all four corners of the room - as if it wished to grow bigger, make its presence known. The stem was a vivid green and without a single thorn. Unlike the former flower, it brought a smile to her face. She could almost say it was glowing like a flashlight in the darkness. Maybe it was. 

She recognized it as the rose her mother had stolen. She wondered how she wasn't completely hypnotized by it before. 

"How haven't they wilted yet?" The yellow rose was weeks old. She didn't know much about gardening but that had to defy nature's laws. 

He stepped closer to Beth. His beastly features were cloaked in the darkness. All she could make out was his pulsing blue eyes. 

"Remember when I told you the witch made it impossible for me to die?" 

She locked eyes with him, trying to beat him to the punch and piece things together in her mind. 

"Yes. Your injuries heal." 

"Right," he said. "That applies for the criminals too. I can't kill them." 

She took in a breath. "If you could, you wouldn't do what you're doing." 

His mouth fell open. "No . . . No, I wouldn't." 

"Because you're not a murderer." 

His voice was barely above a whisper. "Right." 

"What happens to them then?" Her heart was racing in her chest. He was so close to telling her. Nothing she could come up with made sense. She had the strangest feeling that the true answer wouldn't make sense either. He was cursed by a person with magic, after all. 

He held up the orange rose. It was close enough for her to smell. It wreaked of sweat and ashes. The scent was horribly familiar. 

"The criminals I go after don't die. They live on . . . as roses." 

She let out the breath she had been holding and ran a finger along its petals. "You're saying this is Ryan Daniels?" 

He nodded once. 

"That's crazy but . . . I believe you." She might have even known it to be true herself. When Ryan Daniels disappeared there was only a rose the same shade of his hair left behind. It explained why her mother snatching one of his roses caused such a big ordeal. It was because she didn't take a simple rose - she took a person. 

Bethany said nothing for a while. Flashes of thoughts passed her mind until she could find something to latch onto. 

"Did the witch tell you this would happen? Or did you try to kill someone first?" 

His eyes widened as she continued. Her words were coming out like bullets. 

"Even if it isn't really murder, how can you live with yourself? You turned them into roses! Can they feel? Think? You're making them spend an endless eternity as flowers! You're cursing them just like she cursed you!" 

"Look, I didn't bring you here to judge me! I brought you here to tell you the truth! Can't you appreciate that and let it go?" 

She huffed but stopped with her questions. She pointed at the other rose. "Who's this?" 

His breath caught in his throat and when he spoke his voice cracked like china dropped onto the pavement. "I didn't mean to hurt her. I really didn't." 

Beth's hard stare softened. She lowered her voice. "Who was she?" 

His words slipped out of his mouth and haunted the atmosphere like ghosts. "She was my mother." 

He stared at the claws that had sprouted out of my fingertips.

Hideous.

That's what he was. That's all he was.
His eyes found the family photo hanging over the fireplace. It was of his mother and father, perfectly posed with their only son. They all had smiles on their faces but each of them was anything but happy. That extra makeup placed around his mother's eyes wasn't there because she wanted to look nice. It was there to hide the redness all her crying left behind.

The day of the photo shoot was one of the only times he saw his father smile. He didn't even know that the angry, disproving look on his face could be removed. Well it could, but only if it was in service of getting him something he wanted. 

They were a broken family that put on masks to hide it. They needed to look good. No one could see their pain because then they would appear weak. If there was anything his father hated, it was looking weak and out of control. 
Teigan punched the photo as hard as he could. The glass shattered and lodged itself into his skin. In seconds, the skin sewed itself back together. It spat out the pieces of glass and the bleeding stopped. His own body was a cruel prison. He couldn't end it all if he wanted to - he had already tried. Lying on the pavement with several broken bones, he waited for death to come. Instead, he felt the excruciating pain of each bone breaking and then being put back together again by an invisible surgeon. 

He brought out his claws like a cat and swiped at the picture. Five rips ran across of it, distorting all of their faces. The old Teigan was gone. No more fake smiles or pretending. He wore his ugliness on the outside now. 

"Sweetie." His mother's voice was trained to be calm and pleasant, even in distress. "It's going to be okay." 

She was standing in the doorway. Her long blonde hair was tangled, her makeup smudged across her bronze skin. She had never let herself look like that. His father wouldn't let her. 

"How can you say that, Mom? Of course things aren't okay! Look at me! Look at me!" His mother had barely made eye contact with him since his transformation.

"You look like a beast but you don't have to be one." She went to him and took his face in her hands. "Because inside you are my son. You will always be my son." 

"I can't be anyone's son when I'm like this! I can't go out! I can't be a detective! I'll have to disappear and everyone will question the family!" 

"Who cares what people do?!" 

"Dad does!" he yelled. "He doesn't want me anymore." 

Tears escaped her eyes. "I should have left him years ago. I let him raise you and I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." 

"No. He's right." 

His mother held him and wept like he was dead. He might as well have been. 
Heavy footsteps came into the living room. His father stood in his leather boots, his hand resting on his belt. Teigan hung his head. 

"Get away from him, Annie! I told you to stay back! He's dangerous!" He removed his belt and wrapped it around his hand to use as a whip. 

"Stop!" his mother shrieked. She stepped in front of Teigan to shield him. "He's still our son! He won't hurt us!" 

"You don't know that! Back away before I make you!" He carefully came closer as if he was approaching a wild animal - like a zookeeper trapped in a lion's den. What was Teigan in his eyes? Dangerous? Only capable of evil? 

In a quick movement, he snatched his mother's wrist and violently tugged her over to him. She tried to resist to no avail. 

"Stop squirming!" 

His mother let out a yelp of pain. He didn't know what was more horrific - the fact that this was happening or the fact that things similar to this had happened prior to his transformation. 

"Stop! You're hurting her!" he cried. 
"Better me than you, you monster!" 

The woman made one more attempt to break free but was pushed away. She stumbled back onto the floor and hit her head. He couldn't tell if she was conscious. 

"Mom?!" He wanted desperately to rush to her, his father was pulling him into a headlock. Couldn't he see that he had hurt his wife? The very woman he was claiming to be trying to protect? 

Anger burned and sizzled in Teigan. He used his brute strength to knock his father off of him and kneeled next to his mother. 

"Mom?" Her eyes were fluttering open and shut, threatening to roll back into her skull. She mumbled something he never got to hear because he was being ripped away from her. 

His father had lost it. He was beating him with his belt as if his intent was to kill. Teigan yelped and fell to the ground. His skin was stinging so badly it went numb. He couldn't lay there and take it - not like he used to. 

He blindly clawed the air around him, trying to get his father away - to stop. He had only been clawing for a few seconds when he heard a gasp and the dreadful sound of tearing flesh. The smell of blood exploded into the air. He spotted a growing puddle on the ground, droplets on his own skin. 

His father was fine. He had no cuts or wounds. Yet he was as pale as a sheet of paper and staring at the ground with an expression void of emotion. Before Teigan could follow his gaze, a bright light filled the air. In his mother's place was a single yellow rose, drenched in blood. 

"You killed her . . ." His father's commanding voice was only a whisper. "You're a murderer." 

And he was. 

Bethany struggled to find something to say. It was such an appalling story. She would never understand how that felt and she wouldn't try to. Her awe that he even shared the story in such detail and vulnerability left her speechless.
Teigan didn't choke up while telling the tale though there were other ticks that let her know it wasn't easy for him. She almost felt herself brought to tears but refrained from letting them out since she sensed he wasn't one for pity. 

"I'm so sorry. That's so devastating." The clothing and knick knacks piled around her from the spare room in the house must have been his mother's things. She got goosebumps.

Teigan sat staring out into space with a haunted expression. She felt an urge to comfort him. Even though he was her kidnapper and had made bad decisions, and looked like a monster, he was human. 

He was a broken human who was left all alone after a traumatic event. 

Beth's hand brushed his. He awakened from his trance and stared at it. After a moment, without a word or any eye contact, he wrapped his hand around hers and squeezed it.

They sat together like this for a while. Beth didn't move because she knew everyone needed someone to hold onto, to stabilize them, to remind them they aren't alone. For her, that was Grayson. For Teigan, that was his mother. With her gone he had no one and that could turn anyone into a beast.

Author's Note - Finally, a longer chapter! This one was heavy. What did you think about it? Let me know and remember to vote! Thanks again for reading!