EPOV

“I wasn’t precisely sure where I was. Some dark attic crawl space, full of rats and spiders. The spiders ignored me, and the rats gave me a wide birth. The air was thick with the heavy scents of cooking oil, rancid meat, human sweat, and the nearly solid layer of pollution that was actually visible in the humid air, like a black film over everything. Below me, four stories of rickety ghetto tenement teamed with life. I didn’t bother to separate the thoughts from the voices-they made a big, loud Spanish clamor that I didn’t listen to. I just let the sounds bounce off me. Meaningless. All of it was meaningless. My very existence was meaningless.

The whole world was meaningless.

My forehead pressed against my knees, and I wondered how much longer I would be able to stand this. Maybe it was hopeless. Maybe, if my attempt was doomed to failure anyway, I should stop torturing myself and just go back…

The idea was so powerful, so healing-like the words contained a strong anesthetic, washing away the mountain of pain I was buried under-that it made me gasp, made me dizzy.” (New Moon Extra-Rosalie’s News, )

No, it would not help to return. Bellahad never wanted me to see her grow old. It was silly, she would be just as beautiful to me as she had been the last time I saw her. Unless-unless she was-no Rosalie was wrong, as usual. She had to be alive, had to exist. “The idea of that final separation was so much more intense than the pain I already had. My body shook with it. When Bella went on to the place where she belonged and I never could, I would not linger her behind. There must be oblivion. There must be relief.

That was my hope, but there were no guarantees. To sleep, perchance o dream. Ay, there’s the rub, I quoted to myself.” (New Moon Extras-Rosalie’s News, ) Yet who was I to dream of sleep? I had not dreamt in a century. In that moment, a fresh wave of pain overtook me as I remembered how Bella had talked while she slept. Dreams are for the living. I told myself. Dreams are an image of the soul’s deepest wishes and I, I had no soul.