sender unexpectedly arrives at receiver's home covered in blood & bruises.
THE WORLD HAD GONE ALL TOPSY TURVY. Up was down, left was right, and somehow Elena Gilbert no longer walked this mortal plain. Taken by the freezing current of the water beneath Wickery Bridge ⸻ still her body had not been recovered. Of course it hadn't been : because Elena wasn't dead. She'd visited him, in the photo lab of their school ⸻ he himself coaxed there by Stefan Salvatore, the ice queen of Robert E. Lee escorted by his brother, Damon. They'd been together, bits and pieces that Matt could really remember. She'd hugged him and spoken to him in the broken english of someone trying in vain to rediscover their own tongue. She had bitten him then ; that much the Honeycutt boy was sure. Twin fangs had appeared from betwixt parted lip, those lips he had kissed so many times before, and sank themselves effortlessly into his neck : like hot knife through cold butter.
It had hurt, at first, but once he'd been reminded not to fight it ⸻ to give himself, all of himself to Elena as he had always done the pain had receded, dissipated and dissolved like an alkaline tablet in a glass of water. He'd left the photo lab dazed then, managing to stumble back home to his mother and father ; each still aghast at the apparent passing of the girl who'd spent so much time in their very own home.
He sits in that same living room alone now, his parents gone away to offer the remaining Gilbert's their condolences : but what for? Elena wasn't dead. And for as much as Matt knew that fact to be true he couldn't figure out why no one else in town had seen her, surely they'd be over joyed : rejoice even. Elena Gilbert, golden girl of Fells Church was alive and well . . . as well as she could be for a living dead girl.
Reality wracks Matt's brain, his mind struggling with what he knew to be impossible and the very facts that proved him wrong. Vampires weren't real : there weren't creatures in the dark that went bump in the night and the howling of wolves at night certainly wasn't the result of some freaky werewolf situation . . . right?
A knock at the door startles the quarterback, sending his heart careening up through his throat while his stomach rocketed down to the souls of his feet. Matt lets out a subtle gasp and settles himself with hand resting gently over his left pectoral ⸻ christ if he wasn't careful he just might end up dead before this was all over.
He raises himself from the couch, television rambling on about how nine out of ten dentists recommended colgate and heads toward the front door. What he sees there sends Matt's mind reeling, ocean shaded iris widening while mouth hangs open as if in perpetual scream. "Hayley!?" Concern laces in his tone, arms reaching out toward her already, hands finding arms in an attempt to ensure she wouldn't collapse right there on their front porch. "Hayley, what happened?! Are you alright?" He's too shocked to bring her inside, too stupefied to move his legs, absorbed in the way fresh crimson mats her chestnut locks and deep purple and yellow begin to SHADE HER EXPOSED FLESH.
