Blood of the Thorn

4

I woke with a groan as my body started to wake from sleep. My head was pounding, and I felt like the sun that was flooding through my windows was way brighter than it should be. In short- I was hungover. I rolled around and pulled the covers over my face to try and block the blinding light.

Then the taste of iron in my mouth made me shoot up to a sitting position, memories of the previous night flashed into my mind. Remembering the feeling of my lips devouring the crimson-stained lips of a vampire. I brought my hand to my neck and felt for a scab or something to prove that what happened wasn't just a dream. But I didn't feel anything. I jumped out of bed and raced down the stairs from the loft towards the bathroom on the main floor to look at my neck in the mirror.

Instead of a bite mark I was surprised to see there was no wound or scab at all. But there was something else. It was like a faint tattoo of two little red diamonds over the place his fangs had punctured my skin. Was I crazy? What really happened last night? Did he really bite me and drink my blood? Or did he simply give me a tattoo and I imagined all the rest? I firmly reminded myself to never drink whiskey again, clearly it made me go insane.

That had to be it...but my memories of our hot and heavy make out session and my blood dripping from his mouth seemed all too real. But I had a bit to drink, so maybe I imagined all the rest.

My head began to pound harder as I pictured the details of Dracen, thinking It must have been a dream. Dracen's impeccable body pressed up against mine, the candlelight flickering off of his tattooed skin, the smooth feel of his skin beneath my fingertips, our swollen lips dancing with each other, the metallic taste of blood. Just thinking about it was making my body buzz with building anticipation. My nipples hardened and I started to feel slick between my legs.

I thought of Drecen and all his physical perfections. Then my eyes opened, and I looked at my reflection in the mirror again as I remembered the twin brother with the white hair. I had no idea what his name was or what his story was. Truth be told, I didn't know anything at all about Drecen either. We couldn't have been together for more than ten- or fifteen-minutes last night before he dismissed me.

It had all happened so fast, and I wasn't even sure what truly did happen. Was Drecen even real? Was his twin brother real? Or was it all just a figment of my drunk imagination? And where did this tattoo come from? The skin where the tattoo was didn't even feel like a fresh tattoo, it was completely healed.

My head hurt; I couldn't process what had really happened. And if Drecen was real and a vampire, would I ever see him again? My heart hurt slightly thinking of the unlikelihood of meeting again. What had he done to me? I felt more attached to this person, whom I knew nothing about, more than I did about my ex who I had been with for six months. Pretty much the only things I knew about Dracen was that he was insanely attractive, had an equally (if not more) attractive twin brother, and they were possibly Vampires. I smacked myself in the head for even letting my imagination get so carried away. They weren't vampires, that stuff was not real.

Then it clicked. Dracula! I had been watching Dracula right before I met Dracen in the cemetery, now it was starting to make more sense. Clearly the whiskey helped me create this vampire fantasy in my head, a coping mechanism for the trauma I went through with my breakup with Grant. I laughed out loud for a moment, knowing fair well that what happened with Grant didn't traumatize me in the least. I really was going crazy.

The next thing I knew, I was in the shower and the water was turning cold, meaning I had likely been standing here for at least thirty minutes. I quickly washed my face and scrubbed all the leftover makeup away. I got out of the shower and moved at a glacial pace, completely zoned out. I was truly glad that I didn't have work today so I could move as sloth-like as I wanted. Then I remembered all the midterms I needed to grade, and I groaned with resentment.