Til' Death Do Us Part

Chapter Eleven

    Initially, I'd believed it to be a bad dream before realizing, in the middle of nowhere and midday, that with no idea of how long it had been, I was still dazed and covered in blood. Both mine and not. I was still in that clearing and still on the red blanket, now darkened by my and Martha's blood.

    There were many things that were not meant to be a part of this world and on October 8, 1920, I became one of them. I never caught another sight of Martha that year-the only remnant of proof that proved she actually existed was me. I didn't age, I didn't require much sleep and I never went hungry after that. I needed a new type of sustenance that no one could teach me about-I needed blood and I needed it in some form or another each day.

    But of course, I didn't know that. Not then. I just ate and ate and no matter how much I consumed, I could never get my fill. I was too naive to understand just yet what I was. I still felt human and I would until I consumed blood for the first time. Blood tablets were not a thing of that time.

    It took four years for the bloodbath to begin, for me to realize that the reason I hadn't changed was both because I couldn't and because I'd refused to acknowledge the truth. I should have realized what I was, I'd wiped a wound on my arm with my mouth once. It was stale and tasted like nothing and yet somehow it was better than the usual burger and fries. The second time, I wiped someone's wound with my finger before placing a bandaid over it. Before washing my hand, I'd licked my finger to push a strand of hair out of my face and I'd remembered about the last time I'd done it. Afterwards, there were some incidents but in refusal, I didn't acknowledge a single incident.

    In 1928 was when it happened. I was twenty eight years old and still hadn't had more than a drop of blood more than a few handful of times. Most would've buckled under the pressure or realized what they needed to do but most also had another to teach them what they needed to do.

    All I remember before the incident was being in my bed, sick for weeks. For the last two weeks, I'd felt nauseous and unable to move and then spurts of time where all I could do was pace around anxiously. It was hell but at the time there was nothing else I could do. I hadn't allowed myself to realize that the night with Martha had really happened, I'd convinced myself it was nothing more than a bad dream.

    The next thing I knew, I was an entire town away in a near-dead town. It was one that I'd long since recognized. A normal town but the small percent of the town that wasn't dead was half near it or long since deserted. It looked like a massacre when I'd come to. I spent the next month burying the dead of my hometown and attempting to replenish what little I could. The bunch that were near dead refused to let me help them and so they too, perished. There was nothing I could do but leave with a familiar face.

    Dimitri, who'd I'd taken for dead, had come to the town in distress. His wife was away on a trip, he'd taken the opportunity to come back and discover the chaotic slaughter I'd created and after he'd learned of everything, we left the town. We started new lives as friends as we were now similar in physical age-we only had a ten year give or take difference between us though in actuality, the difference remained twenty years.

    It was a new start for the both of us and for some time, neither of us returned to that forgotten town. We didn't even waste a thought to it until gradually, the two of us drifted apart. It wasn't intentional but it happened to us just as it does to many others.

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