Vermillion, Scarlet, Merlot.

Love Dies

I have long picked the loose skin from around my thumb as I wait outside the bedroom door. It'll heal before I have a chance to analyse the wound, the skin will sew itself back together again and I won't ever have to deal with the pain. Maybe there is a metaphor in there somewhere about immortality lacking accountability but I'm too distracted to decipher it. If I could sweat, my palms would be clammy, and if my heart still beat, it'd probably fall through my chest.

The door seems taller now, the one to Camilla's bedroom, but maybe it's my nerves playing tricks on me. I try to focus on what I'll do with the room now she won't be needing it anymore; sleep is a thing of the past for her, but my brain is too busy picturing what's inside.

The silver doorknob twists, and I stand square to the door. When it opens, I'm disappointed to see my sister Victoria slip out and close it behind her. Her black hair is slicked back into a ponytail so tight it's almost impossible to read her face, but I pick up one expression from her dark features. Doubt.

'Is she...?' I trail off.

'She's dead,' she confirms with a hasty nod of her head. 'She took it well, considering."

'Can I see her?'

She avoids eye contact.

'I guess you should.'

She grips the doorknob again and expels a deep breath.

'I... I just hope you're happy.'

She doesn't elaborate. She pushes the door open to reveal the woman I've been longing to see for hours and disappears down the hall in a blur of motion.

Camilla steps out from the dim lighting of her bedroom into the hallway, wearing a simple black dress that I've never seen before.

I've been waiting for this moment for so long, Camilla's descent to the dead. For her to be like me, finally.

But now that it's here, I can't help but notice that her eyes used to be so bright. They're much dimmer now. Once a brilliant blue, now they're muted with grey tones, like the ocean in winter. Her skin has smoothed, pores entirely minimised, freckles that were once littered over her cheeks vanished and replaced with a lifeless glow, a hauntingly beautiful veil covering her skin. Her hair is sleek and uniform, not a strand out of place as she steps towards me. Is this what being undead does to you? Mutes you? Does it decide that what I view as sun-kissed was actually sun damage to be healed? That the body in her hair was actually frizz to be smoothed?

She looks at me, desperate for a reaction that I don't want to give.

'So, how do I look?'

She raises her eyebrows, breaking the illusion that she is anything more than an inaccurate painting of the woman I love. I cringe as the light glints off of her elongated canines.

I hesitate over my answer. I don't know who I'm more nervous for to learn the truth, Camilia, or myself. I have been asking her to change for so long, and now I am faced with the reality of it, it's terrifying.

I don't like her like this.

Camilla had always been a lively woman. It was the first thing that caught my eye, how she felt her emotions with her whole body. When she was happy, it was like her entire being would grin, and joy would pump around her veins in place of her blood. She was complex, the depth of her feelings limitless. A woman with so much passion for life because she knew it was fleeting, with tomorrow not being guaranteed like it is for me, my kind. Our kind.

She was a painter, a poet, a musician. She took skills that took years to just learn and mastered them, because her short life span made these years spent honing these skills achievements, something to derive pleasure from, not just things to fill the countless hours of your monotonous existence with.

I wanted her to turn so I could keep that forever, the radiance she emanated. Only now, looking at her, do I realise why it's called the vampiric curse.

Maybe I had loved her because she was what I wasn't. Warm. Young. Alive.

What am I supposed to do now she's cold? Pale? Dead?

'Come on, Silas, you're making me nervous,' she attempts to coax a reaction from me again, giggling as she does, and even her laugh doesn't sound as sweet.

'Would you excuse me for a moment?' I ask, but I don't wait for her response as I rush down the hall and through the house.

I nearly knock the back door off its hinges as I burst through it, quickly making my way to the highest point of the garden, by the higanbana flowers, a bright scarlet red even in the dark.

Dawn is breaking, I shouldn't be out here, but this is my favourite place to think. I look down to the waves crashing over each other below the cliff on which my house sits isolated on, and I ask myself if jumping could kill me, would I do it?

Camilla was the only thing on this earth that I loved, but maybe the truth is that I have always hated myself more than I ever loved her.

The sun's first rays singe my skin and I instinctively retreat to the shade of the nearest tree. I watch as the burns patch themselves over, like they never existed, and I come to think about that metaphor of immortality again.

This time when I step into the sun, I let it consume me, until I am nothing but ash and pain.