The Hunger

Back to the Hospital

I didn't realize what I had done until I heard my father fall unconscious to the floor, waking me up out of the trans like a bell. It shattered that coolness that I had felt before, exhilarating my whole body. Blood was starting to pour out of a wound at the neck, pooling on the dark wooden floor. I couldn't move, I tried moving my hands but they wouldn't listen. They just shook at my sides, throbbing in some sort of guilty exhileration and pleasure. I felt blood running down the corner of my mouth, joining the tears that silently fell to the floor. Somehow I regained some kind of control and started being able to move even though my thoughts were still overwhelmed. I took the hoodie that I had thrown over the hole in my desk and pressed it to the wound, trying to stop the flow with my shaking hands. I looked around, trying to come up with what to do next and saw my phone.

I picked it up with my right hand, holding the hoodie to my father's neck with the other but right when I was about to hit the call button I realized that I couldn't do it. I couldn't call 911. They would start asking questions about what happened and I won't be able to answer. I looked at the phone, then my father whose blood started to drench the hoodie. My head started to clear.

This is my father! What am I doing?

I came to a decision. I'd drive him there and leave him with the nurses. Then I would get out of there before anyone started asking questions. I put my arms under my father, one under his legs and one under his back. I braced myself for the strain and pain that I would without a doubt feel. I didn't trust my miraculous recovery. I lifted my arms with most of my strength and threw my father up into the air. He felt as light as a feather. I put the hoodie between his neck and my shoulder to stem the flow.

I hurried out of my room with my father pressed against my chest as fast as I could, not thinking on what had just happened. I easily went through the open and light rooms of our home and down the stairs but when I came into the hallway I saw myself in the mirror.

When I looked at myself in my bedroom mirror it had been dark which was why I thought I looked like I did. Now, I saw myself at full light and it was frightening. The first thing I noticed was the blood that coated my entire mouth and chin. When I got over the initial shock of that I looked at how my body looked. My skin was sickly pale, my hair ink black. The skin around my eyes was surrounded by bluish black veins that started to fade as I watched. And my eyes... My eyes that had been green before were now black aswell. Black as coal. Black as the eyes of the girl. The girl that we had found in the woods.

I shook off the turmoil of emotions that were forcing their way through me. I looked down at my father, tears dropping down onto his chest. I wiped my bloody mouth on the hoodie that was sticking out from between my shoulder and my father's neck. When I came to the door I grabbed the car keys, juggling my father with one arm and a knee for a while, and a jacket to cover my naked chest and threw the door open.

My eyes had just adjusted to the sunlight streaming through my bedroom window but it had not prepared me for the direct light of the sun. When I stepped onto my porch I couldn't see a thing. All I could see was the white and painful light that stabbed at my eyes and made them ache. I stood there for a minute, trying to adjust them to the light but it wouldn't work.

I can't stop now; I've wasted enough time already.

Maybe I couldn't see anything but I've lived here for five years and knew my front porch well enough to make it to the driveway without seeing. I closed my eyes and focused on my other senses. It worked surprisingly well.

I started walking slowly, but as I predicted every step down the small porch I started walking faster. I reached the car in just a few seconds and opened the passenger door for my father and put him there and strapped him in. I walked around the car, feeling my way along the exterior of the car with my hand and and opened the driver's door. I sat down into the shaded interior of the car. I could see again. When I looked around the interior, trying to orient myself in the driver's seat, I saw my father's sunglasses resting on the dashboard.

I hoped it protect my eyes from the sun and allow me to see, so I put them on.

I had never driven my father's car before because he had said it was too fast for me, but now, I had to go fast. It was a BMW M5 which looked like a normal BMW 5 series but had some serious horse power under the hood. I started the car and heard the engine roar. I put the gears into reverse and pressed the gas, making the car jump in response to my inexperienced touch.

-

The journey to the hospital normally takes twenty minutes, I made it in ten. Ten painful, throataching and scary minutes with my unconscious and hurt father. I had been driving like a maniac and didn't doubt that some had reported my license plate to the police. I screeched the car to a halt right outside the hospital doors and jumped out. As I had hoped, the sunglasses shielded my eyes and I could see again. I ran swiftly around the car, threw my father's door open and picked him up. I called for a nurse while I ran towards the emergency entrance of the hospital.

When I came in through the doors, I called out that my father was hurt, unconscious and had probably lost a lot of blood. This set in motion what I hoped it would. A nurse came rushing over with a stretcher.

"He's bleeding from the neck; he fell in our garage... I think. I found him like this." I said, which had been the only lie I could come up with on the way here.

"OK. We'll need to see a doctor right away." She said when she had checked on the wound. "Would you please come with me?"

"No, I can't." I said and turned around and ran out of the hospital and into the car before she could object.

When I made it into the car I wiped away the tears that had been starting to stream down my face again and took a deep breath, trying to calm me down. It did everything but. With my father gone to keep me focused I felt the urge to sink my teeth into something again and the thirst and hunger that comes with it. This time though, it wasn't as strong. I could still think. I had been waiting for it which made me able to fight it more readily. I looked over towards the blood that was on the passenger seat. The blood that was left behind by my father.

I wanted more.