vampire // txt

chapter 3: rotting fruit falls

The curtains lightened in color. I started to dread the sunlight and the clarity it gave to the room. The still wet counter of milk and the cluster of kitchenware drew knots in my stomach but I still couldn't move myself to clean it. I couldn't find a reason.

It's been two days since my boss called me but it's felt like weeks. There's no time I sleep or time I'm awake, instead I'm constantly fading in and out in a desperate attempt to silence my brain. Despondent and avoidant, I've not reached for my watch or still cracked phone. If I think too much about the new teeth that's grown in fully, and the reflection of myself in the mirror: pale, thinning, exhausted, and a mess from head to toe, I start to only see a stranger. No- a monster. Now, how am I any different than the one who did this to me? What sets me apart from the leeches that dwell in the alleys and streets that prey upon the innocents? The imposters that antagonize vampires, rambling about how awful they are while they simultaneously plan to suck the life out of their pretty date at the back of the movie theatre? These sharp teeth that bleed my gums and a hunger that claw at the tip of my tongue won't ever let me leave the reality. The reality that I have become something the world loathes without an ounce of sympathy. It doesn't matter that I was once human. Satan was once an angel after all. Just one night has taken everything from me. How am I supposed to continue living my life? How can I sit at the dinner table with my friends without eating nothing or burning my insides by forcing down what now is like poison? I can't hide this. I can't ignore it either. I can feel myself withering- dying. And I'm not sure if I care. What is left for me? That horrible and condemning night, I died. I came back in a supernatural effect that never should've happened. Having my life drained from me was painful enough, why do I have to become such a creature? Maybe I could've gone to heaven if there was such a place; but now I'm more likely to be sent to hell. At least some Christians would say that while naturalists would say I'd die like an animal- wherever they go.

Vampires must need blood often, which is sensible enough considering how high of a metabolism they have with superior strength and longer life longevity. I think this because although it's been only 5 days without eating, I feel as if I've been stranded in the salty blue on nothing but a rowboat and biscuits for weeks. I look like it too. As if I could collapse any moment like the vampire test subjects in London's prestigious experimental labs in the 19th century. Starved until death so they could ecstatically write down an average time vampires could withstood without blood for their "Survival Biology of Vampires: Everything We Thought We Already Knew In a Completely New Light" doctrines. None of that matters though, at this rate I'll probably be dead before they could muzzle me and ship me off to what would be the equivalent of Abu Ghraib for vampires. The longer I rot in my decaying apartment the more convincing it is that death would be my savior. If I die, will I be forgiven? I may not have actively chose to become a turned, but as research still stands at loose ends on what exactly creates a "turned", maybe I was born with bad blood to begin with. I'm balancing on a tightrope between committing to feeling unfairly punished and livid or accepting I experienced the unlucky and unfortunate event of the decade. A "wrong place at the wrong time" slogan above my face in the newspaper type of drama. Or perhaps I deserved this cruel fate. I wouldn't be too surprised if my mother articulated this damnation upon me in her vengeance for my betrayal either.

I laughed at myself. "As frightening as my mother is, she wouldn't want to link herself to a daughter-turned-demon. Although she'd probably just call me a-" I mimicked her prideful french accent, "-grotesque atrocity."

Fiddling with the soft furs of the blanket, I settled into the couch after suddenly getting cold. I can't get myself to leave it. Even with a beating heart, for whom does it pump blood for? For whom does it keep this body alive? The soul who lived in this body is dead, and now it's either a vacant vessel or an entirely new creature; one I don't wish to become or meet. Hae-in lost her life, she can no longer be who she was. Do what she did. With hideous teeth like these and an ultimate dependency on blood, what good could she accomplish as a nurse for all those people? For those five boys? What could she do anywhere? If anyone knew my truth, well to scramble in fear is one reaction. To whip out a knife would be another predictable one. Every impression of me and every relationship of mine would cease to exist like a snap of my fingers. Eyes would turn from kindness and familiarity to disgust and terror. I'd bleed out again before letting that happen.