I've been Challenged Once, Given Coffee Twice

An Empty Mirror

An Empty Mirror

I wiped away with my fingers a trail of fresh warm blood that lingered on my lips. A midnight bite is always welcomed, even more if it comes from a handsome and well fitted man. After enjoying of that ardent and lustful encounter that resulted to be... well, my dinner, I rose up elegantly and accommodated my firm and round breasts back where they belonged behind the low décolletage in my gown. As I walked down the hall way I tightened up the strings in the leather corset and grinned to the memories still tinkling on my skin.

I strolled down the dim alley in a slow pace, with fluid cadence as usual and thought about my complicated existence and that made that smile to vanish away. Why? For us, beautiful, perfect and immortal beings should be everything around us. It's supposed to be ours, but it's not. We own nothing at all. We live secluded from the outer world, a world that hate us... however a world that we need to exist. And is this love-hate- desire-need- predator-prey-relationship that takes us back to an abyss much more deeper and darker than the one from which we emerged centuries ago.

I stopped by a tall window. The silvery and cold light of the moon squeezed through the window panes carrying flickering swirling trails of dust. I stood by the opened arch on the stoned wall feeling nostalgic. There are least the times I have the chance to stick my face out and glance over the outer world. I can barely walk amongst the persons outside without wanting to kill all of them to drain completely, revealing myself to the world as I am: a demonic assassin.

That starry night sky extended its darkness beyond the mountain peaks; there where the rivers are born and the chirping birds perch merrily on the trees. There, the rainbow hides myths a lot more glorious or epic than ours and the green color acquires so many different tones under the golden sun. Ha, the sun! So warm and bright that hurts when I stand out of the shade. For me it's irrational because I'm simply one of them, a creature from the darkness.

Outside, in the Plaza, some couples sit on the iron benches to converse. They laugh and greet the nonchalant passers and they live their lives limited by time so happily that I feel envious. They are born, live, get old and die because of the inclement march of time on them and they seem to don't care. How fool of us, believing ourselves so superior because this same time doesn't leave a scar on us.

Humans are plainly content with their simple and finite existence. They are weak and pusillanimous, but they are free; the true owners of this world indeed. While I have to hide behind these walls or roam below the street level in the filthy and nauseous gutters... Human queens don't go out at night to hunt for food on the dim, narrow and smelling like excrement city narrow streets.

Yes, I can picture myself as the queen of the world, a world that is not mine, neither ours but we stubbornly want to believe that because we're demigods. We are superior beings, gifted with immortality and supernatural power and descend from an ancestral lineage that transcend all human race. Yet we are incapable of containing our instincts; primeval and tribal instincts not different from the basic behavior exhibited by the wild beasts.

And we can love like them... We wish to love, but we crave more for blood than for affection. Therefore we destroy everything we touch to satisfy that implacable thirst. When the throat soars, fangs protrude and our heart sop beating making us incapable of thinking or feeling. There's no reasoning and we act and kill, bathing our bodies in the carmine warm life elixir. A life extinguishes beneath our arms, a human life that we cherished and cuddled and that possibly could make us happy before. But we only seek to fulfill our own pleasure and terrible vices.

A tear rolled down my face. It was a cold and insipid drop and I let it drip. At the end of the hall, in the main atrium, there was a floor to ceiling mirror. I fixed my elegant dress in front of the lustrous crystal with my eyes closed. There was no need to open them because a lost soul doesn't have a reflection.

I took a deep breath and with resignation I decided to open my eyes. The grand salon was empty. According to the mirror's trustful testimony, I wasn't there. A cold solitude invaded the emptiness of my womb making me shiver. I had everything and nothing, not a soul or a real existence. I was a perfect stunning face but I couldn't look at myself in the same mirror humans did. I had eternal youth, but I had no one to spend the rest of my days with. Love knocked more than once to my door, but I destroyed it and left it dry on the floor.

Enemies? Who needed them? I carried it over my shoulders, invisible standing in front of an empty mirror. I was my own nemesis! I was my own inquisitor and torturer! I had denied myself for so long to be happy and maybe I will remain like that forever because blood weighs more than water, even more when it drips down my throat so warm and rich... And it will always taste sweeter than a lover's kiss.

***This short story responds to the WattVampires summer challenge part 4. Less than 1k words about a vampire's nemesis.