Mortal Entry [WATTY AWARDS 2011]

Chapter II

Inbetween my short breaths I heard the panting of my pursuer. I knew they were getting closer. From the sound of their light, fast footsteps compared to my heavy ones, I could tell they were experienced, so more than three hundred years old. I felt so young compared to them - with only a hundred years difference. When I was human it would have been so old and impossible to live past eighty.

I missed the puzzlement on a mortal's face when a sixteen year old came in and talked to them about everything from the past three or four hundred years. I also missed my friends, like Amy, Kara and Ann. They would surely be dead by now, they were my best friends all the way through primary school and we were always pretending to be something different. Like werewolves, fairies, unicorns with glowing wings and vampires, with dark gothic clothes - the general mistake. Vampires weren't all gothic, yes we do live in dark places and tend to keep to the shadows, but we don't wear gothic clothes. We wear normal clothes so we can blend in and stay unnoticed in the missunderstanding world with the humans.

My memory brought me back to the pain in my legs and the weight of my heaving chest. I slipped on some leaves again, uncovering the mud that lay underneath. It grabbed onto the sole of my shoes like chewing gum, but I kept my footing.

I give in I die....die for good. 

I kept thinking why this vampire was hunting me, but I knew it wasn't to invite me to a royal tea party or a wedding, whatever it was it wasn't going to be pretty if it caught up to me. I pushed forward, reaching up to 150km/h. When my feet barely touched the ground they were pulled up again with so much force it was enough to kill a rearing bear or werewolf. I was scared, I couldn't keep this pace up forever and every part of me was aching. I couldn't go on, I had to stop, I had to stop to live. 

I give in I die....die for good.

"No!" I shouted into the wind along with a shortened scream of agony. My mouth was dried out instantly as I opened it, all the wind rushing in. I swallowed softly trying to rehydrate my mouth. I couldn't go on, if I kept running I would run myself to death. But if I gave in I would die.

I have to stop. Stop and die, keep going and die.

I heard four more footsteps join in the chase, the vampires coming up beside me, their eyes flared white instead of their normal colour of blue or brown. I started to cry, feeling red blotches fill my white cheeks. My chest violently jumping up and down, my heart pumping so hard I thought it would explode. I just wanted to live. I lost control of my legs as they fell into a constant agonising rythym of sprinting. My arms catching onto it as well. I threw off my backpack, but it didn't let my speed rise higher, it just lowered it down. I dropped to 100km/h. I knew I was going to die.

My legs slowed and my arms dropped to my sides. I felt as though I had just run around the world ten thousand times clockwise and anticlockwise. I came to a stop and collapsed to the ground, my wholoe body begging mercy to live. My pursuers closed in on me and started to breathe in my scent. They exchanged a few words, but I couldn't make them out, I had no energy to hear or see. I opened my mouth and tried to scream and beg them for mercy, to beg them to help me and make the pain stop. Beg them to keep me alive. I was slowly seeing the cloaked figure of Death move into my soul. Cold tears running down my almost lifeless cheek. Then I closed my eyes and everything went black, blacker than an unlucky cat on Friday the 13th.