Apartment 6ix

It all started on the night of 6th June. I had just turned off the TV and was on my way to bed when I heard atrocious banging and clattering coming from the hallway. I opened the front door leaving the chain latched and peeked out. There, I saw removal men moving packing boxes into the previously unoccupied apartment six.

I waited for a second, but failed to see anyone that looked like they might be my new neighbour. I closed the door and went to bed as I had originally intended to do. The next day before I left for work I ate my breakfast and decided to knock on the door of number six, to introduce myself to the new neighbour or neighbours. There was no answer so I deduced that they were either gone to work already or were having a lie in. I planned on returning to try again in the evening. When I returned from work at about five thirty, I considered knocking, but I was too tired. I just wanted to go inside and relax a while. 

After I had finished dinner and let my food go down, it was about seven o'clock and I felt more like conversing with a new neighbour. I once again knocked on the door of number six. This time I heard a latch being moved and the door slowly opened just enough to reveal a face.

It may not have been opened very far, but it was open enough to see it was a beautiful young woman of around twenty-four or five with fiery red hair and bright green eyes.

"Can I help you?" she asked me, with her face staying expressionless. 

"Hi, I'm your neighbour from across the hallway in number five," I told her.

I waited a moment for her to react in some way. Eventually after what seemed like minutes, but was really seconds she responded with

"Oh! Nice to meet you, is there something you need?". She seemed to be very suspicious of me, but I put this down to her seemingly being alone with a strange man at the door. I considered asking her if she had moved in alone, but I was afraid that that might make me even more suspicious to her.

"No no nothing!" I told her, "I just felt it would be a good idea to introduce myself to you!".

"Ahhh!" she said looking like she finally understood the reason for me being there. At last she seemed more willing to talk to me, although not much. I did however manage to find out from her that she had just moved here from the north, as she needed a new start. That was about all I got out of her. 

Weeks had passed, and I rarely saw her. When I did it was only at night. My concerns about her started about three weeks after she had moved in when I became ill with what I thought to be the flu. I had a terrible fever with the illness and would wake up from horrible nightmares. 

They were always about her. At first they were not even nightmares, quite the opposite they were romantic dreams of the two of us dating. However they started to change, first they went from dreams of candle lit dinners to hardcore erotica. Then in these pornographic dreams more and more over time elements of a horrific nature begun to be added. It begun first with her face becoming pale and sunken and vomiting blood on me as we were... embraced. The next time I had my nightmare it had added two long pointed teeth or fangs to her mouth and she proceeded to bite me on my chest. 

I thought naturally that these dreams were nothing more than fevered delirium. However, I began to notice things about her that I deemed odd. I quickly became convinced that she was really a blood sucking monster, or vampire if you will. I watched her closely and saw that she never left in the daytime and dragged back to her apartment large stiff rolls, the length of perhaps carpet. I could never shake this damned fever, that by now I was convinced was of her doing. The final straw came when I witnessed her take another one of her rolls into her apartment, covered in dark red stains. 

I now realised that if I was ever to recover from this illness or dare I say? Spell! Then I was going to have to fight back. I purchased some wood to sharpen up as a stake and of course some garlic. The question was how was I going to get in quietly? I am hardly an expert burglar. I knew she had a chain latch on the door, I would have to kick it in and make a lot of noise in the process. I decided it didn't matter, I was doing the right thing. It was a monster I was killing and if she exploded like in the movies when I staked her there would be no body anyway. I had to do it, for my own health and the safety of others. 

The next day I gathered up my stakes and put some garlic around my neck. I looked like a true vampire hunter. I was almost on autopilot, I had to be so I didn't chicken out. I found myself standing in the hallway facing number six. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. Kicking in the door was going to be noisy and could alert both her and the other neighbours, so once kicked in I was going to have to be fast.

I took one more deep breath and kicked the door off its hinge. I flew straight to her bedroom, luckily I knew the apartments all had the same layout. I got right over to her bed within seconds, pulling back the bed cover she awoke with a gasp. The funny thing was I think it was pulling back her cover that awoke her, and not any of my initial racket. As soon as I pulled back the cover and she had gasped, I plunged my sharp stake into her heart. Her face twisted into the appearance of an evil old hag as she let out one last monstrous scream. 

As I left her room I saw the stained roll on the floor off to one side. I decided not to bother investigating. My job here was done, although I thought in the darkness I could see some hairs sticking out from inside it. I made my way back to my apartment to await the drama that would soon unfold with the other neighbours and the police. 

"Have you finished writing your official statement yet, lad?" asked the grey haired police officer who had just entered the interview room.

"Yes" was the man's simple reply.

"And signed and dated it, have you?" the officer enquired.

"Yes" was his reply again. 

Local Newspaper Article Dated A Year Later -- 

...And in conclusion the man who thought his new neighbour was a vampire and murdered her has been found not guilty by reasons of insanity. It was found he was suffering from an untreated and unusually high fever that had caused his paranoia and delusions. His victim was a twenty-five year old carpet cleaning woman named Liz who had less than a year ago been attacked and sexually assaulted. This was the reason she had moved so far away to start afresh, and why he rarely saw her leave the apartment (she was still nervous of leaving on her own) and of course it too explains the carpets that he thought was blood drained bodies. Her "only going out after the veil of darkness had fallen" as he put it, was not the case as attested to by witnesses who saw her leave in the daylight. 

What a tragic end to the life of this poor young woman who had already been through so much and was trying to start a new life...