Memoirs of a Vampire

Four

Some time later we had arrived at Felix' apartment. We'd just gotten through the front door, when I found my voice again:

"The sun? Can I go out during the day? Do I age, or am I for ever 17? Do I have to drink blood on the daily? Are there other vampires?", I blurted out all of a sudden. Felix placatory lifted his hand, to interrupt me, while closing the apartment door. I complied with that. He dropped the key in a dish on a cabinet, next to the hall-stand and tensely ran his fingers through his brown hair.

"You don't immediately disintegrate into dust, however you shouldn't expose yourself to direct sunlight.

In principle you can go out during the daytime, it's just questionable whether you would want that.

Your body is never going to change and how much you drink depends on your power consumption.

Yes, there are others.", he quickly answered all of my questions, before he proceeded to go towards the living room. I followed him, until he paused on the threshold, which led to me almost running into him. He abruptly turned towards me and gave me a scathing look. I felt really attacked. But before I could express my distress, he had already guided me towards the bedroom, in which I had looked for him first that Friday night and which had been completely untouched. Confused I followed him into the tastefully decorated beige room. At its end was another door, that led to a bathroom. Felix reached into the closet and brought out two white towels, which he placed at the end of the giant bed. He pointed at the bathroom door: "Shower!", was the only thing he said in a harsh voice. I really couldn't argue with that, I had never felt dirtier.

The bathroom was just as exclusive, as the rest of the apartment and the shower was pleasantly roomy. But I ended up not jumping into the water straight away. As I adjusted the temperature and tested the water with my hand, I fascinatingly discovered, how altered my perception was.

Neither the hot, nor the cold water, really hurt, like one would expect. On this level the temperature was strangely irrelevant and meaningless. My body didn't seem to care. I was sturdy and no longer weak. At the same time the temperature was oddly present, especially now, that I was concentrating on it, I could distinguish the smallest nuances. When I finally got underneath the illegally hot stream of water I was fascinated to discover, that my skin stayed unchangingly white. Normally even with tolerable lukewarm water, my chest turned pink or red quite quickly.

It took some time, until I had scrubbed the layers of dirt of my skin. The stream of water, that circulated into the drain, stayed a greyish-brown colour alarmingly long. Understandable, that Felix prohibited me, from stepping into his living room. After the third time washing it, my hair was clean again and over all the dirt seemed gone. It had been the most persistent underneath my fingernails. No wonder, taking under consideration, that I had literally dug myself out of the ground. When I brushed over my clean back for a final time, I realised, how smooth it was. For years I've had a few uneven blemishes and minor acne, I've never managed to get rid of.

In front of the mirror I impatiently wiped the steam away and turned around, so that I could catch a glance at my back. My skin looked like it had been photoshopped.

Felix had left me a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt on the bed. Both were to big, but a lot better than just a towel. I stayed barefoot and went into the living room, where Felix was sat on the couch. A glass of red wine in his hand, he was staring out of the window.