Confessions of a Rosser

Chapter One: Glowing Red Eyes of Doom

        AT FIRST, I WASN'T SURE IF I HAD TRULY HEARD THE SCREAM, or if it was just my imagination playing tricks on me again. My head seemed to do that a lot of the time, like it was some sort of fun, yet twisted game. I pulled out the earbuds, and the blaring sounds of a guitar solo died away, sounding somewhat eerie in the silence of my bedroom. I paused impatiently, and held my breath as I waited for another shriek. If the sound had come from outside the house, I knew that there was nothing that I could do about that. I was fifteen, and a right idiot some times, but I wasn’t stupid enough to roam out into the town during the night. That was basically equivalent to hanging a sign around your neck that read, “murder me” in big, bold, and flashing letters.

 Morganville isn’t the coolest place to live, really. It’s located in the southern of Texas, and is sweltering hot during the summer, and reaches freezing cold during the winter. The main attraction is Texas Prairie University, and the town basically thrives off of the college students. Morganville is, after all, a small college town. It’s not much different to any other small settlement, well, you know, apart from the numerous amounts of killings and disappearances. And no, I’m not talking about serial killers. I’m talking about much, much worse.

My hand quivered a little, and I almost dropped the ear-bud from my shaking fingers. Strands of black hair escaped from the messy bun at the crown of my head, but I was so frozen in panic that I didn’t even bother to flick it out of my eyes. I had been hearing things, of course I had. It wasn’t anything unusual. Living in Morganville could do that to a person, but just as I was about to drown myself in the sounds of music once again, I heard the all too familiar blood-curdling scream slice through the thick and horribly heavy silence.

 “Jason!” I shouted my brother’s name aloud and I flung myself out of the rumpled bed sheets, almost busting my wrist as I hastily wrenched open the bedroom door. The hallway was dark and cold, and there was no guessing what could be lingering in the shadows, but I plunged myself into the blackness anyway and sprinted towards my younger brother’s bedroom. I tried the doorhandle, and it felt cold and almost damp against my pale skin, but the thing refused to budge. I pounded my fists against the wood, and the door rattled loudly. “Open the door, Jason. Open the door!”

The door swung open and knocked my own feet off the floor. I tumbled to the ground, and missed hitting by head against the wall by a few mere inches. The twist on the tip of my head was practically non-existent now, and I was staring up through a thick veil of straggly black hair. The man – thing – that stepped outside of Jason’s bedroom wasn’t at all my skinny and greasy-haired brother, but instead a tall, and dark silhouette who towered over my flimsy frame on the carpeted floor. A luminous, red colour circled around what I suspected was the creature’s pupils, and I could only stare at the rings in the pitch-blackness. The figure reached out with his right arm, and after one beat, flipped the small light switch upwards. Light emitted from the ceilings throughout the entire hallway with a loud and obnoxious click, and I felt my heartbeat quicken painfully fast.

 “Don’t dread,” the male voice said coyly. “Your family is protected.”

In Morganville, human beings could offer services to particular people, and in exchange would receive safety from somebody called a protector. Those services included donating blood to a protector, and the reward – having that protector there to stop someone else from sinking their fangs into your neck. Morganville’s a messed up town, and if you haven’t already guessed by the hints about the blood and the murdering’s, then honey, you would not last a day in Morganville.

You see, the citizens of Morganville are split into three types of people. There are the guys like my family, who donate blood monthly to their protector after they turn eighteen. People like us have had family dying old (or young) in Morganville for decades. Then there are the other humans that decide to choose the more rebellious pathways. Some people in Morganville are just beyond stupid, and to prove this, they choose to live without the blood donations and protection, and instead, fight for themselves. It would have been a good way of living, I mean, no debts, no blood loss, and no harassment from bosses who want nothing more to get into your pants and drink from your neck at the same time, but then you actually realise who you’re up against. The third type of Morganville local: vampire.

Believe it or not, call me crazy, or whatever you want to, but that’s the thing about the town of Morganville. It’s run by the vampire species. They hunt during the night and prey on innocent victims, and during the day – well, no one really knows what they do during the day. Protectors are vampires, hence the reason why they demanded blood in exchange for their services.

 When I finally found the nerve to speak, my voice trembled, “Brandon.”

Our family, the Rosser clan, have been issued Brandon: an overconfident vampire with a taste for underage girls, and lately, a taste for me. He was all bark and no bite without a single bloodsucker from a higher rank on his side, and any idiot could see that. Hell, even a blind person could see that. I was genuinely surprised that he hadn’t sold us out to some low-life vamp, or had us killed already. His thick hair almost matched the colour of coffee beans, and the redness in his eyes ever so slowly reduced to a rainy grey. His lips turned upwards into a less than friendly smile that showed a lot of sharp and pointed teeth, and his tongue slowly slipped out of his mouth to lick his bottom lip. He was one of the most attractive looking in the town of Morganville, and that helped him a lot when he was feeling like an easy snack from the university.

“Don’t mind Jason. He was failing close to all of his classes at school, and I dropped by to help motivate him.”

 “You’re not allowed inside the house when my mother isn’t home.”

Brandon’s head tilted to the side, and his dark eyes looked alien-like in the shadows. “Mrs Rosser isn’t home?”

 Big mistake. Incredibly bad, life-threatening mistake, Eve. My breath caught in panic, and for several seconds, I was so overwhelmed in fear that I couldn’t even manage to squeak out a single word. Don’t be afraid. They can sense that, and from that point onwards, you’re dead. This was one twisted game to Brandon, and I convinced myself that he wouldn’t do anything bad. Too bad, anyway.

 “She should be home any moment now,” I told him cautiously, and I let him help me up from the ground when he offered his abnormally pale hand. Brandon didn’t let go instantly like I would have liked him to, and instead brought my hand to brush his cold lips over the bare skin. He breathed in a lungful of air that he didn’t need, and I watched as his eyes dipped crimson red for the briefest second. After the first endeavour at snatching my hand out of his hold, Brandon refused and only strengthened his grasp, but after an additional attempt, he decided to release his grip.

 “Go back to your room, Eve,” Brandon ordered sternly, and his voice still contained that touch of sickening playfulness. “Your brother has had a very unkind evening, and I suspect that he would appreciate it if he were left alone.”

 It would have been wrong of me to turn my back and act as if nothing had happened, but that was exactly what I did. My heart was beating at a distressing pace, and when I looked over my shoulder to find that Brandon had vanished from outside Jason’s door, I let myself run back to my own bedroom, and then it was silence.

Complete and absolute stillness that propelled icy tremors down my spine, but that was something that I was admittedly, rather use to.