Memoirs of a Vampire

Six

"Jacky's phone.", I picked up the thread. "What did you tell her? Why did she leave without me? Didn't she ask for me?", I continued and suddenly felt really stupid. I hadn't hesitated for a second to defend her honor, while she just left me at that party, without even checking on me. What a great friend.

"I can be quite persuasive.", Felix answered, which left me wary. I had just gotten some trust, that now immediately started crumbling. How was I supposed to interpret that? But he followed up with an explanation: "You were convinced, that I had drugged Jacky?" He waited for my reaction. I nodded approvingly. Only than he carried on: "Vampires are able to influence peoples decisions. We can control there thoughts to a degree.

Don't worry, I didn't force her to do anything. Everything was still consensual, without me messing around in her head beforehand. I simply made her forget some parts afterwards. That's why she was disorientated for a brief moment and that's what you than mistakenly interpreted as an aftereffect of drug abuse. Yet, apart from you she was actually the only person at the party, who hadn't taken something."

By that I knew all the relevant key data regarding vampire existence:

One's potentially immortal, relatively invulnerable, has got supernatural senses, is supernaturally strong and fast, stops ageing and the sun should be avoided. We are capable to manipulate thoughts and blood is the essential staple food.

By the way Felix picked Jacky at the party, precisely, because she hadn't taken any drugs, apart from the alcohol and had been of age. As for the drug free blood, that's just his preference. He'd rather take illegal substances directly himself, than to consume them through others. I never found out why, though. It's not like he could've died from an overdose. With the majority, that's his own rule, because he sees himself, in his personal way, as an old fashioned gentleman. Or something like that.

So there I was, a brand new vampire, whose whole future had been wreak havoc with. Indeed that sounds a lot more dramatic, than it actually was, for with my new abilities, especially the mind control, a number of new perspectives revealed themselves to me. And let's be honest, which 17-year-old really has a plan for the future? I couldn't have told you, what I wanted to do after my A-levels, at the time, and that was only six month away.

For the first days, Felix was by my side nonstop. As my creator he felt responsible and he simply belonged to the halfway reasonable type of vampire. And yes, we're still talking about the guy, who provided a bunch of pupils with drugs at random, there he was a man of contradicton.

Fortunately he evinced a bit more care with me, for the thing with the absent mirror image is nonsense and we also don't compulsorily sleep in coffins, but the uncontrollable bloodlust is a very real thing. The films partly do exaggerate an excessive amount, though they are right at the core of it. Especially in the beginning, one just has to learn to control oneself, but in an age of blood banks and with the amount of slaughterhouses we have in the 21. century it is quite feasible to lead a peaceful, inconspicuous and fulfilled life. Still, Felix had doubts and didn't take his eyes of me, worried, that I'd do the unforgivable.

Thus I realised in hindsight, that he didn't fear for me or him at the graveyard, but was instead afraid of me, and had feared for the hypothetical people, I could have hurt, driven by my instincts.