How Not To Be A Vampire

Five

Michael's POV

Three Hundred, Forty-Seven years ago...

"This party is boomin, man!" Peter slaps my back, knocking my shoulder forward and causing my drink that I'm holding to spill over the edge. "I'm so glad you're finally twenty-one so we can have parties like this all the time!"

"Yeah, me too" I hold my drink up towards him and when he turns his back on me I down the entire cup. I needed a lot of alcohol in my system if I was going to be able to deal with Peter.

Don't get me wrong, he's a cool dude, but he can be a little over the top sometimes.

"I'm gonna get another drink!" I yell to Peter over the booming music and he waves me off as he starts talking to some girl who I had never seen before. I roll my eyes and leave him alone with her, kind of glad she's here to get him away from me.

As I push my way past people and towards the kitchen, I get an odd feeling that someone is watching me. I slow down my steps and look around me, trying to find whoever is staring at me. At first I see no one and right when I'm about to shrug it off, my eye catches a person standing in one of the far corners of the room. I can't see them too well because of the dancing people getting in the way, but from what I can see it's a man. A man I didn't recognize. 

I began to push my way through the dancing people and towards the man to confront him but when I look at the corner again he's gone. I look around the room and I don't see the man anywhere. I eventually give up and come to the conclusion that he was probably someone's friend who was just here to have a good time.

I walk into the kitchen and grab the first bottle I see, which is a kind of vodka. I don't bother reading what kind as I pour the contents into my cup until it's on the verge of over flowing. I then bring the cup to my lips and start chugging, trying not to cringe at the taste. I see some people nearby out of the corner of my eye starting to cheer me on and before I know it at least ten people are yelling "CHUG! CHUG! CHUG!".

I crush the cup in my hand once I've finished and the people around me cheer while holding their cups in the air at me. I smile and it isn't long before the alcohol starts affecting me.

"Twenty-One fucking rocks!" I yell out loud, gaining cheers from everyone at the party that only grow louder when I start chugging down my fifth cup of alcohol that night.

I'm drunk out of my mind at this point and Peter appears in my face with a worried look on his face. I try to say something to him but his face seems to be moving around and my eyes can't focus on him at all.

"Dude, you went too hard." I hear him say to me and when I open my mouth to say something the only thing that happens is I fall forwards. Peter tries to catch me and then everything goes dark. 

I wake up hours later in my bed, soaked in my own sweat and my lungs aching from it being hard to breathe. I look around the room and it's hard to see because it's so foggy. Or maybe I'm too foggy.

I rub my eyes and finally realize I'm not surrounded by fog, I'm surrounded by smoke. My body goes on full alert and I jump out of bed, ignoring the booming pain in my head from all the alcohol I had consumed that night. I check the clock on the side table and it reads 4:46am.

I open my bedroom door and more smoke rolls in, hitting me in the face so hard my eyes start to sting. I grab the bottom of my shirt and pull it up to cover my mouth as I step out into the hall, crouching a bit because if there is anything I know about a fire it's that smoke rises.