Until Midnight

A Dream, Then Reality

Chapter Eight

6:00 PM, Monday, November 15th, 2014

Returning home took time. By the time I said goodbye to John, the sky was being poisoned by the first hint of darkness, edging it's way eerily into the blue surface of day. 

The sunset lit the forest brightly, sending javelins of pink and yellow light through the canopies and onto the (occasionally) mossy ground. As I walked, I couldn't help but harbor a sense of dread for the dinner that awaited me back at my house. 

I didn't want food, I didn't want water, I wanted-

Don't say it-

Blood. Simple as that. I craved it, was zealous to sink my teeth into something tender and soft and siphon the sweet fluid out and drink it. I knew thinking about it was repulsive, vile, yet I couldn't stop the mirage of images floating past. 

Forcing my mind to think of other things was volatile; I'd get angry and demand the sight of blood back into the eerie reel playing out within my head. 

But then I'd feel depressed. I couldn't come to terms with transitioning into a vampire. A teenage girl my age shouldn't be thinking about blood, she should be thinking about clothes, real food, and Netflix. 

I didn't realize until after a minute I was crying. Tears hurdled down my face, dropping onto the dead leaves below. I suddenly wished I was far, far away, in a land where good things reposed, where friendly beasts soared the skies, and where oceans stretched farther and longer. The yearning inside my own head was so strong, so elastic, that it frightened me. Then I recalled that emotions, when one was either in transition or a vampire itself, were heightened considerably. 

It was 6:00 PM. It was getting closer to midnight. Only six more hours and wa-lah, vampire. I wiped the stray tears remaining on my cheeks. I couldn't enter my house looking as if I'd just been weeping. I could see a faint glimmer in the distance, through the intervals between tree and leaf alike, and knew I was edging nearer to my home. I was zealous to reach it. 

I sped up my pace, ignoring the weeds that grabbed and unsheathed themselves to grab at my ankles. Anxiety rushed through me, sweat beading my forehead. What was happening? Why was I suddenly becoming so panicked? I felt as if something ominous and foreboding awaited me on some derelict, distant horizon. A place where dark things roamed and the sun was always red. 

Everything around me suddenly blurred, became disillusioned. I felt delirious, disconnected. Something was lurking in the dark, usually barren parts of my brain, threatening at any moment to lunge and attack. And it did. 

My knees unexpectedly buckled and I fell, landing on the hard-packed Earth beneath me with a thud. I turned so my face was facing skywards. I could see the first array of stars poking out of the pink-stained sky, twinkling serenely down at me. I felt as if I had just run a hundred miles, yet my breathing was normal. 

I clenched my fists, scrounging up dirt as I did. My feet moved restlessly, as if trying to find a foothold even though I wasn't standing up. And then, as quick as I had fallen down, I slipped into unconsciousness. Then the dream started. 

It started out in a desolate field. I inferred from glancing at the uneven ground that the field had once been a cornfield. Half-cut stumps sprouted every where, dead corn stalks littering the blackened ground. I turned in three directions and saw that the field ran in endless companionship with the sky, but when I turned to my left, the sky was lit by a bright yellow, tinged with red, sunrise. 

It was the only source of light, as far as I could tell. But, as much as I felt alone, I soon learned I wasn't alone at all. I turned to see John, who I was just with, standing a few feet away from me, his face blank in the dawn light. I gasped when I saw his neck, covered in blood, trickling slowly down to taint his shirt and pants, then eventually the ground.