A Pact for Eternity

Dracula's Infomercial

The first thought that ran through my head was that I couldn't live like this. Awfully broody, but I wasn't stupid. Soapy TV dramas were fun to watch, but those vampires were glamorized. I knew what vampires were from horror films. Blood obsessed monsters.

I know how Finn is. He was going to put the most appealing points first to try to cover up the unsavory ones that came next. He runs his conversation like he writes his essays and I've proofread too many of his essays. This wasn't going to be good.

My skin buzzed like I was standing under a powerline and my hands clammed up like they always do before geometry tests. It was hard to listen to Finn's infomercial on vampires. Finn's first topic was immortality. He quickly made it clear to me that he and Ivy were really their age. However, his parents sure weren't. Marion is 200 years old. Mr.Lancaster, Thomas, is seventy years old. None of my business but that is an awfully large age gap.

The way Finn explained it was that when you come back after the venom has completely repaired your body, your cells freeze permanently. Whatever I looked like now, I would look like for however long I lived. It sounded like some pathetic explanation for a sci-fi novel. Stuck forever at sixteen. The thought of that made me question a lot about my future.

Would it be depressing to never move on? Right now it didn't seem so bad. But, what about twenty years from now? I would be mistaken for a pesky teen. I didn't put much thought into it though. That is a problem for future me.

I didn't want to ask questions. Speaking about it out loud made it real. I already believed it. There was too much evidence not to. When I did finally decide to talk about it, my brain seemed to force me to accept the fact and move on. Almost like I was in survival mode and just trying to live through the next wave of impossible.

I turned my head up to Finn after unfocusing my vision from a TV remote sitting on the nightstand. "What about you? If your parents are both vampires and you are a vampire, then how..."

"The only way that vampires can have kids is if they can still pass on the human trait of aging. My mom says that vampires can carry that trait because of cell memory or something like that. If they don't then they simply just won't be able to reproduce."

"So, will you ever stop aging? Or will I be seeing you at the bingo hall?"

He laughed and said," I don't know if I would let myself go that far. When I want to stop aging, all I do is have to take a booster shot of venom."

I looked him straight into his rusty brown eyes, "Promise me you won't leave me alone at forever sixteen. At least stop at eighteen."

It sounded pathetic and selfish, but there was no way I was going to be stuck alone.

He glanced back at me. "Don't worry. I was already planning on stunting myself at seventeen. "

He then went on to his next topic. The one that I had put at the back of my mind so I didn't flip. The one that truly makes vampires, well vampires. He called it feeding. Blood, the human kind, is the only thing that can keep vampires functioning. Apparently, there are some awful side effects if you don't get enough of it. Some of which included blindness, skin decay, and hair loss. He said I would be needing a lot of blood for my body to get used to its new state.

This is when I started doubting how well I could do with all of this. The thought of slurping down pints of blood was sickening. As it would be to anyone. It seemed like some horrific sin. Also, it made me heavily question some of my ethics. Even though Finn said I wouldn't have to chow down on a person just yet, the thought of drinking human blood in any form was a challenge of ethics, sanity, and character.