Distract my hunger

by X. Williamson

  He saw me by my locker that afternoon and just casually said: “You know, I think we should go as Mr. and Mrs. Addams, and since we should match our costumes I should also pick you up. Say, at 10 pm?” And that was it.

  “OK” I said and by the end of that day I had a costume, a date and a ride. We just continued dating ever since.

  That first party was loads of fun! Our costumes matched perfectly and we danced all night. I still treasure my memories of that day. That’s a whole story I could spend ages on, but don’t let me distract myself from my other story, let me go back to my illness.

  After I got sick I thought he would disappear. What else would a teenage boy in midsummer do? I was a total and complete mess; I was moody, sick and sad . . . I was no fun at all. My eyes looked bruised and my raven-hair looked dull and lifeless. I looked like something that had just escaped from a casket and was rotting every day a tiny bit more.

  I expected him to dump me, but he just never ceased to surprise me! Instead of that, he would go every day to my place to see how I was doing. He spent long hours just telling jokes and trying to make me happy. To be brutally honest: just by looking at him I was happy already! My heart jumped every time I glimpsed at him. Of course, little did he know about it! No girl would ever tell a boy something like that of course.

  He was much more handsome than what he would acknowledge I’m sure. His ash-blond, sun-kissed wavy hair curled just over his neck-line giving him a slightly messy look that was just to die for. No matter how much he combed his hair it constantly displayed a personality of its own.

  You can picture it like something you’d be completely tempted to run your fingers through. The few occasions when I caressed his silky mane were heavenly. Any girl would be so envious of my guy’s shiny locks! I must admit I was!

  When he laughed small wrinkles appeared in the corners of his glowing, golden-brown, green-flecked eyes, giving them a cat-like appearance, so mysterious yet gentle and caring at the same time. A set of perfectly curved eyebrows highlighted his feline eyes enhancing his almost perfect features. It was the perfect combo to attract female fans everywhere.

  I could never guess his extraordinary interest in me, or why he chose at times to be there, looking after me, day after day instead of surfing or flirting at the beach like the rest of our friends. I just assumed his crush on me was a big deal, and I must admit, the company was not bad, not bad at all.

  One night, near the end of January, he was making me company when the pain started again. It was worse than ever before; I had to bend in order to try and breathe: its magnitude was such that air seemed to escape my grasp. I felt as if something gnawed at my stomach and tried to find its way all the way back to my spine.

  My ears felt some kind of humming sound and my whole body was trembling with almost ice-cold sweat. I felt the heavy South-American January breeze cold on my skin. I might have been with a very high fever, or in such pain that my senses were failing me. “This time,” I thought “I am really going to die, and He is here to see me.”

  My eyes felt bloodshot and tired, I imagined myself looking as a zombie while I curled on my bed and waited for the worst to happen.

  Now, here comes the odd part of that day. The odd thing is not that I thought I was dying, it’s exactly what happened then . . . When that happened, he started to rub my back very calmly and told me (without uttering one word) that it was all going to be over soon, “tonight”.

  I thought I was delirious! I couldn’t believe what was happening, I knew that was it, death had driven me insane. He talked to me, but didn’t really do so and . . . his voice sounded so clear in my mind but he . . . didn’t move his lips!

  I was more than scared. I was freaked out! How could that be happening? Why on earth did I imagine him talking to me? Actually . . . I really believed that he did, but in my mind! How did he do that? I was completely out of my mind for sure.

  Now, the funny part is that he seemed to notice my anxiety, and then he started to talk and apologized.

  “I’m so sorry, I scared you; I forget you still don’t understand. This is the last part of your awakening, and it will hurt; It will hurt badly, and you will think that it’s the end but don’t worry, I’m here.

  I’ve always been here.

  I’ve been waiting.

  Remember: just when the caterpillar thought the world was finally over, it became a butterfly.” He said to my mind in the sweetest and most soothing voice.

  Then with these words ringing in my ears and with him holding me in his arms, it all went black.

  CHAPTER 3

  Good Morning Blood-Shine!

  I opened my eyes.

  The first thing I saw was a beautiful wooden ceiling, high, amazingly carved and luxurious. I had never in my life seen anything as incredible as that glossy, hand-made, mahogany ceiling. I had been to many embassies and sumptuous places, but I had never seen anything like that before. The soft varnish made its tiny twists and twirls jump out between shadows. It had such lavish and exquisite terminations that its carved roses seemed to bloom and cherubs seemed to dance in the woodwork.

  A mild musky-timber smell floated in the air. It was mildly mixed with something that could be lilies or some other delicately fragrant flower. My senses were slowly awakening, just as I was, and they were already exuberantly overwhelming me.

  “I think she’s awake” someone said somewhere in the room; I couldn’t distinguish where exactly it came from for I was still disoriented from whatever happened to me before. I tried to lift my head from where I lay in order to try and discover where I was, but when I tried my muscles seemed to dodge the order. A deep nauseous wave fell upon me just as if I was with a massive hangover. In less than a sigh’s time, He was beside me and helped me lift my back. His gentlemanly manners were with him no matter where on earth this Twilight Zone had dropped us in. His sweet, soft hands held me and pushed to help my weak and newly awakened muscles.

  I sat up and in a second confirmed I had never before been in this place. The room was vast and luxuriously furnished. Heavy woollen tapestries hung from the ancient brick walls and black leather couches startled anyone who would appear. The floors, impeccably polished, seemed to glow with the warm, yellow artificial light from an antique crystal chandelier. Tiny rainbows danced on every wall because of the crystal roses that made the chandelier, adding a surreal tinge to an even more surreal situation.

  I felt as if I had been transported to a baroque castle in the midst of its utmost glory. My surroundings held me in awe and intoxicated me with all the colour and dancing illumination. My senses where overwhelmed with inputs and my mind was blank with astonishment. Not even in my childhood days when just as every girl I dreamed on being a princess did I ever imagine being in a place like this. Not ever. Not even in my wildest dreams.

  After some seconds of being utterly absorbed by the fancy decoration I realized that not only I had no idea where He had taken me or when or how, but also that we where not alone. A group of about 8 or 9 people stood at a cautious distance from the sofa where I lay and looked at me most intrigued. It seemed as if I was waking up in wonderland.

  “Good Morning,” a tall man very fashionably dressed in about his forties addressed me, “welcome to our house. Our son brought you here when your awakening process was about to conclude, he thought it was best for you to wake up somewhere safe, friendly, and where all your questions could be answered.” He was standing on the right hand side of the party of strangers when he started talking to me and slowly, almost gliding, walked towards us until he was standing right beside me. He got close enough without getting uncomfortably so when he stopped and with a dazzling smile looked at me affectionately, just as if I was a cute pup. That’s when I discovered I could smell him. Yes, you got it right: I could sense his smell just as a dog does! It was the weirdest thing, imagine that you suddenly realize one of your senses is as acute as you’d imagine a wolf’s or a dog’s to be. It was so odd! Completely unth
inkable!

  Luckily my peculiar new found ability didn’t go all crazy, I felt as if it were something so natural yet I had in mind that it was not something I used to do before. I thought “maybe, just maybe my sickness and my queasy stomach have decided to play tricks on me again. Just like the vague memory I had of my boy talking to me in my head. Did that really happen?”

  This handsome, middle-aged man who was so kindly speaking to me smelled fresh and sweet, it was like nothing I experienced before. He smelled of sweet pine and musk at the beginning with a slight touch of rosemary as a back note. I was amazed, since when did I ever get so knowledgeable on scents? I couldn’t do else but wonder . . .

  I was completely puzzled but his candid face calmed me (while at the same time I had no clue of what he said, I was honestly overwhelmed with the whole situation though I appreciated his attempt to enlighten me).

  His presence glowed with father-like authority but in a James Bond sort of manner. I could picture him as a British super-spy after being a teenager’s dad. He wore an impeccably white shirt with silver cufflinks under a dark grey v-necked woollen vest. His tailor made black-grey trousers fit with never a wrinkle and his black-leather, slightly-pointed, highly-polished shoes shone like polished graphite. His temples where just starting to turn silver adding refined attractiveness to his appearance, the rest of his hair was the colour of chestnuts, and his face was just like my guy’s but with a mask of wisdom on it that seemed a little unlikely for his age. His clear complexion was untarnished with years. He had no wrinkles in his skin whatsoever except for some expression lines adorning his eyes when he smiled, just like his son. I knew and loved already those lines if you know what I mean.

  Even though his eyes were shaped just like his son’s, these ones were not mildly feline but completely catlike. Heavy-lashed as nothing I’d seen before, these were not green-flecked but decisively deep jade in colour. It was not just monochromatic green, but billions of different green shades intertwined from the outer emerald ringlet to create a complex jewel-like appearance. They were as vivid as nothing I’d ever seen before: his irises seemed to glow under those jet-black lashes with a completely surreal radiance.

  My troubled face probably made him start to answer my questions even before I had thought them. “What happened to you in the last couple of weeks is what is called your awakening, well, that’s what we call it. It actually started a long time before all the disgusting symptoms, but it is such a gradual process that unless you know what to expect it passes unnoticed.” He seemed so calm and caring that it troubled me to feel so mixed up about the whole matter.

  Discovering my mouth to be even dryer than I would expect after a nap, I felt as if my tongue had become sandpaper. Fearing my voice would be so coarse that wouldn’t even come out of the dessert of my throat I dared to intervene and asked: “I’m sorry, but I’ve heard you mention this awakening thing, and I don’t understand.” This seemed to be very funny for most of the ones present, one of them, a girl just a little older than me, laughed so hard that she had to bend and get a hold of the arm-rest of one of the leather sofas. The sweet and wise man that spoke to me before never laughed but seemed to find it cute for me to say that. Again, the idea of him seeing me as a dumb puppy popped into my mind.

  “I’m so sorry I forget about your peculiar circumstances, I’ll start from the beginning”, he said, and then with a beautiful smile, the whole surprising explanation began.

  CHAPTER 4

  The Truth Unfolds . . .

  “Try to think of what you’ve been through as a different type of puberty. For some of us, our genes dictate that when we get to a certain age a process not much different from puberty as I said begins.

  You know what you felt so I will not get into that, but let me get to a sort of explanation of what happened to you.

  It is quite hard to say this in a way that you will believe me and understand it but let’s start with a name, you are now a vampire.” He said and looked at me for some kind of reaction.

  As soon as I heard him say this, to my surprise, I didn’t actually think it was crazy. This insane supernatural explanation was way better than any of the ones the doctors had given me before. At least somebody gave me a name for my ailing now! No matter how strange or seemingly impossible, it was better than what I had before. Anyway something in my stomach seemed to be upset with this. He must have understood my feelings so after a quick breath he took my hand and continued.

  “All of us here are vampires, my son is a vampire and to your surprise we are not the only ones. You might have met many in your lifetime and never even noticed.

  Try to forget everything you saw in movies for things there are not only inaccurate but also it is best to start with a clean slate.

  You are a vampire because your genes say so, this means that you where born a vampire, you have a family legacy of being a vampire and therefore you didn’t have any kind of choice in the matter. Even from the time you were in your mother’s womb you were what you are and you have just now awoken to your vampire condition.

  Now, you are probably asking yourself if you need blood, well, the answer is obviously yes. You can also ingest food, though after today you need to ingest blood as well.

  Some vampires hunt humans, but not all. Our clan here is very civilized, we are not in favour of hunting humans; we use donors instead. Don’t worry about that now, we will explain this to you when the time comes.

  Vampires are not immortal as folklore generally states though we do live quite a bit more than a human. That is of course if we don’t have an accident!” He said and chuckled as if he had just said something quite funny and continued:

  “We heal better that humans and our lifespan is about three hundred years.” When I heard that number my jaw dropped in astonishment. About three hundred years! That was completely OMG, crazy! It was like four complete human life-spans one after the other. I couldn’t imagine living that much.

  If three hundred was the average then probably there were vampires who lived to be four or maybe five hundred years old! Perhaps to be even older . . .

  With all that thinking of numbers and ages I suddenly thought about my boy and his father. How old would they really be? It was a bit bizarre to think about that, believe me, imagine thinking that you are dating a teenager and you suddenly discover he might be an old guy.

  Ok, so they lived many years, and I was going to live tons too apparently. So, how did they (sorry, I mean we) die? What the heck did he mean with “an accident”? Did he mean a car accident? Or did he mean something as Twilight Zone as all this new stuff? Everything was so confusing! Upon every word he uttered a zillion new questions popped in my brain.

  He didn’t seem to notice my mental ranting and after a very brief pause he just continued explaining all this unthinkable theory; “I can imagine that the topic of the sun is probably arising many questions in you.”

  I personally had not thought about that, but when he brought it up ten thousand more questions arose. I said nothing and just let him go on, I imagined that he would answer anyway.

  “Well, on that exact matter there is some kind of truth in popular human beliefs. We are quite photosensitive, that much is true, but not much more. Even though the sun tends to affect us more than regular human beings we can walk calmly in broad daylight. Don’t worry; you will not turn to ashes at dawn.

  I would recommend the use of a daily sunscreen just to prevent any small accidents. For example try not to go to the beach without a very high sunscreen because if not blisters will cover your body. By very high I believe I mean something like total sun-block actually, just to be on the safe side. Just imagine you have to take care of your skin as if it were a newborn’s. Besides that, you can have a normal life. Normal in this case means not that different from the life you used to lead while you still believed you were a regular human teen. Sunglasses are also a big allay, headaches can be the result of excessive daylight.

  You will
probably die if you are shot through your heart or brain, but if not, you will heal. It can take a long time to heal or not depending on the extent of the injury.

  Most injuries that would kill a human won’t kill us: please highlight my use of the word most since if you get your head chopped off, it won’t grow back. After all, we are vampires, not starfish. We can heal very effectively but we won’t regenerate an arm or a leg (and most definitely not a head).” He said and I couldn’t stop myself from smiling at that.

  I must admit that a twisted sense of humour had always been my thing. Still, the idea of somebody wanting to shoot me or chop off my head seemed quite disturbing . . . Did that actually happen? Why would somebody want to chop off somebody’s head to begin with?

  He smiled back at me, obviously content that I was digesting things so to speak, and continued with this newborn vampires 101 kind of chat.

  “Copper, not silver or other material, hurts us worst. It provokes a reaction similar to an allergic one.

  The whole thing about wood depends on the vampire, so just in case darling: don’t try to poke yourself with any wooden artefacts. You won’t burst in flame like in The Lost Boys for example, but you may get a massive anaphylactic shock kind of reaction or something that looks like the most horrendous infection you can think of.

  As you see, with wooden things are never certain: maybe nothing happens to you and maybe things could get ugly, therefore stay on the safe side. And last but not least before I let you ask me all of your questions, I’ll tell you about my favourite: mind-reading.” He said stressing on the word mind, sounding just like somebody telling a fantastic story to a child.

  Mind reading? OMG, things really went on the crazy side! I started to wonder if I had not really fallen in a rabbit hole and this was crazy wonderland after all. The whole idea of mind reading was like something out of a movie or an illusionist’s number at a “Las Vegas” theatre. I always had a quite narrow-minded opinion on the whole thing and even found it to be quite tacky.