Hunger, Part the Seventh (Sorry for the delay.)

(Still Chapter 8)
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“Wonderful. Just wonderful.”

“They couldn’t have at least finished their snack.”

“It’s not like we need more competition.”

“Hey, I guess we scared them off!” Laughs.

“I guess we did!”

I heard foot-steps and they were one. I was still in pain.


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The pain continued for a week. I couldn’t feel any hunger, or discomfort. I couldn’t even feel the cold. My nervous system was obviously in shock; I couldn’t move any part of my body. I didn’t even feel like I was breathing.

That was because I wasn’t. When I woke up, I found myself feeling strong and confident, and not stiff at all. I ran instead walking that day. The weird thing was that I didn’t get tired, in fact, I ran all night, and all of the next day. It wasn’t a slow jog wither; I was sprinting at a pace had never ran before. I felt great.

There was also the fact that I wasn’t hungry. At all. I thought maybe it was just that my system was malfunctioning, and something was telling me that I was perfectly content. So, I looked for a few hours in a town. I found peaches, and I was delighted.

I sat down next to a garage with a metal door. I could feel each ridge, and every scratch and detail, even though the fabric of my shirt. My nervous system was most certainly not in shock anymore.

Aha! The can even had a tab. Things were getting better already. It was a rare occurrence, and it was much easier to open, and therefore enjoy. The lid slid off as if it wasn’t attached to the aluminum can. I pushed my dirty fingers inside and easily caught hold of the slippery peaches. The peach was thrown straight into my mouth.

The millisecond that the first atom of peach-juice touched my tongue, I threw up. It must have been some kind of shock for my tongue to have taste after so long. Then I looked at what had come out of my throat.

It wasn’t full chunks or bile; it was blood, and a whole lot of it. I had thrown up blood before, but it had never been so much and with nothing else.

What was happening to me?

“Oh, shit.” This is the best response I could think of in the event of the most important thing that would ever happened to me.

I was one of them now. I wondered what was going to happen now that I was... was... The word kept rolling in my mind, no matter how disgusting. I couldn't take it anymore; it was exploding in my brain. What I had become... was a vampire.

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All I could think about was my sister. What they had done to her. How they had murdered her. Now, that would be me. I had to kill myself. When I got hungry, I would kill, and I couldn’t live with that. I already can’t live with the fact that I will. I would have to kill myself. Once and for all.

And then I realized that I didn’t know how to kill myself. I couldn’t imagine that it would be easy as being human. There was no hesitation this time, because I could get hungry any time. I quickly took my knife and sliced my neck open.

I saw blood spurting out as I fell unconscious.

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When I woke up, blood covered the floor, my clothes, and my neck, but there was no pain. There was no wound.

Great. Suicide was difficult when you were one of them. And then I thought of something that I had to do, something that would be disgusting and go against everything that I have thought before.

I was going to have to ask one of them how to commit suicide. Of course, looking at this as a human, it would be suicide to ask one of them such a question, but now it was different. I had to do it.

Just like they were on cue, I heard footsteps.

CHAPTER 9

It wasn’t the group that had done it to me. For some reason, I was thankful for this. There were just two of them. The taller one was wearing a pair of raggedy pants with nothing over his torso. His hair was long and black; it was as stiff as my heart was. The shorter one also had long hair, except wavier. Something was wrong with wavy hair that barely moved. He was fully clothed with what seemed to be an unfitting t-shirt, and jeans. Neither of them wore shoes.

“Hello,” the shorter one said to me.

“Hello.” I wondered why my voice wasn’t quite like theirs. Even after my death, I was asking meaningless questions.

“Hah, a new one! How delightful." They laughed at me as if I wasn’t there.

“What, does that make me inferior to you?” It sounded childish, but then again, just because I was different didn't make me any older.

They didn't answer, but instead laughed at me once again. The laugh was not they way my little brother laughed; it was disconcerting.

I shook my head at myself, "It doesn't matter. I'm not here to be insulted, I want answers."

“You should respect your elders, boy." I paused and stepped toward him, looking straight at his face. I'd had enough of laughter.

“And what could you do about it? Come on, kill me. I dare you." The tall one stared at me angrily, and the other one smiled.

“Yes, you are most certainly a new-born.”

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We sat in the dark to talk. I could see the smallest detail on either of their faces. There was no fire, no dinner.

“So, when exactly were you initiated?”

“Initiated?”

“When one of us turned you into…one of us.”

“I don’t know… two days ago? I wouldn’t call it being ‘initiated.’” They both glanced at each other, understandingly.

“So, they didn’t choose you?” He was in awe.

“I was going to be a snack.” They both stared at me, wide-eyed. Something was wrong.

They both disappeared. I didn’t see them leave, even with my improved vision; they had experience.

I wasn't stupid enough to not realize that I had not entered their "world correctly. All I could think was, I'm supposed to be dead... So why am I alive?

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I was alone once more.

A bastard, searching for something to believe in. I had no one to talk to. I felt like shit; even they rejected me. The worst part was that I couldn’t escape it. I wasn’t even sure if time would erase my existence. I didn’t even feel like meditating anymore.

In short, I was bored.

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The next morning it began. The part that I had been dreading from the moment of my “initiation.” I was hungry. I couldn’t explain it. I had a lust for something. I knew what it was, but I wouldn’t have if it weren’t for what I’d seen. It wasn’t very strong, though, more of a want than a need.

All I could do was ignore it and run.

That night, they came back. This time I heard another set of feet. I couldn’t believe that I was delighted by their presence. The third one looked identical to the tall one, right down to the clothing.

“Hello again," the short one greeted.

“What the hell was that yesterday?”

“I’m sorry… Most of us look down on those not chosen. Some take offense if others even talk to someone like you. We were just afraid of that,” the taller one said. I could somehow tell it was the one that I had seen the night before.

“I don’t get it. What are you afraid of?”

This time the third one spoke, “He still thinks we are immortal.” There was mutual understanding, “I’m sorry new-born, for we are not.”

My face lit up, so to speak.

“That doesn’t mean that any one of us could kill you.”

“I… I don’t understand.”

“We can be killed. I have heard about it numerous times before... In some places it is even common knowledge from what I hear.”

“But then why didn’t they kill me?”

“They probably didn’t care enough. I hear that is a lengthy, difficult process. Perhaps they didn't know how."

“So, you don’t know how? You don’t know how I can kill myself?”

“He hasn’t fed yet, either.”

“Yes, brother, he’s only one or two days old.”

“I can tell. So, boy, you wish to know the secret of death?”

“Yes.” The new one seemed to have some authority.

“Well, that’s too bad. You must wait. And it doesn't matter whether you can kill on a whim, it would be nearly impossible to kill yourself.”

“Well I can get someone to kill me.”

“What an ignorant little-“

“Eric! Do you not remember your youth?” That shut him up. “But don’t worry. You will eventually accept yourself as what you are. Everyone does.”

Accept myself? No, I could never accept one of them, so how could I accept myself?

“Not me! No, I could never- I will never be like you. You kill people, and I refuse to. I’ll find a way. I will! I will... You can’t stop me.

“I don’t need to.”

“Oh will you shut up. You think that you are so much wiser than me, just because you’ve been one of them for so long. Well, I’m not one of you. I am not.”

The face of the new one turned melancholy. As he turned away, he said,“Oh, but you are.”

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I walked with them the following morning. I wondered why they didn’t run. When I asked them, they simply said, “We don’t like running.” I decided to just let it go.

We also went through a town. I was immediately thinking whether or not they were hungry.

“We will not feed today.” I was thankful for that.

“How long can you survive without ‘food’?”

“Forever.”

“I prefer answers that don’t contradict what I know.”

“I’ve seen our kind survive years without blood. You can tell how long someone has not fed for.”

“So, does that mean that I don’t need to feed?”

“Oh, you will sooner or later. It would take years of training to even be able to not feed, let alone be sane for any amount of time.”

“Way to crush my hopes," I said. Somehow, I was becoming comfortable around them... I was acting as if I was with my siblings.

“You asked me a question, and I answered it.”

“I believe that you started the conversation.” He looked at me blankly.

“Perhaps you have already gone insane.” His complete seriousness planted a seed of worry in my mind. I just have to suppress the growth of it.

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The next day I felt a little bit hungrier, but it was still easily manageable. I put off the thoughts of what I was bound to do. I believed that I would have to feed eventually, unless I found a way to kill myself.

“I believe that I can last one more day without feeding, but tomorrow, I hold no promises. I have not drank in two weeks; that is much more than usual.”

“Can’t we at least find people that aren’t… I don’t know, children? Innocent?”

“The guilt will be the same. Especially for us, but for now we can spare children. They are rare anyway.”

Why was the newer one the only one who talked to me now? Perhaps it was because of this “initiation” thing, but I though that was a damn stupid reason.

“We don’t like to associate ourselves with your kind. It is not safe.” I delighted in the fact that they didn’t consider me one of them. Though, it’s not like I would call myself “lucky.”

“That’s fine with me.”

I still didn’t understand how I was surviving only on the blood that was in me. I wasn’t breathing; that was something that I had recently noticed. My sister once taught me a vague lesson on the circulatory system. I never found out how she knew so much about the world. I never would.

“That is why we feed. To get more oxygenated blood. We must discard of the set that we have every once in awhile. I am pulling all that I can out of this set. That is why I feel weak and insist on walking”

“Excuse me?” No answer, but he was answering my thoughts. He didn't They seemed to only like answering the questions in my head.

I had a new thought, “Wait, so if I rest, I won’t need to feed for a longer time?”

“Do not think that you can understand everything about your bodily functions so easily! You have new instincts, new reflexes. You won’t notice them until you are truly hungry, as I am. We must keep walking. I am barely in control of my legs. They are on pursuit.”

“But you promised-“

“Instincts do not listen to promises! You need to stop pretending that life like this is simple! You are one of us. YOU ARE A VAMPIRE.” The others looked around nervously.

“You know to never say that, Augustus!”

“Do not say that word. Please, do not use that word.”

That word was a disgrace to mankind, and everything else. My sister told me of a time when it was used leisurely. No one took it seriously, then they did something. No one knew what it was, but they did something, and all of the humans went away, except a few. “They went away,” she told me. “They just… went away.”


((I read through this one closely, and I edited quite a bit of it. I must apologize, because I'm finding many flaws in grammar and writing style, so bare with me. This isn't the final copy... Not even close. There is much more typed out, but with minor editing and having to put the italics in, it takes a long time to post.))