Illuming

She came into my cabin. As the full moon shined onto my face, and illuminated our surroundings, she stepped closer.

“They shot him!” She shouted in joy. “They shot the vampire!”

I went over to her, speechless. A tear or two ran down my pale face. She didn’t notice – I wiped them away. I took her gently in my arms.

“I love you…” she whispered, still full of emotion.

As we hugged in the moonlight, she felt my body. My warmth had disappeared. Her warmth was more soothing than anything I’ve ever felt. I was topless. She was wearing a shirt – a white one. Just a simple, sleeveless shirt.

As we hugged, I went back in my mind. I went back to running in the forest. I went back to sitting on a cliff, looking down on the forest. I went back to remembering those nights, the peaceful nights, without a vampire present. It was perfect back then.

I was lost in the trail of thought. Suddenly I realized that she had felt my wound. She looked up at me – in my eyes. Those empty, dead, brown eyes. She looked in them with admiration, sheepish fear. Just like everyone else…

She took a panic breath. She opened her mouth, to talk. “You are…” I couldn’t let her finish. I bit her. My jaw locked onto her beautiful neck – the most beautiful neck a human could have. Her hands gripped onto my bare shoulders weakly. I sunk my teeth deeper, as she was in shock. Nothing mattered anymore. I drank her blood. I sunk my teeth deep enough to kill her. I did. I killed the only girl I have ever loved. The only person who ever cared for me. She fell in my arms. I took my lips off of her neck. She wasn’t dead yet.

Her eyes were lost in a dream. In a nightmare. In a bad, bad dream. I remember the time I got bitten. I didn’t know that it was real. I didn’t want it to be real. Deep down, though, I knew what had happened to me. The sole thought of having the life – the blood – sucked out of you by someone beautiful makes you shiver in fear.

Those deep, blue eyes of hers turned white as she went deeper into panic. They tell me that we, vampires, have a sort of poison in our teeth, like the snake. Even though we aren’t biting our victims any longer, they act as if we still would be – paralyzed. Personally, I think that’s all just a crock of shit, but, what can you do?

The ones that came up with this dumb theory were real vampires. Not like me. I was human. I want to be human. I want to watch the sun rise. I want to watch the sun set. As I stand there with a girl more beautiful than a true vampire, I realize what a big mistake this was. I should’ve run away. I should’ve been like all those other vampires. The smart ones. The dumb ones. The ones that were scared. I should’ve run. But I didn’t.

At any rate, these vampires – the real ones – don’t know what it feels like to be bitten. They don’t know the beauty of the sun. They can’t feel the dry summer air, nor can they enjoy a nice day on the beach. They don’t know how bad it feels to be bitten. They don’t understand fear. To vampires, death is…impossible.

She made an intent to speak. “Y...You….could’ve…told…m…m…me.” A tear rolled down my cheek. I shook my head, and laid her down on the floor. Her neck was bleeding heavily. She would bleed to death in a matter of minutes. The poor, beautiful thing…

I touched her face with my hand, my snow-white hand. “I love you, and I always will.” I said, reassuringly. She knew I did. She held my cold, white hands with her warm hands for one last time. She was crying. She closed her eyes, and her hands let go of mine, as her last tear rolled down her beautiful face. I had never seen anything this beautiful. I knew that I would remember this face until the end of time.

I stood up, and left her lying on the floor, shielded by the moonlight. They say that the moon protects all vampires under it. I hoped that it were true. It was.

I walked out of the room. It was warm outside. The whole forest was covered in the moon’s aura. My wound was already healing. I took the bullet out, and threw it away. I licked my own blood off of my fingers, and ran into the forest. I knew that the humans would soon find my wrongdoing, and I knew that they would soon find out who I was.

Vampirism, as much as I wish it wouldn’t be, is a horrible curse. To you, it would be great to live forever, I’m sure. But to me, it is horrible. It is horrible to not feel pain. The only pleasure I feel, the only passion, is for the blood that I drink. I get pleasure from other people’s pain. I’m a horrible creature, an animal. A monster.

As I dart through the forest, running in my black jeans, shoeless, shirtless, the only thing I can think about is her. I cry. I cry of guilt. I cry of love. Out of anguish. Out of pain. I had to stay one step ahead of them – the humans.

I fell. I tripped. I fell through a bush into the river. The skin came off of my left arm, and I hit my head hard on a rock. I got up, and quickly washed the blood off of my wounds. I also drank water, as if blood. But it didn’t please me. It didn’t give me satisfaction at all to be drinking water instead of blood.

There are the human myths, in which they say vampires can’t go into water. Well, they’re untrue. For the most part, anyway. The reason humans invented them, is because of their dumb stories – they needed a vulnerability in the immortal creature they call a vampire. The truth is that there are some vampires who are allergic to water. Just like humans would be to cats or mushrooms,except that the water acts on these vampires as acid on humans. It burns their skin. Slowly but surely searing through their skin.

I’ve heard that the really old vampires do become allergic to water, the born vampires. The difference between the ones that are born that way and me is that I don’t look older. My skin doesn’t age. Theirs, however, does. I look 19, but sure enough, I’m around 40 years old. Anyway, the whole thing has to do with genes – growth genes in bitten people get affected in a way that they stop the aging. In people who are born with the curse, the genes are still in effect, meaning that they do age. The average lifespan of a born vampire is between 400 to 500 years. For me, it is infinite.

I heard something. I turned around, and bullets darted through the trees. I was afraid. I was very afraid. If one of them was a freak who knew about vampires, then those bullets were made out of silver. It is a no-no to get shot with silver. It’s not too much more dangerous than normal bullets, but it takes a lot longer to heal. Most vampires are allergic to silver. Just like humans.

I ran. I ran out of the water. This is the inverse of the hunter-prey scenario. I’m supposed to hunt. They’re supposed to die. This is the total opposite. I’m the one hunted. They’re the hunters. This is wrong. I had to get a weapon. I can’t fight against this many bullets.

Oh, I almost forgot. Vampires can die a lot easier than portrayed in myths. Shoot a vampire in the head with a shotgun. Burn him. Chop his head off. Put something through his heart. These all work. Silver works, but only because of allergy. And while we’re at killing vampires – you can go right ahead and shove that cross up…because it won’t do anything against a vampire.

As I ran, I got shot. I got shot in the back and in the legs. I once again fell. I had to stand up. I had to run. I had to fight. I looked to my right as I tried standing up – and there was a rat. I grabbed it, and I put my teeth through it. The blood gushed as the rat exploded in my mouth. I sucked all the blood that the little animal could give me, then I threw it away.

Blood is everything to a vampire. It is food, water - energy. It is all that a vampire needs to survive. I stood up, and while the bullets were still darting, I hid. I hid behind a log. In the white light, they wouldn’t be able to differentiate between my skin color and a really bright spot of light.

Minutes later, humans roamed through the part of the forest. About 30 or 40 people armed to the brim with firearms and other weapons. The fatter ones were slower. The slowest, a hunter of the village, stayed behind. My perfect chance. I stood up out of my hiding place, and as he was walking, I crept up behind him; a panting, sweating, middle-aged man about twice my size. He was shorter than me, and he was carrying a double barreled shotgun. I grabbed his gun, put my hand on his mouth, pulled his head backwards, almost breaking his neck, and bit him. He didn’t have time to react.

After I was done with him, I broke his neck, and took all his weapons. Nothing extraordinary: a knife, a loaded handgun with two extra clips, and a double barrel with 20 shells. I knew I had to hurry. The humans soon discovered that the fatso was missing, and were heading back to his rescue. I had to find a way to dispose of him. I pulled him against a tree, facing the direction from where I had originally come from. That way, when they came back, they wouldn’t see him on first sight. I had to hide. Or run.

I hid behind a tree not 2 meters away from the corpse of the old man. By the time I lifted the shotgun, most men were visible. There was fog coming in, but being a vampire, one can see in dark, damp areas. My mistake – a good mistake, but still a mistake – was that the man’s arm was hanging out from behind the tree. All the men focused on the arm. It was white; I figure it looked like me to a degree. Before I had fired, all the men ran and yelled “Edgar! Edgar!” – They saw his hand hanging out from behind the tree.

I pulled the trigger. Someone fell. I pulled the trigger again. Someone else fell. I popped the shotgun open, to reload. While I was reloading, I figured they’d notice me, so I hid behind the tree. But instead of suspecting, the primitive townsfolk of Wherever thought that Edgar had been the one that was shooting. By this logic, they started shootingat dead Edgar. I was done reloading, and decided to wait until they stopped shooting. How odd would it look if the dead guy you’re shooting at would shoot (and hit) you while he doesn’t even have his gun drawn?

Again, a mistake: dead Edgar fell over. They quickly realized that dead Edgar was no longer the one to shoot. So again, I had to wait for a chance. Some men, not all, came close to the corpse. By some, I mean three. And by three, I mean three hunters – with high-caliber hunting rifles and very good shooting skills, with bayonets at the end of their rifles. They came close, I drew my shotgun, and I blew one’s head straight off. The second one jumped behind the tree, and the third was shocked. I shot the third as well, an overly easy target, might I add. I threw the shotgun away, drew the knife, and approached the remaining hunter with superhuman speed. I jumped on him and sank the knife deep inside his ribcage. I grabbed his rifle and ran as fast as I could. They shot at me with all their might.

I managed to run away, miles away, but the carpet of bullets had left me crippled for the next couple of hours. I had to sit down. A vampire, a wise vampire, said “The day doesn’t last forever. But neither does the night.” He was completely right. I had to get myself together before the strike of dawn. I still had about three or four hours left, but I was sure that hours were needed for my recovery. It was always times like these where minutes pass as if they were seconds.

I decided to extract the bullets out of my wounds. It was hard without that damn knife. If a wound was too tight, I had to open it with the bayonet. About an hour and a half into this, a rabbit appeared. Rabbits were too fast for my likes, and now that I was crippled, I didn’t have a chance at catching one. Once again, it’s a shame I left my knife in that bastard. Though I have a gun, I need the 36 bullets, and I can’t make that much noise. So I grabbed the rifle. I put the safety on, and grabbed the rifle as a spear. The rabbit went in front of a tree, and as I moved it turned halfway toward me, revealing its side. I threw the rifle, and the bayonet went through the rabbit as a knife goes through butter. I crawled close to the shaking animal, hit the back of its neck, pulled the rifle out of it, and drank its blood. I was so thirsty that I even squeezed the rabbit to rid it of all its blood. I must’ve looked sick.

After the rabbit, with my newfound strength, I could go and find a place to spend the night. I went up the hill, the direction into the meadow with my cabin in it. Through the river, through the countless poisonous plants. As I gave my back to the moon, the protective moon, I thought about her. The more and more I got closer to the edge of the forest, the more and more I thought about her. When I finally saw the dark blue sky at the top of the hill, I started having a warm feeling. Fresh air. I need fresh air. The air in the forest was far too damp to enjoy, so humid…I needed to see the meadow. My cabin. Vampires aren’t this picky. Only I am.

The second I saw my cabin, I broke down. I ran about 20 miles all night. I have the right to rest. Right before I broke down, after I saw my cabin, I remembered her face. Her beautiful, deep blue eyes. Like the ocean, they wereendless and beautiful, omnipotent.

All the sudden, I felt fear. Shivers ran down my spine. My pupils dilated. Something was wrong. For once, the silence was not comforting. It was not comforting at all. Someone or something was looking at me. I stood up, and looked over the meadow. I left the rifle down in the forest. I have heard of werewolves, but I have never seen one.

No, this couldn’t be a werewolf. They can’t be this silent. As I was staring through the moonlit meadow, I noticed that the moon reflected off of my window in a strange way.

I decided to go to my cabin. I’ve heard a lot of strange things about this forest. Rumors were never-ending. Ghosts, wolves, ghouls, zombies, even yeti were rumored to live in the dark, damp, boundless forest. After you meet your first vampire, nothing’s the same. It’s like killing, I guess. After you kill someone, you’re afraid of getting killed. After you meet your first vampire, your mind opens up to all possibilities of legends and myths. After all, somebody must’ve seen something of the sort. These things don’t just come out of the back of a human’s head. I’m scaring myself.

As I’m about 200 meters away from my cabin, I stop for a second and take a deep breath. I look. My cabin – the house I call my cabin – is a white, brick house, with nothing in it but a desk, a bed, a cupboard, a bathroom, and a small kitchen. Oh, and I’m guessing the dead girl hasn’t evaporated yet.

As I walk closer to the house, the feeling of solitude inside me is diminishing. Before I open the door, I turn around and look at the moon. That beautiful, full moon. I’ll have to sleep under the sink tonight, just in case. As I open the door, I expect to see her on the floor, her beautiful hair soaked in her dense, red, clotted blood. And I open the door.

They say that the moon protects all vampires under it.

As I step in, I see her standing, staring out at the meadow. “Welcome back.” She said. She is a vampire. “I…uh…cleaned my mess.” She said, turning toward me. I looked down onto where there was supposed to be a pool of blood. Sure enough, she cleaned the room of blood. “Y...You know, they don’t know we’re vampires.” She was trembling. She loved me, despite my actions. “I’m sorry…” I said. “Don’t be.” She turned to me, smiling in the moonlight. She showed me the left side of her neck, there weren’t any wounds. “You’ve regenerated.” I said, in gentle admiration. “And you are hurt.” She noticed.

I went over to her, the brown haired, blue eyed, thin, pale beauty standing by the window. She hugged me, and she told me that she loved me more than ever. She doesn’t know how glad I am for her to be alive.

“Do we get to live forever?” She asked.