Young Writers Society

I couldn’t resist it any longer. He just smelled so good.

But I kept my cool. It was difficult keeping myself together as Ryan Turner, the love of my life, endured a nosebleed right next to me. I felt my heart rate increase and all my senses became intensified the instant the blood vessel in his up his nostrils bursted. He was bleeding because Abby Smith was sitting in front of him and when our school cheerleaders had prompted us to stand up and do a cheer, she jumped and knocked her head into Ryan’s nose.

I clutched the edge of the bleachers with my life. I dug my fingernails so hard into the metal that they broke in half. I locked my gaze onto the playing field in front of me, but hearing Ryan groaning in pain and I couldn’t stand it, so I closed my eyes. Part of me wanted to comfort him, because I loved him. But the other part of me wanted to plunge my fangs into his beautifully long neck and drink the life out him. It sounded mildly romantic. I imagined myself drinking the life out of Ryan and that made me laugh. I smiled, showing my teeth.

“What are you laugh—“ I turned my head to the left to follow the voice that was aimed at me. I opened my eyes and saw that I was staring straight into Abby Smith’s eyes. She was staring at me with a look of terror on her face, like she had seen a ghost. I closed my mouth and puffed out my cheeks, but it was too late. She had already seen my fangs, and in my head, I cursed myself for being so stupid. Suddenly she was screaming and pointing at me. Everyone on the field stared at me. I was frozen in fear. And everyone’s faces turned transitioned from curiosity to utter hatred. The person that was helping Ryan off the bleachers said that I wanted to kill Ryan and someone behind me began screamed at the top of their lungs to “kill the vampire”. Suddenly the entire school erupted into death threats that were aimed at me.

I had realized that when I smiled at Abby, my fangs were showing. I jumped up and tumbled down the bleachers to get away from the chaos. People were pulling on my clothes and grabbing things out of my jacket pocket. Luckily, none of them got a secure grip on me, and I was able to slip through most of the people because of my thinness.

When I got off the bleachers, I shot right because there was the nearest exit. I ran as fast as I could in my black sneakers and short-shorts. I was doubly out of shape; I hadn’t been going to the gym for weeks and it was at that moment that I truly regretted not going.

The entire school was after me. Occasionally I would glance behind me and see a few of my teachers inside the crowd. It sounded like a stampede of rabid bulls were chasing, and that they weren’t going for the red color but for me, the matador.

I dashed through the halls as quickly as I could. Fortunately, there were no classes in session because all the students had been forced to go to the Rally for homecoming, so I had less to worry about being immediately stopped in my tracks by an opening door.

I didn’t want to be in this situation. It wasn’t my fault that I was born this way. I never asked to be a vampire. Being a vampire was all I knew. It was my parents’ fault. They decided to have a child that they knew would not be liked by society. I lived in a dangerous world; it was a world where “monsters”, like me, were exposed to the public. Everyone knew what we were and now believed that we existed because they had physical proof. But just because people knew about us didn’t mean that they liked us. In fact, they despised our existence and there is currently a war going on between the two entities. The reason this all started was because of one man: Santiago Mendoza, “leader of the pack. He was the one that kept us vamps safe, kept us hidden, and pushed us to persevere in a world that hated us. He was our savior, the one we looked up to when all hopes were lost. He gave us hope and to reinforce this hope, he even got us jobs with major corporations in the world. Eventually, there were so many vampires running the show of things that corruption occurred. The people didn’t like it and that was how all this mess began. I just wanted to be normal.

I dashed around the corners of the school. I rounded the corners of the cafeteria and the court yard. Luckily my school was big, so it was difficult for everyone to keep up with me. And because I’m a vampire, I don’t get exasperated while doing things like humans do. Normally, a human’s heart rate would increase and their muscles would soon become exhausted after such exertion of their bodies, but I was not human, and that was one of the things that benefitted me from being different.

Running in circles around the school building was getting tedious and dangerous. Some students had learned my route and caught up with me. I knew because I their shouts were more distinctive and the sound of their feet hitting the ground was louder than it had been before. I needed to think of something quickly.

Finally I found something that would help. As I approached the cafeteria for the third time, the door was open, and I made a swift yet impulsive dash into it. I tumbled inside because my shoelaces were untied but that didn’t stop me from jumping up and slamming the door which then conveniently locked itself.

The cafeteria was empty and clean, so I knew that the janitors had already been inside. That was a slight relief because it would have been the end of if anyone found out I was in there. But I wasn’t out of the clear because I’d still needed a place to hide. There were no distinct hiding places; all I saw were dining tables and an empty salad bar. I whipped my head from side to side and searched the room from something that would protect me. Then I got the thought of hiding in the kitchen, so I ran as quickly as I could to it.

There were different rooms inside the kitchen that contained different things. One was where they kept the food, and one contained things like the oven or sink, where they made the food. I decided to go in to the food storage room, thinking that it would be dark and not easy to find me because it was larger than the cooking room.

I was right about the storage room; it was quite large. It was that way because it contained what seemed like an endless supply of food. I didn’t hesitate to find a secure hiding place; in the back of the room there was a nice corner that was lazily concealed by a big box that read “rice”. I thought it was perfect for me.

It was difficult moving the rice container into a position that covered me because I was wider than it, which surprised me. After struggling to fit it into a comfortable condition, I thought about getting another hiding place. There wasn’t much time for me to think, by then people would have realized that I hadn’t left the campus because it would have been impossible. The front gate to our school was locked during school hours and heavily guarded by policemen. Although there were never any immediate threats in the town, they did this because of the war. The classrooms were also locked at this hour, because of the rally. So they would only search a few places like the library and the cafeteria. I estimated that I had only been in the cafeteria for three minutes, and that although the trek from the front gate back to the library was long, I knew it wouldn’t take over eight hundred people to get back to where I was. So my only option was to leave the storage room and opt for something else. That was when I headed for the cooking room. Sure it was pretty bare and open but there were some convenient hiding places in there that someone would never guess to look: like inside the oven or one of the top cabinets.

I bolted out the storage room and the door flew open in front of me. All the imagined adrenaline I’d had in me told me to go faster and think harder, but I couldn’t especially since I was stopped by something unbelievable. There he was, standing right before me holding a bloodied towel to his nose. But he startled me, and my instincts were activated. I produced my fangs and I went in for the kill. However, for a split I felt like everything was at a standstill. It was like before I had changed, I knew that I was going after him. It felt like I could have stopped myself before it happened but of course it was too late. By the time I realized that, my teeth were already plunged into his succulent neck and I was literally sucking the life out of him. So many emotions ran through me as it happened: lust, anger, regret, hurt, love, and power. They came one after the other, like feet do when they hit the pavement. I couldn’t stop, I just couldn’t stop myself. I slurped every last bit of blood that I could from him. I couldn’t contain myself, not even after I heard his blood curdled screams and begging. As he lay there helpless, he shouted at me, calling me all kinds of things that hurt me. Finally he stopped fighting and let death come to him.

Towards the end I heard him mumbling. He mumbled about all kinds of things, like his little sister Savannah and his mother who would be extremely upset about him being gone. Then he called out names that I’d never heard before and asked them to forgive him. He asked for forgiveness of his foolishness. He thought that he was a fool for being alive, and that hit me. This guy, the love of my life, that lay dying on the ground below me believed that it was his own fault for being punished. Suddenly, he did something really amazed me. Through my darkness, I saw his bloodshot eyeballs roll lazily toward me. He lazily attempted a smile, and that was when I couldn’t take any more of it: I cried. Never had I ever felt an emotion so intense like the one I was feeling at that moment. It was something new to me because I had never felt empathy or guilt before. I had always learned in school that humans felt empathetic or guilty when they pitied themselves, but never did I feel that way because I was not human. I never connected myself to humans because it wasn’t possible. It was never heard of that vampires could empathize with their victims, or feel the same emotions as them because they were not alike. We are supposed to be different therefore we could never connect with each other on emotional levels. But why did I relate my feelings to the ones humans have had for millions of years? I definitely wasn’t human, so how come this was happening?

My tears are not like human tears. I cry tears of blood. I the thick red juice ooze from my eyes and slowly stream down my face. With the tears I felt like something else unprecedented was happening. Each drop of blood that fell off my face and onto Ryan’s cheek was like a rebirth. There was a deep feeling of light growing inside me, like I was turning into a light bulb from the inside out. Ryan was still staring at me. He was extremely pale and his lips match the color of his skin. His eyelids drooped heavily, and his eyes were still bloodshot. Painstakingly, he used his left hand to pet my hair. That made me cry even more.

“I’m so sorry” I managed to say through heavy heaves and sobbing. He said nothing to me but just smiled like I usually saw him do in the hallways during school. I buried my head into his chest, on his left rib cage and sobbed there while clutching his shirt and crying in defeat. Then that enlightened feeling slowly treaded away, and my sobs were harder than they were before.

As I laid there devastated for a few moments, I felt him tugging gently at my hair. He was in a very feeble state, and I had predicted that at any moment, he would be gone from me forever. He stared at me and for a moment I thought that he was gone. I stopped crying and paid close attention to him yet my lips quivered awfully and I still cried. My eyes were stinging. The floor around us was a bloody mess and the smell of fresh blood was overwhelming. I couldn't believe the horror scene we were in.

Ryan finally said something to me, but I couldn't understand what he said. He kept mumbling it over and over but I hadn't understood what he said. After several attempts at trying to interpret it, I gave up and went back to sobbing. Finally, I felt his labored breathing stop and that was it. He was gone. The only thing in this universe that I had ever cared about was gone, and it was my fault. Then I was filled with rage. Rage was what then controlled me.

To Be Continued...