New Life (chapter 1)

(Still working on the title of this. If you have any suggestions, you can tell me and I'll take the under consideration.)

Chapter 1

It was like a fog was lifted. Her mind cleared, and she stopped running when she noticed she was. Almost as if continuous noise or static had suddenly ceased, her mind seemed surprisingly empty. Where was she going? Maybe she hadn’t been going anywhere. Where was she now? A glance at the buildings around didn’t reveal much. An alley, that was plain enough, but it was one spot in a void, anything beyond what she saw might as well not exist for what she knew of it.

Maybe simpler information would help her out more. What about her name? Her name was… Alice. That sounded right. She was Alice, whether she was here or there or anywhere. Alice looked at her hands for some reason. She was awake. Of course she was, it was night, wasn’t it? Alice glanced out of the alley at the dark street lit by pools of yellow light. Yes, it was night. She used to sleep at night, something told her. She wasn’t sure whether to believe it, though. It seemed silly- she was alive at night, why would she sleep?

Other than that, her hands didn’t seem very interesting. Footsteps made her cringe, and they sounded close. Perhaps she shouldn’t have stopped running. Starting up again, Alice remembered she didn’t know where she was going. At this point, though, it was better just to trust her feet.

A series of quiet back alleys, studded with twists and turns, seemed familiar to her in a distant way. Her legs certainly recognized them- they knew when to jump over a crack and when to edge around a trash can to shuffle through a small tunnel hidden behind it. After that, though, she over thought the way, and had to stop for fear of going the wrong direction. Did she do this often? Alice touched a wall, trying to let her feet choose the way again, but they were quiet.

Also quiet though was the air, and the concrete wall of the alley. She seemed to have lost whoever those footsteps had belonged to. The fear she hadn’t realized was building up inside her curbed and tapered off, letting her muscles relax again. Why had she been so tense? Troubled by all these things she felt but didn’t understand anymore, she looked at the way she had been going. One path led to the right twisted off back towards where she had come, while the other went on straight left for a while before gently curving. It looked more pleasant, at least, so before her second thoughts could get the best of her she started that way, keeping one hand on the wall as if it would guide her wherever she needed to go.

Alice walked for a while, ignoring the branching streets without hesitating. It was a maze of alleys, pretty easy to get lost in, as they almost all looked the same. But, she recognized marks and scratches here and there, though she had to wonder what made them and why she was able to use them to guide her way.

This makeshift map ended at a dead end, but her heart didn’t drop. Her hand stayed on the wall as she drifted to one side, drawn by a tug on her gut. This wall, she had seen it here, but also not here. Her hand slid along the mainly smooth wall. How could it not be here? It very obviously was. Maybe, maybe she was missing something. If she had seen beyond it once, she could do it again.

Maybe it had never been here at all.

Suddenly her hand felt nothing and disappeared into the wall, inspiring a gasp from Alice. With that, it flickered and faded, revealing a dirt path to a hole in a mound. It seemed…. In its place. She walked up to it and ducked inside, sliding a hidden door closed behind her. Leaving it open made for good ventilation, she remembered, but right now she wanted to be more hidden. In the tunnel she passed a charm hanging on a nail, which she stayed well away from, feeling a sort of impending doom from any thoughts of touching it.

Alice led herself along the right wall, going that way as it was the one she went down the most. She was starting to recognize this place more, it was somewhere she felt safe and spent a lot of time. Facts were coming back to her as she walked, back into her clear mind where she could register them. One tunnel led to a living area with books and an ice box and an emergency exit. Another led to… somewhere she hadn’t been much. The thoughts of that tunnel were fuzzy and discombobulated -like a child who had only seen a glimpse of their parents’ room, and could only imagine what the rest looked like. All the walls were blank, without features or lights, which she rather liked, being able to see quite well without any harsh light casting shard shadows everywhere.

At the end of the right wall was the clamber she recognized the most. A small rug was laid out in the middle, soft under her shoes. A chest made of cheap plastic- not wood- rested near one wall, holding inside the few things that belonged to her. To finish it off was the dark coffin sitting in a large hole in the back wall, a simple cross etched on the front; like it had ever helped her.

Alice slid over to it and lifted the lid, feeling the inside- the cloth covering the hard walls and padding on the bottom, giving new meaning to the term ‘death bed’. She even had a stray blanket and a pillow, which she rearranged even as the strong urge to climb in hit her, practically pulling her off her feet as she doubled over the side of the coffin gasping for breath. She belonged in that coffin. Nothing should separate them- not space, not air, not a thought. It invited her in with a feeling she couldn’t refuse, something so warm and familiar that the truth was she may never want to leave again. Sliding into it and swinging her legs over, she pulled the blanket over her as her mind started going black. Alice didn’t even register her hands pulling the lid of the coffin over her, or the click as it fell into place, though she may not have even moved it at all.

The life left her just in time for the sun to hit the maze of alleys and find nothing there but the cold, dead mists remaining from the night. Deep underground in the center of that maze was a chilly, dark, empty space which while not perfect was a very good place for a vampire to live. Or, perhaps, unlive.