Unnamed

Chapter 2

Leaning against the wall behind him and facing the sleeping beauty, he watched her chest rise and fall in rhythm. He smiled at her. He hadn’t slept himself for a few years now. Oh, he still longed for sleep, but the pulsing of the human blood in his veins kept him awake. It didn't want him to forget. Not even for a few hours. He gazed at her in envy.

However, his desire for blood was much more than his desire for sleep. He sighed. He would kill her tonight and then wait a few days. Wait for the dissatisfaction to creep back into his body. Then he would go hunting and kill another victim. Would the cycle ever end?

Suddenly, the girl's eyelids squeezed tight and her eyebrows narrowed. Her breathing grew rapid and her hands balled into fists. The intruder remained where he was, wondering what she was dreaming about.

Soon after, her hands relaxed and her eyes opened. Her breathing gradually slowed. She lay there, still, for quite a long time before changing to a sitting position. He smirked and didn’t move from his spot as he watched her rub her eyes. She covered her face with her hands and sighed. When she finally uncovered her eyes, it was a few minutes after she had woken up.

She saw the stranger that had terrified her so much earlier that day in her apartment, and she took in a sharp breath in preparation for a scream. He was there as quick as a flash. He covered her mouth with one hand and placed his pointer finger on his lips and shushed her. She saw the hunger in his eyes and she became disgusted.

No. Not again. Not if she could help it.

Without a warning, she kicked his shin as hard as she possibly could. He keeled over in pain, and she took this chance to run for the door. She was expecting him to be down longer than he was, so she was taken completely by surprise when he lunged at her from behind and knocked her to the ground. He turned her around and stared into her eyes. He whispered to her soothingly as if he were trying to calm a wild animal.

"It'll all be over soon."

He felt her rapid pulse under his hands and his eyes betrayed more hunger. Natalie made one last attempt to escape his grasp, but he was stronger than she had expected for someone so frail. He grinned at her. And that's when she saw them.

Fangs.

Her mind became a confused, blurry mess when she saw them. Her head was a just a floating, jumbled heap of useless information. But she knew one thing -- She had prepared for this somehow. She felt his eyes on her neck as the fangs got closer and closer to her skin. His bony fingers slid down to her side as he bent down. His grip relaxed.

She felt his fingers against the skin on her stomach through her jacket, but she also felt something else. Something solid, something plastic, a cylinder...

She remembered now. The garlic.

He did not seem to notice the object beneath his fingers. His focus was on one thing and one thing only -- the blood that was pulsing rapidly with fear through her veins. His eyes were closed now.

As quickly as possible, she grabbed the container inside her pocket. She opened the screw-on top just as he widened his mouth to prepare for the bite.

He paused for a second, opened his eyes, and sniffed the air. That was all she needed. Before he could recognize the foul smell, she spilled half of its contents into her palm and threw it in his face. She quickly scurried away.

He froze in dread, realizing what had just happened. He felt the sting of the toxin in his mouth, nose, and eyes. He stared at the ground on his hands and knees, breathing rapidly, anticipating. Then… it came.

The burning in his mouth worsened into what seemed like a fire that had started on his tongue. He moaned in pain and dug his fingernails deep into his palms as the fire spread quickly down his throat. He squeezed his eyes closed because the light from the apartment made the garlic seem to sizzle on his eyeball. The garlic he inhaled through his nose met with the fire in his throat, making it hurt like hell to breathe.

Suddenly, all of his veins caught on fire. It was almost as if the garlic was the fire and the human blood that flows through his veins was the oil. He screamed in agony at the sudden pain. The fire spread to his limbs, forcing him to collapse on the floor, lying on his back and shaking from the pain. Tears rolled down his face from his stinging eyes. He couldn’t help but to breathe hard, but the air seemed to react with the garlic still in his nose and mouth, making the pain ten times worse.

He dug his nails into the carpet. He needed to know that he was still alive and on Earth… He needed to know that there was something else that was tangible other than the pain. He needed to know that he was still alive, that he wasn’t in hell. He needed to know that the pain would end. He hit the floor with his fist with all the strength he had left, but it didn’t matter. Nothing could distract him from the agony.

Finally, when it seemed like the pain would never end, it ended. The fire slowly faded until it bled from his lips, leaving soreness and emptiness behind. He had been drained of all energy. Every part of his body ached. His muscles relaxed. He looked up at the ceiling, breathing painlessly, and in the corner of his eye, he saw the girl. She was staring at him. He glared back.

Then, it hit him. He still hadn’t drunk any blood. He groaned as the dissatisfaction came back. Wincing, he pushed himself off the ground with his hands and got into a sitting position. He tried to move his legs, and he barely succeeded. But he realized that standing up would be agonizing. If he managed to stand up, he would have to lean against something. Even then, it would drain his energy. Walking would be impossible.

With an annoyed and defeated expression on his face, he simply leaned against the sofa. He was now looking right at the person that was supposed to be his victim. She was leaning against the wall that he had been leaning against himself when she was asleep. In her trembling hand was the conveniently powdered garlic. He smiled slightly in amusement. The tables were turned, alright.

Her legs growing weak as well, Natalie slid down into a sitting position, her back against the wall. He sighed in annoyance and waited for her to say something.

"Why me?" she asked weakly.

He looked away from her and focused his attention on the items in her apartment. The books that she had dropped when he found her, soaked from the rain. A guitar. An abstract painting on an easel.

"There were other people you could have…" she began.

"Would your neighbors have called the cops?" He asked with a weak, raspy voice, completely ignoring her question.

"I asked first."

"Never mind then."

A few minutes of silence passed.

"No, they probably thought you were just high." she answered him. Unfortunately, he didn't return the favor. She sighed.

"So why me?"

He didn’t reply. After a few more minutes of silence, Natalie asked something else she had been wondering about.

"Can garlic kill you?"

"Why do you care?" he exclaimed suddenly. Natalie was quick to respond.

"Let's think about this. A man breaks into my house and he has almost all the stereotypes of a vampire. No, you're right. Why would I care?" she said, her voice soaked in sarcasm.

He glared at her. What was wrong with this person? First of all, what was the garlic doing in her pocket? Second, he was supposed to be drinking her blood right now, but he was being interrogated instead. He wasn’t used to it. But he felt obligated to answer her. He looked warily at the garlic.

"Your blood type." he said finally. Natalie narrowed her eyes in confusion. If it was just her blood type, there would've been a lot more people he could've...

"Oh." she said out loud. That's when she realized that her blood type was AB Negative. The rarest blood type. It was the blood type that less than one percent of the human population had.

A long silence filled the room. The ticking of her clock suddenly became very loud.

"My other question?" she asked, breaking the silence.

He shifted his position uncomfortably. Then he crossed his arms and looked down.

"Yes." he said uneasily.

A pause. "Can you die from not drinking my blood type?"

"Yes." he said with a hint of annoyance.

"Are there others of your kind?"

"Yes."

"Do they all drink blood?"

"No."

"Why not?"

He looked at her darkly. "You ask a lot of questions."

"Can you blame me?" she snapped back. He sighed.

"Most vampires have learned to blend in with the crowd. They don’t have cravings anymore." he said, eyes on the door.

"Does garlic affect them?"

"No."

"Why do you crave blood but not them?"

More silence. "I was exposed at a young age."

He tried to move his leg and found that it was a lot easier than it had been before. He was starting to feel the energy coming back to his body. He was eager to get out of here…

"How…" she started. He sighed in frustration. "How did you become a vampire?" He didn’t answer for a long time, so she started again, but cautiously.

"Did you get bitten by another vampire?"

"Yes." he said quietly, more annoyed than ever.

"When?"

His face became tormented all of a sudden, and Natalie felt a pang of guilt. His eyes were unfocused, as if he were reliving a memory from his past. Natalie looked at the clock, waiting for him to answer, if he was going to answer at all. Minutes went by. Ten minutes. Fifteen. Twenty. No answer.

When she finally gave up on waiting for the answer, he spoke. He answered her so softly that she barely heard what he said.

"I was eight."

She started to digest the information. Then, she realized…

Had he been killing people since he was eight?

Just then, he stood up very slowly from the ground. His brows furrowed in concentration as he placed his hand on the armrest of the sofa for support. His thin, pale arm trembled slightly from the weight that it was having to hold. He brought his other arm over to the armrest and the trembling stopped.

After he gradually let his legs support his weight, he let go of the armrest and carefully made his way towards the door, his left hand on the wall just in case he fell. He did have to lean on it heavily a couple of times, but the energy was coming back.

Finally, he arrived at the door. He winced and turned the doorknob. He pushed it open, which seemed to take all of his strength. He leaned heavily on the doorframe, out of breath. He stared straight in front of him at the hallway for a while, unmoving and unseeing. After a few minutes, he left.

The moon was full and the sky was dark. There was a young boy walking along a road, alone, and bleeding. There was a small, lone house not too far ahead, and this was the direction in which the boy seemed to be going.

He reached the porch, where the porch light revealed a deep wound on the boy's neck. He tried to open the door, but it was locked. He finally climbed through the kitchen window and made his way to the living room, where a little girl was sitting in a chair and listening to Beethoven on the tape player. Across the room from her was their father, who was reading the newspaper and drinking a beer. The boy stood in front of his father.

"Sir?"

There was no response. The boy looked down.

"Help me."

Yet again, there was no response. Giving up, the boy began to leave the room.

"Go to the kitchen, son. I have to show you something."

"Yes, sir."

And so the boy went to the kitchen, where his father soon followed. The man pulled out a knife from a drawer. He pulled it out and kneeled in front of his son, looking at him in the eyes. He put the knife between them and smiled. He then proceeded to cut his wrist with the sharp blade. Blood seeped out of the shallow cut. The boy looked at the cut in fear, but didn't dare to run away. The father put his wrist in front of the boy's mouth.

"Drink it."

The boy did nothing for a while, and that angered the father.

"Did you hear me, boy? Drink it!" he yelled this time. The boy nodded fearfully and stuck his tongue out.

"Good boy. Don't put your teeth on it. Just lick it."

At first, the boy was disgusted. But as soon as the taste of the blood registered in his brain, he grabbed his fathers arm with his small hands and put his lips around the wound. The man yanked his arm away and slapped the boy with his other hand, knocking him on the ground. He stood up and glared at him. The boy stood back up, and the father grabbed his hand and led him to the door. He pushed him outside, causing him to fall down the steps leading to the porch. The boy's whimpers suddenly turned into screams, and it wasn't from the fall. He began to shake violently, as if having a seizure. Without a glance back at him, the father closed the door.

The next day, the father had killed himself in the kitchen with the same blade, no doubt from the shame of who his children had become. And his son was the first to go inside and clean up the mess.

The girl sat in the chair the entire time, not the least bit surprised, listening to Beethoven.