He always suspected it. He always knew there was something wrong with him, and those whom he called friends. He could not remember anything, his name, who he was, how had he come to be here with them, nothing. They were buried deep within the dark shadows of his own brain, somewhere where he could never shed light, no matter how hard he tried. He remembered being woken up by a group of people, hands tied behind his back alongside a dark figure, in the same state. No matter how hard he tried, sometimes for hours at end, his memories would never go before that moment. But, he knew he had them, he could tell by intuition. He sometimes had flashes of insight into his brain, when somehow one tiny spark had managed to light up that dark room, and at that moment he remembered something completely different than his present life. He could remember a pretty young woman feeding him off a spoon, a man in glasses picking him up in his arms, a young girl kissing him on his lips. He could feel that kiss for a few precious moments before they were snatched away from him, and he fell from the clouds only to land on earth. Whenever he would ask Lucian what these memories meant, Lucian would just look at him gravely, and grunt
“Don’t ask questions.”
Of course, that was the first rule for a quiet life with his ‘family’. Never ask any questions out of the ordinary. Do not ask why they sleep during the day, and only go out at night, contrary to most normal humans. Never ask why their skin burns if they stay in the sunlight too much when normal people never even seem to care for it. Never ask why they kidnap people at night and keep them in cages until one day they would be taken out and cut into pieces, their blood kept in bottles, which all of them had to drink. He would always feel sad about the people in the cages, especially for the children. How they would cry at night for their mother, plead to be taken home, to be taken to their parents because they felt afraid when alone in the dark. Sometimes he would even cry after hearing their screams, especially their dying ones. He would ask Lucian,
“Why do we have to kill children? Why cannot we just leave these people alone? I never see human beings eating each other back in towns and cities.”
Lucian would laugh and say,
“You just haven’t seen enough of the world, Ralph.” and he would turn his head away. The others were no better, for they too would refuse to look him in the eyes if he ever threw up this question. However, he had remembered something when pondering with himself. It was a single word, it read vampire. He had been unwise enough to speak the word out aloud in front of Sheila, for upon hearing it, she had looked at him murderously, and for a second he had felt afraid. He had taken note to never say it again from that day on, even though Sheila had shown no sign of being offended at him.
After months and months of saying with them, he started to believe that he was becoming like them. It was the stigma of his friends, ever circling around him in the form of a negative field, making him evil, and eternally thirsty. Not a throat would pass his eyes without him wishing that he could just rip it out and drink, drink to satisfy his cravings. He had once tried to leave, and even though he had been caught, Lucian did not wake up the others. He gave him a choice saying,
“You can go Ralph, but among them you will always be an outcast, a freak, a fish out of water wanting to swim again. They are the makers Ralph, but we are gods amongst men, and we take what they make for ourselves.”
And so he had stayed. And life would go on, the same routine every single day, like an endless paradox. Until one day they came.
The villagers had pitchforks in their hands, and torches, so, so many torches, lighting up the night like the middle of the day. All of them tried to fight, but the villagers crushed the entire group by sheer force of numbers. And as every single one fell, Ralph could only think but one thing, he was next. But when the sword fell on his neck, he didn’t even try to defend himself. The throat had been slashed almost in two, and Ralph could feel blood dripping down his neck in a steady flow. The stars, the beautiful stars which he had always loved to look at, they were twinkling even more brightly, as if they knew that this was the last time Ralph would see them, it was as if they wanted to say goodbye. In his last dying moments did Ralph’s remembrance come; he saw everything. He saw his whole other life, his friends, family, parents, and wife, how he had been turned into a blood-sucking vampire, into a creature of the night, and for the first time in his life as a vampire did he smile, and feel happiness. Slowly, that picture of his past life went away from the front of his eyes, the darkness engulfing him from all sides, death breathing down upon him, whispering softly in his ears that it was going to be okay, it was nothing to be afraid of. He opens his eyes one last time and sees a blinding white light stretching out all around the night sky. He closes his eyes, finally succumbing to the appalling pain he felt in his limbs, and finally acquires the tranquility that he had always desired.
