Radioactive Vampire Read online

  The first time I tried to sleep like I usually did as a human, I woke up with a bad sunburn, since I slept in my room by the window. That’s when I found out as a vampire, sun doesn’t kill us, like the human myths say to this day. It just gives a really bad sunburn that takes about an hour to heal, even with my super healing powers.

  All of the other myths on vampires are wrong as well. I can’t believe some of the things these humans make up. The only myth that comes close to the truth is the one about vampires sleeping in coffins. There is only one reason for that, it’s because no one is going to look in a coffin in a remote part of town, and its not like people go around opening coffins and saying “Hey how ‘ya doin’ down there?” to the corpses. No sane person anyways.

  So I decided to get one of those fancy Gothic-style crypts that has an underground chamber and room enough for one large cement coffin in the middle of the room. I told the groundskeeper it was for a homeless person who had helped me and I had my own ‘people’ to take care of the preparations, so he wouldn’t have to do anything other than keep people out of the underground chamber, which would be locked.

  As I didn’t know what to expect when I wake up, if ever, I kept all of the important information with me in the crypt, my passports, IDs, cash, property titles, and things like that.

  Since the sun doesn’t really burn me anymore, especially if I cover up with a long sleeve shirt, pants, and a long coat, I didn’t see a need to wait until dark to enter the crypt. So I snuck in after the groundskeeper made his rounds. The crypt was all set up and ready to use.

  After I got my coffin all prepared with the necessities, pillows, cushions, and my valuables, I lay down and got comfortable. Then I closed the lid of the coffin, which would have been impossible for just one human to open, since I had it made to weigh a few tons, and made out of concrete and steel. I didn’t want to end up like any of those vampires in movies, you know the ones. The ones who believe they are safe in a simple coffin, only to get killed by some nosy and overly suspicious human.

  When the lid was secure I lay my arms at my side and closed my eyes. All I could do now is wait. For what, I didn’t know. I just felt I had to wait. I slowly drifted off to sleep, which I didn’t realize I had so badly needed. Maybe that’s why I had felt as if I were going insane these past few decades. The need for sleep seemed to move to the back of my mind in my quest for answers, so I couldn’t even tell you the last time I slept.

  Chapter 3

  As I slept, I dreamt. I dreamt of the night my human life ended. I dreamt of everything that had happened up until I went to sleep: discovering I was different from other humans after that night, finding my powers, leaving home, surviving, feeding, hunting, tracking that monster that made me what I now was. How I had to leave my home, because humans could never understand what I was. I wasn’t human anymore, but I looked like one. That idea tended to scare people, and I don’t blame them.

  I dreamt of traveling the world in my quest for that monster, his eyes haunting my dreams. My repeated failures to find him seemed to be the most persistent of my dreams. How frustrated I felt when the trail went cold. With the waiting I went through to find the next hint of his existence. How alone I felt at not being able to live a normal life, like the one I used to have. I especially remembered the times when I thought I was the only vampire out there, besides my maker. I didn’t know anything about other vampires. I didn’t know where to go to seek any company.

  I was alone. For almost 500 years. And I would remain alone for what seemed to be another 500. I couldn’t help but to feel the weight of loneliness from those many years.

  I couldn’t tell what was going on in the human world as I was tucked safely away in my box. Even if I couldn’t see what was going on, I could feel it. Something very wrong was happening. There was sickness and death in the air that seemed to penetrate my coffin. Earthquakes were very common, and the sense of death got worse. I lost count of the years, listening to the quietness of the outside. I was still asleep this whole time, but I could still sense what was happening around me.

  In between dreams, I could sense someone close by. I’m not sure what they were doing, but they were also quiet. There wasn’t any noise from the outside for what seemed to go on forever, so I decided it must be time to go outside again. Besides, I could only dream of the past for so long, no matter how long I lived.

  It must have been a few years since I went to sleep, I thought. Maybe something has changed by now. The sense of death was somewhat dissipated, but it still there. It lingered in the air.

  I tried to move my arms to open the lid, but I couldn’t seem to move them at all. I screamed mentally at my self. If I couldn’t get this lid open, I might go mad. After trying countless times to open it, I gave up. My energy was gone; I needed to have fresh energy or blood soon. I feared I would die if I didn’t have it.

  I lay there in my self-made prison for a long time. At some point, I stopped yelling at myself (mentally, since I couldn’t do it physically). I felt that this was all one big nightmare. Maybe I was going insane. Well, it’s high time you did, the inner voice in my mind said. I hated that voice. It always said what I didn’t want to hear. It always told me what I didn’t want to know or realize, but it was the rational side of my mind speaking to me. Maybe I had gone crazy.

  After contemplating if I was insane or not, I drifted off back to sleep once again. This time I didn’t dream of the past. I dreamt of a man. He was traveling the world, searching for something, for someone. I couldn’t tell, but in my dream it seemed as if I was watching him from above, like a bird’s-eye view. Sometimes I could almost see his face, but he always kept it hidden. As if he knew I was watching him. This man was a vampire too. I knew it even before I saw him track down a deer and drain its energy until it slept. It was as if I knew what he was as soon as I saw him, but I didn’t realize what he was until he was draining the deer. There was something about him that was familiar, but I couldn’t place it. I felt drawn to him somehow.

  As far as I could tell about the man, he was not the one who made me. He was different in so many ways, but he still reminded me of him. He had short black hair, about two or three inches long. He wore tinted goggles as big as his face, for what seemed like all the time, like he was purposefully hiding his face from someone or something. He wore a trench coat that was tattered in many places, and I could almost make out the boots he wore. They were similar to the ones I wore, except for the buckles that went up the side. Mine had laces.

  That was all I could remember from my dreams about the man. I never saw him really doing anything, but whenever I did see him, he was usually outside sleeping, or looking up at the stars. He wandered around during the day, or what I thought was the day, since the sky always seemed to be overcast all the time.

  I couldn’t make out exactly where he was, because all around him was rubble. The next time I saw him in my dream, he was looking at the stars while laying on what seemed to be the roof of a building. The roof was out of place though, because it was on the ground, not attached to a building.

  It must be nice to wander around without a care in the world. I missed the feel of the air on my face, and watching this man stare at the sky so carefree looking just pissed me off. I decided to try to think of other things to calm my self down. Like getting out of here for one. I want to feel the wind, I desperately thought to myself. Oh, how I missed the feel of the wind in my face, in my hair. I just wanted to stand on a cliff and have the wind blow all around me. It was the only feeling I missed from before I decided to sleep.

  The man’s image came back to my dream, and he was still on the roof, like the last time I saw him. He was standing now, looking around him as if he heard someone. At least you get to walk. I didn’t know if this man was a part of my dream or if it was real, but I still hated the man. He had freedom to do what he wanted. I couldn’t even move. If I was this weak, I wondered how I looked. Probably a lot worse than I felt.

  I w
anted to pound on the lid of my prison, but I couldn’t move.

  I wanted to cry out of frustration, but I was too weak.

  I want out, damn it! I mentally screamed, as I saw the man searching around him again. Did he hear me? But I wasn’t speaking. This was very strange, even for a dream.

  Maybe I really am going crazy, if my dreams are reacting to my thoughts, than I really must have lost my marbles.

  Suddenly the man stopped looking around. He turned his head up and looked right where I would have been as if I was standing on something higher than him, looking down. He headed towards me, climbing over more rubble, and just as I thought he was going to touch me with his outstretched hand, he disappeared. Or maybe it was me who disappeared.

  I didn’t dream for a long time after that. I tried to sleep to pass the time. Until what happened, exactly? If that man was real, would he search for me? Would he save me? Yeah right. Things like that are just in the movies. The guy saving the damsel in distress, except if I was the damsel, I wouldn’t be in a tower in a castle, but a crypt in a cemetery. How un-romantic.

  *****

  It had been a week since I had heard that voice in the night. It called to me like a siren. I couldn’t help but to try and follow it. The first time I heard the voice, I was trying to imagine what the stars must look like at this time of year. I couldn’t remember the last time I had actually seen them, it had been so long.

  I was trying to remember where one of the constellations would be when I heard her. The voice said it wanted to be free. Free from what? I was wondering where it had come from all week, when I heard it again. I have felt as if someone were watching me for a while now, so I was alert to my surroundings. There was no one nearby. I kept looking around for the source of the voice, fearing it was a demon come to kill me in the night.

  I want to feel the wind the voice said. I could at least determine it was female from this past week. She sounded so sad and I could almost feel the loneliness and frustration in the air.

  I want out, damn it! she said. I could sense she was trapped somewhere, but I wasn’t sure where to even begin to look.

  Then I saw her. She looked like a ghost, hovering in the air like she was suspended from wires like in the movies. Although she looked like a ghost, I could sense her presence, as if she were really here. I reached out to see if it was just my imagination, or if I was beginning to go crazy, but she began to disappear. Before she finally left, she looked at me and pointed to the east. With nothing better to do, I headed east to begin my search for the mysterious woman.

  After a few days of walking, I knew I was finally close to her when all of a sudden all of the energy left my body and I passed out. I woke up a few hours later, knowing exactly what had happened and what I was up against. My energy was drained repeatedly for the next few days, I was making little progress, but the frequency of the attacks were fewer and fewer so I kept a somewhat steady pace to where I believed the woman to be. The only building around us for miles was an ancient looking crypt that looked surprisingly intact.

  I entered the crypt.

  Chapter 4

  I was coming out of sleep for what seemed to be the thousandth time when I heard a noise near by. It was the sound of a gate opening and closing, followed by footsteps. The footsteps were getting closer and closer to the coffin I was in, until they stopped just next to the coffin, at the end where my head was. I heard a light thud outside, like someone was placing something on the lid. Then it began to move back and forth slowly, as if it was a hand feeling the cold steel.

  I tried to move, but I was in no better condition to try to move than the last time. I tried to speak, but I was too weak to even complain. I couldn’t even open my eyes. I even tried sensing whatever was in the room, but I couldn’t sense anything through the thick walls of my prison. So I just sighed mentally, waiting for that person to finally open the lid so I could feed off of their energy and leave to find out what happened to the earth.

  This seemed to startle whatever was outside my coffin, because the footsteps began to move again, slowly moving away from the coffin. It was some time before the footsteps returned to where they were before.

  The person actually heard me? How could they? I was sealed in a steel and concrete coffin, and I hadn’t made a noise. So how did they hear me?

  There was a knock on the lid. Once. Twice. The third knock was weaker than the last. I couldn’t respond, no matter how hard I tried. This was so frustrating. If this was anyone who wanted to kill me, I’m screwed. I have no way of fighting back.

  I would be dead in less than a second. I wasn’t about to give up hope, so I tried what I had dreamt of doing when I saw that man. Maybe had heard me, maybe not, but it was worth a shot.

  Who’s there? I asked, thinking hard on what I wanted to say, and then basically thinking loud enough, with a lot of emotion behind it. It must have worked since the knocking stopped, and there was a long pause before the person spoke aloud “So it was you.”

  Get me out of here! I didn’t want to stay here any longer. I’ve rested enough. I now wanted to see what the world has become, what has changed. If the humans have changed.

  The lid of the coffin began to slowly move. It was moving so slow that at some point it seemed to stop, but it always started back up within a few seconds. No ordinary human could possibly be able to move the lid. I had made sure of that when I made it so heavy. When the lid was off far enough for me to feel the fresh air start to come in, I tried to open my eyes to see who this person was, but they would barely move. I managed to get them open wide enough to see through, but everything was blurry since I hadn’t used my eyes in so long, so I closed them again. I was finally able to taste the fresh air. As a vampire, I didn’t need to breathe, but it felt nice to clear out my lungs after who knows how long.

  Probably noticing my struggle, the man began to speak. His voice was deep, but not too deep to give me the idea he was threatening. He called himself “Rai”, which sounded fake to me, but I didn’t care if I had to call my rescuer “cutie pie” or “sweetheart”, as long as he would get me out of this box, my self-made prison.

  I felt his hands move under my back and legs, like he was trying to lift me out of the coffin.

  Rai. I thought.

  “What? Oh, I’m sorry if I’m being rude or anything. You said you wanted out, so that’s what I’m doing.” He put me down on the cold floor and waited for a long time. He was probably waiting for me to move or speak, waiting for the slightest movement to show I was still alive.

  Finally, he spoke. “You know, you don’t have to worry. I know what you are.” If I had a heartbeat I swear it would have sped up just then. “Could you tell me which type you are? You need to feed, and no offence, you look like hell.” I just hoped he didn’t show me a mirror because I didn’t have the energy to be worried about looks right now.

  Energy. I thought with all my might. I needed energy and then everything would start to work itself out. That was the theory anyways. “Oh. Well, I hate to leave you alone again, but I better go look for something for you. A rabbit, maybe.” And then just like that, he got up and left. I didn’t know if he would ever be back or just leave me there to suffer, because it seemed like a day before he returned. What got me thinking was how I was going to get energy off of an animal. I had never tried it, since they usually had less energy than a human. But the little bit of energy would help. Then I realized he hadn’t sounded scared or disgusted at the fact I was a vampire.

  He didn’t offer me any blood either.

  He must be a vampire, too. I thought. He seemed to think there was more than one kind of vampire too. Weird. I had thought all vampires were the same, if there were others than myself and my maker.

  When he returned, he was carrying four rabbits, two in each hand, and they weren’t that big either. My eyes were still closed, but I could hear the heartbeats of the rabbits, and now that I thought about it, it was all I could hear. The man didn’t have a heart
beat. Which was why he asked me what type I was. What type of vampire I was. Which meant there were other types. And other vampires.

  He came closer to me and sat down about a foot away from me. “I’m going to put the rabbits next to you, so don’t feel like you need to hold back, ok?” I was surprised he volunteered that kind of information to me, a complete stranger. Since I never met another vampire, it was strange to have someone watch me eat. In a few short minutes, the rabbits were lying still, as if asleep, which I think they were, because I had taken almost all of their energy.

  I let the small amount of energy from the rabbits flow through me. It had been so long since I had any source of energy, I felt like I was waking up from a coma. I tried to move about, but all I could manage at the moment was to open my eyes and sit up, putting my back to the wall. I started to fall over a few times so the man, Rai, put me in the corner of the room, so the only way I could fall would be down onto my back. But I didn’t fall again as I slowly absorbed the rest of the energy I had taken. He moved a rabbit to my mouth, and I felt my fangs begin to hurt. It had been so long since I had blood I almost forgot what they were there for. I bit into the rabbit and drank. I continued to drink the rabbits one by one until they were…empty. It was weird to hold the body of something that was living just moments before. I had never killed a human since I fed on their energy, so a dead rabbit felt weird. I put it down with the others. I felt ashamed at the fact I had taken the life of something so innocent, all because I couldn’t control myself.

  “So, what’s your name?” Rai said, interrupting my thoughts. I had forgotten to get a look at him since I fed, so now I looked at him as I said “Helen. Helen Grey.” I took in his features. They were exactly the same as the man from my dreams.

  “You,” I said. How did you tell someone you saw them in your dreams without them thinking it was some kind of pickup line?