The gun shot rang out in the silence of the shop. When you work the graveyard shift in a 24 hour conveiniance store not many interesting things happen and tonight had been particularly slow. So the gun shot had been somewhat suprising, in fact the last customer had ventured through the door for a cheap bottle of vodka at 1 am, 4 hours before the gun shot. The gun shot was the first thing I had heard since then... and the last thing I ever heard.

Philosophers contemplate the nature of time. How is it possible to explain how a Sunday afternoon drags on forever or even the phrase "time flies when your having fun"? Time may fly but not in my case and I'm certainly not having fun although I don't believe that I am currently having any emotions. My senses are dulled to the point where I can't feel nor hear nor smell anything... I may also have lost my site but for all I know I could be in a box six feet under. A dark thought, I know... but one contemplates these things. Another thought crosses my mind as I sit (although sit probably isn't the right verb) is that since when have I used the pronoun "one" or for that matter, since when I have known what a pronoun was?! I only work (worked? will work?) in a convieniance store because I dropped out of college... not usually one for speaking or thinking the Queen's english. Yet here I am, confined within the uneventful prison of my own thoughts. And it is a prison because since the thought of a coffin crossed my mind I feel that I am lying down in a confined space in spite of seeing or feeling nothing and having absolutly no spacial awareness. Panic begins to form on the edge of my conciousness at the thought of being trapped in a box.

Suddenly there is a crash nearby, I don't see it or hear it I just seem to feel it without it the use of my sensory organs and when I say "crash" I don't mean one thing hitting another. In my current state of existance a pindrop would feel like an explosion but all I know is that suddenly whatever space I am existing in is no longer just my own mind, there is someone, something else here. And I no longer feel nothing, I have the sense of standing in a vast area which seems to be nothing but a cold hard floor but it is there and exists. I feel also, that I have just opened my eyes even though I have greeted the same view of utter darkness and it is darkness rather than just the inside of my eyelids.

Turn the light on.

It's not a voice... more a thought sent in my direction. I try to reply but I have a distinct worry that I have no vocal chords.

Sound is an illusion.

Turn the light on.

I turn my thoughts towards creating a reply.

There is no light.

It is weak, feeble, just a whisper but I know the other being feels it and understands it.

Of course not.

Just imagine.

I don't understand what is going on but nevertheless I think of a light... specifically the hideous lamp that sits in the corner of my living room. It's a standing lamp, the stand itself it tall and thin made of chrome and the top is light a giant goofy lightbulb that casts an eery glow every time I switched it on. And then, out of nothing it is there, right in front of me looking like a silver metal stick poking out of the ground had just had an idea straight out of a cartoon. It's eery glow spreads until I'm in the middle of a brightly lit room but a room that goes on forever, I can't make out the outer walls and the ceiling seems non-existant. The whole place is bright white other than the voice. The voice who I can now see.

"It's sad that New Borns always wake up in darkness. It always makes me worry as to what the Human State does to a consiousness." I just blinked bemusedly in reply for the man talking (and he was talking now) looked exactly alike to Morgan Freeman except I don't believe Morgan Freeman has ever had the chance to wear my Uncle's purple flared suit from the seventies. I blinked again and took a moment to realise that I was still in my vile blue uniform from work with my hair in a hastily tied ponytail. A small voice at the back of my mind was saying "of course! you haven't had chance to change!" but I couldn't fathom the meaning of that and so I turned my attention back to Morgan Freeman.

"I know it probably seems strange but New Borns always find it difficult to adjust and so most have to visualise in order to cope. Light is an illusion but it helps to imagine. I presume you are seeing me as a seemingly random person from your time in the Human State. It won't make sense now but I believe it will in time." Morgan Freeman chuckled. "I remember when I got here for the first time. My Guide looked my high school geography teacher sitting in a bath of beans. Looking back it makes perfect sense but at the time I was rather perplexed."

"but what..?!"

"Time for questions later. We must leave your inner concious soon as I don't wish to prolong my presence here." He reached out a hand or I thought that he reached out a hand or possibly he sent the thought of it to me... either way I took it and he led me towards a small discreet door that I hadn't noticed before. He grasped the handle and looked back at me.

Welcome to the Real world.

Labels: afterlife

Victoria looked down at the crumpled note in her hand and back up and the foreboding building in front of her. The derelict warehouse stood ominously in front of her, black grimy bricks glistened slightly in the rain and the broken windows looked like sharp teeth in the moonlight. From a distance the entire place seemed dead but from where Victoria was standing she could here the dull roar of a crowd in the basement. The gathering where the note said it would be. Where Tristan would be; Tristan the vampire.

Victoria couldn’t be more uncertain as to why she was here. The note said to go down to the basement, apparently his name should be enough to get in and Tristan himself would be in there already. She’d probably been watching too much Buffy but she couldn’t help reassuring herself that Tristan was a good person hence so must be his... friends.

She jumped as a man suddenly opened the door in front of her; he was stocky and had greasy black hair which lay half-heartedly on his head. Dark hungry eyes peered at her through the rain before he grabbed her arm and pulled her roughly into the dim hallway.

“You must be Tristan’s,” he said with a strange smile and pushed her towards a staircase heading down into the basement, at the bottom was a non-descript door which she slowly walked through into the basement itself.

There were around sixty people in the shadowy room, mainly men but a few women too, gathered around the edges as if waiting for some kind of performance; the excited banter stopped as soon as Victoria stepped through the door. The black suited man who had brought her in stepped around her and greeted the nearest man, a scrawny nervous-looking lad.

“Good evening, Roman.” He gestured towards Victoria, “Tristan’s?” Roman, the vampire ‘leader’, nodded. Victoria nearly spoke up; “I’m not Tristan’s, I’m here of my own free will” but she has a strange feeling that wasn’t true. A walkie-talkie appeared in Roman’s hand and he spoke a brief inaudible instruction into it before pushing Victoria to the side, slightly away from the nearest of the crowd. At the far back of the room a door opened and two tall men... monsters... dragged in the bloody and beaten body of...

“TRISTAN!!” Victoria screamed and went to run towards him but two vampires appeared out of nowhere and restrained her, her usual strong wills disappearing. Roman stalked casually up to her; he was close enough so that she could feel his hot breath on her neck.

“Don’t worry; he’s still alive... well, in our own special kind of way. But he needed to be punished because he brought you here. An un-blooded one... in our domain, did he really think you would want to be one of us? No-one is this way out of choice... and yet you came. Maybe in a sick, twisted way you want this...” He scraped a strangely sharp nail down her neck making her quietly shudder. In an instant he thrust out an arm and seized the nervous lad’s neck bringing him closer, using the same nail he gouged a deep cut into the side of his neck and let the blood spray onto his hand. Raising his hand above her face Victoria couldn’t help but following it with her eyes, he flexed his fingers and the blood dripped onto her cheek. She recoiled in horror as he hissed into her ear, “like delicious teardrops...” The creatures behind her released her arms but Roman grasped at the back of her neck, holding her tight. He clicked his fingers at his bloodied assistant and the young man scurried off, seconds later he returned with a beautiful cut wineglass filled, glistening to the brim with...

Victoria gasped and squirmed in Roman’s grip but couldn’t move, Roman dipped a long finger into the glass of blood, stared at it for a moment before slowly running it along Victoria’s bottom lip leaving a shimmering trail of blood that traced down her chin and onto her neck. She was frozen to the spot, her eyes locked with Roman’s.

“No, Roman!! Stop it! You’ve gone too far! I’ve learnt my lesson!” screamed Tristan from the other side of the room. Roman cocked his head slightly and silently mouthed “no” before taking the glass and tilting it over Victoria’s mouth. She squirmed again in his grasp but his hand moved and grabbed her chin, shaking his head teasingly. The glass tipped and the thick crimson liquid rolled out of the glass and straight between her lips and sliced down into her throat.

Labels: extract, romance, school, vampires

I stopped to catch my breath and collect my thoughts. They must still have been following me, although the sirens were in the distance now, but maybe they had followed on foot. I took stock of my surroundings. I was standing in the middle of the high street; actually it’s more of a square than a street. It’s probably not the best place to hide but at least I could lose myself easily in the crowd, everyone seemed determined to get somewhere and I seemed to be the only one who didn’t know what to do or where to go.

Well, not the only one. There was a fountain in the middle of the square, just half a dozen metres away, which might have been grand and imposing once but now seemed to represent a public convenience… for pigeons. A family were sitting on one side eating chips and probably discussing which shop to visit next or whether or not to go to the bank. I turned away and remembered what I was doing.

I was being chased.

I spotted my chance in the building next along from the bank; the old library doesn’t seem to fit comfortably in with the rest of the 21st century but I headed straight through the door anyway. One thing I didn’t notice was the scruffy girl placing down her newspaper and disappearing down an alley to the side of the library.

Once in the library I let my eyes adjust to the dark and look around, it was just how I remembered it although I hadn’t been there for years; giant bookcases reaching the rafters and crooked tables strewn haphazardly in the corners. I headed for a small table at the back of the room and grabbed a random book from the nearest shelf before sitting down.

The bookcase creaks and before I register that fact another thing happens. I suddenly feel cold metal being pushed into the back of my neck; the unmistakable feel of the barrel of a gun, even someone who’s never experienced this would still understand the meaning of the metallic touch that sends shivers down the strongest of men’s spines.

The door of the library opens but a bookcase obscures my… our view but I still here a police officer address the librarian.

“Come with me quietly now and I won’t hurt you,” the voice behind me whispers. I don’t answer; it’s like being stuck between a rock and a hard place.

“I won’t hurt you,” my apparent captor repeats, “but they will”. My captor isn’t talking about the police but the police are defiantly not barging into the library for the good of their health, they have higher orders. Higher orders that probably contain the words ‘dead or alive’.

I nod my head slowly and the press of the gun disappears but before I think of making a break for it I hear a click and feel a gust of cold air. Suddenly I am dragged by the scruff of my neck down a passageway, the door swings silently shut behind us and I realise I have been taken into the bookcase that was plain and ordinary only a few minutes before. I realised that now, maybe, I was out of my depth.

Labels: adventure, chase

“Left flank! Forward!” Captain James McLeod ordered his men behind the nearby barn, which was their only protection from the raging gunfire. The field itself was a desolate necropolis after the fighting of the day, flies hovering in anticipation for McLeod’s men and a grey mist creeping over the horizon.

“Where’s the rest of E Company, Captain?” asked Jack of his commanding officer although he knew the answer already.

“It’s just us, soldier”, he said as he scouted the field, “The rest of the mission is up to us.” The rest of the men nodded in a way that only men who have seen such abominations and lived through it could.

“In the next dip of gunfire sprint for that ridge”, ordered their Captain, “And stay low!” The gunfire quietened and James nodded to his men, mouthing to them; guns at the ready. But they already knew that: they had been at Bastogne. Harry, the youngest private, had lost his best friend Billy during a race for the foxholes.

Harry sprinted first and leaped, skidding, behind the ridge. He checked his rifle and surveyed the enemy troops with the barrel. Jack was next to go running into their no-mans-land, gun clamped to his side, like a torpedo he landed next to Harry and mirrored his position. A few rounds of sniper fire whistled past Captain McLeod’s ear.

“Quickly Scott, go!” The raven-headed soldier started across but had only gotten two steps when a sniper’s bullet ripped through him like a hot iron.

Captain James McLeod cursed and turned to his remaining counterpart. Private Lewis, a replacement from D Company, young and scared, he’d been good friends with Scott. They raced over to the downed Private and slung themselves on either side of him. He wasn’t breathing. McLeod checked his pulse and shook his head. Lewis put his hand over his friends face and closed his eyelids as McLeod wrenched the dog tag from the dead soldier’s neck. They ran on to the remains of their company.

“Scott?” asked Private Jack. Lewis just shook his head and collapsed down beside Harry.

“What’s the next offensive, Captain?” asked Harry. The Captain thought for a moment before looking over the ridge and speaking.

“We take out the sniper then launch a load of grenades at the soldiers on the ground.”

The four soldiers were about to clamber over the ridge when a bullet sliced through Jack’s neck like a jagged knife. It sent him flying back four feet where he skidded to a half, scarring the earth. Even the Germans must have heard the blood curdling screams as the three soldiers ran to the private’s side as James inspected the wound. Jack grasped Harry’s hand in a vice grip.

“I don’t want to die! I can’t die!” he was shaking terribly, so his Captain could barely see the wound through the blood. An explosion cracked through the air behind them and the soldiers snapped their necks round but when the looked back at Jack his sad, glazed eyes were looking at something they couldn’t see. He slumped in Captain McLeod’s arms.

A moment later the wounded troop began to advance slowly on the enemy shooting as they went...

“Boys!” shouted a shrill female voice. “Dinner’s ready!” Three boys turned around.

“Aw... Mam!” said Captain James McLeod, “We were just about to advance on the German army!” he whined. The three khaki clad boys scampered back down the garden path back to the house. As they went back James’ Mom asked where the others were.

“They had to go home, Mam!” he said.

“Yeah”, agreed Lewis, “They got killed by the Germans!”

Labels: school, war

It’s ten o’clock and I’m only just getting out of school. I suppose it’s the curse of being a drama student but that doesn’t comfort you against the dark when you leave. The blackness folds around you like a shadowy cape that you can’t shrug off, and even the not easily spooked aren’t entirely confident underneath the moon. Walking out of the school gates I rubbed my eyes slightly, I was so tired I think If it hadn't have been so cold I would have slept where I fell. It was so cold however, that I just brought my coat closer around me and started to shuffle home. I breath out slowly and the cold air hit my throat, making my eyes water. I could hear cars in the distance, along with the muffled sound of the pub I had to pass everyday to get to home. So many people…

and yet no-one came to help.

In order to cross the road I have to walk under the canal bridge; on one side of me was the dark, dank, dripping brickwork, the other side was just cold black water. On any other night it would have been different, I'd have crossed the road to avoid going under the bridge but I was still buzzing from the rehearsal, earlier. So much so that I didn't hear him come up behind me until he had me in his grip. I felt his hot breath on my neck and a slight growl before razor sharp fangs sunk into my neck. I tried to scream, I tried to fight back but he was inhumanly strong and I slipped into the blackness.

---

I must say that it's a strange experience to wake up drowned. When you scream you realise you're breathing in water and you can't feel it... it makes you want to scream again but there's no release. Just more water, more water spinning down your throat like air. And that alone told me. Told me I was no longer of the living. It seems a strange thing to think when I am on the bed of the canal, underneath a bridge only minutes from my home. But I instinctively know that I can never go back.

Somehow I have no grief, no sadness, I am suddenly detached from my old life... it's a new start. But a new start in which I need to spend the entire day under water as to avoid the blinding sun that cuts through the water just metres away. I can feel the cold water biting into my skin but it's not an unpleasant feeling, as a human I would liken it to the warmth of the sun on your arms though the memory of that feeling fills me with a burning fear. I move my arm through the water in front of me, it ripples in front of me, dancing and swirling. I suddenly understand the unspeakable beauty of the natural world but with that knowledge comes a niggling hunger fighting for attention.

---

Hours later the light disappears from the water and I swim towards the bank. Surprisingly strong arms allow me to lift myself out of the water, my wet clothes clinging to me, the water dripping red with my own blood. An old lady walking her dog screams and basically runs on along the canal path when she sees my now skinny skeletal form, calm and pale in the moonlight.
Now I run. I run away from the village I grew up in, away from anyone who knew me and away from my disappearance that will be haunting my family and friends... my family and friends who now feel like strangers to me. I run to the main road and head towards the next town and on through time itself... miles and miles I run but I don't tire, I never tire.

And I never shall.

Labels: vampires