(This piece is an intro to a new series, there’s no sexiness to be had…yet.)
Maybe it was always my destiny to die young. Maybe I should be grateful that I managed to live to twenty-five instead of lamenting the years I’ve been robbed of. But looking down at my twisted, bloody body, it’s hard to feel anything other than cheated.
I watch the hotel guests hover around my broken form, listen to them insist that they’re shocked and that they’d never have believed this could happen in their own town, not in a million years.
As I eavesdrop on the chamber maid’s whispered opinions of me, my nape begins to prickle. Or at least that’s what this new sensation reminds me of. I don’t have a nape anymore. Or a neck, or even a body. Well I do, it’s right there on the floor, but I’m not in it. That’s something I’m grateful for because it doesn’t look like I’d be very comfortable if I was.
The prickle increases in intensity, so I leave the living to their insincere mourning and shift to the adjoining room, letting myself be guided by the responsive tingles that I seem to be entirely made of. It’s a separate building to the one I was in, but walls mean nothing to me now, which is just as well. Assumption has always been a bad habit of mine and I’d feel pretty stupid if I’d walked into a wall intentionally.
This room is just as dank as the one I died in, though there’s only one light on here. It’s on the table beside the unmade bed, and the bulb is so poor it might as well be switched off. The red shade doesn’t help matters much either.
I hover a few feet in front of the guy perched on the piled-up blankets at the bottom of the bed, head bowed, his hands covering his face. His usually pallid skin looks almost healthy and pink in the glow of the lamp. I notice deeper patches of red on his hands and neck, and though I’m quite aware it’s my blood, I don’t shy away.
“What have I done?” my killer mumbles from behind his too-powerful hands.
His voice is a hushed scratch. He’s been crying. I’m not sure how that makes me feel. Is he crying for me or for himself? Does he even have a right to be crying for either of us? I suppose if I really think about it, he does. In many ways, what had happened wasn’t his fault. He’s young, ignorant of his own strength. He’s never fully understood his hunger because it isn’t a hunger that can ever be measured or sated. The countless names of the dead which are reeled off on the news at six every morning can attest to that.
Maybe if I’d been someone else or if we’d been somewhere else this wouldn’t have happened. But he knew I was close, so he’d gone against the rules. He’d broken away from the rest of his kind and he’d come looking for me. I’d known he would, and I’m pleased he did. Even now, as I watch him cry for me. I guess killing me wasn’t enough to stop me loving him. And the saddest thing of all is, becoming what I had become hadn’t been enough to stop him loving me, either.
Maybe if it had things would be different for me, but then, maybe not.
If you’re still interested in our story after all of those maybes, I’ll happily tell it to you…
