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“Think you like me?” He said and laughed. “Child, Go back to your room and your dolls”. I stared at him. Tried to remember how we got to this point. Just trying to understand how he could hate me so. Once, far ago in time counted, he loved me. The only one who ever loved me. Now he looked at me with eyes colder then ice and sharper than a sword, hating every inch of me. I tried to open my mouth. Tried to speak, but my lips were dry and I feared they would break if I moved them.
“So this is what we’ve come to?” He said without expecting an answer. Once I loved him. But then, just then after all we’d been through, I understood that that time has passed. Suddenly I could speak again, but I didn’t quite seam to find any more words. We had at that point known each other for to long. Just like old married couples that had ran out of love, we had now ran out of words. “Yes” I said and saw the surprise in his eyes. He began to realize that I too had lost the last of my love. “Yes, this is what we have come to. This is what it all comes down to”. And I was right. Every word, every gesture during our lives, all came down to this moment. It all made sense in that exact moment. Seams like a contradiction at that my saddest moment, because it was also the moment that I for the first time in a very long wile I felt hole. And I remembered the first time I saw him.
I had always been attracted to the occult. Even as a little child I had believed in something beyond our sad little existences. I used to sneak in to the city library and search for all the books about witches and trolls and such magical things. But when I was 13 I found something more real, I found Ben. Or rather, Ben found me. The world of occults in this part of the world isn’t too big; sooner or later we were bound to have found each other. Of course I was quite old for my age so to say. And Ben wasn’t the first guy I ever met. Although he defiantly was the first vampire I ever met.
Not the last though.
For someone as focused on the occult as me he was a dream come true.
He was the knight in shining armor, to save me from the knights in shining armor. This whole occult thing is all about romantic thoughts. I hated the stories were the knight killed the monster and saved the beautiful princess. In my mind I saw the monster turning out to be the good guy and killing the evil knight. What I didn’t realise then was that the outcome was the same, and so was the story. I was just too focused on turning the other way.
My biggest fear at that time was becoming someone ordinary. Someone that would become one of the masses and never be seen again. I wanted to experience new things and see new things. Convinced that the ordinary world couldn’t offer me that, I turned to the occult. A mistake that so many before me have done, and so many after shall… But, I was going to tell about Ben. My beloved immortal Ben. The untouchable exciting Ben with his pale skin and black soulful eyes. He was everything I’d ever dreamt of. With his mystery past and his dangerous looks. I loved him from the day I laid my eyes on him.
I was as usual working late in the library. My mom thought I was at a friends. An obvious lie considering I had no friends. But my family saw what they needed to see. And that wasn’t me.
I had just finished reading something about immortals, something I had already read twenty-one times. Suddenly I heard a noise. Just a weak one, as if the wind had broken a grass straw. I turned around, and there, in the dark hall between some bookshelves, stood Ben. I got scared at first. But then I realized I’d just found what I always been looking for. Then we talked, nothing fancy, He just sat down at one of the antique chairs and waved at me to sit down at the other. He told me his name with a sad voice, so sad I just wanted to make everything better for him at once. But I couldn’t. So I swore silently to my self that I would somehow linder his pain, no matter how long it took me or how much it would cost. I told him my name. Ha said it a couple of times, as if to taste it. And all the tiny hairs on my body rose, and I noticed my hands were shaking. We talked for hours and hours. I was amazed by him, overwhelmed.
Everything seamed to fit, every little book was there just so they would fulfill him. As if he wasn’t already perfect. Even the chairs, they seamed to have been made just for him. I got so amazed, I forgot to breath for a wile. But he reminded me with a soft laugh, it sounded just like silk. I will never forget how beautiful he was that night. The library in witch I had worked for months looking for mysticism, seamed as if changed and brought to another dimension. The dimension of my beloved Ben, the vampire, the one that would take my life.
Of course I didn’t know that then. I was just a child in experience counted. But Ben would teach me everything. When I was around him I feared nothing. I would just sit and watch his face as he told me about then world and about his life. And most important of all, he told me about the immortals. Immortal may be a bad word for vampires. Vampires can die, and does die. But it’s not very usual that they die of ‘natural’ causes, a strange word when speaking about vampires’ lifespan.
Now it seams natural to me, how the vampires’ world is. But I had a hard time understanding it when I sat there talking with Ben…
Ben got irritated that I didn’t understand. He didn’t say it; he didn’t need to say it. I understood. He moved his hands a bit faster when he was irritated. Even my perfect Ben had certain things that told what he tried to hide. Ben sat as usual in the antique chair. We had known each other for a few months at that time. He told me things that I doubted any other human knew. He told me all the secrets of vampire rituals. Once, I asked him why he taught me all these things and he answered: “Dear child, you have to know this when the time comes”. He leaned his head towards me and his eyes seamed to shine, they always did when he talked about the time that would come. I wondered why he didn’t want to tell me about it, I dreamt at nights that it was something scary, but then I saw Ben and I knew he would keep me safe from that unnamed horror.
<“What time?” I asked for probably the hundredth time. He looked at me and smiled is pale smile. “When the time comes, you’ll know, child”. I nodded, although the answer didn’t mean anything to me. He always called me child, in his eyes that was exactly what I was. I leaned back on the chair and closed my eyes. Ben smiled, I could hear it. “Have I told you about my life, child?” He asked. I didn’t open my eyes but answered, “What do you mean, Ben? You told me about when you were younger, yes” I said younger, not human. Ben was a bit touchy about that; the worst thing you could say to a vampire is reminding it about its human time. Ben laughed. I opened my eyes and looked surprised at him.
That was probably the first time he laughed. “Have I told you about the life of a vampire?” he asked me and looked at me with intensive eyes. I shook my head and leaned forward. “Have I told you about when I first become a vampire?” he asked and once again I shook my head again. “Have I told you about the death of a vampire?”. He laughed when my eyes opened wide.
I was self-taught in my knowledge about vampires. I thought they were immortals, incapable of dying. He sighed. “It had been better if you knew nothing about vampires from the start, child” I didn’t know what to say, so I just leaned even closer. But I felt a bit hurt, I had always been proud about my knowledge of vampires. “You think vampires live for ever?” he asked me. When I nodded he smiled sadly. “You’re almost right, child, almost”. He sighed again and leaned back with closed eyes. He held his fingertips against each other so that his hands formed a triangle. He started talking with his eyes closed still. “Once I thought the same” he said and I didn’t feel hurt anymore. “Once I thought that when I became a vampire I would live for ever: but I won’t” I think I screamed then, I’m not sure. But the thought of my beloved Ben dying was more then I could take. His eyebrows wrinkled and he looked at me with thoughtful eyes, but he didn’t say anything about it, just kept talking.
I wonder if he didn’t hear or if he just didn’t want to hear. “Don’t be scared, child, I will live a long time yet, and so will you”. I guess I should have thought something about that then, something with his eyes and the words he used, but I didn’t, I couldn’t. I was under his spell.
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