"Fear - Chapter 1" by Natalie Paquette

     Have you ever woken up in the morning after a long, restful night of sleep, and enjoyed a rare moment of silence that allows you to reflect upon a various montage of dreams? ... and then wondered why the hell everything was so quiet? I am accustomed to a rare few seconds of solitude before my brain yields to the pressure of a thousand random thoughts of unaware mortals going about their daily lives. Being as old as I am, my mind is particularly keen at siphoning the private thoughts of lesser creatures... that is, every living thing beside myself.

     Three days ago such an occurrence took place; I had been asleep for a month, give or take a few days (sleep is one of the few remedies I've found for boredom) - and as I lay in my extravagant hand-hewn bed with 'too many God-damned pillows' (Nick's words, not my own), I allowed my mind to wander over the random images that had come to me in my dreams. Four minutes passed according to my faintly glowing digital clock before I realized that not a single thought slipped into my reverie that was not my own. If I had been focused enough, this wouldn't have startled me - I can easily block out the passing thoughts of those around me - but I hadn't been trying. I hadn't needed to try. And although the silence was positively delicious, it was unnatural... and a strange feeling knotted my belly so that I rose from my dozens of pillows and gave in to a frown.

     "How strange..." I had murmured, and closed my eyes so that I could seek out the aura of another... and had found none. None. Were my heart given to a regular beat, I'm sure it would have skipped one and wavered to an unsteady rhythm. And were I normally inclined to imbibe oxygen, I'm positive I would have gasped. Instead, I gave into a blink and then settled back down against my sateen haven to ponder.

     Letting down the walls that kept my mind reigned in and unfurling the wanton mental tendrils that could snatch even the most private of thoughts from someone else's mind, I let my aura fan out around me and wander. I soaked in the smell of the misty pavement outside, the dew gathered on the leaves... basked in the pale yellow light of an early morning sun; I heard the twitter of a chickadee, the wind gently whispering down the nearest alley... faintly, someone's car alarm sounding in the distance. And then in a sickening suction feeling, all of my brain became focused on a solitary smell, a singular object lying in the street - an old man who had bled to death under the pale golden sunrise. In a moment more quick than I care to attempt to describe, I had memorized the details of his face, the smell of his blood, and the stench of his decay. I noted the pattern of his wool pants down to the broken threads that poked irritatingly from the hems. I knew that he wore a size 11 shoe, that there was a faint lingering stain of tobacco on his fingers from his love of cigars, that he loved to feed the birds as evidenced by the packet of seed in his front coat pocket, and that he had broken his nose when he was 13 from falling out of a tree, which was still crooked to this day - this day that he had died, slowly and terribly, out in the middle of the street. It took me an eighth of a second to shut my mind off from this knowledge and to recoil. Too long. I had forgotten just how sensitive I had become over the years, and opening up the Pandora's box that was my mind was a very tricky thing.

     Drawing myself up again, I had slipped my naked legs over the cold softness of expensive bed sheets and let my feet strike the even colder wooden floor. In my old age, I have grown repetitive - and I remember wishing once again that I could retain a decent amount of body heat to keep myself warm. It is something I wish for every time my feet meet that unforgiving floor.

     In my preoccupied state of mind, I must not have thought enough to step lightly, and a troublesome board beneath my feet creaked as I made my way over to the window and drew back the heavy curtains, which suffice in keeping most of the sunlight out of my bedroom. It is untrue, you see, that vampires cannot move beneath the garish light of the sun. We prefer not to, being so sensitive to its obnoxious light, but it is little more than a nuisance to our overdeveloped eyes. As I blinked and forced my pupils to contract into nothing more than pinholes, silently cursing the temporary blindness that always ensued when I met the morning light after such an extended rest, I caught a whiff of something vile that made the very hairs upon my neck stand on end.

     The creature, for I cannot call it a person, who crashed into my bedroom was capable of incredible speed, and I can recall even now in perfect detail the animalistic look of lust upon its face as it came at me, howling. Perhaps, had I not been so startled by its presence (and that I knew not of what it was, nor where it had come from), I would have thought to only make the thing somehow unconscious, and then lock it away for study, to appease the burning questions that would arise only moments after I'd killed it. But as I have mentioned, fear, even in its mildest forms, can make one react instinctively and cut the thought process out of a situation entirely. As such, I bared my fangs and let its face and neck meet with my fingernails, which despite their smooth, polished appearance, are capable of cutting through glass. Foul, dark blood splashed across my face and I can remember feeling the urge to vomit; holding myself in check, I tore open the being's throat before it could scream at me again and let it drop with a sickening thud to the cold wooden floorboards at my feet. Relaxing the curl that had come to my upper lip, I stooped over its twitching form and waited for the nervous system's tremors to quell, which would indicate its death. It was poor form for me to be so messy - it would have been so much cleaner to break its neck, and that rotten blood, finding nothing that would absorb it, spread quickly along the floor like a sea of black ink.

     With my composure regained, I curled my fingers at this creature's jaw and turned its face toward me. Dark, blood shot eyes met my own - but they were cold, lifeless, and so I did not spend a great deal of time there. This thing had been a mortal man, once, with sculpted cheekbones and a fine roman nose. "What a waste of beauty", I had murmured, and pried his mouth open with my forefinger to inspect his teeth, disregarding the blood that was pooling around my toes and staining the pale silk of my night gown. I had long since shut down my olfactory senses, so that I did not gag on the stench that arose from that dark fluid inching across my floor - but I could almost taste it upon my tongue, regardless. Giving into it, in hopes of finding some clue, I dragged my index finger along the tip of my tongue to search out chemical components and pH levels. The taste, at least, was not so terrible as the smell. But this blood was dangerously acidic, and as I closed my eyes to focus, I could feel it eating away at itself in some effort to remain 'alive'. It had little iron, and far too much calcium - as if it had been leaching it from this man's bones. Wrinkling my nose, I opened my eyes again and peered into the cavern of his mouth. His teeth were physically unchanged, although the gum line had receded to exaggerate their length.

     With brow furrowed in curious concentration, I ran my fingers over the wound I had inflicted, and noticed that the torn vessels which had been leaking blood were quickly rotting away. Slamming my fist through his sternum and cracking the bone, I pulled his ribcage apart to inspect his internal organs, and noted that even his heart was shriveling, as well as his liver and his spleen. Blood vessels everywhere were rupturing and falling apart, as if the fluid inside of them was feeding on the surrounding tissue. At this rate, in a matter of hours, all that would be left was a hollowed-out skeleton - and I would be left with nothing but questions.