"Rowan" by Jackie D. Ozorio

The night sky will get boring after ninety-eight years of nothing but.

Still, the top was down on my black Austin, and I was leaning back calmly in the seat, dark glasses on and seatbelt still not used. It had been a sure heist to get this car. Of course I was a perfectly good driver – even one of the best, but I wasn’t registered to have a licence, and that was partly because I very closely resembled a seventeen year old girl. In some countries I could legally drive, but in others I couldn’t. And when I got the car I just so happened to be in one of the latter places. And most licence tests were done during the day. A bit of an inconvenience on my behalf.

I had travelled a lot since then. Well, there wasn’t much choice. I couldn’t very well stay in Australia for the rest of my life. Besides, my family had been torn apart, and there was no point in going back. They were the past, and when my life had changed my past was left behind.

I glanced at my hands loosely gripping the wheel. They were nice hands, one might say. Lean, artistic. Nice nails, not too long, not too short. Those nails looked as though they were coated in clear glass. They could have been luminescent, under the right light. And they were unbreakable.

My skin was the palest human skin tone imaginable. Alabaster white. Luminous. Ninety-eight years and those hands hadn’t changed in the slightest. And I liked silver rings. I had at least three on each hand.

I looked in the rear-view mirror. My face was stony, as expressionless as a rock. It was youthful, and some had called it beautiful, a mixture of nationality. But it was beautiful in a deadly, predatory kind of way. The way they say tigers are beautiful.

My lips were sensual, I knew. Faintly, so faintly tinted a healthy blood red, as though my lips were the only parts of me that could have been diagnosed as alive.

My hair was out. I rarely did anything with it. I’d grown so tired of its eternal perfection that I didn’t bother checking it anymore. Luscious, black waves framed my face, shiny and perfect, just like the hair on all the shampoo ads. Only mine was real.

It was actually a bit of a hindrance, having black hair. I mean, it only heightened the obviousness of my pale complexion. Not that I really cared, but still. Little things bug you.

My sunglasses were black. They weren’t for blocking out the sun – my sunglasses had never even seen daylight while in my possession. They were for hiding my eyes.

Yeah, a lot of people got spooked by my eyes. I reached up and slid the glasses away, and scrutinised my own face. Every now and then I’d shoot a casual, laid-back look at the road ahead, just to make sure no idiots were getting in my way. Not likely, on this lonely coast road that would lead me eventually to Calais. I hadn’t even bothered to check what road it was. I was just driving on a whim, following road signs. I drove everywhere. Never caught planes unless the flight was under six hours long and would leave and arrive in total darkness.

I looked up again and stared at myself. There were times when the sight of my own eyes made the hairs on the back of my neck raise. They were creepy eyes. It wasn’t like they were red or white or any odd colour like that. They were actually a nice silvery grey. But what made them creepy was that they glowed.

Well, not really glowed, not in the sense that glow-in-the-dark objects glowed. My eyes were iridescent, a very bright, very pale silver with flecks of darker grey. My pupils were usually little pinpoints, especially in bright lights. Of course tonight the pupils were larger, because there were no lights on this road at all, and I hadn’t turned mine on. I grinned at myself, and winked.

Then I sighed. I didn’t sigh often; probably because there was nothing really I could sigh about. Although I didn’t need to breathe I did; merely out of habit and because it was nice to breathe fresh air.

Calais wasn’t far, and the night was young. And, doing around one hundred and twenty miles on the country road, it wouldn’t take me long to reach it.

For variety I flicked on the radio. Nothing much but static, seeing as I was quite a way from any decent English radio stations. And I didn’t carry many tapes in the Austin. I usually sat through the long trips in silence, thinking and pondering. I could get through a lot of thinking with one night of driving. The radio found itself flicked back off.

Calais, like most other places at this time of night, was asleep. But of course, the commercial businesses never rest, and it was only a matter of thirty minutes before the next Channel-Crosser Ferry left for Dover.

I might mention at this point that I am quite comfortable in matters of cash.

I paid my way onto the ferry, possibly over-tipping. It wasn’t that I did it on purpose. Money was one of those things I didn’t give a damn about. Selfish, yes, but nobody was going to argue with me.

On the ferry I was only one of the dozens of cars aboard. Some people had gone on walks around the deck, others were sleeping, and others were audaciously rocking their cars from the backseats. I had decided to go on a walk, sliding the keys into my pocket. No point in locking the doors to my car. It wasn’t as though one couldn’t just leap in. And besides, where would they go?

I liked water. At one point, distantly, I remembered adoring it, but that had dwindled and become something more like a mild attraction. I liked bathing in it. It felt nice.

I also liked fancy clothes. Nothing too fancy, of course. But I mean, there had to be some style. And considering I was a “teenager” who drove a stolen car, the style was almost in the contract. Heavy black boots, low-riding leather pants, a blood red lace shirt with tapering sleeves over a similarly red tank, and a big black trench coat over it all. I didn’t have a necklace. My only jewellery was on my ears and fingers. I knew I looked good, and I loved it.

Leaning on the railing, in thick shadow, I watched the English Channel go by in all its black, freezing glory. It would only take a couple of hours, and then I could continue driving, to London, to wherever I wanted to go. I knew vaguely I would head to one of my places of residence, and thoughts of some big-time spanning had been twirling in the back of my mind. It was going to be an exciting year, once I got around to it.

‘Bit lonely out here,’ someone said. I’d known he was watching me for about ten minutes. He was French, and spoke to me in such. I knew and could speak fluently nine languages, French among them. And if I found the need to, I would learn another few. It wasn’t hard at all. Just like learning to play instruments. I’d learned piano, a number of stringed instruments, woodwind, guitar and percussion all in one year.

I smiled at the Frenchman when he leant on the railing a couple of feet away.

‘Where is the sun, sweetheart?’ he asked, in French, a smirk lighting his young face. ‘Why hide your beautiful eyes with sunglasses?’ 

I smiled again, but didn’t say anything. I always felt some kind of amusement when mortal men put themselves out for me. And…I was rather peckish…

‘Where are you from?’ he asked me, persistent. ‘Are you alone?’

I tilted my head coyly and reached up to my sunglasses. As I spoke I slowly slid them free of my face.

‘Yes, I’m alone,’ I purred. My smile broadened, and I knew he would catch a flash of unnaturally sharp canines. ‘Are you?’

Not ten minutes later his lifeless body slid into the black waters of La Manche. And I went back to my car, delicately wiping a spot of blood from my lip and licking my finger clean, the look of a happy cat on my face. This little vampire felt much better.