May 10th

“I love you, Kris.”

Those were the last words I heard as a human. My world slowly slipped into darkness and when I awoke I wasn’t human any longer.
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I know what you’re thinking; I spent my teen years reading vampire novels too. You’re expecting to hear that I was turned by my greatest love, but only because I was dying anyway. That when I awoke he held me as I survived the change and taught me that I could survive on animal blood or blood from blood banks or at the very least without actually injuring humans. Well, if that’s what you’re hoping for I recommend you stop reading now, my story is nothing like that.

Starting with the fact that the last words I heard as a human did NOT come from my true love, or my best friend, or a member of my family. It came from a slightly creepy boy who stalked me in high school and then turned out to be a vampire.  His name was Dexter. Sometimes I wonder if I had just agreed to go to prom with him maybe graduation wouldn’t have ended with me drained of blood in a frat basement looking up into the face of a vampire.

I woke a week later in a house I didn’t recognize in a town hundreds of miles from anything I knew. Dexter wasn’t there, but he didn’t need to be. All it took was an accidental step in front of the window to make me realize that I was a prisoner until the sun went down. An Internet search revealed that I was reported missing, but they’d given up on the search. I was starving but there was literally nothing to eat in the house. In fact, aside from a computer on a desk with a chair, the bed I awoke in, and a couch and TV in the living room, the house was empty.

I scouted my surrounding from what I could glimpse through the windows (without getting into the sunlight myself), and I discovered my strength by breaking the leg off the computer chair, with one hand. I thought I had a decent plan for where to go and how to get home, but before the sun went down Dexter was back, and he wasn’t alone. Dexter brought a human with him, a boy he found when he was out. The boy was cute, I might have even given him a dance when I was human, but dancing wasn’t the plan that night. I’m not proud of what happened next, not just because I ripped the boys throat out with my teeth, but because I enjoyed it.

Before you start to judge me for killing an innocent boy, answer me this, have you ever been starving? I don’t mean hungry because you haven’t eaten in a few hours, I mean stomach completely empty, shooting pain in your belly, you’re going to die shortly without nourishment, starving. If you’ve never been that hungry than you can’t understand what I was going through. If you have been there than I’m pretty sure that you won’t fault me for eating the one thing that would bring me nutrition.

Dexter was there every step of the way, opening the boy’s vein and then egging me on and on until the boy’s neck more closely resembled pounded hamburger than human skin. By the end of it I was so high on the blood that I lost track of myself. The euphoria is so intoxicating that at that moment everything seemed like an amazing idea, even making out with the boy who took my life and turned me into a vampire. When the high wore off I would be disgusted with myself, but for those few hours I would do anything, and Dexter knew it.

He kept bringing in a steady stream of humans and like the drug addict that I was I took a shot of every last one. Eventually he’d show me how to leave them alive enough to survive, but in the beginning he only cared about giving me the high that he knew would make me love him. And the sick thing is that I did love him, deeply. In those blood soaked days he wasn’t the creeper who had murdered me, he was the savior who had opened my eyes to excitement and power, who had rescued me from a boring existence and filled my world with vibrant colors, amazing smells, and above all, love.

But Dexter’s fairy tale couldn’t last forever. Eventually the high wore off, I remembered who I was, what I’d done, and each day the resentment grew. When I wasn’t feeding I was brooding. Hating myself not just for the humans I’d fed on but also for the affection I’d shown the vampire who ruined my life. I was obsessing over my past life, what my friends were doing now, and what I’d lost. I was realizing that when I wasn’t drinking blood, when I was actually seeing things clearly, I didn’t want to be alive (or whatever qualifies as alive when you’re a vampire).

“I hate you, Dexter.”

Those were the last words I ever spoke. I uttered them as I used blood given strength to throw Dexter out of my way and step out of the front door into the bright noon sun.