I lay sprawled awkwardly, on top of my crumpled sheets, drifting in a darkness that only sleep could provide. I had no reason to be awake, but suddenly my eyes opened. A strange feeling in my legs and arms, and a heaviness in my chest, pulled me rapidly from sleep and into my room. The red glow of my digital clock told me it was 7.20 in the morning. Confused and groggy, I glanced around to make sure everything was alright - and it wasn't. My bedroom window was open, and gentle wind played with the curtains. I was certain I had closed the window; it was December and far too cold to leave them open. But I also knew no one else could have opened them as I lived alone and the bedroom was on the third floor.
I slid out of bed to quickly close it. Then suddenly, a strangeness prickled at my neck, and I could feel fear wash over me. I froze. With a quick, desperate glance, I discovered a dark figure standing in the shadows. "What the..." I gasped. Then, with a speed seemingly impossible, the figure was suddenly by my side with his hand over my stretched mouth.
"Don't say a word" he whispered forcefully.
"I have waited too long already, and I do not have the patience for hysterics."
I watched the dark form reach for the light switch, and I heard the faintest of clicks as light poured into the room. After a split second of near blindness, I saw clearly the man beside me. He was... God! There is no earthly way to express to you what he was, or how he made me feel. Malevolence was a tangible thing that surrounded him. He was terrifying. His skin was pale like mist at dawn, deathly and cold. Hair blacker than oblivion fell to his shoulders. And his eyes... When I stared into his cold, dark eyes, eternity itself stared back at me. His iron gaze turned my rapidly beating heart to ice. An indescribable fear tore at my mind - a fear I had never known before and never again will feel. It was the fear of something inhuman, something more dangerous than death.
With the hand that covered my mouth, he pulled my head to the side, exposing my bare neck. In his eyes I saw a hunger I can never describe, and in that moment a sudden insane inspiration entered my brain. One word. Vampire. I never believed in such things, even as a child, but in that instant I knew it was true. And so his head lowered, and I felt the touch of his lips on my skin. As his razor-like canines slid into my artery, I felt only the slightest of pains, like a shot for a vaccine. I could hear his voice in my head, whispering soft things of comfort to make it less painful - and to keep me from resisting.
But I was not ready to die. I could feel the blood slipping from my body, and I fought. It was so hard to think with the demon in my head and his arms around me to keep me standing. Get out of my head! I hissed in thought. I shoved the vampire off me with trembling hands. His teeth pulled away from my throat with the searing pain of a knife slash. When I touched my skin, my fingers were coated with warm, crimson blood. Panicked at the sight of it, I hurried to wipe it on the sheets. The man - if you can truly call it a man - faced me once again.
"Who are you?" I demanded in a weak, quivering voice.
"I am the night," he whispered in a breathless whisper.
"Very poetic," I jibed, though I was shocked at my own capacity for sarcasm in a desperate situation. "Leave me alone."
"I must survive."
"I intend to survive this encounter as well," I informed him, suddenly more angry than scared.
"No. I have waited too long. I do not have the time to hunt for new prey before the sun rises," he told me. There was no emotion in his voice. It was a simple fact that I would die so he could live. And I bristled at the word prey. I was not an animal to picked off the food chain. I refused to die. There was a wooden cross hung above my bed, courtesy of a previous occupant and the ends were pointed and sharp. I had no idea if the legends were true, but I was not about to go down without a fight. Furious and desperate, I snatched at it, and brandished it like a knife before me.
"Leave!" I shrieked at him. But of course, he didn't. With inhuman speed, he lunged at me and attempted to grab my wrist. Adrenaline and fear coursed through me. I swung my little wooden cross and sliced through his arm. An unnatural cry tore from his throat, and I watched as he clutched him wound. "Stay back," I told him." He blinked as if shocked, and glanced down at his arm. It was bleeding. Then he glanced at the point of my cross that now had a thin layer of blood on its tip. He smiled, but it was a bitter expression. And when he spoke again, his voice was strained.
"Funny," he mused, "you were the first one ever to fight. And I have not the energy to fight you." He turned to the window, and as I stared at him, I could see through the blowing curtains, the sun climbing slowly over Golden Cap. My head turned rapidly to the clock. It was seven-thirty, he had waited too long. When I faced him again, he was perched on the sill.
With one backward glance he leapt from the open window. Amazingly, he transformed into a raven before my very eyes. But at that moment the sunlight fell on his midnight wings, and that was his end. Caught between horror and fascination, I watched as he burst into a cloud of smoke and disappeared with the coming of dawn. Again I heard his whispering voice in my head, saying: 'I am the night." I gazed at the brilliant sun and whispered back.
"There is something greater than the night... the light."
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