Bloody Twilight

I could hear myself breath but I couldn't open my eyes. Where I'm I? Who I'm I? Whatever I was lying on was very soft. I felt damp sweaty and I was sure sticky. The air around me was cool. Something was covering my body; I could only feel the cool air on my face. It sounded like it was raining. I could hear the splattering of raindrops rattling against something.

Wait! I can't move! My body was stiffer than a log. I tried opening my eyes again but to no avail, they felt too heavy to move. I tried shifting a finger, even a twitch but nothing. I mentally touched my toes, I wasn't wearing any shoes but whatever was covering me was covering my toes as well. Then I heard something, ‘what was that?’ It was a rattling sound. I stopped trying to move but my heartbeat quickened. Next I heard a thump, then the sound of footsteps. The rattling sound of the rain against the glass was subsiding and the sound of the footsteps became louder. Thump! thump! thump! It was getting closer, and then it stopped. I don't know how long I lay there, listening for another sound when I felt a finger brush against my cheek. Okay, that’s when I started to panic…

With all the mental strength I had, I willed all the muscles in my body to contract, nothing. I felt it again, the light brush of someone's finger against my cheek. I was immediately thrown into a panic and without even trying; I pushed myself up. I drew in a long shaky breath, my heart was racing. There was darkness all around me, 'where I'm I?' I rubbed the back of my hands against my eyes and then the fluttering light from a candle lighted up from behind me. Instinctively I looked behind me; two blurry figures stood there, one way larger than the other. I rubbed the back of my hand against my eyes and when I refocused my vision on the figures I discerned two pairs of glowing red eyes. I lost my grip on consciousness—and I think sanity as I fell back to the bed.

It was raining heavily, the window panes rattled with every drop of rain that struck against the glass. I was alone, I always was. Sometimes Leya would come and stay with me throughout the night but that wasn't happening any often.

She and I were the only ones who slept amongst the five of us, but she was also the only one who ever showed any actual emotion. She was thirteen yet I thought her naive, brittle characters could allow her pass for a ten year old.

I was the newest member in the clan, but I wasn't the youngest. I sat on my bed, looking at the stretch of darkness behind the window, and the cold mist that clouded from the sides of the glass. I was thinking about who I was before my impurification. I remembered some of it very vividly, the pain, the numbness, the pungent smell of unknown chemicals and medicines that always hung in the air, the constant urge to vomit, the constant wish for death. Yet the doctors came every day to tell me that death wasn't coming soon, wearing a smile on their faces.

My room was dark; the attic I was forced to stay locked in for two months, I think. The air around me was cold and silent except for the frequent rumbling of thunder and the ticking of the small clock that hung loosely above the window. All I could do in my solace was recall the most recent memories I had before I woke up on this bed.

I remembered the stiff face of the emaciated boy that was very pale it was fair to call him stack white, as he breathed out his last and I couldn't help but feel envious of him; why would death pick him over me? My cancer had spread far beyond his own yet he died first. It was only till when the doctors rushed to his bed and picked up his drip cord that it all made sense. He had removed his drip cord and let himself die.

Dying was preferable than living in that condition anyway. After they took his body away and night fell I had decided to do just the same. The moment the lights in the ward went out, I had said my final prayers; begging God to forgive me for what I was about to do, pulled the needle out of my left hand and waited patiently for death to come.

I remember smiling, I had been happy that soon enough the pain would end. My heart had skipped a beat, then two, then three, and then I was suffocating. It was a rather torturous state and the thought that I had made a mistake crossed my chaotic mind. I had almost started to reach for the cord that was dangling at my side when I chastened myself with the thought of dying a noble death, rather than begging for life and regretting my mistake like a pathetic coward.

The feeling of suffocation came to a stop and then I had felt myself loosing grip on consciousness. If this is what death felt like, then I was more than glad to die. I had let a small smile creep its way onto my face. And as I was finally being pulled away into oblivion the image of my mother had crossed my mind and then just in that moment, I wanted to live again.

The door flung open with a thud. The sound startled me. A stretch of yellow light crossed the room. I turned sharply, ripping my mind out of the reverie, to look at who ever it was. Jhan stood at the door frame. The boy, or should I say young man, could have been six feet five, for all I knew, with a lean build. He always wore big trousers and nothing more than a white tank top—or that was just all I had seen him in. In the past two months. He and Leya had been the only ones I had spoken to. Although I was certain the others had no idea there was a fifth vampire amongst them.

"Doing alright?" He asked, without hinting off the slightest trace of care. Unlike Leya who always seemed concerned about how I felt. I guess she didn’t like the idea of my imprisonment.

"Err... Yeah, I'm good." I answered inscrutably. If by good I meant gawking through the open window, waiting for the girl to jog by, then yes. I was good.

I didn't even know who she was, but when ever she jogged by I was already face-pressed against the glass, ready to stare. She once stopped, spotting me and met my gaze. I had expected her to turn away and jog off, but instead, she waved and smiled. I had ducked under the windowsill right after that, peeping a few seconds to see that she had jogged away. Like a child.

I had seen her a few times after that, either in a red car or just taking a morning jog, I was careful not to let her see me stalk her jog past the street every morning. And today was no different, I was ready at my window post to stare at her golden hair as she went past.

Her appearance warmed me up. The feeling sparked a new kind of life in me.

Jhan turned to leave. But there was something I had on my mind about my new family. I knew they were at home. I could hear them talk and laugh from the parlour below. The rough voice, I had identified to Jereum, had just made a joke about dumping Leya in the middle of a place called East valley and I could hear the lighter, feminine voice I had identified to be Tia, guffaw in response.

"Can I meet them?" I asked before he turned away.

I could see the lowly lighted figures of their bodies downstairs.

"I can see them downstairs, so..."

He looked perplexed, eyeing me carefully like I had just grown a horn. But I was sure he already knew the answer. We stared at each other for a while before I answered.

"Ever since my... Impurification"—the word was meant to be glorified, said with honour, but to me it was rather demonic—"it's like my hearing has dialled up." He looked at me expectantly as if wanting to hear more. And that wasn't all to it, I could hear ants crawl, the sound of insects buzzing through the air was as if I was standing next to an aircraft that was taking off.

I could not control when it happened but when it did; many other weird things would follow. I would be able to see people as yellowish-reddish figures through the walls and that was how I figured out that there were four others in the house. I would also be able to see much more bluish-whitish figures of furniture like the sharp edges of the table downstairs. At first I had thought that my vision was adjusting to the changes my body had undergone, but as it kept on happening I was forced to believe that this was going to become a permanent part of me.

"Is that all?" He asked.

"No." I answered begrudgingly. "Sometimes I start to see figures and objects through—,"

"—the walls," He said, cutting me off.

"Yes," I said, betraying a hint of surprise. The rain outside was settling, but a few white flashes of lightning could still be seen, alongside the sound of rumbling thunder.

"Is that all?" he asked again, and I was sure that there was nothing more to it. I shook my head but that didn't quench his look of expectancy.

But his looks of surprise did not make me feel in anyway better or proud. His reactions only told me that I was different.

"You can do it... Right?" I asked, "You all can do it?" I sounded nervous but his expression did not change. I did not want to be the odd one by any chance.

"Jhan!!!" A female voice—Tia—cried from below. We both looked towards the ground then back at ourselves. If this is the part when he nods to me an closes the door again—as he had been doing for the past two months—then I wasn't going to be locked in here without my voice being heard. But his next words surprised me.

Very slowly, a smile crept its way to his lips, and the edges curled upwards, the combo of the shadow on his face with the smile made him look almost sinister. "Come," he said at once. "I think it's time you meet—,"

"—Tia, Jereum and Leya." I said and I could clearly see that he was stung by my omniscience. He moved his lips as if to say something but I quickly added. "I can hear their voices and so—,"

"—you could hear them call each other's names."

If this had become a game of finishing each other's sentences, I was more than happy to play along.

I stood up from my bed, I wasn't sure if he meant what he said but I wasn't going to take any chances. I had already familiarized myself with the house so I needed no guidance.

The first door to my attic-room was right next to Jhan's. Tia's, Jereum's and Leya's rooms were at the end of the corridor where a staircase led downstairs to the other parts of the house. I reached the end of the corridor—Jhan's loud steps against the floor boards thumping behind me—and started down the poorly lit stairwell. A bulb attached to the walls, behind yellow decorated glass, poorly illuminated my way but I had no problem seeing. I could perfectly at dark but I watched my steps so I do not miss a step and end up tumbling down all the way—what a memorable first impression that would make.

I could now see, to the left, the stretch of a room at the beginning of the stairs below. I suddenly felt uneasy and nervous. I could only see them in the form of lighted figures; I had never actually seen their faces. I reached the beginning of the stairs and looked into the parlour. Three vampires stood behind the short black table. Leya, who had been secretly keeping me company in my room for the past months, did well to feign surprise. A low hanging chandelier was the only source of dim light for the room, and the red walls did well to add an occultic contrast to it all. Three black sofas, that could accommodate two people at once, were set adjacent each other. One sofa behind them and facing me, the other at their sides.

The girl at the left, who I immediately identified to be Tia, looked no more than eighteen. Straight long brown hair, blues eyes rosy cheeks... Just as I had imagined her to be, except for the white crop top and close-fitting grey leggings she wore—I had always imagined her in girlie dresses. Jereum, who was almost the height of Jhan, was now eyeing me carefully. His unkempt black hair—that was no darker than his gaze—looked as if it hadn't been combed for ages. I looked straight into his dark eyes; he was glaring so intensely that it was hard for me to look him in the eye without goose bumps rising on my skin, so I traced my gaze down to his scanty beard, then to the brown long-sleeved leather jacket he wore over a black sweat shirt.

Tia was smiling so brightly now and Leya was feign smiling as well. Jereum just continued his hate glower and I was sure of the fact that I was not going to get along with him in anyway.

Jhan, who was standing behind me, cleared his throat loudly. I wasn't expecting a whole introduction but I was fine if it meant I would no longer be locked up in that dark, creepy attic for another two months.

"Everyone, this is Kaldar. I'm sure you knew of his presence in the…err... attic."

Even he found it hard to accept the cruelty of containing someone in such a place.

"Nice to meet you Kaldar," said Leya in the most excited voice she could muster which still sounded very well fake to me.

"He's... Beautiful." Tia said, and I tried at that moment, as hard as I could, not to look at her, but failed. Nobody said anything else and apart from Tia's wide grin the only other thing that made me more uneasy was the continuous deathly glare Jereum was intensely focusing on my head.

Jhan continued, "He's the newest in our clan and so he doesn't know anything about our customs and way of life by the higher court."

"How old are you?" Jereum sneered. I couldn't understand how someone could hate somebody they had just met.

"I'm nineteen." I could remember one of the doctors, a female, telling me that I may live up to two decades by the years end. But for the specific date of my birthday, I had no idea.

"I'm Jereum, chronologically I'm a hundred and three but I was impurified when I was twenty-two, and I'm your superior so you take orders from me. You understand!?"

I couldn't do anything but nod, if that was what it took to get some fair treatment from him then I was willing to do it.

"This is Tia," said Jereum, and her smile increased length—it made me wonder just how far the corner of one girls mouth could stretch before reaching her eyes. "She's seventy seven and this one here"—he roughly patted Leya on the head—"Is Leya, she's thirteen and she's an Abnormal." He said the word with a sneer so intense it was as if he wore talking about a dirty stray, rabid cat. But Leya just smiled nervously and I smiled back at her, she was swaying to either side slowly it made the rims if the yellow night dress she wore to brush against her thin ankles.

Tia, whose hands had been locked behind her back, was now brushing away stray strands of hair from her face with a finger. The girls gaze was alluring, I tried my best to avoid her eyes.

The sound of Jhan's voice startled me, "There's one more thing I need y'all to know about our new blood." And I knew what Jhan was about to say before he even said it, the excitement in his voice was so overwhelming it filled this grim and ghostly looking room with brightness. "Kaldar is a Supreme."

I watched as their faces pinched with an intensity I could not make out—Tia's face stretched with excitement and Jereum's face was contorted with an entanglement of confusion and hate. The only people in the room that seemed excited about hearing this was Leya and Jhan, because I myself was actually getting scared of the unknown I had become.