Nights are long when you are immortal.
Actually, I shouldn’t say that. I don’t know I’m immortal; that’s one of those impossible to answer questions, like “If a tree falls in the woods, and no one’s around to hear, does it make a sound?” You know there is no answer, but you drive yourself crazy trying to think of one anyway.
But yeah, I can’t know if I’m immortal or not. The vamp who turned me twenty-five years ago didn’t share that information with me before disappearing into the night.
I don’t know why, on the second of February, a true-blue vampire burst into my one-story house. I was unlucky enough to be home at the time, alone as usual. Even now, I can remember that monster flying through the open window (as it turns out, they need no invitation whatsoever to come in). Its body was shriveled and blacked, as if it had been baking in the sun for days. Its sharp ears were pointed straight out, and its face was drawn in a feral way that defied all human form. It had claws that dragged on the floor and long, stained teeth filling its distorted mouth.
I remember sitting on my bed, looking up at the nightmare before me. Fear like I had never known before filled my whole being. I screamed, longer and louder than I ever had in my life. I was still screaming when it lunged at me, hissing and spitting, claws gripping me and tearing skin while its jaw fastened around my neck, biting down hard.
I must have passed out, because the only thing I remember after that is lying in a pool of my own blood, my head in my sister’s lap as she sobbed over my shredded body.
That’s another thing I remember with eerie clarity; awakening for the first time to find I couldn’t die. I was dead, and then I wasn’t. There was no white light, no tunnel. There was nothingness. I try not to think about that too much.
My body knitted itself back together, flesh joining again, open wounds closing. Soon my body was completely healed, and in one piece, I’m glad to say.
But my heart wasn’t beating.
As I lay there, tears and snot dripped from my sister’s face onto mine (excuse me if that sounds like over-sharing, but I like to tell it how it is; you’ll realize that about me, as the story goes on). Slowly, I realized that they were the only warmth in my whole body. My skin was so cold, it was like I was made of ice. I felt as if, when I moved, I would break into pieces. That was my first change as an undead being.
The next came later, when shock finally silenced my crying sibling. I couldn’t move, not even an inch; the entire time she was crouched over me, I was incapable of even a flicker of motion. I couldn’t even breathe. Soon enough, it seemed to sink in that that was a bad thing.
She stared blankly into my face, not seeing my body was once again in one piece; I think she was already numb with grief. I could smell it after a while; it stunk and struck my nose like spilt kerosene. In fact, I could smell everything in the room, from the wilting daisies drooping in their filty glass vase to the mold growing on our bread.
And I could hear things as clearly as if they were right next to me. As long as we had lived there, our little hovel of a home had always been completely, utterly quiet. Now I could find the creaks and aches of the aged wood with my ears. Insects and rodents scuttled around us, unseen even to me. The world was so loud, so huge and full, but small and empty at the same time.
But even with all of these new sensations, I found myself distracted by a strange, thick smell. My nose twitched as it tried to pick it out among the slew of others, the first movement I had been able to make. Air stirred about my face as I breathed in, not because I needed the oxygen, but because it contained so much of that stringy, metallic scent that I could almost taste it as it blew across my dry tongue.
I looked up at my sister. Around her, the room was dark; she had dropped the lamp after its light revealed my mangled body. But I still somehow made out her form against the varying shades of black and gray. Hair cascaded down over a blotchy face streaked with tears, ruddy from my smeared blood.
And I could hear her heart beating, could almost see the blood pouring through her veins in great blasts with each muscle constriction. Her breathing hiccupped, providing her life even as she fell into despair.
For a moment, the part of me that still thought it was human clung to that despair. It was a raft on which I could tie myself, restraining what was already about to overflow inside of me.
But I couldn’t manage to hold on.
A scorching heat blasted my gums. The heat joined the hunger, which felt like it had always been there, an unquenchable thirst that ripped away the last clinging threads of humanity.  Need like I had never known took complete control of my body, flaring to life as something else died.
A newly made vampire has no control over their minds and bodies fresh out of the transformation. This is clear now that so many years have passed, but even if I had known then, having felt what I felt in that moment, I know it wouldn’t have changed a thing.
My sister never stood a chance.
I can still see her astonishment when I stood up, even though I moved impossibly fast, far too fast for her to fully understand what was happening. I had a perfect view of her face as I rose up off the ground, the tatters of my clothes the only indication any harm had ever come to me. In a fraction of a second, her wide eyes leapt to my front, where pearly smooth skin was unblemished by holes or tears. Her gaze came up to meet mine, the beginnings of joy crinkling her skin.
I latched on, and I didn’t let go until long after her screams quieted and her body stopped twitching. It lay against mine seamlessly as I fed, still warm, limbs drooping to the ground as the last of her blood crossed my tongue and slid down my throat.
Only then did I pull away, and only then did I let myself see her face, still ravaged by disbelief and fear. And white. So, so white, her eyes rolled back into her head, the skin stretched tight over her face, even the edges of her hair fringing her scalp. It was all the color of bone dust, shockingly pale and sucked clean of anything resembling life.
Sitting there on the floor, our roles reversed, that night I found out for myself that vampires can still cry.
She didn’t come back like me. I waited for three days, only moving when sunlight threatened to brush me through the gaps in the window and the open door, never leaving her body once. In that time, four cars, two horseback riders, and one boy on a bike came by on the road outside. None of them came to the empty-looking house a mile off the road.
The fourth night came, and I finally stood for the first time. I had been crawling around on the floor, hauling my sister’s corpse along after me. We were both filthy and battered from the past few days, but I was the one who went to the water barrel and washed myself clean of blood. I was the one who pulled fresh clothes from the box under the bed and put them on. I was the one who took the box with me when I left. I left my sister in our room, settled into bed with the covers pulled up to hide her horridly pale face.
Years go by so fast when one has no reason to count them. I didn’t travel, exactly. I wandered, carrying little and caring even less. I saw and did things that my old self would not have been able to believe, but to me it was a blur, a meaningless slur of events that just happened to go together. I fed only when the thirst threatened to destroy what was left of my sanity and take even more lives than were needed. Starving myself was impossible; my body simply wouldn’t allow it. After all it had been through the first time around, it was refusing to die again.
I still can’t die, no matter how much I want to. No matter what I do to this body, it simply heals, anchoring my soul to this world. It’s a cage, and I don’t know if I will ever be able to escape it.
So if this body won’t die, then I’ve decided I will give the soul it holds hostage a reason to exist. And my reason is revenge.
I’m not sure when I decided this; perhaps it occurred to me after another forced feeding brought on by the thirst. Maybe it was during the blur where the decades changed without my noticing. Maybe it was the moment I walked out our front door instead of staying with my sister’s remains forever. Truthfully, the when doesn’t matter. What does matter is my resolve to find the one who did this to my life and my sister. And if I have to kill anyone and anything like him along the way?
I’m looking forward to it.