Life In Death

PROLOGUE

Journal entry one:

I've been given a second chance at life, in death. I'm still alive, but I'm not, I'm dead. I'm a vampire.  I have been for six months. Yep, they're real. I'm real, so they must be. I don't know any other vampires, though. I only remember a little of the one who made me. I remember standing on the gravel in front of the door at my seedy, alley front apartment building, holding onto my purse with one hand and hurriedly trying to fit the key in the door with the other hand. It was a cold October evening which had started out as a warm October day and I hadn't put a jacket on before leaving home. Now, I was cold and had to pee and wanted to get inside.

Then it happened.

I was mugged from behind.  Or at least that's how it seemed, but nothing was stolen. Out of nowhere, I was attacked. I remember nothing of having my blood sucked out of my neck. I remember nothing of the actual occurrence. I only know that I must have blacked out because I woke up like this in what seemed to be an attic in an old industrial building. I assumed it must have been in the abandoned warehouse district a little ways from my apartment.

When I awoke, my navy blue strappy dress with the daisy print that I had loved so much, along with the long off white shirt underneath and my long, wavy auburn hair were all covered in vomit and blood.

When I saw it all, I first thought I had been sick. I thought I had been throwing up blood. Especially because I could hear my hearts beating through my chest.

No, that wasn't a typo. I do mean hearts, with an "s". I heard multiple hearts beating. That's when I really realized something was wrong. Very wrong. I was weak, disoriented, and thirsty. A hungry sort of thirst that I had never felt before.

Then the feeling got stronger and one of the heartbeats became faster and louder than the others. It was not my own. I felt it getting closer. I smelled sickness. I smelled disease. I smelled weakness. I smelled all of these things more acutely than I had ever smelled anything before.

And then I saw a cat. The cat came hobbling toward me from behind an old wooden crate. The cat was a small framed black cat who was probably once beautiful but was now skinny, scrawny, weak. The baby seemed mistreated, abused, and was on the verge of death. Bloody and mangled. His tail muscle exposed in a bloody mess. He or she came toward me and out of nowhere, without thought, my right arm flung out, I grabbed the cat, and I drank. I sunk my teeth through the ebony fur, through the flesh, through the muscle, and drank. He was delicious. 

And I was horrified once I came to my senses and realized what I had done. But the heartbeats died down. I suddenly felt stronger, no longer weak. No longer disoriented and finally regaining control of my senses.

Soon, I could recognize my own heartbeat from the others. Soon, I realized I was a vampire.

--LJH