How to Save a Life

Chapter 1

~2nd December, 22:00, 21 days before death~

Vampire.

It's the only way to describe me, the inner me. Not the innocent, eighteen year old girl with ash-blonde hair and stormy, determined eyes, but the demonic creature lurking inside my soul. The real me is dead, dead, with empty eyes that don't see, don't feel. I can't care, I can't love, I can't breathe. It's suffocating. Suffocating me.

How do I breathe when every time I inhale I choke, knowing that it is all a lie, that is not real, that I'm not alive? I'm not living. I'm just existing. And how do I love if all I feel is hatred? A strange loathing, for anyone I come across on the street, at the shops, in my house, at school, anywhere? Becuase I know that they're better off then me, and I know that they can breathe, they can care, and they can love.

I am a vampire.

No, not like that. I don't drink blood. I don't fear the day. Well, I do, but not in that way. I'm scared of entering the day, knowing that I'll have to pull through again and again. I hide from others. Sometimes I hide from myself, too. Because, everytime daylight wakes me from my hibernation, I feel the monster, and I know immediately that I must flee, I must flee from myself. But how do you run from the creature inside you?

Sometimes I awake in the morning, screaming, crying. My parents rush to my aid. They can see the creature inside me, controlling me, making me do the things I do. They ask me if I'm okay.

This happens this morning, and again, we do this morning ritual. I scream, they come. Jaz! Are you okay?

I know they're just trying to help, but to be honest, how can somebody even ask someone like me a question like that? Am I okay? No, I'm not okay. No, that's why I'm screaming. No, that's why I'm crying. That's why the tears are warping my vision, that's why they are cutting trails on my pale face. No, I'm not okay. I'm dead.

Not literally. But I am inside.

But because they're my parents, and I don't want to scare them when I already scare myself, I tell them I'm okay.   I don't want to hurt them.

I tell them that I can control the creature lurking in my soul.

But the others who are like me, can they? Can they control the creature, can they be free?

No.

But I have to.

I promised.

Broken promises.