Hellfire - The Awakening (Complete)

Chapter Four *

 Hatred and fear are two of the most powerful emotions in the world and when both are combined it is said that they can destroy a person from the inside out. Fear, loneliness and self loathing are even worse, they are like fire breathing dragons, they burn through our minds, turning hopes and dreams to ash, they corrupt our thoughts and like a disease they spread through our body until they change us, usually for the worst.

I'd always prided myself on my ability to understand other people's thoughts and my sensitive personality. I had faults but I cared about other people, I wanted to help them and when my friends were hurt I shared their pain, but now above everything else I was afraid that now I was one of them that human part of me would be lost...

I don’t know how long I actually laid on that leather recliner, but when you’re in absolute agony, and completely alone it’s all too easy to lose all sense of time; seconds become minutes, minutes become hours and hours become days and when that happens you begin to dwell. With nothing else to do I found myself reflecting on everything which had happened to me.

I thought of Sophie, although she was entirely self-centred and incredibly condescending we’d been friends for as long as I could remember. I’d met her on my first day of nursery, back when my mother and father were still together. My father had received a promotion at work and my mother had baked a huge cake in celebration, I had been afraid of starting nursery and so my father had brought home a present for me; a new Barbie doll; it quickly became my new favourite toy.

My mother had allowed me to take my favourite Barbie doll with me and Douglas Crane, a boisterous kid who loved teasing girls, had stolen it, drawn on it with a black marker pen and then buried it in the sandpit. I’d cried for ages and nothing the teacher said could make me stop, that was when Sophie appeared and told me that we could share hers, we’d been best friends ever since but then over the past year things changed…

Sophie joined the drama club and met a whole set of new people who she started to hang around with. She became more much more judgemental and she didn’t have as much patience. She didn’t care that my father had cleared off, or that I’d started to self harm. She didn’t care that people at college had started to turn against me or that I was failing my exams, she didn’t care about me.

It was a vicious cycle, the more she ignored me the more I isolated myself and the more I isolated myself the more she ignored me. I’d started to feel detached, deep down I think we both knew that we were growing apart but we had an unspoken, mutual agreement not to mention it, yet on that night when I…died I think we were both ready to go our separate ways. The trip to the pub was going to be one last night together, I just hadn't known that it would be the last night of my life.

I paused, I hadn't yet reached that enlightening stage where your life becomes split into two parts the 'before' and 'after,' and being a vampire had done nothing to nullify my emotions, if anything I felt worse, the memories were still fresh in my mind and they were just as raw and painful as ever. I tried to keep my mind blank, but that second I tried not to think about my old life was the second I started to think about it. It was a never ending cycle and once I’d started I couldn’t stop.

I thought about my sweet, caring mother and tried not to think about how she would have handled my funeral, she’d already lost my father and now she’d had her daughter snatched away from her as well. I also knew that my five year old sister, Lissa, would never understand my death.

When my father left she’d search the entire house for him, climbing under the bed, rummaging through the wash basket, even checking underneath the dining room table. She thought that he was playing hide and seek, and when she had finished searching everywhere and still couldn’t find him, she would sit in the middle of the living room next to his favourite armchair and she’d howl. How do you tell a little girl that her daddy is never coming back?