Vivi the Vampire

The Clock Strikes Twelve

...Vivi raised a bloody SEVERED arm from the tub. A human arm!

She laughed, and opened her mouth wide, exposing sharp, pointy VAMPIRIC teeth!
Eyes glittering, she opened her mouth as wide as she could and then CLAMPED down hard on the arm, taking a big BITE...

******************************************

With a gasp, Vivi awoke in her bed, her normal bed, in her normal house. Not that weird gothic mansion with the corpses and demonic sculptures.

She was drenched in sweat as usual, her heart racing and her belly turning with nausea.
All that blood, all that gore...

Why did she have these horrible dreams? Was there something wrong with her? Was she secretly a psycho?

Yes, she liked to watch horror movies but she didn't want to eat people up herself! She wasn't a sick cannibal... Or was she?

'Nah, it's just because I watched that zombie movie before bed.' she reassured herself trying to shake off the remaining anxiety from the nightmare.

It wasn't the first nightmare of this kind she'd had. All throughout her life, even before she'd started watching horror movies, every now and then she'd fallen into terrifying dark dreams.

They were always the same, she was either drinking blood, reveling in blood, taking part in some strange gruesome rituals, eating human flesh, or flying through darkness and clouds.

Once as a child, she'd dreamt of running across a frozen lake followed by a tall, very pale, beautiful woman. The woman had long black hair like hers and piercing blue eyes.

It was a cold, crisp day. The sky was overcast, small gentle powdery snowflakes drifting down around them.
They'd both been carrying heavy buckets.
When they reached the center of the lake, Vivi had stopped and looked around. "Here?" she'd asked the woman in a posh accent. "Sure darling" the woman had replied with a mysterious smile.

They'd both lowered the buckets and opened them. The buckets were filled with blood. Blood and little gory fleshy things. A human finger protruded from the bloody soup.

Humming to herself, Vivi had taken a paintbrush and dipped it into the bloody bucket. Then she'd drawn a beautiful, huge rose across the frosty lake's surface. It was a lovely work of art. Vivi didn't know to draw yet in her dream she'd been quite a gifted artist.
"Goes to show that it was just a dream" Vivi had thought later.

The dreams felt so real, that at times it scared Vivi.

These weren't just normal bad dreams. These were like a dark reality show, continuing for years with the same theme, location, and actors. The same tall dark woman had appeared several times over the years in her dreams, and occasionally she'd gotten glimpses into different rooms in the same gothic mansion.

What if it wasn't a dream, but a vision, like some psychic prediction of what she'd one day do?
Maybe she was schizo-whatever-it-was-called and would one day flip and go on a rampage devouring people!
She'd never told her parents about her dreams out of fear that they'd think she was nuts and send her to some institute.

But then, as time passed, and none of the dreams came true, she stopped fearing them. She'd read online that nightmares are simply a dark mirror of one's deepest fears or... (she felt sick with dread at the thought)... one's deepest desires. Fears, fears, I'll go with that! She thought.

It wasn't unusual for her to have nightmares on her birthday.

On her 10th birthday, she'd dreamt of a strange party in a fancy, large ballroom. The type that castles and mansions have. With large glass windows, thick black velvet draperies, and tens of lit chandeliers glittering from the ceiling. The floor was slippery and wet, a bright shiny red.

Merry music played, tens of people dressed in fancy black outfits stood around clapping and smiling, sipping blood from cocktail cups as they watched her. She'd skated across the room, half-dancing, half-skating, doing pirouettes, perfect spins and dainty little jumps. Musicians played a fast exciting tune. She was completely focused on her performance, the people around watching her were a blur. The floor was slippery but she didn't slip once. She moved with perfect practiced steps, confident, graceful, smooth and fast.

She ended by doing a triple spin on one leg and landing in a split on the floor. People clapped and cheered. The floor was wet, it didn't just look wet. The red liquid soaked into her white stockings. Her hands came away covered in... blood. Then she heard a gushing sound and looking up she saw a skinny man in black atop a ladder, pouring a bucket of blood down the dark red walls. The blood poured down them and streamed across the floor.

The room, the walls, the floor weren't red because they'd been freshly painted... they were drenched in blood!

VVVVVVVRRRRR! Her vibrating phone jarred her back to reality.
She checked it. Another birthday wish from someone she didn't even know. A Facebook friend of some friend. How nice. And still, nothing from her parents. Not a word.

The bedside clock read 11:58

Vivi brushed her hand over her cold, damp forehead. 'It was just a dream' she told herself. 'Just another nightmare, relax, relax, relax...' Her breathing slowed. She took a deep breath and breathed out heavily. The sweat drying on her skin.

11:59

The room was deadly still. In the perfect silence, the low TICK TOCK from the clock felt unusually loud. TICK TOCK. TICK TOCK. It seemed to grow louder as she listened and slower. As though the clock was about to stop.

TICK. Silence. She waited. TOCK.

TICK. an even longer silence. She waited. TOCK.

TICK. She waited expectantly but the TOCK didn't come. She held her breath, straining in case she'd missed it. Nothing. She glanced at the clock. Had it stopped?

All of a sudden, a deep feeling of dread filled her. It started at her stomach, gnawing away at her gut, creeping up her chest and then sweeping over her body. It filled her veins, like a hot liquid, and raced up the back of her neck into her head.

Her fingers felt numb and tingly. Wait, that was unusual. It wasn't a panic attack, what was it?

She lifted her hands and looked at them. They weren't just tingling, they were pinching now like she'd sat on them or frozen them half to death in the snow.

She flexed her fingers and shook her hands. Ow! the pain was getting worse. What on earth was it?

A pregnant silence. The night held its breath. And then -

TOCK. The clock changed to 00:00...