All week I felt like an undercover cop in a drug cartel. I was afraid that one wrong word or another rapid sunburn or another display of superpower would completely betray me. Not to mention a couple of fangs that showed up uncontrollably. I became really paranoid! I constantly considered my every word, every move, and even every look. Sometimes my fears went to ridiculous lengths – before taking a spoon or a fork I touched it carefully first with the fingertip. Like there was any chance that the school cafeteria had silver utensils! I barely spoke to my parents, friends, Chris, and other people so as not to accidentally arouse my secret vampire instincts.
So far they had only exhibited themselves twice – on the hill with Chris and at the sight of a bleeding piece of meat. “But who knows? Maybe my new animal nature will wake up when I get angry or accidentally break my nail,” I thought. So I decided that in my situation it was impossible to be too careful. Every day after school, I was visiting the supermarket’s meat department and buying a fresh steak, still oozing with blood, to dull my hunger at least somewhat.
After that, I would go to the restroom at the gas station close to the supermarket. I didn’t dare tear into the steak at home anymore, and I specially chose a supermarket that was far from our neighborhood. No one I knew shopped there, and even if someone caught me in the act, I could always run away and remain an unidentified psycho. Every day, by the time I reached the bathroom stall to feast, I had already been on the brink of going crazy. Perhaps this was how heroin addicts looked when a cherished syringe showed up in their shriveled hands after a long withdrawal. My entire body was trembling, and my jaws were involuntarily clanking, trying to snap at the air and simultaneously displaying my massive fangs, which were ready for action.
I would always take off my t-shirt and hang it on the door hook so that I would not stain it with blood while ripping the steak to pieces until all of the blood vessels of its muscular tissue were ripped and the last drop of beef blood vanished in my mouth. For some reason, I preferred beef to pork. Perhaps cow’s blood had a more refined taste. After finishing the meal, which calmed my trembling body, I would wipe my face and hands with toilet paper, put on my t-shirt, and leave the gas station through the back door.
The first several times, I was throwing the bloodless steak into the trash can right in the bathroom stall, but then I decided that sooner or later a janitor would notice it and might try to figure out why he keeps finding a huge piece of meat among the bathroom trash every day. The next few times, I took the used steak with me and gave it to the angry dog that was chained up near the car repair shop around the corner. By the end of the week, he was greeting me like his best friend and even allowed me to pet him.
I’d read DumDoom17’s blog till the end by Monday. She described the same problems I’d faced recently – from the constant hunger to the random appearance of huge fangs. Much to my regret, the posts stopped after describing the fangs. In the last one, DumDoom17 wrote that she didn’t know how to live further and that she had decided to leave home. The post was dated last summer, so I had no idea whether my comrade in misfortune was still alive and, if so, whether she managed to solve her problems or not. I found her email in the user’s info. I wrote several letters, though I didn’t really expect her to answer.
Surprisingly, three days later she answered. An awkward communication sprang up between us. For a long time, I couldn’t bring myself to tell her that I was a vampire too and she, in turn, wasn’t eager to give personal information about her life to some stranger. Finally, I confessed my situation. To make sure I was telling the truth, she asked me several questions about vampire life which weren’t reflected in her notes.
I passed the test. Then DumDoom17 told me her Skype username, and we continued chatting online. Turned out that her name was Jacqueline but she preferred Jack. Now we were united not only by vampirism but also by love for male names instead of female ones. I was terribly lucky – Jack lived in Breeksby, the nearest big city less than two hours from us. And she even agreed to meet me and discuss our mutual problems in person.
My happiness about finding a new friend was quickly replaced by disappointment. Jack couldn’t tell me any magical secrets about how to tackle the raging hunger or how to control those damned fangs. She only told me that with time it would be easier to cope with vampiric manifestations; however, it was not an affliction that could be cured once and for all. According to Jack, the only way to solve the majority of my problems was to leave home as she had. When you don’t have friends and family, you can’t scare them with your huge fangs; and when you live alone, you can quench your thirst any time without being afraid that you will be caught with a bloody face, trembling hands, and a crazy look.
For a long time, I couldn’t force myself to ask Jack whose blood she was drinking and where she was taking it from. So far, I’d succeeded in holding myself together with the help of steaks, but it had only been several days since my fangs had appeared for the first time. I feared that with time my thirst would become so unbearable that I would be able to slake it only with human blood. In movies, all vampires killed people. None of them was content with just a couple of Bloody Maries before going to bed. So, I finally asked her. Jack answered that she was buying cow’s blood from a slaughterhouse and that one quart was quite enough for a day.
Talking to Jack made me think hard. Prior to hearing her stories, I’d still had a glimmer of hope for some magical solution to all of my problems. I expected to find a recipe of some super-drink, made from tomato juice, the semen of a young bull calf, and road dust, which would stop my hunger once and for all; or some oriental meditation practice that would help to control my fangs and other external manifestations of my interesting condition. But, as far as I could tell, there weren’t any such things as vampire yoga or vampire juice.
Jack solved her problems by running away from home, but I had neither money nor even a car. To be honest, I was afraid of all that new world that existed outside of our quiet suburb. I would be all alone, without my mother, father, friends, Chris, or any idea of what to do next. It scared me. Even if I couldn’t share my problems with my parents or my boyfriend, they would still be by my side, and they would support me at least morally, even if they didn’t know the reason for my troubles.
My friends, schoolmates, all teenagers, including me, constantly try to vehemently prove to our parents that we’ve already grown up, but actually, when it comes to real, adult stuff, like making a living or taking full responsibility for your own life, we still remain children. And even if we don’t run screaming to our parents’ bedroom in the middle of the night anymore, it doesn’t mean that we’ve stopped being afraid of that big and scary world outside the window.
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