C2| Awakening

Death was not as I’d imagined it be nor as I had been taught to believe. I am sinner in the eyes of God and yet when I appeared in the place, my final destination. Where I was sure I’d begin my eternal torment in Hell’s embrace. Yet, there was nothing here, nothing at all. 

Just me, weightless and incorporeal surround by nothing, no light and no darkness. I was totally alone here, wherever here is, with solid emptiness to keep me company. The feel of it pressing in on me was horrifying, like I was standing in the mouth of an enormous monster I could neither see or ran from. Stuck in an endless loop of dread and inescapable fear and sure as the sun would rise I knew that in this cycle of nothing, I would spend my eternity.  

Then I woke up.  

My soul had settled back into my body like water poured into an empty vessel trying to adjust the strange yet familiar shape. Even so, my sense eluded me, it felt like I was still stuck in that place of nothingness. Like I was still dead, still trapped by forces unseen and all powerful.  

Tap. Tap. 

The first thing to return was sound. The incredibly loud sound of pacing in fact, the slow and steady pacing of predator on a wet stone surface slowly started to fill the emptiness death have left in its wake. 

With sound came scent, I could smell the damp stale air then feel it creasing the exposed skin of my arms, feel the cold seeping into my bones from the stone slab under me. It took some effort to open my eyes, I wasn't fully aware of myself. Everything seemed strange, foreign and uncomfortable. Like my skin wasn’t my own! Forcing my eyes open, I was confronted with snow, it hovered and floated in the darkness over my head. Beyond it though was not sky, but a ceiling of stone. No, this was not snow but dust. I could see it with impossible clarity even in the dark.  

Tap. Tap. Tap.  

Turning my head towards the figure pacing the length of the tomb next to me, he’s movement kicking up the decades of dust covering the floor with ever step he took. Why was I in a tomb? How did I get here? Who was that man? I don't remember.

Who am I?

I tried to sit up but my stiff body protested against my every move. I tried to speak but failed. My attempt to move and speak brought with it a slight stinging sensation across my throat, the phantom pain in my neck reached for a forgotten memory, a betrayal, a wrong un-righted.  

I thought back to what happened before now, before here, in this place of darkness and death. The memories came back slow at first, images of people, places and random sounds that I could not piece together. Then screaming and crying and pain, so much pain everything about myself rushed past me like a river and the more the images came, the more they made sense. Me, laying in the grass dreaming about touching the sky. Family dinner, church, my friendly neighbours then a tree with long weeping branches. A monster with the face of a man, he’s hands on me, clawing at my clothes and at my skin. The same monsters blood on my hands, an unjust trail, a guilty verdict and a cold cage. A twisted smiling woman, my mother and a smug powerful man, the Mayor. I’d killed someone… 

Michael, my friend Melanie’s brother, who was also the Mayor’s son and the Mayor in turn had sentenced me to death. Death by my father’s hand. 

He’d killed me! My own father hung me.

Pain and all consuming rage followed this revelation. 

“Awake are we?” The predator stopped, turned in my direction and stared right at me with his semi-luminescent green eyes. Those eyes drew me right in, forcing all my attention to the creature in front of me. 

Instinct, told me not to make any sudden movements or loud sounds. This person was dangerous! Even though he was probably the most beautiful person I had ever seen, even though he had save my life, with whatever had been in that glass vile. He was still undoubtedly the most dangerous creature I had ever had the fortune of stumbling across.  

Silence filled the space between us as I searched for the right thing to say, the right question to ask and I had many. How I was alive? What was in that vile? Why did you help me? What do you want from me?

“What are you?” I ask instead, trying to ignore the terrible dry ache in my throat. He smirked at my question the movement bring my attention to he’s mouth and lips. Full and almost red in colour. “Good question. But don’t you mean who are you?” He mocked me while I shook my head and tried to rise once more.  

Finally managing to sit up, I turn to face him awaiting his response. But he does not reply, instead he tilts he’s head slightly and continues to observe me in silence.

“Was that to difficult a question? Fine, argh,” Rasping, I rubbed my fingers along my neck, I had to swallow a few times to ease the expanding desert in my throat. “W-what d-did you do to me?” I ended up whispering, why is my throat was so dry? Water, I needed water, I was so thirsty. "Don't worry, you'll be fine." he sighed bored with those words, as if he had said that same sentence a thousand times. 

Coming over to my left side he reached into his beast packet and produced yet another red vile in his hand. 

Pulling the finger nail size stopper off, the coppery smell of blood filled the air and with it’s scent, intense hunger was born. The kind that clouded the senses and hollowed the mind, enough to killed whatever got in your way.

I could practically see the image of myself reaching out to try and grab the vile from him and down its contents as sure as if it were a memory already passed. But his vice like grip on the my hand told me otherwise. Should I kill him?

He laughed then, right in my face like he could read my mind and know exactly what I was thinking.

He found the very thought of my trying to murder him funny. The sound of his deep and clear laughter brought me out of the blind need to quench my impossible thirst and back to the present. What the hell was that?

I couldn't comprehend how I was thirsty enough, hunger enough to kill the creature who’d save my life. Albeit for reasons he’d yet to disclose. What on earth had been in that vile?

"Eager! I like it!" he said with a smirk, mirth dancing in his eyes. 

“Relax, all good things come to those who wait.” Amused he lowered my hand and brought the vile to my lips. Tilting it so the blood entered my mouth and ran down my throat.

In seconds I felt stronger and the pain in my body vanished, I suddenly felt stronger, faster. Alive and amazing. 

Powerful! I felt powerful.