Rebirth
Days, months, even years could have passed, but I could not tell time. I could not feel, but one feeling. Pain. Pain so raw, so terrible, I drowned in it. I could tell my body was changing, growing increasingly more durable. Increasingly more indestructible. My world was no longer filled with a multitude of colors. It was only filled with one. Red.
Just seeing the red, gave off waves of even more pain, and I wanted to fold into myself. I wanted to do anything; I would do anything, to soothe the pain.
Was I alive? Was I dead? Is this what Hell felt like? Was I such a bad person in life that I deserved this torture? Yeah, I was mean to a few people every now and then, but nothing that deserved pain of this multitude! Or maybe that was just my opinion.
Even more time passed, and slowly the pain started to fade into something more bearable. Colors started to come back to me, and with the colors, memories. Memories of my family, my friends. Memories that pushed away the red. Pushed away the pain. They rooted me to reality and life.
“It is time for you to awake,” a voice bellowed, cutting through the thick fog between me and the world. It was a familiar voice, very familiar, and sent shivers down my back. When the words reached like tentacles into my brain, my eyes snapped open.
I could tell it was night, and yet the room was bright. I could see the cracks in the white ceiling, and every stroke of light blue paint on the walls. Everything was visible to me, from the large bed I was lying on, to the microscopic bugs crawling in the carpets. The smells though, they were the most prominent. There was the dank, foul scent of trash, and the sweet citrus scent of oranges.
“Welcome Tammy, to your new life.”
The voice was quiet, and yet it pierced my ears as though the person was screeching right into my eardrums. Instantly, my body went into a crouch. I snarled at the voice, looking left and right to try to find the speaker.
“Good God, try to act at least a little civilized! You are part of my kind now, and we are not animals!”
A person materialized from what appeared to be thin air, and I started snarling again. My mind recognized who the person was immediately, but my body acted of its own will. I pounced on Duke, my teeth elongating as a hunger took hold onto my body. A red haze started to fill my vision, and my thoughts mushed into one another. My body moved at a speed that should have been impossible, but somehow felt natural. I could not think but one thing, I was hungry.
The pain that the hunger brought was like a slow burn in my throat that kept getting worse and worse as the red haze got brighter and brighter. Before I could get to Duke, get to my meal, he disappeared.
“Tammy, I am quite sure that is not the right way to treat your maker. Now, I can see that you are hungry so I brought you a meal. If you want it, you have to calm yourself down,” Duke said, his voice again quiet but piercing.
I forced the redness away, and walked backwards onto the bed. The burning in my throat was still there, but for the time being it had lessened into something that was hard to ignore but not impossible.
As before, Duke appeared out of the air. This time I was ready for it though, and my body didn’t react. All though instead of it just being him, he brought another person along.
The person was a white homeless guy, who smelled like crap. He was wearing a T-shirt black with dirt, and long pants just as gross. His face was full of zits, and his eyes were glazed over. All over his arms were bite marks, and I started to salivate as I thought of how soon one of my bite marks would be on him, and his blood would be in me.
“Sorry I could not bring a better meal. But since this is your first time, I can almost guarantee this one will not last long. So eat up. When you are done, feel free to nap on the bed. Good bye, and I will come back soon,” Duke said, and with a sigh dropped the homeless man to the ground and left.
I felt the red haze start to creep over my eyes again, and so I quickly shook it away. If I was going to do this right, I had to at least attempt to be myself.
I grabbed a part of the man’s arm that was unbitten, and opened my mouth. My canines were still long because of being frightened before, and they tingled in anticipation. I bit into him, and my body automatically moved closer and closer to him. The man moaned, and my eyelashes fluttered.
The taste was addicting, it was sweet like chocolate, melting onto my tongue and sliding down my throat. It filled me with warmth, and made me feel almost connected with the homeless man. I wanted more, and more, but a voice in my mind started yelling at me to stop.
I forced my mouth from his arm, and immediately felt coldness where the warmth was before. The guy shuddered, and his eyes opened.
“Keep going....please,” he slurred, and reached toward me.
I threw his arm away from me, slamming it onto the floor. A crack sounded from his arm, and the guy screamed. The glaze that was in his eyes before cleared away and he started to back away from me.
“Shit... I’m sorry. I did not mean to do that. Um... How do I fix this?” I whimpered, and folded my arms around myself. He had started to bleed where I had broken his arm, and my body started to move of its own accord.
I felt the red haze hit me full on, and my eyes focused on the blood. I was hungry again. So, so hungry. My eyes closed, and when they opened I was the predator and the man was the prey.