Post by madascheese on Mar 7, 2007 4:02:28 GMT
Ok, this is a pretty long chapter (hence why it seemed to take me aaaages to write!!). What will Dillan do next? Read on to find out...enjoy!
****************
She arose from her deathly slumber early that evening, after the red Sun had sunk beneath the horizon. She felt the same hunger claw inside her, rabid as a wild animal and, walking to the window and peering through the blinds, became enveloped in her own conflicting thoughts as she examined the radiant evening sky. Remembering the sheer volume of blood she consumed earlier that day she became frustrated – would she really have to feed this often? It was only a matter of hours since her last ‘meal’, why did she perpetually need and, more importantly, want more?
In the end, it wasn’t really drinking the blood that bothered her, as unnatural as it was, that was the easy part. It was the sheer number of lives she would have to take to satisfy her intense cravings. Presuming the myths about vampires were in actual fact accurate, how many people would she be forced to kill in her immortal life? These questions and many more filled her thoughts now in the aftermath of the doctor’s death. She hadn’t stopped to consider her actions at the time; the ecstasy of his blood flowing through her veins seemed to erase all morality from her mind, she thought, now opening the blinds fully and gazing towards the horizon itself. Sunset was not too long ago – the sky was still dyed with orange, pink and gold stretching just above the distant hills. She looked further up at the sky now, mesmerised by the way the colours melted into green, then aquamarine and finally a deep, restful blue, all the while her mind racing with hunger, confusion and pain. Silently and unknowingly, she cried out in despair for guidance. She desperately needed to understand what had happened to her and, most importantly, why her?
Just a short distance away, in the basement of the Mansbridge Academy, Karl was watching the very same green-tinted sky. He had been forced to there, under the watchful eyes of the Elders and Dr Murdoch, for two weeks of the summer in complete isolation as his sentence for his terrible transgression. He was left with numerous dusty volumes detailing vampiric lore and the rules of the ‘old ones’ – or ‘dining etiquette’ as he had nicknamed it. Reading what he could of these ancient texts had made him realise just how little he knew about his own kind; it saddened him that there was still so much he had to learn until he could consider himself equally as knowledgeable as his classmates. Still, what little knowledge he already had never really held him back and, he reasoned, this was a great opportunity to get up to speed with the basic facts and rules that he had never been taught.
He cut open a blood sachet with his scissors and, sighing contemplatively at the majestic rising moon, began to drink through his straw. After a few satisfying mouthfuls the hairs on the very back of his neck stood on end as he felt a cold surge surround him suddenly, all the while feeling that he was not alone. He looked around the room for some sort of explanation, but there was, of course, nothing; he was the only creature in this basement – as far as he could see anyway. Beginning to feel worried, he heard a familiar female voice drift into his consciousness.
“Help me, I need you,” it said desolately. “I need to understand, you have to help me understand...”
The strange, enveloping sensation had disappeared, along with the voice, as he tried to make sense of what had happened. He definitely knew that voice, he felt shocked to the core when he heard her again - he thought he would never hear her again.
“Oh God,” Karl said, his face showing pure dread and stark realisation. “It’s Dillan…oh my God!”
Suddenly he felt overcome with a multitude of emotions – guilt, despair, fear, self-loathing – which all became intertwined in a whirlwind of confusion, filling him with blind panic. What the hell would he do now? Dillan would be killed and the experiment would be terminated, the elders were more than clear on that matter on the night of the incident itself. The only friends he could ever be himself with, the only people who understood him fully, would be gone forever. Essie would sure as hell never want to see him again, he thought despairingly. He nervously gulped more blood through the straw in an attempt to calm himself, his hands shaking with fear and panic. Once he had regained his composure, it occurred to him that there really was only one option; he had to save her from the wrath of the Elders. Somehow he would have to persuade them to accept her as part of the experiment and to appreciate the immense progress their current students had made in the space of one year alone. He only had one more week stuck helplessly in the academy, which would hopefully give him just enough time, if he used the time he had effectively. He looked at the piles of books he had been poring over on the table and, picking up a large musty smelling volume, began to flick frantically through the stiff, yellowed parchment pages before settling on a particular chapter. Resting the book on the table, with the blood in one hand and pen poised above paper in the other, he began to read.
Meanwhile, Dillan was beginning to feel slightly weaker than she had earlier on in the day, a feeling that she was beginning to despise; she enjoyed the power she felt when she drank from him, she thought, remembering the draughts of blood she drank enthusiastically from him. She needed to feed again, that much was certain, but first she must find a way to dispose of Dr Parker’s lifeless body. This was the part that she could definitely do without but, she argued, needs must – it was now more than dark enough to get rid of him without a hint of suspicion. She slipped on her lightweight denim jacket and, walking to her dressing table, looked into the mirror. She gasped as her reflection did not appear, not expecting that aspect of common vampire mythology to rear its ugly head. She quickly looked away from the mirror as she became more aware of her almost non-existence, hurriedly running her brush through her crimson hair. The more she stood in front of the mirror, the more she despised her new circumstances. Putting the brush back on her dressing table, she hastily walked out of her room and downstairs towards the cellar, feeling less human than ever before.
As she approached the closed cellar door she began to smell the stench of death wash over her like an unstoppable wave. He had only been dead a few hours, and yet the slightest scent of death or decay seemed to be multiplied tenfold. Filled with a powerful sense of dread as she thought what he might look like – the exemplified smell seemed to make her think of nothing but a rotting, maggot filled corpse – she opened the door cautiously. She jumped back in alarm as his pale blue eyes instantly bored through her from his contorted body, his limbs lying lifeless, limp and completely askew. His mouth was tightened into a more intense grimace than what she remembered when she had thrown him down there, she could see the fine lines where the muscles had tightened in his thin, pale lips; although fear still reigned blatantly on his face, when she looked at him she saw nothing but pure anger. Repressing her apprehension and attempting to focus on the task in hand, she reluctantly descended the stairs and picked up his flaccid, deflated body with physical ease but intense emotional torment. She would have to dump him somewhere that could not be traced back to her, she thought. She walked outside and put him in the trunk of her mother’s car face down and then, quickly climbing into the driver’s seat, drove swiftly to the banks of the river Annan.
The black river flowed steadily through the surrounding darkened valleys as the headlights of Dillan’s car roved over the ground. Stopping the car, she got out and opened the trunk reluctantly; there was nothing she wanted to do less than lift up the dead body yet again. She felt nauseated by his smell, his incessant stench of true mortality, and sickened with what she had done to him; but she could not allow herself to be distracted. Once this was done, she could forget about it – he was just another statistic to be erased, another human amongst the millions who die day after day, and yet, deep down, she knew different. With all her strength, she threw Dr Parker’s bloodless corpse as far as possible into the murky water and watched as the ebb and flow of the river floated him away. His eyes seemed to watch her all the time this was happening, those cold, glazed eyes that burned with anger and yet were still widened with fear. The stark contrast between his pale body and the dark night-time water held her gaze until he disappeared beyond the meandering current. Thankful that the worst was now over, she began to drive back home and figure out how she could actually feed from unknowing mortals. It was still fairly early on in the evening but well past twilight, though the unrelenting aggravation caused by her dark desires did not lend her time to think of anything but her own agenda for the duration of the night. She left the car in the garage and decided to head for the roadhouse in Mansbridge, certain that she would find something to finally quell her bloodthirsty appetite.
She walked down the streets of the town and watched the different mortals drift around her. Never had she felt so unlike society before; granted, she was never a conformist like most of her peers, but there was always someone that she could connect with. Now she had been cast to the very perimeters of society, forced to become an observer and never again a participator. Her new position had diminished her respect for human life itself as everyone seemed to be living the same pointless, pitiful life, just in slightly different guises between them. They lived such fragile lives, she thought, watching with intrigue as a child darted across the road on seeing an approaching car. She was strong, powerful and practically invincible; a human life can be so easily taken at anytime, she mused, and now she had the explicit power to take it or leave it. Did that then mean that she had the right to execute her power over life and death? It was true that she could now decide if a mortal she happened to encounter lived or died, she was simply helping the world go about its natural business. On the other hand, this was most definitely not natural – in her opinion, there was nothing less natural than her destructive cravings but, nevertheless, it was obviously a matter of fact that she was not the only vampire. Out of millions of humans who die every day, she reasoned defiantly, did one more really matter?
On entering the roadhouse she was greeted with the truly repugnant smell of cigarette smoke, beer and sweat hanging limply in the stale air, though she could also clearly sense the sharp scent of blood cutting through the atmosphere like a knife. She could hear the steady beating of several hearts around her; on every rhythmic thud she felt a slight pang of hunger reminding her of what she came here for. Glancing around for a quiet seat where she could gather her thoughts and make a plan, she found a small chair and table in a dark corner away from the rest. It was perfect. She slid off her jacket and placed it on the back of the chair. She notice a few glances being fired her way, however they petered out as, pushing her hair away from her face, she took a book from her pocket, opened it and began to ‘read’ – thankfully, they all left her to her own devices. When they had looked away, she watched the various people in the room with interest – the drunks clumsily lurching towards the bar; teenagers who managed to elude the bartender sipping beer bottles as cautiously as if it were secretly poisoned; two lovers in a small booth sitting closely and looking passionately into each other’s eyes – she wondered how on Earth she would go about actually ‘hunting’ for food. Would she have to seduce someone into her bed before feeding and then have to dispose of another body? There had to be an easier way.
Her mind seemed to wander in several different directions at once, her conscience simply didn't know how to advise her anymore. She looked back at the couple in the booth, marvelled by their innocence; how could she taint something so pure? Her hunger and thirst still writhed inside of her, yet she allowed her mind to wander back to the thought of Dr Parker and the act of killing him. It did not feel like murder, she reflected; it felt like pure bliss. Drinking his blood was like tasting the divine, it was far more intense than any human emotion she had ever felt before, though the act itself was certainly not one of divinity but of selfishness. The very thought that, since finally watching him being carried away by the current of the dark river, he had been lost entirely from her thoughts amazed her incredibly; it seemed to confirm the insignificance and irrelevance of the conservation of human life in comparison with her own survival.
She watched as a pretty, young brunette flirted shamelessly with a confident looking guy stood at the bar as it occurred to her that she could never know what it feels like to love as a human. She would never be able to live the life that she wanted to lead – granted, her life was far from ideal, but she never had the chance to make it better. She had lost so much, and what had she gained – a new life? It felt like a new type of torturous death. A ‘life’ consumed by a ceaseless desire to kill and feed, endless destruction and violation of human life wherever she was; but why should she care about killing if that was what she was required to do? She would kill, feed and then rest; she would do it for self-preservation, not out of malice. It would simply be another notch on the bedpost of death, one more strike through the tally where millions of deaths in the world had already been engraved.
Tiring of her continual moral inner-war she decided to try not to let her old human morals get the better of her – inner-dialogue was simply not her style. She was separate from the mortals beings around her now, she had lost touch with her humanity the when she crawled onto Dr Parker with a smile on her face, anticipating draining him of the blood that she so badly needed. She must embrace her nature for what it is, whether that would be as the sympathetic avatar of death considering the consequence or the prowling predator begging for release – she would not repress herself for the sake of one measly human life, what would be the point? God knows she never changed her ways to accommodate anyone during her human life, so why the hell should she start now? She began to feel a lucidity wash over her as she watched the brunette she had observed flirting at the bar walk out of the roadhouse, surprisingly alone. Sensing the tantalising scent of blood and perfume the girl left trailed in her wake, and her primal urges infesting her mind with thoughts of malice, Dillan decided what to do with no hesitation. She slipped her jacket back on and, eyes turning red, followed the girl out into the moonlit street.
************
Thanks for reading!!
****************
She arose from her deathly slumber early that evening, after the red Sun had sunk beneath the horizon. She felt the same hunger claw inside her, rabid as a wild animal and, walking to the window and peering through the blinds, became enveloped in her own conflicting thoughts as she examined the radiant evening sky. Remembering the sheer volume of blood she consumed earlier that day she became frustrated – would she really have to feed this often? It was only a matter of hours since her last ‘meal’, why did she perpetually need and, more importantly, want more?
In the end, it wasn’t really drinking the blood that bothered her, as unnatural as it was, that was the easy part. It was the sheer number of lives she would have to take to satisfy her intense cravings. Presuming the myths about vampires were in actual fact accurate, how many people would she be forced to kill in her immortal life? These questions and many more filled her thoughts now in the aftermath of the doctor’s death. She hadn’t stopped to consider her actions at the time; the ecstasy of his blood flowing through her veins seemed to erase all morality from her mind, she thought, now opening the blinds fully and gazing towards the horizon itself. Sunset was not too long ago – the sky was still dyed with orange, pink and gold stretching just above the distant hills. She looked further up at the sky now, mesmerised by the way the colours melted into green, then aquamarine and finally a deep, restful blue, all the while her mind racing with hunger, confusion and pain. Silently and unknowingly, she cried out in despair for guidance. She desperately needed to understand what had happened to her and, most importantly, why her?
Just a short distance away, in the basement of the Mansbridge Academy, Karl was watching the very same green-tinted sky. He had been forced to there, under the watchful eyes of the Elders and Dr Murdoch, for two weeks of the summer in complete isolation as his sentence for his terrible transgression. He was left with numerous dusty volumes detailing vampiric lore and the rules of the ‘old ones’ – or ‘dining etiquette’ as he had nicknamed it. Reading what he could of these ancient texts had made him realise just how little he knew about his own kind; it saddened him that there was still so much he had to learn until he could consider himself equally as knowledgeable as his classmates. Still, what little knowledge he already had never really held him back and, he reasoned, this was a great opportunity to get up to speed with the basic facts and rules that he had never been taught.
He cut open a blood sachet with his scissors and, sighing contemplatively at the majestic rising moon, began to drink through his straw. After a few satisfying mouthfuls the hairs on the very back of his neck stood on end as he felt a cold surge surround him suddenly, all the while feeling that he was not alone. He looked around the room for some sort of explanation, but there was, of course, nothing; he was the only creature in this basement – as far as he could see anyway. Beginning to feel worried, he heard a familiar female voice drift into his consciousness.
“Help me, I need you,” it said desolately. “I need to understand, you have to help me understand...”
The strange, enveloping sensation had disappeared, along with the voice, as he tried to make sense of what had happened. He definitely knew that voice, he felt shocked to the core when he heard her again - he thought he would never hear her again.
“Oh God,” Karl said, his face showing pure dread and stark realisation. “It’s Dillan…oh my God!”
Suddenly he felt overcome with a multitude of emotions – guilt, despair, fear, self-loathing – which all became intertwined in a whirlwind of confusion, filling him with blind panic. What the hell would he do now? Dillan would be killed and the experiment would be terminated, the elders were more than clear on that matter on the night of the incident itself. The only friends he could ever be himself with, the only people who understood him fully, would be gone forever. Essie would sure as hell never want to see him again, he thought despairingly. He nervously gulped more blood through the straw in an attempt to calm himself, his hands shaking with fear and panic. Once he had regained his composure, it occurred to him that there really was only one option; he had to save her from the wrath of the Elders. Somehow he would have to persuade them to accept her as part of the experiment and to appreciate the immense progress their current students had made in the space of one year alone. He only had one more week stuck helplessly in the academy, which would hopefully give him just enough time, if he used the time he had effectively. He looked at the piles of books he had been poring over on the table and, picking up a large musty smelling volume, began to flick frantically through the stiff, yellowed parchment pages before settling on a particular chapter. Resting the book on the table, with the blood in one hand and pen poised above paper in the other, he began to read.
Meanwhile, Dillan was beginning to feel slightly weaker than she had earlier on in the day, a feeling that she was beginning to despise; she enjoyed the power she felt when she drank from him, she thought, remembering the draughts of blood she drank enthusiastically from him. She needed to feed again, that much was certain, but first she must find a way to dispose of Dr Parker’s lifeless body. This was the part that she could definitely do without but, she argued, needs must – it was now more than dark enough to get rid of him without a hint of suspicion. She slipped on her lightweight denim jacket and, walking to her dressing table, looked into the mirror. She gasped as her reflection did not appear, not expecting that aspect of common vampire mythology to rear its ugly head. She quickly looked away from the mirror as she became more aware of her almost non-existence, hurriedly running her brush through her crimson hair. The more she stood in front of the mirror, the more she despised her new circumstances. Putting the brush back on her dressing table, she hastily walked out of her room and downstairs towards the cellar, feeling less human than ever before.
As she approached the closed cellar door she began to smell the stench of death wash over her like an unstoppable wave. He had only been dead a few hours, and yet the slightest scent of death or decay seemed to be multiplied tenfold. Filled with a powerful sense of dread as she thought what he might look like – the exemplified smell seemed to make her think of nothing but a rotting, maggot filled corpse – she opened the door cautiously. She jumped back in alarm as his pale blue eyes instantly bored through her from his contorted body, his limbs lying lifeless, limp and completely askew. His mouth was tightened into a more intense grimace than what she remembered when she had thrown him down there, she could see the fine lines where the muscles had tightened in his thin, pale lips; although fear still reigned blatantly on his face, when she looked at him she saw nothing but pure anger. Repressing her apprehension and attempting to focus on the task in hand, she reluctantly descended the stairs and picked up his flaccid, deflated body with physical ease but intense emotional torment. She would have to dump him somewhere that could not be traced back to her, she thought. She walked outside and put him in the trunk of her mother’s car face down and then, quickly climbing into the driver’s seat, drove swiftly to the banks of the river Annan.
The black river flowed steadily through the surrounding darkened valleys as the headlights of Dillan’s car roved over the ground. Stopping the car, she got out and opened the trunk reluctantly; there was nothing she wanted to do less than lift up the dead body yet again. She felt nauseated by his smell, his incessant stench of true mortality, and sickened with what she had done to him; but she could not allow herself to be distracted. Once this was done, she could forget about it – he was just another statistic to be erased, another human amongst the millions who die day after day, and yet, deep down, she knew different. With all her strength, she threw Dr Parker’s bloodless corpse as far as possible into the murky water and watched as the ebb and flow of the river floated him away. His eyes seemed to watch her all the time this was happening, those cold, glazed eyes that burned with anger and yet were still widened with fear. The stark contrast between his pale body and the dark night-time water held her gaze until he disappeared beyond the meandering current. Thankful that the worst was now over, she began to drive back home and figure out how she could actually feed from unknowing mortals. It was still fairly early on in the evening but well past twilight, though the unrelenting aggravation caused by her dark desires did not lend her time to think of anything but her own agenda for the duration of the night. She left the car in the garage and decided to head for the roadhouse in Mansbridge, certain that she would find something to finally quell her bloodthirsty appetite.
She walked down the streets of the town and watched the different mortals drift around her. Never had she felt so unlike society before; granted, she was never a conformist like most of her peers, but there was always someone that she could connect with. Now she had been cast to the very perimeters of society, forced to become an observer and never again a participator. Her new position had diminished her respect for human life itself as everyone seemed to be living the same pointless, pitiful life, just in slightly different guises between them. They lived such fragile lives, she thought, watching with intrigue as a child darted across the road on seeing an approaching car. She was strong, powerful and practically invincible; a human life can be so easily taken at anytime, she mused, and now she had the explicit power to take it or leave it. Did that then mean that she had the right to execute her power over life and death? It was true that she could now decide if a mortal she happened to encounter lived or died, she was simply helping the world go about its natural business. On the other hand, this was most definitely not natural – in her opinion, there was nothing less natural than her destructive cravings but, nevertheless, it was obviously a matter of fact that she was not the only vampire. Out of millions of humans who die every day, she reasoned defiantly, did one more really matter?
On entering the roadhouse she was greeted with the truly repugnant smell of cigarette smoke, beer and sweat hanging limply in the stale air, though she could also clearly sense the sharp scent of blood cutting through the atmosphere like a knife. She could hear the steady beating of several hearts around her; on every rhythmic thud she felt a slight pang of hunger reminding her of what she came here for. Glancing around for a quiet seat where she could gather her thoughts and make a plan, she found a small chair and table in a dark corner away from the rest. It was perfect. She slid off her jacket and placed it on the back of the chair. She notice a few glances being fired her way, however they petered out as, pushing her hair away from her face, she took a book from her pocket, opened it and began to ‘read’ – thankfully, they all left her to her own devices. When they had looked away, she watched the various people in the room with interest – the drunks clumsily lurching towards the bar; teenagers who managed to elude the bartender sipping beer bottles as cautiously as if it were secretly poisoned; two lovers in a small booth sitting closely and looking passionately into each other’s eyes – she wondered how on Earth she would go about actually ‘hunting’ for food. Would she have to seduce someone into her bed before feeding and then have to dispose of another body? There had to be an easier way.
Her mind seemed to wander in several different directions at once, her conscience simply didn't know how to advise her anymore. She looked back at the couple in the booth, marvelled by their innocence; how could she taint something so pure? Her hunger and thirst still writhed inside of her, yet she allowed her mind to wander back to the thought of Dr Parker and the act of killing him. It did not feel like murder, she reflected; it felt like pure bliss. Drinking his blood was like tasting the divine, it was far more intense than any human emotion she had ever felt before, though the act itself was certainly not one of divinity but of selfishness. The very thought that, since finally watching him being carried away by the current of the dark river, he had been lost entirely from her thoughts amazed her incredibly; it seemed to confirm the insignificance and irrelevance of the conservation of human life in comparison with her own survival.
She watched as a pretty, young brunette flirted shamelessly with a confident looking guy stood at the bar as it occurred to her that she could never know what it feels like to love as a human. She would never be able to live the life that she wanted to lead – granted, her life was far from ideal, but she never had the chance to make it better. She had lost so much, and what had she gained – a new life? It felt like a new type of torturous death. A ‘life’ consumed by a ceaseless desire to kill and feed, endless destruction and violation of human life wherever she was; but why should she care about killing if that was what she was required to do? She would kill, feed and then rest; she would do it for self-preservation, not out of malice. It would simply be another notch on the bedpost of death, one more strike through the tally where millions of deaths in the world had already been engraved.
Tiring of her continual moral inner-war she decided to try not to let her old human morals get the better of her – inner-dialogue was simply not her style. She was separate from the mortals beings around her now, she had lost touch with her humanity the when she crawled onto Dr Parker with a smile on her face, anticipating draining him of the blood that she so badly needed. She must embrace her nature for what it is, whether that would be as the sympathetic avatar of death considering the consequence or the prowling predator begging for release – she would not repress herself for the sake of one measly human life, what would be the point? God knows she never changed her ways to accommodate anyone during her human life, so why the hell should she start now? She began to feel a lucidity wash over her as she watched the brunette she had observed flirting at the bar walk out of the roadhouse, surprisingly alone. Sensing the tantalising scent of blood and perfume the girl left trailed in her wake, and her primal urges infesting her mind with thoughts of malice, Dillan decided what to do with no hesitation. She slipped her jacket back on and, eyes turning red, followed the girl out into the moonlit street.
************
Thanks for reading!!
, so only a few more sleepless nights 