Amanda

Amanda was running for her life. Her legs were hurting, her lungs were burning, her gums were throbbing and she was gasping for breath. She was exhausted and all she wanted to do was sit down and rest for a while. However, rest wasn’t an option. Something was chasing her.

So she ran.

And ran.

Everything had started when she decided to stay late in the around-the-clock café to read her book. It had been very noisy at home, her brothers were running everywhere, screaming and shouting, playing as kids do. Usually, the cacophony of her little brothers’ games didn’t bother her too much but this time she had found herself reading the same paragraph over and over again. After the fifth reread she had decided to go to the café alone. That had been her first mistake.

After getting there and ordering the usual large latte, she had got immersed in her book so much that she hadn’t noticed the time. What else was new for a bookworm like her?

After realising that it was much later than usual and that her parents would worry themselves to death for her, she had quickly paid and stormed out of the bookstore.

Her second mistake had been going outside in the dark alone.

That’s why she was running for her life now. She didn’t even remember how it had got to it. She just remembered sensing something bad, seeing a pair of red eyes and off she had gone, running for her life like Hell itself was chasing her. And it probably was.

Amanda wasn’t one to scream or cry, she wasn’t very emotional and the closest for her to a breakdown was the panic rising in her chest. Her legs were hurting so much that they had started slowing down, her breathing was now laboured, her lungs burning, her whole body was tired and sweaty and all she wanted to do was give up.

For the first time since she had started running, Amanda realised that she was going to die.

This realisation hit her hard. She loved life. She didn’t have many friends and wasn’t especially outgoing but she loved spending time with them anyway. She loved her little brothers and she also loved her books. She had always known that she would never read all the books she wanted to, but realising the truth of it hurt more than her whole body after this maddening sprint.

Amanda didn’t know what to do. She had lost track of time and didn’t know how long she had been running for, all she knew was that it had been far too long. This was the most exercising she had done in the past year and was enough for a decade.

She tripped.

And fell.

Amanda had a second to decide whether to keep on running and try to save her life. She didn’t have where to go. She would never lead whomever or whatever was chasing her to her family and she couldn’t go to the police either. She didn’t even know where the police station was. She was pretty much sure that she was lost in her own hometown and didn’t know what to do.

Her legs hurt like hell. Her lungs barely worked.

She sighed. There was no point in running anyway.

I can’t be arsed, she thought and sat in the middle of the pavement.

She waited.

When the thing finally showed up, she wasn't afraid, she didn’t try to run away. She simply accepted her fate. When the thing came, it wasn’t even human, she simply waited for death to claim her.

A vampire? Her last thought was as sharp teeth pierced her neck.

And then, darkness.

Amanda slowly came into consciousness. The first thing she knew was that something was wrong. The second thing she knew was that she didn’t have a pulse. Oh, she thought. So that’s what’s wrong.

She frowned. She was pretty sure that she wasn’t supposed to be conscious or even alive.

But, she thought again, if I don’t have a pulse, then I’m not alive. Right?

She opened her eyes. She felt weird. The last thing she remembered was running, tripping and being eaten alive. Oh, well, more like sucked dry. Amanda touched her neck where the vampire had bitten her. Vampire. That’s what she’d chosen to call the creature until she found out what it was. She wasn’t exactly surprised but she wasn’t unsurprised either. The feeling was weird. She had always believed in the supernatural but to have it actually happen to her was surreal.

She could be dreaming but she couldn’t dream up the pain of the chase. Besides, she usually didn’t dream about being chased by vampires.

Amanda sat up. Her body felt weird. It was sort of light but a bit stiff. Was that due to her being dead or because she had slept for a long time? Was it even called sleep when somebody died for a while and came back to life? Was she now a vampire or a zombie? What had happened?

She felt the tips of her teeth as she looked around. The room was dark but she could see quite clearly all the normal furniture inside: a desk, a wardrobe, a full-length mirror, some shelves and a couple of chairs. She didn’t have fangs but she could see in the dark. A slow smile spread on her lips. She could now read in the dark.

This small happiness made everything she had gone through that night be worth it.

She was just about to stand up when the door to the room opened. She immediately was on guard, not knowing what to expect.

A tall guy came into the room, carrying a dark wine bottle and two glasses. He was dressed in a suit, his long dark hair pulled in a ponytail at the low of his neck. He was totally the type she had been into four years ago. His dark blue eyes added to the overall picture of perfection.

This has gotta be a dream, she thought. It was too good to be real. These dreams didn’t just happen in real life.

And yet, here she was in a dark, unfamiliar room with a tall, dark and handsome stranger. He smiled softly and she almost expected to see fangs.

“I see you are awake,” he said.

“That I am,” she answered, not knowing what else to say. She wanted to ask so many things but at the same time, she was curious to see what he would do if she didn’t. So she kept quiet until addressed again.

He moved one of the chairs in front of the bed with his right foot and sat on it. He was so tall that sitting down he was at her eye level while she sat on the bed. She watched him as he made himself comfortable.

After he settled in the chair, he just stared at her. She stared back.

Amanda didn’t know how long they sat like that, unmoving, staring into each other’s eyes. If she had been alive, she would’ve started fidgeting at some point but because there was no blood flow in her veins, she didn’t need to move at all and apparently the same went for him.

What now? She wanted to ask but remained quiet. This guy was weird.

Amanda smiled slightly and raised her eyebrow.

The guy blinked. It was like he came out of some trance and blinked again.

She decided to be weird and while still smiling, wiggled her eyebrows at him. The guy’s expression almost cracked her up but she managed to contain her laughter. For now.

He cleared his throat, preparing himself to speak. She found it weird that he would do such a human gesture. Amanda immediately concluded that he was probably younger than she had assumed.

“I don’t know how to go about this,” he said. “You are my first one.”

Amanda understood what he meant and yet, she decided to pretend. Putting on a disgusted face, she covered herself and looked at him.

“You… you necrophiliac!”

The shocked expression on his face was her immediate reward.

“What? No!” He said in open disgust. “I… I didn’t… I would never… I…”

He stopped tripping over his words when he saw her grinning. Realising that he was the butt of a joke, the guy gave her a nasty look that just threw her into a fit of laughter.

“That was not funny,” he murmured annoyed.

“Oh, but it was,” she said, wiping at her eyes even though they were drier than the Sahara desert. One good thing about being dead was that she no longer teared up after laughing.

“As I was saying,” the guy said as he gave her a dirty look, “you are my first one, so I don’t know how to do this.”

“Are you telling me that at your old age you are a virgin?” He just gave her too good of an opportunity to miss.

The stranger sighed. He was obviously annoyed. Of course, she might have hurt his ego assuming he was old or a virgin or an old virgin. She didn’t know but she was curious to know which one it was.

“You are a vampire,” he said.

“Cool,” she deadpanned.

He looked at her curiously. He knew that all people reacted differently but having never dealt with it before, he didn’t know if this was a normal reaction. He had expected denial, anger or even tears. He hadn’t expected acceptance.

“You are dead,” he decided to clarify.

“I was dead inside anyway,” she said nonchalantly.

The guy just looked at her. He didn’t know how to react.

“So,” Amanda said, after realising that he didn’t have anything else to say. “When do I feed?”

The guy slowly opened the bottle of wine he still had in his hands and she could immediately smell something metallic. It was the best thing she had ever smelled. He poured her a glass and handed it to her. He poured one for himself as well.

She swirled it. It looked thicker than normal wine and didn’t smell like wine either. Blood. She smiled but waited for him to take the first sip before she did.

Amanda watched him take a sip of the blood and when he didn’t wither and die on the spot she calmly put her lips to the glass and took a tentative sip. It was the most delicious thing she had ever tasted. Her hands trembled, she was afraid that she was going to break the glass from trying not to grip it as hard as possible and pour its contents down her throat like an alcoholic. Instead, she took another small sip, savouring the moment of her tasting blood for the first time. She couldn’t wait to find out what her new life, or unlife, could offer her. She also couldn’t wait to have more opportunities to tease this guy. Oh, yes, her afterlife would be fun.

As Greg watched the newly turned girl sip the blood calmly from the wine glass, as if she was drinking normal wine, he couldn’t help but wonder what he had got himself into.