• If I Shall Die Before I Wake


    Prologue


    The little boy looked up at his parents, his eyes the color of blood. He used his weak little fists to pound on them, on the walls, on everything, as he whispered his wishes, "Love me, love me, love me......" and his father carelessly pushed him away before turning back to his other three sons.

    The lonely child looked pleadingly up at his mother but she looked away and then walked over to join the rest of her family. "Please, love me!" He is still ignored. "Don't let me go!"

    The van appeared from the dark depths of the night to take the boy to the orphanage and he screamed, "LOVE ME!!!!!" The people of the orphanage picked him up and carried him away. He stared at his loved twin brother as he wondered what it would be like to be him. To be listened to. To be loved.

    To not be the monster he is.

    And every night he was in that dreaded orphanage, not knowing what to think, what to feel. He just looked through the many windows at the stars and wondered why he must be this, why he couldn't be like the rest of them. Why he had to be some blood-sucking monster with eyes of death. Why he had to be the regrets of the mother who didn't love him.....

    "Kaden!" I gasp as I sit up right in my bed. My alarm clock is screeching at me and i unplug it furiously and throw it across the room. Why must he haunt me? Why?

    Tonight the it has gone farther, to what his life was like at the orphanage. I stare at the window at the stars that he was staring at in the repeating dream....the repeating nightmare.

    I take my ponytail out and let the damp hair stick to the back of my sweaty neck. As I rest my head in my hands, there's a knock on the door and I hear Keaton ask, "Charlotte, is everything alright?"

    "Yes, just fine." I call in response. Although nothing is fine.

    Because I'm falling in love with his unloved brother.