Welcome to Gaia! :: View User's Journal | Gaia Journals

The Vampire Saga: Quiet Screams
By Shel Robin

By the sinister darkness of he night, he wandered. He stalked. He hunted.
And he had grabbed me from behind by the shoulders that night, after I hadn't
seen him in almost five months.
I sharply gasped, a white fog escaped the warm confines of my rounded lips,
which was unable to utter any cry of surprise.
“Shel,” he breathed.
It actually took me awhile, frozen in terror, to realize who had spoken.
It was then I was able to speak. “Damon!”
“Did you miss me?” Damon smiled.
“More than you can know!” I said as he released me and I turned to face him.
His handsome face was beaming with happiness at the moment, though I glanced at
his bare forearms and saw two deep cuts that had scabbed over, along with many
bruises and scars. “What happened to you?”
“Oh...uh...um...” he trailed off nervously.
I realized what he meant. “Vampire Hunters. They did this.”
He nodded. “They've gotten pretty violent in the past few months.”
Just like me. Ruining the moment. He was probably aching to see me, and
all I could do is obsess about the last thing he wants to talk about.
There was definitely something different about him since I last saw him all
those months ago. Not something I could put my finger on—but there was surely
something he was nervous about or that he was not telling me.
For now, I was just glad to see my vampire friend. I just pushed the thought
way for the time being.
“Take your mind off them. Come inside.” He cautiously stepped into my living
room, as if he would jump up and race to the door at any time. Damon was pretty
much always like this, having almost been walked in on by my parents on day
about a year ago.
“Where are your parents?”
“At a fancy dress party.”
“When will they be home?” he asked in his timid, little voice.
“They said they'd call.” I was really happy, and I couldn't help grinning while
he had a timid, sheepish line for a mouth on his face. Just like him. Acting
totally emo while I was busy being happy. His shaggy black hair, tall build,
tanned skin, and walnut-shaped dark eyes had almost escaped my mind—it was like
that with vampires. Something about them was enough to make you forget them
easily.
Now that I remember how we first met, I realized how little I knew about them.
I always asked annoying questions to him, like “Do you really suck blood?” and
“are you evil?” while he felt I was being 'racist'. I guess I didn't mean to be,
but I had never really met a vampire before. They usually avoid contact with
humans, and most think they don't exist.
Now I knew they weren't universally evil, and you only became a vampire if they
sucked you dry of blood: and they don't need that much to survive. Vampires suck
blood like humans take their coffee: everyone was different. There were actually
many variations, each more macabre and grotesque than the next. When the thought
crossed my mind that Damon was actually dead with no blood in him, and took
blood from innocent people, it upset me a little, but now I've learned to live
with it.
“Are you OK?” I asked.
“Yeah. Fine.”
“No you're not.”
“Yes I am.”
“Don't argue with me.”
“Don't order around a vampire.”
I huffed. Usually he didn't mention his little 'condition.' “You seem...I don't
know...on edge a little.”
He sighed. “I'm just worried.”
“About what? Vampire Hunters?” He was one of my best friends. If anything ever
happened to him...Vampires couldn't die of natural causes, but they could be
killed like any human could. “If you're that worried, you could stay here.”
He sighed. “I'll tell you later. Let's go into the backyard.”
We sat on the porch overlooking a starless sky due to light pollution, on beach
chairs tilted upwards towards outer space. The closest things we had to stars
were airplanes crossing over the fragile lawns of suburbia--I could almost smell
that awful airline food. In the silence of normal life in the suburbs, we talked
for the longest time—much more time than I spend with any of my other friends on
the phone. I preferred to talk face-to-face.
“Tell me everything about Vampire life,” I pleaded with him.
“Well...” he sat thoughtfully. “I guess I could compare it to an amphibian's
life.”
I tore my face away from the heavens and gave him a puzzled look. “Are you
comparing yourself to a frog? Or a salamander?”
He nodded. “Kind of. We both lead double lives. One on land and one in water.
It's the same for us, except that it deals with sunlight.”
Damon sighed. “I would also describe fear. Fear of the sun—we won't burn, like
most myths say, but we could be permanently blinded. You humans can't
understand. I've been out in the sun before, it's the worst pain I've ever
experienced. It comes to the breaking point between pain capacity and being so
painful you can't feel it, like to razor-sharp, hot rods were stuck into my eyes
until they caught fire, and then trying to put it out with a hammer. It throbs,
stings, and it burns. Trust me, if I ever go out in the sun again in my extended
life, it'll be too soon.”
Yeah. Now he was Mr. Nature. A few months ago, he cried like a baby
when a butterfly got too near.
He looked even more timid and his body tensed. “Along with Vampire Hunters.” He
shuddered. “Those people can do things to you that would go off the charts on
the measurement of morality. I won't even say what they did to my parents.”
“Then why did you want to be a Vampire in the first place?”
He looked me straight in the eye. “Looking back on it, I guess I don't know. I
was stupid. Reckless..” He trailed off. "But I guess there's no changing it now.
Though I would prefer to be human, once a vampire is friendly with you, you
have a loyal friend for life. Probably that's what keeps me going..."
I winced and shivered, when I looked at all the cuts and scars over Damon's
arms and legs.
He smiled at my reaction. “Even if you make the worst mistake in the world,
something good comes out of it.”
We sat in silence for a minute and I let the words sink in. Damon was right.
Something good has to come out of everything bad. And then I remembered...
“What did you really come here to tell me Damon? Why are you so timid all of a
sudden?”
He sighed. “I can't tell you now...but I will say this,” he added warningly.
“You need to leave this town, and you need to leave now.”
“What? What do you mean?”
He gazed at me with a look in his eyes so burning and angry that the world
around me seemed to melt away, and he repeated himself. “Please...” he said to
me, almost desperate, asif he didn't want to do it, but he had to. He never
looked at me that way before.


Half an hour later, I had a small suitcase with some changes of clothes for
contents, being lead out he door by a wary Damon. “You can stay with me until we
get this sorted out...”
I still had no idea what was going on, but I moved as if I was hypnotized. I
followed orders without question, probably subconsciously realizing Damon had a
good reason for all this.
And with that, unknown to me, I left suburbia and that town behind me for good,
not to come back anytime soon.