It was too cold and painful to be heaven but too real to be hell. Darkness embraced me despite my eyes being opened. There seemed to be a spiraling pain that swirled around my entire head, peaking at the point where it met the hard surface beneath me. I groaned subconsciously.

I had no idea where I was, but I knew that I wasn’t dead. Instinct told me to panic, but I saw no cause.

Cautiously, I lifted my body up into a sitting position. My body pealed off of whatever I was laying on, sticky with cold sweat. My shirt was gone, and by the draft of the cool air on the rest of my body, along with the way that it stuck to whatever I was lying on, it was easy to surmise that so were the rest of my clothes.

Again, my mind told me to panic. Why had he taken my clothing? There were only a few reasons that I could come up with and none of them were good.

I did a quick self examination. Aside from the throbbing headache accompanied by a strange nauseous feeling everything else seemed to be intact and unharmed.

“Hello”, I whispered softly into the darkness. My voice sounded frightened and pathetic. I said the word so low that it was barely audible at all. After a few moments of uncertainty, I spoke it again a bit louder. No reply.

I placed my hands down by my sides and crawled my fingers away from me. One hand hit a wall and the other hand fell off the edge of whatever I was laying on. It was either some type of examination table or a really wide metal bench, I concluded. Sitting up would answer my question, and I was almost scared to do so. Depending on the answer, that would open up a whole nother bottle of questions to panic my already unsteady brain.

I sucked up my fears and quickly pulled myself into a sitting position, pushing my bare feet over the edge. To my relief they met with a cool surface much sooner than I had expected. I was in fact on some type of wide bench or bed. I sighed with relief.

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I rolled up from the cold marble and my breath suddenly caught in my throat. How long had he been standing there waiting for me to sit up? He could have killed me in an instant and I never would have seen it coming, just as I had planned.

Bright menacing red eyes pierced through me. My eyes grew wide in fear, anticipating his next violent move. He grinned a sadistic grin, and then the pain came.

It wasn’t what I had expected. There were no teeth ripping at my throat, no crack of crushed bone beneath heavy thoughtless hands. His movement was so quick and unexpected. The sound of a thud as the syringe in his hand penetrated the soft tissue of my neck at lightening speed.

There wasn’t time to move and hardly even time to gasp. The poison worked quick, blurring my vision and causing me to almost immediately become unstable. In shock I clutched the front of his denim jacket as I fell to my knees. He made no movement but simply watched my descending to the floor.

It was quick and practically painless, as planned. But the end result was never what I would have expected.

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The evening trudged on and darkness seemed to give birth to a noisy mess. The wind had picked up and tree branches brushed against each other so violently that it sounded like nature was having a scratchy shouting match. Crickets chirped loudly, playing the part of an excited audience.

I had never noticed such things before. In fact, I wondered if I had ever heard them. The steel vampire proof domes that we lived in also locked out the noise from outside. Impenetrable fortresses that speckled the ground like giant silver ant mounds. That is what we had to resort to since the vampire problem had become so bad.

I was growing impatient. How long had I been waiting? One hour? Two hours? I didn’t want to look at my watch in fear that it might not have been that long at all.

The longer the time drug on, the longer I had time to think, the more likely that fear would creep in and I’d slowly regret my decision. I didn’t want that. There was no reason to regret my decision. Life wasn’t going to get any better, and I surely did not want to face another day, not knowing what I knew and feeling the way that I felt.

A few more endless minutes and my impatience was growing to a head. Perhaps coming here, to this cemetery, was a stupid decision. After all, the vampires would want to go where the living things were, not where the living buried their dead.

To be honest, I hadn’t really thought past the point of escaping my rescue. I just assumed that I could stay in the cemetery, that my scent would carry on the wind and bring the vampires to me. Perhaps it was just another one of my naïve thoughts.

Sandwiched between the cold marble of the tomb and the icy chill of the wind my body began to act accordingly as the undeniable cold buried through my skin and into my bones. One thing was for sure, I couldn’t handle the discomfort of being out here much longer.

I briefly debated on looking at my watch to time down 15 more minutes. I needed to get somewhere warmer, otherwise I felt that the cold might kill me before the vampires did. I gave in to my impulsive desperation and brought my wrist to my face, pressing the button on the side that would make the backlight come into play so that I could read the time. I had been outside for nearly 3 hours. I was impressed with myself.

I dropped my arm back down to my side and waited a bit longer. I could feel the goose bumps racing across my skin with the touch of the wind. A shiver rolled down my spine and expanded throughout my body. My teeth began to chatter in tune.

Staying out in the cold like this was stupidly torturous. After nearly 3 hours and not a single sign of a vampire nearby, there was no point in waiting any longer.

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Betrayed. Broken. Those two words had led me here.

The winter wind kissed the wetness from my eyes as I stared out over the city. I listened to thick metal doors grind into place as the nightly ritual began. The city was shutting down in preparation of things to come.

Anxiety poured into my mind. There would be no rescuing me. This was it, my fate was sealed. Now all there was to do was wait.

I leaned back on the cool tomb and looked up at the darkening sky. The icy coldness of smooth granite pierced through my shirt, complemented by the chilly wind that swept over me.

I wondered how long I would have to wait before they would come for me. Would there be one or many? Or by some miracle, or misfortune, would I be rescued from the fate that I had placed on myself at the last moment.

It wasn’t likely. Even the police station stopped patrolling at 6 PM, only responding to the most serious of calls after that time. No one would see me out here to call in a rescue. That is why I picked this place.

I honestly hadn’t been sure that I would have the balls to stay outside. I had contemplated suicide many times before but never had the nerve to follow through. But I suppose that this wasn’t really suicide if someone else was going to kill me. Perhaps that’s what made it easier.

There were few clouds in the purple sky, none of which made comforting shapes. Every one of my senses was heightened as the echo of the steel doors faded into the distance. I decided to stay concentrated on the clouds, I didn’t want to see it coming.

A quick death. I felt like I deserved at least that much for all that I had been through. My entire life had seemed like a never-ending tragedy. This would just be the icing on the cake.

The minutes seemed to last forever as I watched the sky change from bruised purple to a dark shade of blue. Every crackle of leaves brushing against each other in the wind blown trees sent a shiver of fear down my spine at the thought that one of them might be lurking. That the overwhelming pain of my jugular being crushed might only be seconds away, feet away from me, and I’d never even know it because I chose to be so naïve.

Naivety, that is another thing that led me here, just one of my many seemingly psychological flaws. The fairytale life that I kept trying to pretend existed was over. Life doesn’t get any better, and more often than not the hero doesn’t get the girl. Bad things happened to good people, and one innocent mistake could lead to a lifetime of pain and regret. How could that possibly be a world worth living in?

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