Without a Sound

All I saw was darkness. There was never any light. I could barely remember what light looked like. Sometimes I wondered if there was even such a thing.

For a few years, all I smelled was damp air and rotting bones. I knew the bones were all around me. I wished I could get away from them. I also longed for fresh air. Would I ever smell anything but this thick air or decaying stench? Eventually, though, the day came when I stopped breathing altogether because I didn’t have the strength, and the stink was gone.

All I felt was the cold stone slab underneath me. It was the perfect size for me to lie on, and maybe it had really been made just for me. I was grateful that it was raised up above all the bones I knew were near me. Sometimes a spider would crawl across my leg, or a fly would settle on me for a bit. I longed for these moments. They marked the passing of time.

I never heard anything unless it was the buzzing of a fly or the tapping of a rat’s claws on the stone floor among the bones. Some days I got a treat, and I could hear the rain pouring on the stone roof of this prison, each drop glancing off with a sharp, distinct noise.

All I tasted was this appalling, unbearable thirst for blood. It was sickening. I knew I had to be a vampire or something of the sort. Why else would I crave blood? This longing was repulsive, though. It was so immoral, yet I couldn’t revoke it.

The worst part was that I didn’t remember anything before being in this place. No, that was misleading. I remembered things: shapes, objects, what they were called, and what color they were supposed to be, like trees with brown trunks and green leaves. Or did they have orange leaves? Or were they supposed to be yellow?

There were things I did remember. What I didn’t remember was myself. I knew the concept of names. Everybody – and I was sure I was some form of a person – was called something. However, I could not remember my name. Sometimes I felt like I almost had it, but then it slipped my mind.

All I remembered of myself was waking up on this stone slab. At first, I had searched for a way out. Panicked and screaming, I had waded through the bones and felt the slimy walls for a way out. Obviously, I had had no luck.

Then I had gone back to the stone slab, rested on it once more, and waited for someone to find me. I had no idea who. Sometimes I thought that if someone did come, I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from spilling their blood and testing its sweetness, just to stop the burning ache of my thirst.

Days passed. Months passed. Years passed. Although I really had no sense of time, I knew this was true. A million times I wondered why I didn’t die. A human would’ve died of hunger and thirst years and years ago. Most of the time I wished I had died or wondered if dying eased pain.

I had adopted this frozen sort of trance. Because I was so weak, I couldn’t move anymore. I didn’t have the strength to twitch a finger, much less the energy to blink or even breathe. In all scientific terms, I was dead.

Perhaps the strangest thing was that I couldn’t feel my heartbeat. It was not there. However, I had this deep sense that I couldn’t explain of knowing that there was blood in my veins. Even so, my body did not decay.

I suspected that I was in a mausoleum of some kind, and guessed that there was a cemetery around me. Every so often, someone would come near the tomb. I do not know how I knew this, but it drove me insane. When people were near, I could feel, hear, and almost taste the warm blood flowing through their veins, and I could just feel their hearts beating, inviting me to drink.

But no matter how much I fought the restrictions of my body, I could not move and go towards these people that I was so ready to kill.

Then one day it happened. I was suddenly aware of someone in the cemetery, but this person was different. His or her blood was there; I sensed it. But it did not move through his or her veins. It was almost completely stationary. It felt a lot like my blood, and his or her heart was not pumping either.

This person was almost identical to the corpses that were brought to the cemetery, except that there was one difference: his or her blood was warm. Somehow I knew he or she was alive, and he or she was like me. Also, this person’s blood did not annoy me like other peoples’. Although it stirred that thirst deep within me, it was not as… appealing as other peoples’ blood.

This person stopped somewhere yards away from my tomb, probably visiting a grave. But then they came closer to my tomb and hesitated for a long time just outside the walls.

The person gasped. Upon hearing this, I knew he was a man. I do not know how. I felt him circle the stone structure about three-fourths of the way before he stopped walking again.

What followed was a sound louder than anything I ever remembered hearing. It made my ears ache. The sound was something between the roar of the rain and the sound of the rats’ claws on the stone. Was he moving a big stone?

I will never forget when that first shard of light broke the seemingly endless darkness. It was not the yellow light of what I remembered to be the sun. No. It was pure and silver, as if from the moon.

The light was coming from an opening in the stone wall closest to my feet. As the opening got bigger, more shafts of light entered the tomb. Because I could not use the muscles in my eyes, I could not look away from the ceiling. Each shaft of silver light glanced off the stone at a different angle that was fascinating to me and reminded me of a million stabbing needles.

In my peripheral vision, I saw a shadow blocking the way for more light. I knew this was the silhouette of the man who had somehow detected me and opened the door to my crypt.