Without a Sound

A few minutes later, we were looking at his house. I wanted to laugh when I saw it. It just wasn’t a vampire house. In fact, it looked like a family house. It was nice sized, tan, and new-looking. It also had a pretty front porch with one of those bench swings and – get this – a white picket fence.

“This is my house,” he said to me, stating what was obvious. I raised my eyebrows at him, but he just smiled and walked up the steps.

After he opened the front door to reveal a very dark inside, he paused. He seemed to be thinking. “I’ll only turn on a few lights,” he concluded, nodding to himself. I suppose he didn’t want to hurt my eyes.

He carried me through the dark room. He switched on one light that illuminated an elaborate ebony staircase with white carpeting. Once we were up the stairs, he switched on the light to a hallway. I noticed that the walls were strangely bare. Not a picture was in sight.

There were six dark wooden doors, three on each side of the hall. Mikey froze mid-step, looking at each of the closed, mysterious doors.

I looked at him curiously, and was astounded by the look on his face. He looked as if someone was ripping him apart for a second there. I was suddenly worried. What could be wrong with him?

When he looked down at me, he fixed his expression immediately. He even went as far as to smile. Then his eyes darted to each of the doors like he was wondering where to put me.

At last he went to the first door on the right. He did not turn on the light, so it was pitch black when he closed the door behind us until he turned on a little, dim lamp.

I felt my eyes drooping, and I was too tired to make observations about the room. I was barely awake when he set me on the bed and tucked the blankets around me as if I was a child.

“Sleep as long as you like,” he whispered. “We’ll get things sorted out when you wake up.” He tiptoed out the door and closed it quietly.

I was almost asleep when I realized that the bed was way too soft to be comfortable in. Without even thinking about it, I fell to the floor and stripped the bed of its sheets in the process. I slept on them like they were a nest of some sort.

When I first woke up, I was confused. I shot up and looked around. A little lamp was giving off a small amount of light in the room I was in. The lamp was lavender, and the lampshade had little flowers and ballerinas on it.

I saw that the carpet and walls were also purple. I looked around, very confused. On the dark wooden dresser that matched the framework and the closet doors was a bouquet of fake pink roses, multiple jewelry boxes, bracelets and necklaces, a glass horse figurine, and an intricate porcelain fairy that was missing the very tip of one of its wings.

Each book on the bookshelf was a different size and color. Displayed on shelves were a few stuffed animals and a million dolls of all sorts, some with fair skin and blonde, curly hair, and others with dark skin and foreign-looking dresses on. The twin-sized bed was bare of all sheets, due to the fact that they – along with the flowery comforter – were working as my bed.

It looked like the normal room belonging to a little girl, except that it was perfectly clean. And that was overlooking the strange fact that nothing but shelves and a mirror covered the walls. There was not one picture.

Before I could think it all through, I sensed the presence of blood moving. It was coming from the room next to me. I felt that it was Mikey, who was holding that horrible thermos that I adored so much. I knew this because the living but unmoving blood that was in the veins in his fingers wrapped around the container of cold, dead blood. I frowned. Did it always have to be the same?

He must’ve felt or heard me moving, because he was walking through the door within seconds. After he closed the door, the only light was coming from the little ballerina lamp. The window’s pale pink drapes only revealed blackness between them. It was nighttime. I must’ve slept for more than twenty-four hours.

Mikey tilted his head to the side when he saw my makeshift bed on the floor, but he didn’t comment on it. All he asked was, “Thirsty?”

I sighed and nodded. I was constantly thirsty. That familiar sense of regret was washing over me. It only got worse when the spell of the blood gripped me tightly, and I drained the thermos as fast as I ever did.

That wasn’t the worst part, though. What I hated the most was when Mikey put his arm right in front of my face as I was finishing up, making it impossible for me to even think about resisting. It was like he was offering it to me.

Only after I drank every last drop of his blood was I free to break down once again. I did something different this time, though, just to alter the pattern. When he reached out to me, I pushed his hands away and curled into a tight ball. I hid my face from him. I didn’t understand him.

I could tell that he was shocked by my reaction. So was I, to be honest. I couldn’t believe how… ungrateful I was. He was only trying to help. It made me feel even guiltier. I was messed up real bad, and I knew it.

“It doesn’t have to be like this,” Mikey told me. When I looked up, I saw that he was sitting against the wall on the other side of the room. “You don’t have to cry all the time. Trust me, I know what it’s like to be lost and confused and thirsty and ashamed, maybe even more than you do. You’re not the only one.”

I raised my eyebrows skeptically. I doubted he had ever felt nearly as ashamed and confused as I did.

“You can cry and die inside, or you can accept what you are and deal with it. We all have to make that choice,” he told me. “For some, it’s harder than it is for other.”

I wiped my eyes and stopped crying. It sounded to me like this choice wasn’t a simple one and that it would take a while to make it.

He smiled at me encouragingly. “Now. Let’s talk about some stuff.”