Vampire Academy

Mikey’s P.O.V.

Two pairs of glove-clad hands gripped my shoulders, pinning me down as one of the nurses slipped a rather large needle into my arm and injected me with some sort of sleep medication. My mother watched, horrified, from the corner of the room as I thrashed and screamed, trying to break free from the doctors’ grips.

I hadn’t slept in five days.

I couldn’t go back to that hell. I just couldn’t.

The doctor told my mother that I had developed Somniphobia, more commonly known as the fear of sleeping.

So the doctors held onto me until my final spark of vocalized fear died away, and I was left, an empty dismantled hull of a boy, to my own devices. And I felt my eyelids getting heavier, and I felt my breathing slow and slow and…to my horror…I lost total consciousness…

And I was floating…

And I was flying…

And I was falling…

And I could feel the dream world swirling around me, in my hair, through my toes, at my fingertips. I opened my mouth and let the world in, my lungs filling not with air, but with the sheer liquidity of the matter around me.

All movement stopped.

I opened my eyes to find myself dangling between time and space. Endless amounts of stars, planets, swirls of star dust, and blazing comets enveloped me. It was incredible. I was surrounded by thousands of hues of blue and purple and red and pink. Everything was bright and exciting and breathtaking. It was as if my brain couldn’t even comprehend the frightening beauty of it all, the sheer magnitude of what was going on around me. I wanted to stay there, in that single moment, for the rest of my life…

Gerard’s P.O.V.

A bead of sweat slid down my face as I fanned my shirt out in a desperate attempt to cool myself down. I was trying to pay attention to what our teacher, Micah Rosenthal, was telling us about Clans and all that, but it was just too fucking hot to concentrate down in that musty little dungeon. Not to mention Raine, who had been following us around for the past few days or so, who also had this class with me, wouldn’t stop staring at me. Not that I minded…

Mr. Rosenthal’s classroom, for lack of a better word, seemed to be the most decorated. There were several lavish paintings of Vampires and their clans mounted on the walls, eyes bright and full of life- not something you’d expect from a creature of the night. In the back of the room there was an enormous poster of the different Vampiric eye colors, fully labeled and incredibly detailed. The adjacent wall was painted emerald green and in the center was a large painting of a group of Vampires. After a class or two I finally realized that the tall, blonde-haired man in the middle was Mr. Rosenthal.

“Alright today we are actually going to get into how Clans work. A Clan is, obviously, a group of people with one or many, common element or elements. Now, you might be asking yourselves, ‘How exactly do Vampires get put into different Clans?’ Well, have you looked at our eyes lately? Are they all the same color? No, they are most certainly not. So, as I hope you have used your skills to figure out, what Clan you belong to depends solely on the color your eyes turn.

The Clan colors and names include,” The sound of pencils on paper filled the room as he turned to his chalkboard and began to scribble, his hand-writing rivaling that of a kindergartener’s.

-Gold, The Clan of Angels.
-Black, The Clan of Bandits/Traitors.
-Blue, The Clan of Flight.
-Crimson, Clan of Fire.
-White, The Clan of Descendants.
-Violet, The Clan of the Universe.
-Pale Pink, The Clan of Healers.
-Emerald, The Clan of the Earth.

When he finished he turned around and pointed at the poster of eyes. “I want to mention to you the Black and the Gold Clans first and foremost. The Gold Clan is made up of individuals who...are the most in tune with their Vampiric selves. They tend to be…very controversial, and they start fights with many of the other clans. No fight, however, has gone on longer than that of the Angels and the Bandits. Now, the only Vampires who have Black eyes are those who are descendants of Traitors. A Traitor would be anyone who either gives away the location of Vampires to hunters, helps kill off Vampires in order to not be killed, or is cast out of his or her Clan. It only takes one Traitor to ruin an entire bloodline. The Angels do not take kindly to Traitors, due to their…especially…vehement Vampiric Patriotism; therefore, they do not allow their members and members of the Clan of Bandits to mingle. Angels that associate with Bandits are cast out of the Clan. Being cast out of your Clan is the worst possible thing you can do as a Vampire. You no longer have protection against hunters or other Clans, and you have certainly tainted your family name and bloodline. No other Clans will take you in, as they will see that you cannot stay true to your roots.”

Now, in a very distracting fashion, he began to pace around in front of us, “Of course, many Vampires don’t agree that members of one clan should be forbidden to even speak to members of another, but that is not their place to decide. Rules are rules, laws are laws, and punishment is punishment.”
---------------------------------------

I was getting used to how the Academy worked, how the teachers were, who was in charge, etcetera, etcetera. There was something about this school, though, that just made me feel so…good. It was like a normal school, really, except for the fact that it was deep underground, the teachers were extremely eccentric, and not to mention that the goal of all of this was not to learn how to function and go to College, it was to learn how to not die after getting the disease known as Vampirism. After all, that’s all Vampirism is; it’s a disease. At least, that’s what Ms. Ksenia Vasiliev explained to us more recently, though she didn’t have the chance to go into much detail.

Our free periods consisted of sitting around and wondering what the hell we were going to do for an hour, besides trying not to vomit up our lunch. We didn’t really have “homework”, at least not yet, and it’s not like we could leave the underground catacomb until we finished school, so we were condemned to lie around in our rooms until our hour was up.

“Man, that Myths and Legends, that’s some crazy shit, huh?” Frank asked, flopping down on his bed and squirming out of his t-shirt.

“Mhm,” I mumbled, attempting to open a letter I’d gotten from my parents, which had promptly been thrown at me by the mail guy during lunch.

“It’s crazy some of the shit people come up with, you know? It’s like, how could you ever think that garlic would keep a bloodthirsty creature of the night from tearing you apart?!” He laughed wildly and put on a different shirt, for whatever reason. I fumbled with the ribbon that kept me from opening the damn letter. Why mom and dad sent it to me this way, I had no idea, but it was beginning to piss me off. “And the teacher, holy shit! I mean, I thought she was kind of strange, but damn! She was writing today about…whatever, and this guy, Holt, rolls up this note to throw across the room to his friend, and just before he throws it she yells insanely loud, without turning around, and writes on the board, ‘DON’T YOU DARE’. It was insane! I mean she didn’t even turn around! It was like…” While he established how insanely cool it was that she was psychic or some shit, I was getting more and more frustrated by the second. I tried slipping the little red bow down the paper, but it turns out that it was glued down. For whatever reason, they double knotted the ribbon, and my nails were too short to get in there and get it untied, so I was completely screwed. So finally, in a ditch effort, I started cutting the ribbon with my teeth. I had gotten about a fourth of the way down it when it was suddenly yanked out of my grip. “You’re doing that wrong,” Frank stated, putting his teeth where mine had been, biting one half of the ribbon, and, in an animalistic fashion, ripping backwards. The letter opened and he handed it back to me, smiling triumphantly, but not arrogantly like I honestly would have expected.

“Th-thanks…” I mumbled, suddenly feeling like dirt for tuning him out. He grinned and flopped back down.

“Anytime! So, anyway, Elliot’s like a crazy genius…hey are you okay?” I felt Frank climb on my bed and read the letter over my shoulder, as my mouth hung open and my eyes grew wider by the second.

Gerard,

I hate to be so blunt but I don’t have much time. Your brother’s been hit by a car. He’s been through many surgeries to remove bits of metal from his major organs. He had been fine and alert for awhile, but he had stopped sleeping shortly after the surgeries ended… The doctors gave him something…it’s a long name, I don’t know. It was to help him, but now he’s not waking up. It’s been a day and a half. I don’t want to cause you alarm, or keep you from doing well in…school. I just thought you might want to know what’s going on. I don’t know when I’ll be able to write again, but just pray for Mikey, okay? For the love of God, please stay safe.

Love,
Mom