Thirst

As I stand in front of the wall of mirrors in the middle of the dark dance room, I take in my appearance. Studying myself was one way to distract myself from the hunger. My too-shiny red hair was damp and muddy from my chase through the local forest preserve; my usually golden eyes almost entirely black because of how enlarged my pupils were due to the darkness. A person's pupils aren't supposed to get that huge, but I'm not a person. I'm a predator. I'm the thing some wish they could be while others fear. Your children fear me after watching a horror movie too close to bedtime. I represent eternal youth and strength - to the human world of media, anyway. In truth, the only thing I really represent is the overbearing hunger. When you are like me, you feel it up to ten times a day. Your predatory instincts take over your body; your mind dissipates to nothingness. There is no escape - you will feed. You don't have to kill, though. You take no more than a gallon of blood, though don't expect your victim to live unless you feed near a hospital and get them inside instantly. Hospitals were too crowded to feed, though. Some call it an all-you-can-eat buffet. I call it a trap.

I could feel my muscles rippling beneath my skin, itching to run, itching to feed. It was starting. All I could hear was the beating heart and the whooshing sound the blood makes as it is forced through the arteries; the life I would probably take that was sitting in the dimly-lit office just down the hall. I turned towards the door.

No, I whisper to myself. I can't go through it again. There is little like the pain of standing up and staring down at the horrified face of someone that would probably die only moments later, knowing that it was all your fault. Instead, I turn and leap through the window, literally, shattering glass that falls three stories down and shatters more. Me, though, I land on my feet with a thump and six inch deep footprints in the grass. With a hop to start, I begin to sprint back to my forest to feed once more.

The closest thing to me when my instincts fully take over me is a rabbit. I turn in mid-air and start heading almost in the direction I came from with a push off by my right foot. When I am fifteen feet away, I leap in "Superman form" and land on my knees with the rabbit in my hands. I am too quick, and the rabbit can't react in time. I sink my canines into it and lap up the warm liquid that trickles down its fur.

I don't care what your books or your movies say, blood does not taste good whether you are human or not. It warms your body, makes you more able-bodied, kills the hunger for a little while, and makes you feel the way a human does in the most pure of air. It is not sweet, it is not electrifying. You still feel like you are sucking on pennies, and in becoming a predator you do not suddenly acquire a taste for it. It isn't enough blood, and I take off running once more.

My next victim is a possum near a berry bush. He knows there will be little competition, and he thinks he'll sense a predator coming before he is put at risk, but he is very wrong. I leap the same way I had for the rabbit and catch him by surprise. He tastes sweeter than the rabbit because of a higher level of glucose, but it's still excruciatingly coppery. This possum gets plenty of iron in his diet. I bleed him dry, praying he didn't have little possums to feed. To my conscience, however, it was better than killing a human who might have little ones to feed.

My hunger tamed for now, I stand up as myself again and walk toward the slowly rising sun for cliche effect. I wouldn't burn up in it, and it wasn't uncomfortable. And hell no, I do not sparkle in it. I could only wish that it would melt me to ash so that my own killing would end, but I'm not the cut-my-own-head-off type.

All there is to do is wait. For what, I'm not sure yet, but I pray that one day the rising sun will come with a message for me.