Fireflies.

My new contest

Growing up I had always visioned that my life would be different. I suppose a lot of people say that, after all what we dream and expect are often very different from our reality.

Of course, my thirteen year old self could never have visioned that I would end up on the fringes of humanity. That I would deal with the creatures my classmates read about in their favorite novels.

I thought, in my innocence that my friends and I would be friends forever, that we'd travel the world searching for the love that so many wrote about.

The love we all dream about, the blinding, consuming emotion that would make any future pain worth while.The love with someone who understood every part of you and loved it anyway, even the parts that scare even us.

But that's one of the irony's of life, we are taken by surprise constantly. Just when we feel we have a grip on it all, life throws something else at us, just another test.

Just when we think we've finally learnt the difference between right and wrong, again life throws us something, just to see how firm those beliefs are and how tightly we hold onto them under preasure.

Now at eighteen, I have an even lesser grip on right and wrong than I did at thirteen. My hold on life and what will happen to me, is weaker than it ever has been.

I now live on the fringes of humanity, hunting the creatures my class mates adored.

And my innocence, well that was shredded not long after my fourteenth birthday, but that's a story for another day.

As for my dreams for finding love? Long gone, my body is used for destruction and death. The moments I can use it for pleasure, for life, are moments I treasure as they're rare.

I've been all over the world yes, but for my career. Sadly lounging on some tropical beach or looking at historical monuments isn't in my job description.

No, my job description consists of varying certificates for martial arts. And my senior classes had names like combat 202, weapon studies -Advanced, Vampire behaviour 301, amongst others.

I'm a hunter for the great city of New York, I work for the international organisation of the Occidere Vincere, an underground organisation funded by the government of the United States of America. I'm in charge of sector three which consists of over fifty other hunters like myself.

I live a life of darkness, hunting and killing the things that go bump in the night. Instead of ballet lessons I now train five days a week, with other hunters. A blade is now my best friend, and has saved my life more often than any person has.

I've been hardened by the world, I stick to myself and live for solitude. I'm sarcastic and jaded, I've seen far to much to hold any innocence anymore.

My name is Estelle Rosemary Hieros, I'm a warm breathing human who feels pain just like the rest of you. I search for revenge for those I loved and live to protect the innocent. And this, this is my story.