The Fools That Fall in Love

I sat sideways on the couch to properly face Michael. Butterflies invaded my stomach, not knowing what he was about to tell me. I had the feeling I'd think he were crazy after he let me talk.
"So don't think I'm insane or anything. And I know the word 'vampire' is very off setting, but I have no other word for myself. Sleep all day party all night. Never age never die. That's me. I've been alive since 1908, I'm 103 years old." I didn't know what my face looked like but I was sure it wasn't too comforting as Michael looked worried. He regained his composure and kept talking.
"I used to work for my father, who was a blacksmith. He taught me how to make all different kinds of weapons and how to go about selling them. He was a pretty respected man through the town, but we were low class. No one in the higher classes would talk to us without a business excuse. It was normal at the time so we never thought much of it." His eyes kept going back and forth between the floor and me, trying to find words. I assumed this was something that wasn't normally talked about.
"Can I ask a question?" I asked, knowing he'd say no. I already had a thousand more questions to ask on top of the new ones that were swimming through my mind.
"Not yet." He half smiled, approving of my curiosity rather than the doubt I could have been showing. "I'll explain it all. Then let you ask what you want.
"Now, to skip all of the boring meaningless aspects of my human life, I guess I'll just go to when I met Carl. Carl was the one who changed me, he was such an ass about our first meeting. I was walking home from cleaning up my father's shop, I had nothing on me for protection and I didn't think I would need it. I never heard of anyone getting killed or stolen on the streets, especially in the day light, so I wasn't worried. But a very tall and lean man bumped into me. I'd apologized anyway and tried to keep walking until he stopped me.
"'Stop there blacksmith.' I remember him saying. He didn't sound friendly and I wanted to run but something told me it would be a better idea to stop. So I did. He stood in front of me and looked me up and down. 'Walk with me.' He demanded. So I walked, keeping my distance from him. I kept asking what he wanted but he always evaded the subject until I started yelling at him to tell me what he wanted or I'd go home. I was very suspicious with his attire, as he was wearing layers upon layers of clothing that covered as much of his skin as he could cover without looking too suspicious.
"He wasn't very secretive or magical as fairy tales say vampires are. He wasn't even good looking. His hair was dirty and curled, he was thinner than anyone I'd ever seen and his clothes were terribly dingy. He looked like a poor man. But anyway, he told me that he wasn't human and wanted to drink my blood from my neck. I told him he was crazy and tried to walk away, but I remember exactly what it was that stopped me.
"'Do you want to live forever Michael?' I stopped dead and turned around. He explained to me that if he bit me and drank my blood in a certain way that I would be forever youthful and never die. I was incredibly curious but a little cautious as well. I asked him if it would hurt, and he said yes. I asked if it would always hurt, and he said no. I even asked if I would be able to change people too, and yes was his answer. I walked back to him, seriously considering this man truthful. I was skeptic about everything, but I had so many things I wanted to do before I died. I wanted to travel the world and meet thousands of different kinds of people. I wanted to study religions in different countries and sail across the seas. And I wanted to fall in love and get married and have kids. All of the natural human instincts. I knew that I would never be able to do any of that stuff in my lifetime, especially since my dad couldn't run his shop by himself and my mom would never approve of me traveling and studying. She was a very biblical woman, always thought that men should go work, as the women cleaned, cooked, and watched the kids. That's how she was and how she wanted me to live my life. I was doing so too, until this night.
"'There is no way to die?' I asked.I knew I'd wonder what death was like, I already wondered. I knew I wanted to die someday. He explained to me the 3 ways to kill a vampire. The first being flame. If a vampire somehow gets engulfed in flame, it'll die. The second was for their lover to strike them with a wooden stake in the heart. But that's where some of the vampire myths are flawed. Yes, that will kill a vampire, but only by the hand of their lover. If anyone else tries, it won't work. It's very romantic, in all honesty. But the third way, is through the sun. If a vampire goes out into the sunlight for too long, and the time corresponds with the vampire's tolerance and experience, they'll burst into flame and die."
My horror struck face must have been obvious because Michael looked like he regretted saying that. "So I decided I wanted to do it. I wanted to live forever. I followed Carl to a very dark, very hidden cottage he apparently lived in. He took me inside where a heavy lingering smell engulfed me, almost making me choke. It was the smell of too many incense burning and something else that made it thick that I couldn't quite put my finger on, and probably still couldn't now. He lead me to his basement where there was an operating table directly in the center of the room. There were tons of tools on the walls, saws, hammers, drills, doctor's equipment, anything that you could use to tear a human apart. A lot of the instruments had blood on them, some dripping with it and others dried. I was shocked at the scene and even more shocked that I was actually getting on top of the operating table by myself. Carl had told me to do so, but I was shocked to find myself actually doing it.
"I had a hard time trying not to puke, I was very sensitive to things like that. I couldn't be around anything dead, the smell and look of it always got to me and I'd either puke or pass out. It felt the same as you would feel as if you were about to take your own life, except there was a little twist to it. I was selling my soul." I'd never thought of immortality in a way where you'd have to sell your soul. I never even realized that Michael literally had no soul, which was why he was undead. I also didn't even realize that he didn't have a beating heart either. I would never hear the sound or feel the thumping myself, that was long gone.
"Anyway, he had me lay down on the table and he cut me in three spots. Once on the back of my neck right on my spine, and once on each wrist. I was starting to wish I hadn't agreed, but it was obviously too late to turn back. Carl shoved my right wrist into his mouth and started collecting the blood in his mouth. I remember my stomach churning and feeling dizzy after just a few moments. He lifted off of my wrist and quickly made me turn over and move my hair so he could reach the back of my neck. The blood that had been stirring in his mouth was released into my neck, which sent an incredible burning sensation down my whole spine. He went to my left wrist and sucked out the blood and injected it back into my right wrist, completing the circle. When he was done, he told me to go home when I could walk and he left.
"A couple of hours had to have gone by and I couldn't bear to look at those bloody tools anymore. I got up, even though every part of my body was sore and burning, and I walked the long way home, but not after getting lost a few times. I was incredibly afraid of what was to come, somehow I knew that Carl wasn't just full of shit. He'd actually made me immortal. I didn't sleep that night, and I started noticing my sensitivity to lights and fires. I sat on the roof to watch the sun go down. It was my last sunrise, and unlike Louis, I did often watch the sunrise before I was changed." Michael smirked at his reference, but moved on. "I remember watching the sun rise every single morning, feeling the chill of the night air cease to exist, the warm sun letting it's heat grace me, and the way the vacant town looked as I walked.. It's the one thing I miss the most about being human. I can never see the sun again, not directly. I can never watch the sun win the silent, unrelenting war with the night." He wasn't talking like himself, I knew that. He was talking as if he were living back in the era he was actually born in. I wasn't sure hwy he started talking like that, but I knew he hadn't even noticed; after all, it was once all he knew.
I could tell that he was reliving that morning, and every morning before it, wishing he could see it once last time. I could see that he wanted to be human again, but I really didn't expect what he was about to say.
Michael rested his back on the couch, laying his head back as well. He looked longingly at what seemed to be nothing while his eyes gently closed. "Sometimes, I have these terrible thoughts." He admitted. "I feel like I've been here for far too long. I just don't want to go on anymore. But something inside of me always tells me to keep living. Keep going.. But for what? I want to die.. I do. But.. I can't do it. I like to think that I've lived how I was supposed to live and accomplished what I was supposed to in this life time, and that it's okay to die. But something pulls me back. I can't die." His eyes opened and stared at the floor, his mind not completely there, only half way. The rest of his mind wandered other places, most likely beyond the grave.
"You know, living is easy. You just.. Find ways to survive and continue on with your day. Dying.. Dying is so different from life. I've died once already. I died at age 22, an early death even back in my day. Dying is hard and no matter how many people are around and with you, no one is actually with you. You're alone, no matter how you look at it. When you die, you die by yourself, and it's a long and fucking scary road.. But there's nothing you can do. Nothing you can do to stop it. Nothing you can do to prepare for it.." He paused, thinking.
"What happened to your family?" I whispered, knowing he'd only answer if he wanted to.
"I wasn't allowed to see them again, I knew that. As I mentioned before my family was very religious, so if I spoke of anything like this, or if they noticed that I only came out at night or even ever caught me drinking blood, they would send me away. They would have accused me of worshiping the devil and made sure the whole town knew so I'd have to leave. I couldn't hurt my family like that, so I stayed for as long as I could, until people started getting suspicious. I had to fake my own death.
"One night, I was working late, as was becoming a usual thing, and I tested my immortality for the first time. I had a short metal bucket type thing that we put rusty and unsharpend blades in. I set them all in so the sharp sides were up and I just.. Fell. Directly onto them. Two of them stabbed my heart and the rest were plunged into the rest of my torso. I fell over, making it look a bit more natural than it was. I expected it to not hurt at all, but it did. Not as much as any human would be hurt, but I felt the pain for a short time. My skin seemed to just sit and wait for the blade to be taken out before it healed. I noticed that I stopped bleeding much sooner than I normally would have, so when I pulled one out to test it, my skin automatically healed.
"My dad found me that morning, his horror struck face still haunts me today." Michael seemed to be getting emotional, but how could you not? "I remember his scared voice, calling out for me, screaming my name. He prayed and yelled for me to come back to life, but I couldn't move. I couldn't comfort him and let him know I was okay. I had to lay there and pretend to be dead. When I did this at first, I didn't think it's be so hard, but while it was happening, it was terrible. To this day I still say that the whole process of faking my death was the hardest thing I'd ever done.
"Dad took my to my mom and all she could do was sob.She kept crying and screaming, 'Michael! My baby boy, what happened to you? Why is this happening? What happened to my son? My baby..'" He teared up, look at the ceiling. I knew this was hard for him to talk about, even I got teary just imagining it, let alone living it. "And my dad just kept saying "No! God, why?' over and over.. My funeral was the next day.
"They hadn't had much planned, but all of the lower class towns people were there, some sobbing, others not even knowing who I was. The children that came cast black flower petals everywhere as the church's choir sang their hymns. I was upset and afraid.. I didn't know what to do. So I faked it. I stayed where I was and.. I had to dig myself out of my grave when the night came. From then on, I never saw them again. I left home and have yet to go back."
I knew this was the point where I could ask all the questions I wanted. It was going to be a long night.