rfwritings

[rfwritings]

I'm Sorry

When I woke up I was next to a boy. I didn't know who he was then, or how important he was. But I did know, that I knew him, somehow. Like a gut feeling I couldn't quite put my finger on, somewhere lost in memories that I couldn't quite place. When I woke up, I couldn't remember anything. Anything at all. From my name, to how I ended up there. For some reason, it didn't bother me at all. I wonder now why that was, but then I guess, this was a strange situation, so such strange details probably shouldn't bother me. This boy I woke up next to, was warm. Living definitely, breathing so softly as he slept beside me. It wasn't until he woke up, that I realised, I mustn't have really been there at all. When he woke up, he looked right through me, and then sat up, through me. This also didn't bother me at the time, I thought this was some kind of strange dream, and I would wake up when it was all over. How naive I was, ignorance is bliss, and I honestly wish I had never opened my eyes. As he started to dress, I noticed... things about him that I hadn't noticed before. He must have been crying in his sleep, honestly I was surprised I missed it, the tear stains on his pillow sticking out at me. His eyes were still red, I wondered why he was upset. There were weird scratches on his wrists too, like they were there on purpose. I remember thinking, 'maybe he has a cat or something?' Glancing around his room, I noticed pictures, all of them turned upside down. I tried to pick them up, but my fingers just went right through them. I tried harder, but I just couldn't pick them up. Sighing, I resigned myself to this as a fact. Dreams were weird, and so stuff that didn't make sense were obviously just figments of the imagination. Then he left the room, and I followed, going through the door he closed in my face. I thought this was probably just what it was like to be a ghost, you know like in all those weird.... romantic movies where one of them is kind of dead. This... is not a romantic movie. Quite the opposite. This is... real. I'm sorry. There are no happy endings here, this is just my story, a story I'm sure many have seen before, and one that will probably be repeated for as long as human beings continue to exist. Really, I am sorry. I followed him down the stairs, as his mother shouted for him to come get breakfast. He ignored her, grabbed a glass of orange juice and went upstairs again, where he crawled back into bed. He had a school uniform hanging on the door, I noticed it when I came back in, I wondered what day it was. He started to play on his phone, so, with my newfound ability to go through things, I glanced at his phone for the date, and when he went to turn up his brightness I saw it. It was a Thursday. Shouldn't he have been at school? Weird. He seemed to do nothing all day, but lie on his bed. And the only time he left his room was for food or drinks. Even then he sparsely did that. I spent a lot of time in that room, wondering why this dream was going on for so long. What was in those photos that he had turned upside down? Surely if this were my dream I should have been to manipulate things or something. I spent some time sitting on his window sill, staring outside while he seemed to just be in constant hibernation. I remember trying to talk to him. "Hey! Hey? Oi!" I'd sit on the floor beside his bed and wave my hand in front of his face, and once or twice I swore he had started to notice me, only to then shake his head and check his window was closed. I'd been there for almost a week, and my, did that week drag on, it's weird how much you notice time when you've got nothing to do with it, sure I could sleep... but sleeping felt strange now... no matter where I would fall asleep, I would always wake up next to him. One day, he'd gone into the bathroom in the middle of the day, and was in there for close to an hour before I decided to check him. Poking my head through the door that was clearly locked, I saw.... At first I didn't know what it was. He was... hurting himself. The scene would have made me sick, had I been able to be sick. He was just cleaning off the blood as I peered in, there was so much... That was when the scratches on his wrists started to make sense to me... For some reason, it was an oddly strange sensation, and glancing at my own wrists, were similar cuts. Was I.... doing things like that? I didn't remember. After that I began to remember snippets of memories, well... not memories, feelings. Intense feelings. Feelings of pain, sadness, regret. Were these my feelings? Why... am I feeling like this? I still didn't remember anything. Nothing about who I was, who I am... who he was, where I was... why I was here. None of it made sense, these feelings only added to my confusion. They didn't subside, but they became bearable almost, the more I watched him, the more it hurt. I wanted to help. Wanted to say it would be okay, and that he should seek help... but no matter how hard I tried, my words wouldn't reach his ears. The days after that, when I was feeling this way, seemed to last an eternity. I don't really remember anything from those days, I snapped out of it though. I was there for a reason, right? There had to be some purpose to me being there. Maybe I could help, maybe I could stop it. I tried, Heaven knows I tried my damnedest to save him. I couldn't let him down, not again. I found myself thinking that, 'not again.' Even though I couldn't remember letting him down before. I don't know. Something inside of me remembered. But I just didn't want to know. I realised really, there was nothing I could do. I was like the draught. Formless. Cold. Hardly noticeable. I tried, I shouted, I cried, I begged. I begged God, I begged every diety in existence, Buddha, Shiva, Allah, I cried out to them all. I received no response. He died. He died, right in front of me. He wrote a note, then he hung himself. It's... sad really. I didn't remember anything until I read his note. 'Dear Ashley...' My name is Ashley Jones. I am fifteen years old. I am not a very good student, and I like art. My name is Ashley Jones, and I died on the twenty-first of October, I committed suicide by slitting the veins in my wrists. My boyfriend, Logan Evans, is sixteen years old, he's smart, funny, witty. I love him very much. My boyfriend, Logan Evans, died on second of November. He committed suicide by hanging himself after losing his fight with grief. When I was alive I thought no one would miss me, I thought, it would be okay if I were to just disappear. No one would notice. Maybe a few people would be sad, but eventually they would just get over it and forget I ever existed. When I was alive I was wrong.

[rfwritings]

Chapter One Of the Thing That now Has a Name.

The Kingdom of Draelon had been left without a ruler for over a year, many had fought over who was next in line, and the possibility that the princess was still alive. The king's brother, who all suspected played a part in his demise, deemed this impossible. The people wouldn't hear of it. They demanded proof of the child's death, proof they just didn't have.

The truth was, that crying bundle of blankets had been the child. And she had been carried away by a servant, and left in a decaying summer home that hadn't been visited by the royal family for a hundred years. Said servant was sworn to secrecy to protect the kingdom, and went onto live in a village far away from the child she had left.

And that brings us back to our protagonist, Nikolas. Nikolas had spent the year looking for her, with only incredibly obscure clues to go by. He was worried and weary when he finally found out where she was. And it was so far away from the path he had been following it took him over three months to just get there, being a vampire and only being able to travel at night was the cause of the journey's length, not to mention time for feeding. Nikolas arrived at the rather large house in the early hours of the morning. The forest surrounding it seemed to have melded into the man-made architecture, the walls were covered by ivy, and some of them had fallen down where a tree had grown inside. The walls appeared to have been white marble once, but the time when that was clear was over. The roof had collapsed in places, and the forest creatures seemed to be only residents of the building. There were a number of squirrels running on the roof, the ground was ridden with rats and mice. Truly it was an image of nature fighting man's influence when man's back was turned. He would have stood to admire the area but really, he didn't have the time. He had to find her, and he couldn't be too late. He couldn't bear to be too late. The kingdom needed her, and he needed her. So he could fulfill his duty.

He pushed open the door, or rather, at his touch it fell to the ground.  "Must have used a back entrance," he mumbled, wandering around the house to see if there was another door, or an entrance to a cellar. The latter was the case. Next to the house was an opening in the ground, and unlike the rest of the area, it was untouched by plants or animals. He found himself thinking that was probably a good sign, after all, if there were no animals, it could mean she was feeding on them. Then he felt sick at the thought of his princess drinking rat blood, or worse. This only strengthened his resolve to find her.

He opened the door to the cellar and was greeted by the unpleasant smell of decay. He was an optimist, so he hoped that smell was her feeding, not her body. He stepped down into the gloom, pulling out a candle and a match. He lit the candle, then held it in front of him. "Hello?" he called out into the darkness, a scuttling noise greeted him. Light quick movements. "Is someone there? I'm not here to hurt you," he said, quieter now he felt she must have been near. It was uncomfortable down there, he felt eyes on him. Hungry eyes. He wasn't certain it was his imagination either. The movement avoided the light, and then he realised how stupid he had been.

The girl would never have experienced any sort of light, so even the dim light of a candle would cause her pain. He blew it out. Now, he couldn't see very well until his eyes adjusted to the pure dark of the room. This usually didn't take long, but oddly, with his fear, the shadows seemed to be alive in his head. This made it difficult to adjust to the darkness as he was looking around, trying to see her.

When his eyes finally adjusted, he did see her, no more than two feet away from him. It was an unnerving sight. He was frozen by shock. The girl... was alive. "Liliana..." he whispered under his breath.

She crouched on the floor, eyes staring at him like a predator looking at its prey. Her hair was long and black, matted and dry, covering her naked body from view. She was so small, and fragile, as if just touching her would shatter her into tiny pieces. She had grown a little, and now resembled a three year old, in terms of her size.

He slowly reached out a hand toward her, and she pounced on it like a god would an offering. He felt her bite into his hand. It took a lot of restraint not to stop her. He had to remind himself, she was a child. She couldn't possibly take enough to kill him, and she definitely needed it more than he did. His other hand petted her head gently, trying to make her see him as a friend, rather than an enemy. Or food. She seemed to barely register the touch, merely focused on her desperate feeding. Then, when he was beginning to feel faint, she stopped. She looked up at him with eyes no longer red with blood lust, but the beautiful blue that her father had had. The honest blue that he had had. Her hair was just like her mother's, black as night. In just one feeding, she looked like an entirely different child. Her body was no longer sickly and fragile, but strong as a well looked after child should be. Her hair was rich, soft. And she seemed able to recognise that he was her friend. He knelt before the girl, "I am Nikolas, little lady, I've been looking for you," he smiled gently, and in return he received a blank stare. He shook his hair, pushing a blond hair from his face. "I'm sorry, you don't understand a word I'm saying do you?" Another blank stare. He pointed at himself. "Ni-Ko-Las." then pointed at her to suggest she tried to say it. He found she could make no more sense of it than the first syllable. "Ni?" He decided it would do for now.

[rfwritings]

Okay so this is the prologue to the thing I haven’t named yet. I’ll link these text posts to the page in case anyone decides to read it.

It was late December that night, December 28th. It was cold, the coldest night Draelon had seen for years, and it would stay that cold for a good few months after. Nikolas, poor soul, had been there. Witnessed the tragic events that are about to unfold before your eyes, dear reader.  They had known the attack had been coming, they’d seen it coming long before they heard the cries at their gates. It was hopeless, and they had known it. They simply didn’t have the armies, or the strength, or the weapons to win. That didn’t mean they wouldn’t try, but it meant they would not risk the life of the thing they held most precious. Merely hours before the arrival of the first attackers, a bundle of crying blankets was carried out of the castle, to be taken somewhere no man nor woman, no human nor vampire, would ever find it. No man except one. But that is neither here nor there for the moment. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. 

The king and queen were strange in their kindness, they ordered their guards to hide in the dungeons and not fight. Swear allegiance to whichever noble power approach them. Several protested and some, when the time came, fought anyway. They wouldn’t betray their king and queen, their kingdom. Some would later call it noble, and others would call them fools. 

The king and queen were captured with surprisingly little fuss. They made no attempt to fight or escape, for fear they would threaten their people. They couldn’t stand to let people die for them. 

They met their fates the following morning. The sun was rising slowly in the sky, as if trying to buy them time. The queen was tied to a post in the center of a court yard, much like a witch to a stake. And with all the injustice. The king was tied up in the shadows, sobbing in the way only a man who has lost everything can. His queen looked at him, her eyes fearless in the face of her demise. Her only fear was what would happen to her husband. Vampires swore to be together eternally in their marriage vows, and when she passed to the next world, so would he. 

The sun hesitantly rose into the sky, unable to put it off any longer. She would not delight them with her tears of pain, she would not satisfy them with her screams, she merely burned to cinders, with a smile on her face as she greeted death, mouthing the words, “I’ll see you soon, my love.” The king was not so controlled. He screamed, cried, sobbed. Then he stopped. His head dropping limply as death embraced him.

Nikolas, like all other sired vampires, felt his master’s death as if a chain had been lifted from his neck. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and entered his master’s room. He had been told to enter there once it was assured that he would not return. Now it was so. And he had one mission. Find the child.