#versus actually trying to live and adapt and all the joys and hardships that come with that.

[autumnalwalker]

A Dream About Waking And Sleeping 

Author's Note: No idea how my subconscious got stuck on vampires, but here we are. This was one of those weirdly vivid dreams that stuck with me so hard after waking up I had trouble concentrating on anything else all day. Content Warnings: Vampire stuff. Mentions of blood and death (because vampires). A brief scene of fantasy violence. Mention of unspecified animal hunting/death for food. Nothing graphic or in gory detail though.

I awake in a stone coffin.  Or would “sarcophagus” be more accurate?

I slide the lid aside and find myself in a crypt with other such vessels of entombment.  None of them stir. 

I do not recognize this place. 

In a daze, I explore, soon finding stairs going up. The crypt is beneath a church, or at least something resembling one. The roof has fallen in in most places, allowing snow to cover the floor.  

It’s beautiful. 

A man in armor of black chain and plate and brown leather leaps down from the broken rooftop to attack me with a spear, barely missing me with his initial landing.  I can’t see his face under his pointed black helmet and he says nothing, silently going about his grim task of trying to impale me.  

Somehow I manage to keep dodging and evading my attacker, if only just.  We move from room to room within the church, but he is adept at cutting me off from any exits. 

He raises a hand and several heavy books fly from a shelf behind me.  The unexpected projectiles knock me off my feet, allowing the man in armor to close in on me and finish the job. 

At the last moment I break free from my paralyzing fear, scramble out of the way, and pick up one of the fallen tomes. 

While the man’s spear is still stuck in the floorboards I spring to my feet and begin beating him over the head with the book.  Somehow this is to make him fall. 

With the danger passed, it finally occurs to me how strong and fast I am.  Between that and the circumstances of my waking, I find myself wondering if I am some manner of vampire or other accursed undead creature. 

Funny, you’d think I’d remember something as important as dying, but now that I think about it, I can remember precious little before my waking. 

To my surprise, the book in my hands is legible despite its exposure to the elements and its recent repurposing as a blunt instrument.  Between it and the other books on the shelf I confirm my suspicions and learn something of my erstwhile attacker. 

He was once in line to inherit some legendary sword from his father and go on to become a hero and leader of his people, but that glorious destiny was denied him when his thieving brigand of a brother challenged him for it, won, and went on to become little more than a glorified bandit.  Meanwhile this man lying before me was cursed and exiled to this remote place to watch over the interred dead and put them down should they ever rise. 

He was not a happy man, but he took his long and lonely duty with a sacred seriousness. 

I drag him down to the crypt and lay him down in as best a place of honor as I can manage.  I perform what last rites I can glean from the books. 

I still feel horrified by my own action, but I try to comfort myself in telling myself that it was self-defense and at least the man can finally rest free from his own curse. 

Further exploration confirms that the church is indeed far from civilization. I find nothing but snow-covered forest for miles in every direction.

I return to the ruined church.

Eventually another like me wakes.  Or do I wake her?  These things blur together. 

She is a child, or at least she was when she died, and she continues to act like and view herself as one.  She is perfectly content to play in the snow and the woods, alone, with me, or with the skeletons who rise from the crypt around the same time she does.  I never am sure if it’s her that’s raising them or me.  Or if they simply rise on their own. 

Unlike us, the skeletons seem more like automatons than true people.  They never speak and rarely act or change course from their current action without direction from either the child or myself.  But every now and then I find myself wondering.  Once in a while one of them will take an action unprompted, and with time I start to pick out small quirks and differences in - for lack of a better word - personality that allow me to tell them apart. 

Also, unlike us, they require no sustenance. 

After some days, a hunger takes me and I find myself in the woods to hunt.  It turns out that I can sustain myself on the blood of animals and I bring enough back with me to feed the child as well.  I’ve quickly come to feel protective of and responsible for her.  Motherhood has never suited me, so I choose to think of her as a little sister. 

Unlike me, she finds nothing strange about any of our circumstances and drinks the blood as a matter of course. 

It’s a quiet, peaceful life we find ourselves living. For certain definitions of “life” and “living” at any rate.  

But, even with regular feeding, we increasingly find ourselves growing tired.  When Spring comes we return to our coffins in the crypt to sleep. 

It is Winter again when I next wake, but the state of the church and the trees tell me that years have passed, not merely seasons.  Neither I nor the child have aged, of course. 

And so we settle into our cycle of waking for one Winter out of every four or five.  Or is it a dozen?  The gaps seem to be increasing with time. 

Over the cycles I learn that the other “accursed interred dead” truly are the monsters the old texts claimed.  I see to it that they don’t rise again. 

I know not why I always seem to wake first, but it suits me just fine. 

One day, I wake to find my coffin harder to open than normal.  Eventually I break free to find that the crypt has been converted into a basement. The stone coffins have all been covered beneath floorboards or sealed into plaster walls.  Above, the church has been replaced by a strange house.  It is too warm for winter and there are sun-bright humming bulbs inset into the ceiling and adorning suspended fans. Yet, when I look out the glass window it is dark outside and snow is falling to cover the ground. 

A woman hears me moving around and is as shocked to find me in her home as I am to find hers built on top of mine. 

It is a long talk to explain and to get her to believe.  And to not fear me.  And there are enough details that I keep accidentally surprising her by casually mentioning things I’ve grown too used to to think noteworthy.  The skeletons in particular get a more amusing reaction than they ought to. 

Meanwhile, she explains that it has been a long, long time since I last woke.  Going out hunting for game in the woods is no longer viable, for the area is too developed now.  She offers to do what she can to get me and the child through the Winter until it is time for us to sleep again, whether she winds up going to a butcher or a “blood bank.”

During all of this I learn that she is a single mother.  I am delighted to hear that my little sister will finally have someone else her age (in a manner of speaking) to play with. 

I’m concerned though about what finally drinking human blood will do to us.  Not the woman’s or her child’s of course, but what she might bring us.