A NIght In The AfterLife

The year was 1790, though that really is unimportant, if it is anal any any further than the surface. To me, it was a year of the greatest pain I will ever know, and of the potential of love and a woman’s touch to bring the greatest pleasure any man can know.
It has been 2, 2 and a half years since I was made the way I am now, and the way I will be for eternity, or tomorrow, whichever is the day the sun’s rays will greet me once again.
In any event, I was walking along the darkened streets of some small French Village, hunting my next meal. This particular meal was a five-foot-tall, long-brown-hair, beautiful specimen of English School Girl. Her name, as I overheard it, was something along the lines of Roxann Sienna Clarke, or something like that. Here and now, she shall forever be called Roxee. I was following behind her and the students surrounding her, though they seemed more involved in their own affairs to notice this uncut diamond in their midst. I was intrigued by this girl. She seemed so innocent, but her eyes projected a near endless intelligence and curiosity. I chose to follow her more closely, to see if I could get more of an idea about her from the books she carried. No such luck for me it seemed. The only book I could see clearly was an untitled leather-bound volume I would later learn was her journal. I have still, in all the years since, not gotten a good look at that book.
I chanced startling her by moving up beside her and beginning a light conversation from behind my high collar, low hat, and dark glasses. I still laugh at how well I fit the stereotype of my kind in those days.
“Good Evening, Milady.” I said, bending to kiss the back of her hand lightly, “might a gentleman request to walk such a radiant beauty home?”
She nodded slowly, like she was coming out of a stupor. Which, truth be told, she was. I have since ceased to use my power so blatantly since then, but at that point, I was new to the game, as it were.
“I would be honored, good Sir.” She curtsied quickly, obviously only trying to fill her own stereotype. I took her arm lightly, and took her books in my other arm and we began to walk back to her room. As we neared her apartment, I began to use my power of suggestion more forcefully, making her ask me if I would mind walking with her for a while longer. I, of course, agreed wholeheartedly, stating that a young one such as her need not be out alone at this hour. We walked down the street, toward the awaiting darkness of the countryside.
When I was satisfied that we were far enough away from town, I turned to her and removed my glasses. She looked up into my eyes, and opened her mouth in the beginning of scream. But before she could even make a sound, I had covered her lips with my own as my hands began to play over the rest of her body. She slackened in my arms, as the scream that she tried to release turned inwards and exhausted what energy she had left to fight me. When she was satisfactorily “out-of-it”, I removed my lips from hers, and moved them down to the left side of her neck.
I felt the warm rush of her life blood flow into me quickly at first, then slowing as her heart dealt with the loss of so much of its Vitae. When I had finished, I stood, placing her lightly in a hay bale somewhat off of the road, so that no casual passerby would see anything suspicious, then was on my way. I heard a strange sound behind me and turned to see her launching herself at me with reckless abandon. “Girl, I applaud you fiviniving through that, but in your current condition, that won’t last long.” I said stoically as I swung my arm out to fling her out of my path. I thought to myself,” she responds the same way I did when I met my first vampire”.
Anger. This was the key to my change, and it occurred to me that, as my Sire had punished me, might I reward her, if that is what she would take it as? During my transformation, I was a sad creature, barely aware of those around me, save for the man I grew to hate, and then love, after I had my final meal in his presence. That meal was him, and that was probably the reason I even began to entertain this idea of her as my companion.
She came at me again, determined to take her revenge for what she viewed as a previous wrong to her person. When she was within arms reach, I took her to my chest and hugged her tightly, holding her there as she began to sob. “You bastard!” she cried, impotently beating on my chest with her balled fist. “I’m going to die, aren’t I?” she asked sobbing once again.
“Yes, my dear, you are.” I answered, trying not to belie my emotions to this human youth. “If I could go back, and change it so that we never met, I would, believe me.” I was torn up that this girl would fight harder against her apparent death than I had seen anyone, before or since fight any other force, be it interior or exterior. One single, blood-tinged tear made its way down my ivory-skinned face, to land unceremoniously on her foad aad and snake its way to rest on her lower lip. Her tongue darted out quickly, taking in this small part of myself. I broke our embrace, then tried to shove her as far from myself as I could, only succeeding in knocking her to the ground.
Apparently, this was when logic restored itself in the girls mind, because when she rose, it was not to come at me again, but back towards town, battered and bloody.

I have not thought on that day for over 200 years. The year is now 1999. I am standing with my back against a lightpost, just outside the dim circle of its illumination. As with all of my kind, I had no problem blending in with the darkness around me until I deemed it necessary to be seen. I stood across the street from a small club on the outskirts of town, waiting to catch a glimpse of one of the patrons as she made her way back to her car. A young woman emerged from the dark beyond the doorway and began to weave through the parking lot. It was obvious she was not going for a car, so I considered this a good night, since she would have to walk home. Because of her oversize hooded sweatshirt, I could not make out any of her features save for the gentle, hauntingly familiar curve of her hips, andt a t a hint of a chest I had seen many times in the memories that assaulted me when I awoke every night. This is not possible. That girl would have died more than 15ars ars ago, but this girl wandering the street in front of me had to be her.
I walked up beside her and removed my glasses. She did not even look up or seem to notice me, save for a slow, barely visible nod when I asked, “might a gentleman request to walk such a radiant beauty home?”
She barely responded to me, so I began to talk to her once again. “Milady, you seem very familiar to me, could we have met somewhere before? A past life perhaps.t myt my utterance of the word “life”, I felt her body tense up and release as if she were going to faint. It seemed she had been doing the same mental calculations I had, because the instant I went for her hood, she ran as fast as her legs could carry her. As she ran, the hood fell back, exposing me to a sight I had nearly forgotten in the 200+ years since. Her hair flowed behind her as she ran, bouncing slightly with each pounding step on the hard pavement.
I crouched, readying myself for a leap into her path and released, just in time to see her disappear from my view. Startled by her disappearance, I lost focus and landed hard on e foot, losing my balance and skidding to a halt on my face. She stood behind where I had anticipated her movement to, and laughed. I was enraptured instantly with dre dream, this impossible creature that should not exist. I stood, brushing myself off roughly, stepping angrily towards her waiting form. As I neared her, my rage turned to joy at finally seeing the face I had seen in such anger those years ago, now in utter joy at seeing me as well.
“My name is Ettiene Lucke, Milady.” I said, kneeling in front of her.
“Get up, you goofy blood-sucker.” She laughed as I stood again.
She looked at me, and I at her, for what seemed like an eternity. She was the first to make a move. She closed the short distance between us and enfolded me in her pale, delicate arms.
“I don’t unders. Ho. How are you still alive?” I asked.
“Simple. Are you alive? Well, neither am I.” she stated simply in her high, girlish, sensuous voice. “I have lost many friends, searching for your kind.” she added with a note of seriousness in her voice.”Never too the violence of my first encounter with you, simply with aging, their’s not mine.”
“As I said then, I shall say now. If I could go back so that we never met, I would.” I said, on the verge of tears with the sadness in her voice.
“Ah, but there is where we differ. I do not wish for us to have never met, I simply wished afterwards to find you. At first, it was a task of revenge, but as the years wore on, I knew I needed some one that could tell me what this life, or un-life, meant. I hope I have found it now.”
“I am sorry, Roxee is it? But I cannot tell you that, I have often wondered my self, but never have I found a satisfactory answer. I simply go on from night to night, feeding when I can, enjoyine nie night in general. It is nearly dawn, and I’m sure I don’t have to tell you what that means, do I?”
She shook her head innocently, then looked up into my pale green eyes with her own emerald gaze. “All this trouble over one tear...”