Ashes part 1
I woke up very thirsty, which is not at all uncommon for a vampire. I stretched and yawned and clucked my tongue against the roof of my mouth, which made a sound like two pieces of chalk smacking together. I rubbed my eyes and looked around. Same dusty basement room as always. Bed, book case, candelabra, tiny shelf. I threw out my TV after I realized it was destroying my sleep schedule. I got up and stretched again, then bent down to touch my toes. I made the clucking dry-mouth noise again and sleepily meandered towards the front door. I wondered vaguely about the time as I walked down the concrete hallway that lead out to the maintenance entrance, a concrete set of stairs behind an ancient rusted door. A regular catacomb. I kicked the ancient rusted door open, like I always do, then promptly hissed, shrieked and leapt backwards, sprawling without a single shred of grace or dignity on my back. This was caused by the sudden cascade of burning yellow sunlight that rushed inside.
I screamed and flailed, expecting my skin to flake away bit by bit, my insides igniting and dissolving me from the inside out. I waited for the rush of mind-shattering pain, the unfathomable agony that is said to occur when our kind enter the sunlight. After all these years, done in by a door. What a joke that would be.
But the pain never came. I covered my eyes and gasped for air and grasped to regain my composure, then rolled over onto my belly and out of the bright white rectangle cast on the floor. I sat up and pressed myself to the nearest wall and looked at my hands in disbelief. The nails were a little long and in need of trimming, hairy, with a variety of small scars and rough patches, but unchanged. There were no burns, there were no marks. The sun hadn’t had the tiniest effect on me, other than, I suppose, giving me a dose of vitamin D.
A million different possibilities flashed through my mind, hurried, dim, like the passing of lights from the back seat of a car. Was I dreaming? Was I hallucinating? Had I gone mad? Had I been mad all along?
Going into the sunlight—or rather, strictly avoiding going into sunlight—is a main tenant of the vampire life style. It ranks almost as highly on the vampiric priority list as the drinking of warm blood.
In a confused effort to make any more sense of the situation, I slowly put my hand into the illumination cast on the floor and nothing happened. No burning. Nothing. I rolled up my sleeve and put my arm further out, and still nothing. Slowly I got to my feet and after a moment of hesitation, jumped into the rectangle. Nervous, I hopped immediately back out. I gave myself another once over, and not seeing any burn marks or my skin turning to ash, jumped back into the light. This time I stayed. I spun around and examined myself.
“What the fuck?” I said to no one in particular.
Unable to explain what was going on, I decided simply to roll with it and walked out to meet the day for the first time in two hundred years.
