The following piece started of as a satire with all the vampire craze, but with the character's voice, and a year of hanging about with some awesome writers, I'm sure I can flesh this story out. So without further ado, I present to you the first chapter (still going to work on my finished novel, not going to forget that), and probably last chapter, of 'Exit Light'
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Somewhere, somehow, I found myself stuck in a situation reserved only for the more...trashier romance novels. It was as if the universe was mocking me. You see, the night was clear, the moon hanging above me, its pale face laughing amongst the sea of stars surrounding its pale, radiant glow. The air was cool and crisp, the last breaths of autumn swirling around my short cut brown hair. For a moment time stopped and all that remained were the two of us.
Fuck, you know you’re stuck in a bad novel when the main protagonist describes the world like that.
If it were up to me, I would have preferred to describe the night like this. This night was average, nothing extraordinary about it. It was a Friday night and there was nothing significant about it. It was neither too hot nor was it too cold, in fact there were nights like these stretching back before humans even thought of the word Friday. We were standing underneath a drooping willow, its low branches hiding us from the world; or, as I would like to say, we stopped underneath a dead tree because I could not stand listening to her annoying chatter any more. The smart suit I was wearing was a rental, the pure white dress she wore was cheap, and the blond, curled hair designed to hide her pale sapphire coloured eyes made her look like a hooker.
She looked at me, her eyes seemingly gazing into my soul. Which was crazy, because vampires don’t have souls.
‘I love you,’ she said with her sigh, her breath a faint tickle against my pale skin.
I shifted uncomfortably and groaned inwards. Great, there was the L-word again. I remember back in the day when hunting used to be a challenge. When I had to work for my meals by creeping in the shadows and trying not to get caught.
‘You make me feel beautiful,’ she continued, burying her face into my chest. ‘It was as if we were made for each other.’
‘You don’t say,’ I mumbled. What possessed me to try this? Stupid Tony, he egged me on into this bet. I should have grabbed her in a dark alleyway and had my meal. All this prancing and talking about true eternal love was boring me to a second death.
‘You make me feel safe, Kester,’ the girl whose name I had forgotten said. To be honest they all look the same, and I’m never interested in them for more than a week or two.
‘Yeah, I’m going to have to cut you off there,’ I said. ‘How long have we known each other?’
At first she looked confused, then she smiled gently into my chest. ‘It’s been three weeks, yet I feel like I’ve known you forever. It as if fate has—’
‘You know what, screw this.’ I pulled her off my chest and held her away from me at arm’s length like she was a crucifix. This was getting too far. ‘Stop this romance bullshit. I’m a vampire, you’re a star struck girl who has read way too many vampire novels and written a staggering amount of bad fan fiction about us. Yes, I’ve read your fan fiction. It’s bad, real bad. So bad in fact that it makes me want to smash up a coffin and drive a piece of wood through my shrivelled up heart. If that wasn’t enough, I’m at least two hundred and fifty years older than you. I’m old enough to be your great-great-great grandfather.’ I’m sure I left out one or two greats, but at this point of time I could not care.
‘Kester, stop,’ she cried, the tears staining her mascara. ‘Don’t push me away. I know you’re not a killer. Deep down you want to be like us, to stop feeding and feel normal. Let down your walls and let me in.’
Yeah, fat chance. See, here’s the thing that all these novels and movies forget to tell you. Vampires don’t have emotions. No, correction, we do have some emotion, the main one being hunger, but it takes a lot for us to feel some. Extreme happiness, extreme anger, extreme sadness; you get what I’m saying? You picking up what I’m putting down? Comprende?
You see, we’re killers. We don’t want to be human. We enjoy our position in the food chain. We do not sulk in the shadows, recite bad poetry, and wish to rejoin the cattle. We like our blood from the human neck and any vampire caught sucking blood out of a rat is in need of a bad staking. You know what we call vampires who are like this?
Failures.
Stake bait.
Annoying.
What I’m trying to tell you is this. I’m a vampire, you’re food, and any of that lovey-dovey crap you’ve read or seen in the last ten years is a joke to our very existence. If you’re expecting this to be about how I overcome my savage nature by true love, please put down the book. If you’re expecting the beast in me to be charmed by some beauty, then I request that you pull your head out of your arse, stop with all that Disney bullshit, and join the rest of us in the real world.
Where was I? Oh right, blond bimbo with grand delusions of making me human.
‘No,’ she continued, ‘you’re different. You are kind and sensitive, while at the same time making my heart race and my blood boul. You’re like some kind of drug that I’m addicted to—’.
To be honest, I zoned out around about this point. Seriously, thousands of years of being a scary bad ass now reduced into nothing from a few short decades of badly written novels. The Coven should have sunken their fangs into all those poets and novelists when they had a chance.
‘I show you what it means to be human, Kester,’ girl whose name I can’t remember said. She turned her neck towards me, the idiot offering herself on a silver platter. Well, not silver, that shit stings like there’s no tomorrow. ‘Turn me,’ she whispered. ‘Let us spend the rest of eternity together.’
Turn her? Was she fucking kidding me? One, I don’t have the clearance to turn anyone into a vampire. If every vampire did what they pleased and turned whoever they want into a vampire, then the whole night would be overrun by sulking, emotive, brooding vampires. If that did happen, someone please drive a stake through my fucking heart. Secondly, even if I did have clearance to turn her, why would I? The last three weeks have been torture for me. Could you imagine spending the rest of eternity with her?
Yet again, my mother when I was alive told me never to waste good food.
I extended my fangs and pierced her skin. Her blood rushed into my mouth, soft like velvet, warm, and tasting, strangely enough, like hot chocolate. You see, everyone’s blood is different. Younger people are easier on the palate, while older people are more a hearty meal. Personality also comes into it. Nice people taste sweet, bitter people taste bitter, and the real assholes, the scum of the earth, taste what I like to call ‘licking your tongue alongside the bottom of sewage pipe.’
At first she moaned in pleasure, her eyes rolling back into her head. Then, when she realised I wasn’t about to stop, she struggled at first. With my superior strength, I kept her pinned down until her struggles ceased and continued my feeding. It wasn’t until she went limp in my arms that I realised I drank too much.
‘Fuck,’ I cursed, dropping her body onto the ground. I bit down on my wrist and drew blood. Tilting her head back, I poured it back down her throat while I tried to pull out my mobile.
‘Come on you stupid piece of shit.’
I hate phones, especially the new ones with the touch screens. For some reason us vampires have trouble using them, must be because we’re dead and the technology has trouble sensing us. Eventually I turn on the old Nokia and start pressing buttons, the screen illuminating my surroundings.
‘Emergency service,’ a bored, tired female voice says at the other end.
‘Judy, it’s Kester. I’ve done it again.’
There’s a pause at the end of the line and a sharp intake of breath for pure theatrics.
‘Dark Night, Kester,’ Judy sighs, ‘would you please stop trying to kill people?’
‘I can’t help it, Judy. They start talking about true love and it pisses me off to the point where I stop focusing on when to quit drinking.’
Judy sighed and I can hear her tapping away at her keyboard.
‘Okay, Kester, we have your position. Hide the girl in the bushes and the extraction team will come and get her. I’m guessing you want her memory wiped as well?’
‘Yes please,’ I sigh. I wipe the last drops of my blood off her lips and sling her over one shoulder. ‘I’m guessing I owe you, Judy?’
I don’t have to see it, but I can sense her cruel, seductive smile on the other end of the phone. She lets loose a small, seductive laugh that sends shivers down my spine. Remember earlier on how I said vampires could only feel extreme emotions? Let’s say that I was scared enough of Judy to actually feel fear, that’s how bad she is. The woman had some sick sexual pleasures that made me cringe whenever I owed her one. All I could hope for was that she didn’t bring out the silver encrusted whip again.
‘Of course, my pet,’ she said. ‘Now dump the body and I’ll arrange the time for us to meet.’
I give an empty laugh and disconnect the call. Stupid girl whose name I couldn’t remember, stupid Tony for challenging to me to last three months in a stupid relation. I dump the body in the bushes and step outside. At least I could be content on a full stomach. It’s hard to stay angry when full, and it would take a lot to make me stay furious. I step into the night, under the moon’s gaze, which has suddenly turned disapproving. I stare back and slowly extend a middle finger at it. It knows what I am. Does it disapprove of the lion when it brings down the zebra? Does it disapprove when the wolf brings down the sheep? No, so why should it disapprove of me?
I am a vampire.
I am mother fucking, bloodthirsty killing machine who relies on deceptions and lies to feed.
I am a creature of the night, a supernatural being of your worst nightmares.
I am Kester, the Bloodied Angel of Death.
I had to kill many people for that. No, seriously, you wouldn’t believe how many people I have had to kill for that last title.
I step away from the girl, her face an already fading memory, and try to figure out what the hell I’m going to do for the rest of my night.
Tucking my hands into my pockets, I whistled a little tune and walked into the night feeling like a complete badass.
Fuck, you know you’re stuck in a bad novel when the main protagonist describes the world like that.
If it were up to me, I would have preferred to describe the night like this. This night was average, nothing extraordinary about it. It was a Friday night and there was nothing significant about it. It was neither too hot nor was it too cold, in fact there were nights like these stretching back before humans even thought of the word Friday. We were standing underneath a drooping willow, its low branches hiding us from the world; or, as I would like to say, we stopped underneath a dead tree because I could not stand listening to her annoying chatter any more. The smart suit I was wearing was a rental, the pure white dress she wore was cheap, and the blond, curled hair designed to hide her pale sapphire coloured eyes made her look like a hooker.
She looked at me, her eyes seemingly gazing into my soul. Which was crazy, because vampires don’t have souls.
‘I love you,’ she said with her sigh, her breath a faint tickle against my pale skin.
I shifted uncomfortably and groaned inwards. Great, there was the L-word again. I remember back in the day when hunting used to be a challenge. When I had to work for my meals by creeping in the shadows and trying not to get caught.
‘You make me feel beautiful,’ she continued, burying her face into my chest. ‘It was as if we were made for each other.’
‘You don’t say,’ I mumbled. What possessed me to try this? Stupid Tony, he egged me on into this bet. I should have grabbed her in a dark alleyway and had my meal. All this prancing and talking about true eternal love was boring me to a second death.
‘You make me feel safe, Kester,’ the girl whose name I had forgotten said. To be honest they all look the same, and I’m never interested in them for more than a week or two.
‘Yeah, I’m going to have to cut you off there,’ I said. ‘How long have we known each other?’
At first she looked confused, then she smiled gently into my chest. ‘It’s been three weeks, yet I feel like I’ve known you forever. It as if fate has—’
‘You know what, screw this.’ I pulled her off my chest and held her away from me at arm’s length like she was a crucifix. This was getting too far. ‘Stop this romance bullshit. I’m a vampire, you’re a star struck girl who has read way too many vampire novels and written a staggering amount of bad fan fiction about us. Yes, I’ve read your fan fiction. It’s bad, real bad. So bad in fact that it makes me want to smash up a coffin and drive a piece of wood through my shrivelled up heart. If that wasn’t enough, I’m at least two hundred and fifty years older than you. I’m old enough to be your great-great-great grandfather.’ I’m sure I left out one or two greats, but at this point of time I could not care.
‘Kester, stop,’ she cried, the tears staining her mascara. ‘Don’t push me away. I know you’re not a killer. Deep down you want to be like us, to stop feeding and feel normal. Let down your walls and let me in.’
Yeah, fat chance. See, here’s the thing that all these novels and movies forget to tell you. Vampires don’t have emotions. No, correction, we do have some emotion, the main one being hunger, but it takes a lot for us to feel some. Extreme happiness, extreme anger, extreme sadness; you get what I’m saying? You picking up what I’m putting down? Comprende?
You see, we’re killers. We don’t want to be human. We enjoy our position in the food chain. We do not sulk in the shadows, recite bad poetry, and wish to rejoin the cattle. We like our blood from the human neck and any vampire caught sucking blood out of a rat is in need of a bad staking. You know what we call vampires who are like this?
Failures.
Stake bait.
Annoying.
What I’m trying to tell you is this. I’m a vampire, you’re food, and any of that lovey-dovey crap you’ve read or seen in the last ten years is a joke to our very existence. If you’re expecting this to be about how I overcome my savage nature by true love, please put down the book. If you’re expecting the beast in me to be charmed by some beauty, then I request that you pull your head out of your arse, stop with all that Disney bullshit, and join the rest of us in the real world.
Where was I? Oh right, blond bimbo with grand delusions of making me human.
‘No,’ she continued, ‘you’re different. You are kind and sensitive, while at the same time making my heart race and my blood boul. You’re like some kind of drug that I’m addicted to—’.
To be honest, I zoned out around about this point. Seriously, thousands of years of being a scary bad ass now reduced into nothing from a few short decades of badly written novels. The Coven should have sunken their fangs into all those poets and novelists when they had a chance.
‘I show you what it means to be human, Kester,’ girl whose name I can’t remember said. She turned her neck towards me, the idiot offering herself on a silver platter. Well, not silver, that shit stings like there’s no tomorrow. ‘Turn me,’ she whispered. ‘Let us spend the rest of eternity together.’
Turn her? Was she fucking kidding me? One, I don’t have the clearance to turn anyone into a vampire. If every vampire did what they pleased and turned whoever they want into a vampire, then the whole night would be overrun by sulking, emotive, brooding vampires. If that did happen, someone please drive a stake through my fucking heart. Secondly, even if I did have clearance to turn her, why would I? The last three weeks have been torture for me. Could you imagine spending the rest of eternity with her?
Yet again, my mother when I was alive told me never to waste good food.
I extended my fangs and pierced her skin. Her blood rushed into my mouth, soft like velvet, warm, and tasting, strangely enough, like hot chocolate. You see, everyone’s blood is different. Younger people are easier on the palate, while older people are more a hearty meal. Personality also comes into it. Nice people taste sweet, bitter people taste bitter, and the real assholes, the scum of the earth, taste what I like to call ‘licking your tongue alongside the bottom of sewage pipe.’
At first she moaned in pleasure, her eyes rolling back into her head. Then, when she realised I wasn’t about to stop, she struggled at first. With my superior strength, I kept her pinned down until her struggles ceased and continued my feeding. It wasn’t until she went limp in my arms that I realised I drank too much.
‘Fuck,’ I cursed, dropping her body onto the ground. I bit down on my wrist and drew blood. Tilting her head back, I poured it back down her throat while I tried to pull out my mobile.
‘Come on you stupid piece of shit.’
I hate phones, especially the new ones with the touch screens. For some reason us vampires have trouble using them, must be because we’re dead and the technology has trouble sensing us. Eventually I turn on the old Nokia and start pressing buttons, the screen illuminating my surroundings.
‘Emergency service,’ a bored, tired female voice says at the other end.
‘Judy, it’s Kester. I’ve done it again.’
There’s a pause at the end of the line and a sharp intake of breath for pure theatrics.
‘Dark Night, Kester,’ Judy sighs, ‘would you please stop trying to kill people?’
‘I can’t help it, Judy. They start talking about true love and it pisses me off to the point where I stop focusing on when to quit drinking.’
Judy sighed and I can hear her tapping away at her keyboard.
‘Okay, Kester, we have your position. Hide the girl in the bushes and the extraction team will come and get her. I’m guessing you want her memory wiped as well?’
‘Yes please,’ I sigh. I wipe the last drops of my blood off her lips and sling her over one shoulder. ‘I’m guessing I owe you, Judy?’
I don’t have to see it, but I can sense her cruel, seductive smile on the other end of the phone. She lets loose a small, seductive laugh that sends shivers down my spine. Remember earlier on how I said vampires could only feel extreme emotions? Let’s say that I was scared enough of Judy to actually feel fear, that’s how bad she is. The woman had some sick sexual pleasures that made me cringe whenever I owed her one. All I could hope for was that she didn’t bring out the silver encrusted whip again.
‘Of course, my pet,’ she said. ‘Now dump the body and I’ll arrange the time for us to meet.’
I give an empty laugh and disconnect the call. Stupid girl whose name I couldn’t remember, stupid Tony for challenging to me to last three months in a stupid relation. I dump the body in the bushes and step outside. At least I could be content on a full stomach. It’s hard to stay angry when full, and it would take a lot to make me stay furious. I step into the night, under the moon’s gaze, which has suddenly turned disapproving. I stare back and slowly extend a middle finger at it. It knows what I am. Does it disapprove of the lion when it brings down the zebra? Does it disapprove when the wolf brings down the sheep? No, so why should it disapprove of me?
I am a vampire.
I am mother fucking, bloodthirsty killing machine who relies on deceptions and lies to feed.
I am a creature of the night, a supernatural being of your worst nightmares.
I am Kester, the Bloodied Angel of Death.
I had to kill many people for that. No, seriously, you wouldn’t believe how many people I have had to kill for that last title.
I step away from the girl, her face an already fading memory, and try to figure out what the hell I’m going to do for the rest of my night.
Tucking my hands into my pockets, I whistled a little tune and walked into the night feeling like a complete badass.
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