Hunger Dreams

A thick, impenetrable mist surrounds me on all sides. I stop to take a look around only find myself surrounded by a menacing group of vampires. Their sharp eyes penetrate me, not with anger, or malice, but with fierce hunger. My heart increased its rhythm to a hammering stutter. Could they feel my fear, smell it, hear the thudding inside my chest? I realize this group is starving. They need sustenance, and look upon me as a feast. How did I find myself in this dire situation? Better yet, how was I going to escape with my life intact? There was no hope of fighting them and living to tell the tale. Though I knew deep inside my death was at hand, a shred of hope still lingered like the last leaf on a tree caught in a hurricane.

My mind raced with feeble plans of action as I tensed for a foolish, mad dash. They must have read my thoughts because my arms were clamped by immovable, impossibly strong hands, pulled taught, and stretched out wide. Yet more hands exposed my neck as I was shoved forward like an offering in a temple. The leader stepped forward. A female of indeterminate age, but of equally astonishing beauty and animus offered me two choices. She spoke in a chilling voice, completely devoid of emotion. My life mattered not to her, I was not a human to her, I was food. The choice given was, I could could die here while giving her “children” a meal, or I could join their ranks; be one of them.

I tried to swallow but my throat had long constricted to a pinpoint. Quickly I thought this over, because my life as I knew it was speeding to an end. If I didn’t want to die, I would have to take their offer. But isn’t being a vampire still a kind of death? I thought. As they prepared the ritual, I tried to think of the positives of being an immortal vampire. Admittedly, it was something I playfully dreamed about on several occasions, but when the opportunity actually presented itself, abject terror set in. There was no way I could refuse them, but I still could not fathom the thought of being “eaten” alive while they sucked every molecule of blood out of my veins. What would happen to my soul?

I could feel their hunger grating against me. If I didn’t make a choice soon, it would be made for me. It was like being dropped into the open sea, surrounded by hungry sharks. The anticipation and fear grew to insane levels, as I knew they would attack soon, and there was absolutely nothing to prevent it. Each one was waiting for the other to make the first move. Once the first drop of blood was released it was going to be a frenzy of teeth biting, gnashing, ripping, and tearing flesh.

Against the screaming voices inside me, I agreed to let them turn me. Ha ha, funny, let them, like you had a choice, the thought rang in my head. The lead vampire slipped on a jointed, metal, finger cuff with a long, scalpel-sharp, curved point and slowly inched toward my exposed neck and the large jugular vein. They had to notice how my carotid artery thumped like a bass drum under the skin, but to cut that open would cause much of their needed sustenance to spurt out and be wasted. I tensed as the point of the finger cuff, shaped like a talon, inched closer to my neck. I might as well have been encased in a solid block of cement for all the movement I could manage. My jaw clenched as I braced for the sharp pain I knew was coming. Still, that clinging spark of hope called in the back of my mind, it was a dream, I would wake up, it was just some kind of sick joke, this was not real, no I would not die right here. But no, this time hope failed as the blade bit into my skin.

The sharp pain I knew would hit me didn’t come, in fact I felt nothing as the metal bit deep into my skin, except for the thick, hot oozing of my life essence as it drained down my neck. I thought the female vampire would be the first one to taste my blood. In a dark, lascivious part of me, I knew the act was going to be grotesquely erotic and pleasurable.

For a quick instant, the thought of death didn’t invade my mind, and I embraced the thought of her sharing such a horrifying, and at the same time, intimate, yet arousing deed. Instead a male vampire stepped forward, opened his mouth wide, licked the side of my neck where the blood slipped out, and began to suck. At the touch of the cold wet tongue, I shivered in repulsion.

Panic began to seep into my consciousness, as well as wonder. In all the movies and books I have read about vampires, there was supposed to be a rapturous feeling of bliss and pleasure to rival anything felt in the natural world. This feeling was supposed to be exponentially better than sex. That feeling never came. Brief disappointment was replaced with primal fear. This is wrong, they betrayed me, I’m going to die here, a willing, hapless, helpless, victim. I let them do this to me. My life is over.

The primal will to live kicked into overdrive as the vampire gulped greedily at my opened vein. I resolved to not die, not here, not like this. The rapid loss of blood was making me weaker, with every slowing heartbeat I lost an exponential amount of strength. I strained against my captors, but I might as well have been trying to bend a steel beam. My chest constricted like there was tightening band across my lungs. Every breath became a struggle, as my lungs body cried out for the blood and the oxygen it carried to every cell. I tried to breathe faster, deeper as I knew my death was imminent, but the band tightened like a constricting snake. I counted each heartbeat as I foolishly clung to my diminishing life. Soon he will quit drinking and I will live…somehow, I thought. The curse of hope stayed alive, though I knew better. My heart slowed, and labored with each beat, it got weaker, and weaker.

I continued to wonder. Would he stop? When would I become a vampire like they said? If I was to die, then I would embrace the unlife they promised so that I didn’t have to face my untimely death, and the unknown of the hereafter. But I knew I was betrayed. Never did they plan on making me like them. Prey is only meant to be a meal. When my dried up husk was finished, my desiccated body would be treated like a crumpled fast food wrapper, to be tossed out with the trash. My heart beat the last tremulous shiver of a beat it would ever make. Darkness descended.

Then I sat straight up in bed to survey my surroundings. Not a soul stirred around me. It was only a dream... But it was so real. The deathly quiet enveloped me like a misty shroud. My throat was parched…no, sore. Tentatively I reached up to touch my neck where she had cut me. I had to know that my flesh was whole. Before I touched my neck, a deep, centuries old hunger was wakened, I clutched my stomach. Nothing else matters. I. Need. Sustenance.

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