My Addiction - My gift My Curse - part 1

Raven became a vampire after the loss of her human family. While she had been addicted to the tales when alive, she never imagined any of it to be true. She is an impulsive quirky kind of girl.

My Addiction

“My Gift, My curse”

Written by Nadine Cloete

Part 1

Definition on “Addiction”

1. “Being abnormally tolerant to and dependent on something that is    psychologically or physically habit-forming”

 

PROLOGUE

           Dazed I struggled through what was left of the car wreck. I tried to focus on the things that made sense.

Check if everyone is okay.

 Is there any gas leaking?

Can I walk?

Can I talk?

      Subconsciously I kept on looking back. It was as if something was watching me; timing my every move.

      Shoving the feeling to the back of my mind, I slid out from in between the seats and pulled at my husband.

“Baby, baby - are you okay?”

He didn’t answer.

      I pulled back at the pieces of clunky metal and material trying to see any signs of life.

The silence only increased my agitation as I frantically started to hyperventilate.

“Baby” I huskily half asked - pleaded.

      After more silence, I feverishly gripped my way out from in between the shrouded glass and metal, my nails eating into the tar road in my angst effort to escape. As soon as I was clear from the wreckage, I crazily made an observation of myself. Bruised forehead; some serious gashes on my arms; hands and knees I seemed okay �" Alive I thought anxiously.

      Refocusing on the rest of my family I impulsively lurched towards the wreckage. Crazed I pulled at the damaged doors in an attempt to rip them open. They had to be okay. I am okay and if I’m okay they’ll be okay my mind kept on trying to comfort.

I forced my way into the driver’s window.

“Baby, “I screamed in relief as I finally met my husband dazed eyes. I held his cheek in my hand tears streaming down my face.

“Are you okay? Can you move?” �" I hurriedly asked.

      I tried to catch his gaze but was pulled away by a sudden shriek of approaching traffic. Something big was trying to hit breaks and it was obvious that it wasn’t going to make it.

     

In a frenzied effort, I leaped to the back door trying to see my kids. I had to save what I could. It was my job. I had to protect them my mind raced.

I mastered all my strength and pulled at the wrecked metal but couldn’t get anything to move not even an inch.

      Inch by inch I pulled tearing the skin off the rest of my fingers and all the time I could hear the truck skidding towards our already wrecked car. What seemed like hours actually happened in minutes.

As the seconds ticked by, I met the eyes of the driver as he heroically jumped from the cab - his own feeble attempt at survival.

I glanced down at my gashed hands and decided in that split second - If this was the end, I was damn well going with them.

I crouched down squishing myself back through the window of the driver’s seat. I calmly held my hand to his cheek.

“I love you baby … forever” I managed to whisper before the hideously loud darkness swallowed me.

 

 MAIN CHARACTER �" CH 1 

            It was a misty morning as I perched on the edge of the old age home’s roof. Physically, I didn’t look a day older than twenty five though in years I had been fortunate enough to reach the age of a hundred and five.

            Sitting on top of an old age home was what had recently become my newfound addiction. It was the thing I did to fill up the empty space inside--that empty hole that most people tried to fill with busy-ness. In life, I had learned that everyone had a different reaction when dealing with pain. Some worked hard, others took a vacation and some went for haircuts and tattoos.

            Me on the other hand… I was a vampire. Mingling with the general population was not exactly an option.

            Therefore, I perched.

            I caught myself daydreaming--if one could call it that - being what I am and all. I was reliving some of the old folks’ years…their memories that, of course, led me to some murky memories of my own. I couldn’t help but wonder what it must feel like to age.

            From my vantage point, I imagined jumping down every now and then, strutting towards one of the benches where an old woman and her companion sat day after day. I imagined myself greeting them and asking about day-to-day things.

How are you feeling? How has your life been? Are you ready to go? Have you lived your life to the fullest? Where do you think people go after death? Do you think you will meat up with everyone that you lost?

            I imagined that the conversation would be easy: flowing--normal. We could talk about events they had lived through, events I’d shared since I had also lived during their time. I had also experienced what they had experienced. End of an apartheid era. Winning of two world cups. Hosting of a soccer world cup. Birth of your kids. How the fall of the twin towers influenced us.

            Then reality interrupted my thoughts. It was an impractical possibility. I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from recalling too much detail and what would they think of a twenty-five-year-old describing a historical event as if it happened yesterday, as if she’d experienced them herself? 

            This was my current cycle.

As soon as I felt as if I had lost my purpose, I started leeching onto things people remembered--their memories, historical events they witnessed and the past.

            I wasn’t oblivious to the fact that those around me thought I might have lost the plot. In fact, I was sure I had; I just managed it better than they would have had they lived to my age.

Eternity was different for me; it felt as if I had fought my wars, loved with passion, lived my life and, in the end, remained frozen.

            Some leaves fluttered down as I sprawled out on top of the roof while caught in thought. Earthy smells took me back to the past when I had transformed.

            It was such a long time ago.    

 STORY LINE - CHAPTER 1 �" THE BEGINNING  

            I once recalled having heard someone mention that in a near death situation she had thought that death was easy, silent, and comfortable �" life was more difficult.  After going through a close encounter myself, I had to object.

            It had hurt - the whole transformation. My endless search and infatuation with vampires and mythical creatures finally got me to a stage in life where I discovered that it was true �" that the majority of mythical historical stories had a truth to them.

            Every time I thought back, my grandmother’s voice still rang in my ears: “Waar daar ’n rookie is, is daar definitief ’n vuurtjie” Where there is a little smoke, there is definitely a little fire.

            Stories weren’t just told. They originated from something; whether they were passed on from generation to generation or developed from an idea. All stories had sparked from something; someone had precipitated the experience.

The bottom line? 

Stories are a human creation. The only way I would know for sure was by living it. The only thing left for me was to focus on what I planned to do since I became this.

            I recalled my sense of humor at the time. The question: “Good bat or bad bat?” to this day remained a wicked yet promising thought.  

I never wanted to be bad. Naughty, yes, but bad had never been part of my nature.          

            The end of my first life; my human life had come eventually after exceptional bouts of pain. My family had been erased in a car crash. I was the only survivor.

            After six months of intensive care. Having gone through operation after operation of skin graphs, kidney transplants; hair removal; implants; drainages I was finally released back into the big wide world.   A big joke I thought - I was going through the ropes of being pretty and for who - for what?  Walking out there on that day didn’t make my life any easier, it just made me aware of the fact that I didn’t want to live anymore.

Nightmares haunted me into hellish pits as I woke up every night screaming. I was trying to occupy the kids with merry little songs. “Vader Jakob” to be exact. The song would play repeatedly in my dream.

Loud screeches would interrupt the song as I uttered “slaap jy nog?” The kids would scream and as I looked back, the car would be in the air. Then darkness. My hands would search for something familiar - his skin. In the darkness, I would hear my own whispered words “I love you forever”. Now, in my current state it all seemed like a farfetched dream - another time and someone else’s life.           

            Whilst going through the whole transformation, I recalled I would rather have liked believing in eternal soul mates and reincarnation. At least then, I would have known that with my husband; my family it was never good-bye but always until we meet, again… The reminder was sheer agony, which consumed me more than the cold killing burn of my now craving throat.

            If I had died, I would already have been on my way to meet them but, instead, my mythical obsession had landed me in the pits of the unknown; it led me to this.

And this for me …was not a coming back, but rather a staying on.

My life changed before my twenty-sixth birthday. Something that mattered. It continued to matter to me as I was left with a dead life to live into eternity.

            After arriving at my empty house; being surrounded to the full life I once lived I was consumed with dread. I stayed at home for days - not eating, drinking, going out or working, maybe sometimes not even breathing--a speck of dust, on a planet waiting for the end to come to finally join the rest of my family.

Either way, release never came. My pain would stretch to oblivion, and so it was--seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months ticked by went and still…there was nothing. Death never came.

            Nothing; no one could save me from myself--my own creation--my personal hell. The only reminder of life at the time was that of a thumping broken heart. Ironic since it was the sound I hated with my every existence--the organ that indicated life.

            That was…until she came.

She sat next to me 

She listened to my sad story, sympathized with my losses. 

She held my hand when I couldn’t distinguish between reality and the past. 

            I woke up that day with a burning sensation in my hand. Lights were buzzing in the background from a regular electrical power outage. At first, I had struggled to grasp what and where I was since the flashing just caused more confusion. Absentmindedly, I had assumed that I had once again fallen asleep with a cigarette in my hand. My mind accepted the irrational excuse as it happened regularly.

            Flustered by the questionable sensation I had tried to get up after realizing that the burn was in fact no physical fire but mote of an annihilating sensation within.

It didn’t take long for me to finally discover that my wallowing was killing me. My surrounding became blurry and I prayed, begged to die as the burn succumbed my existence. Was this hell?

            My body had frantically started convulsing as I was drowning within myself, while I continued struggling to grasp for air, something, someone �" an angel had pushed down on me and whispered in a feline whisper: “Muda wako hajaja bado, mtoto, bado una muda wa kupata nini nihapa kwa ajili ya.”

Your time hasn't come yet, child, you still have time to find what you are here for.

            The pain was extreme--similar, I imagine, to one’s body being cut apart. It was as if fire spurted from within my veins, as if a million hot needles sizzled within my frantic body.

My voice had lapsed and in its place, I could only establish how I huskily gasped for air.

            In time when I thought that I would no longer be able to scream, when every breath, and every impulse had left my body, the sensation mercifully started subsiding and in its place resided an extreme sense of coldness.

            The sensation was born at the tips of my fingers. It slithered down my hand and continued down the right side of my body where it then slowly slithered its way up the opposite side. The coldness filled my head with a weird sense of clarity; it encircled my body and finally came to rest at the location where I once had a bobbing heart.

            This sensation created a new world. Things seemed open: big, spaced out and airy.

My mind circled in hasty confusion as my senses tried to work it all out. It was clear that I had drowned in a raging fire and there was no one who could pull me up.

            Gradually, after the horror died down - a silent monster was born. As I, lay there sprawled out naked for the obvious eye I managed to open my eyes. Shocked by the difference I squeezed them closed again and started taking in my general surroundings. I could smell grass from the neighbor’s garden - it was a mixture of dust and sunlight a fragrance that grabbed me as I turned on my bed.  Far off in the distance I recognized the faint smell of pine trees and old jacarandas, which I remembered being situated downhill close to the cemetery. The realization of where these fragrances came from while exceptionally frightening, where also oddly intriguing.

            I smiled in relief, as I was able to grasp and direct my sense of being. Everything had its own distinctive smell and vibration.

Hearing was intoxicating.

            Sounds seemed to stretch around me. They vibrated along the corridors and windowsills of my now silent home. They rippled through the grass, up the tree stumps, down the leaves and got absorbed into the huge bubbles of air to which I was still trying to adapt.

            It was as if I had awoken from a deep sleep and now I took my first steps back outside. I was born into this now new world. The air touched my skin. It made me feel alive, as if I had never lived before. I was reborn or born and this was now a different time, a different place all contained within familiar surroundings.

I was exposed to extreme polar sensations.

In conclusion, the world…life was different. Once I had accepted this one part of me, my inner emotions started coming affront. I suddenly experienced intense loneliness.

This suffocated me. It was as if this new sense of me brought on a heavier, more potent sensation.

            The pain was so intense that it swirled within the pits of my stomach, it bubbled up to the extent where I wanted to scream out in agony.

I continued searching for the sense of what I knew as the act of breathing. I was stuck with the perception yet couldn’t quite find the familiar motion of inhaling and exhaling.

Slowly, the reality dawned as I recognized the monster that was now fixated within. He darkly sprawled out his lust for blood and pulled at my throat with furious vengeance. 

            Anguished, by what was to come I still struggled to grasp the sensation crept up on me. I couldn’t define it at first, it was a knowing sensation that pecked at the edge of my stomach. It swirled around under my flesh anticipating a relief for its craving.

            It was the exuberant sensation of a cringing thirst, similar to that experienced after a long run: a burning chest and throat that demanded ultimate satisfaction.

            At first, I swept down the passage in my first attempt of movement, eagerly wanting to drench my thirst, desperate to kill the compelling burn. Yet once I reached the taps, I stood poised, confused since, oddly enough, the smell of water didn’t increase the need to quench it. The motion didn’t connect to the slaking of the thirst. Instead, it created a sense of discomfort--a sluggish sense of battered queasiness.

            My whole being floated around the familiar, yet unfamiliar surroundings and I gasped at the reality. What I wanted was something intangible. My mind raced towards the idea of something warm that could trickle down my throat; something that had a peculiar irony undertone. Something sluggish yet sufficient. It was without a doubt the bulging twist of hunger the echo of thirst. Blood.

            Panic mode slapped down on me, as I had to face the fact that I was going to have to kill something…sometime and soon.

            At first, I started laughing insanely. From a general perspective, I’m sure it was a sad, hysterical bubble that peeked out.

            My mind still plummeted through sensations--physical reality and an undeniable nibble of thirst. It shuffled between what I knew; what I was and what I wanted. It didn’t take long to pile up my objections. Would I eat a human? Would I eat a cow? Would I kill a human? Would I kill a cow? I had flashes of memory that was mangled in between “silence of the lambs” and a general braai. The answer was obvious--human blood would never be an option. Not a willing one.

            I had dealt with enough loss for thirty lifetimes and I would never want to put that onto any other. I was adamant I would have to find another prey, another way to survive.

            I had to admit the thought of the neighbor’s hairless cat Gerry came up as an option. It was an intriguing option and one that my thoughts even lingered on for a bit. But, in the end, the innocent idea was mostly only something that mocked me, so I shoved it down as part of atrocity.

            With all of these things in mind, I concluded I had always been very adaptable as a human and should still be as a monster. I hadn’t lost yet. I had the monster intact. I stormily lined up my thoughts.

The first step was to hunt.

 

 

Author's Note

Would like to know what you think of the story.
Please give me tips on where you think I could remove commas.
English is not my first language so I am well aware of the fact that i would need to get it edited before I could get it published.

Reviews

[Tony Russo]

For English not being your first language, I think it was really good. You do a good job prepping the reader and sharing the inner thoughts of the narator. You also do a great job in your descriptions. The concept is very interesting, though I was a little lost when you were able to talk to the dog. Were you going to kill it, or save it? I like the setup. It remind me of the character from inteview with a vampire and its infactuation reminded me of the character in fight club, that swore they weren't lonely and just like to "people watch, but really was a lost soul that saw themselves as an exclusion to society. I think with a few edits, this will be a very interesting story, though I would love to see the vampire inside them transform the character... at least into a "vigilante" type. This story actually inspired me for an idea on the contest "Good vs. Evil." You also have some strong character development skills - keep utilizing them!


The two pieces of critique that I can offer is:
- Take your time with your descriptions. You do them well, but sometimes it looks like you skip vital parts. Overall, you do a good job keeping the reader in tune with your thoughts.
- It is difficult to write in 1st person. Some of your naration sounds like you wrote them the way you would say them verbally. I would challenge you to try to write what you are trying to say without coming out and directly stating it. use your descriptive skill and character development skills to describe draw the reader in and let them feel what you are trying to say in your writing.

Overall, great start! Let's see some more violence and the darkness that comes with being a vampire>:)