4. Dreadful Mistakes

“Hey, wake up,” I tried to gently shake awake the three beings strewn across the living room.

“What?” Mack tried to push my hand away with his foot, but he ended up kicking Jared with full force. Jared groaned and rolled over, off of the couch and landed on Sydnye’s legs. Jared grunted, Sydnye screamed, and Mack, who was already on the edge of the couch, startled awake and rolled. He landed on Sydnye’s back. I held back laughter. It didn’t work.

“Get off!” Sydnye yelled at the two half-asleep beings on her back. Jared looked at her groggily, and then looked down to see that his “chair” was Sydnye.

“Oh!” his eyes widened and he jumped up. Mack quickly followed his example.

“Nothing like Dominoes in the morning to cheer a person up,” I muttered.

“Why’d you wake them up?” Sydnye asked, exasperated.

“School?” I nodded my head toward the wall clock.

“Oh, what time is it?”

“You’ve got a half an hour, but I figured that you’d want to get cleaned up a little.”

“What are you saying?” Jared asked folding his arms.

“You haven’t gotten the chance to look in the mirror yet,” his brown hair was standing nearly straight out on one side of his head and his brown eyes looked tired.

Jared didn’t look too bad as a normal person. He had medium length dark brown hair that bleached lighter in the sun, darkly lashed brown eyes with flecks of color that shone gold in natural light, and a subtle spattering of freckles that shaded his cheeks and nose just under his eyes. He was the same height as me, five foot eleven.

Mack tallest at six two with blonde hair that always laid to the side in a skater style. He had blue eyes that just barely pinched sharper at the outer corners. He was skinny but he had muscles that didn’t protrude but were prominent enough for almost every girl to fall head over heels for him.

Sydnye was one and probably the only exception to that, and thought of him as just a friend. At five foot six she stood as the shortest in our little group. She was slim but had great curves. Her layered strawberry blonde ran barely down her back, to her shoulder blades. She almost always wore it straight with her long, slanted bangs covering her left eye. She had an attracting attitude that always seemed to get her way, not that she took advantage, too often.

“Neither have you, obviously,” Sydnye said, “You look terrible.”

“Yeah, well, we should all probably clean up,” I suggested, “You all know where the bathrooms are.”

I walked to the bathroom and looked in the mirror at the not yet familiar face that was mine. My face looked thinner and tired. My expression looked angrier, though I felt quite content. I always seemed to look angrier, ever since the Change. My mark had almost taken its full shape and was throbbing with an annoying, light pain that appeared when I fed on the bear. It did that in sunlight, too.

I had dried blood all over myself, “Lovely,” I muttered to myself and started scrubbing my face as Mack and Jared walked in.

“Sydnye’s gonna take a shower in the other bathroom,” Mack said, “and I believe that she said ‘Stay on the other side of the house’ as a warning,” I nodded in acknowledgement.

“Scoot over, I think I’ve got drool on my face,” Jared said.

“Blood beats drool,” Mack replied.

“No, it’s fine. This is pointless. I’m just gonna take a shower, too. It seeped through my shirt,” I pulled off the blood-stained t-shirt and threw it in the hamper before walking out the door.

I gathered my new outfit and a towel before walking into the bathroom. I turned the water up to what I usually would, but it felt uncomfortably warm against my new skin. I kept my hand under the water to test it as I turned it down. I stopped once it was freezing and stepped in. I closed my eyes as the water relaxed my muscles and my mind while I thought about all of the events that had occurred within the last day.

That didn’t take too long so I decided to see what the other people in the house were thinking. My first thought was Sydnye because I talked to her the most, but as I started to enter her mind I only saw light and chaos. This is what it looked like when she worried. She worried about more than one thing, usually. Even my mind couldn’t keep up with hers and that unnerved me. Humans, apparently, weren’t supposed to do things like that.

I decided to just relax after that. When I was finished I dried off, put my pants on, and draped my shirt over my shoulder. As I was walking out I saw myself in the mirror. It appeared that the Change had altered my body, too. I had a full six pack and some pretty thick arms. This made me look even less like myself.

I walked into the other bathroom, where Mack and Jared were, to get the rest of the way ready.

“Whoa, muscle man where’d you come from?” Jared asked.

“Very funny,” I said as I flexed in a very body-builder-type way, “It’s just the Change.” In the mirror every muscle rippled, rolled, or flexed perfectly. I quickly slouched back into a normal stance.

“That type of thing makes a person want to be a vampire,” he said.  

I looked at him sideways.

“I’m just joking!”

I brushed my teeth and walked into the kitchen as I pulled my shirt on.

So, animal blood wasn’t on the menu. What about Cheerios? I thought, contemplating. I decided to take my chances and poured myself a bowl of cereal.

Sydnye trotted into the room cheerfully.

“What’cha doin’?” she asked hopping onto the barstool beside mine.

“Eatin’ Cheerios,” I replied after swallowing the spoonful of cereal in my mouth.

“Sounds wonderful,” she jumped off of the chair and poured a bowl for herself.

Mack and Jared wandered into the room for breakfast, as well. We we’re all silently eating when it happened.

Like the bear blood, my body rejected it. I ran to the kitchen sink and retched up the contents of my stomach. Sydnye was soon by my side, holding my hair from my face.

“Mack, go get towels,” she said calmly as she turned on the water to flush out the drain. Mack hurried out of the room obediently.

When everything was out and I was officially deprived of blood my instinct took over. In one swift motion, without thinking, I lunged for Sydnye and bit down on the soft pink flesh of her exposed shoulder.

She didn’t scream, but I almost did. Her delicious blood scorched my throat and my veins as I drew the liquid into my body. I pulled myself back as fast as I could and my head cracked against the marble island. A chair flew to the side, shattering against the wall.

Sydnye collapsed, unconscious, to the cold linoleum. I stared at her limp body, as I was frozen in disbelief. Mack practically slid into the kitchen.

“What the hell?” he looked from my blood-stained clothes to the bleeding girl across the room, “Damn it, Damien! What did you do?” He ran straight to her.

I couldn’t respond. My veins were throbbing and the edges of my vision became blurred. I felt faint and began breathing heavily, not able to get the oxygen I so badly yearned for. I gave Mack a worried look. My mind was panicking.

“Get out of here,” his voice was low, “You’re starving yourself and I need to be able to help her without worrying about my head being ripped off.”

Just then, Jared finally walked in, obviously oblivious to the earlier commotion.

“What’s going on?” he asked, before turning the corner to be exposed to the chaos. Then he panicked.

“Holy s**t!” he skittered back a few feet, and with that, he fainted. His knees buckled below him and his body landed with an exaggerated “thud”. His head only bounced slightly.

I looked back at Mack, nodded, and ran out of the house, letting instinct take over and smelling the air for anyone edible.

I only ran for a couple minutes, for about five miles, before finding somebody who happened to be out. It was a man, about six feet tall and in his late twenties. I didn’t care, I couldn’t care, whether he had a life and a family, or not.

His back was to me, but I didn’t even think about trying to sneak up on him. My body slammed into his, probably breaking many of his bones, and we fell to the asphalt. He was still conscious, but he didn’t scream. He couldn’t scream. My knee was pressed to his throat and I snapped his neck. I was careful to only break bones and keep the body intact as much as possible.

My teeth pierced through skin and muscle near his collar bone, and the blood began to flow easily