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Boom.

Right out of the gate, we have a vampire story.

Enjoy

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There’s blood everywhere.

It stains my pajamas.

It smells like metal and seeps into the carpet.

My mom’s neck is ripped out.

My dad’s chest looks like a bowl made of bones filled with thick punch.

I should be crying,

Screaming,

Anything…

But I can’t.

My throat is locked up tight, and I can’t find the key.

I sit between my parents, their cold hands gripped in my shaking ones.

There is man standing on the other side of the room.

He did this.

He killed them.

His mouth is smeared with blood.

My parents’ blood.

He drank it and made me watch.

His unnatural white glowing eyes scare me.

The man takes a step towards me, and I whimper and try to back away.

He grabs me by my neck.

His fist tightens, and I feel the air slipping away.

Just as black dots start to cloud my vision, he releases me.

I cough and choke, and then looked up into his terrifying black eyes.

“It isn’t your time yet, little one.”

My hand rubs my throat as I watch him walk out of my parents’ room.

Just as I think he’s gone, he speaks a final time.

“I will come back for you, Lucy.”

*

“I will come back for you, Lucy.”

Those words still haunted me to this day. I’d stopped sleeping for awhile to avoid the nightmares that replied that night in my parents’ room. Once the doctors had caught wind of my insomnia, however, they’d put a stop to it by adding to my daily pills.

You see, when my eleven-year-old self had been found wandering around the suburban cul-de-sac in which I lived, covered in my parents’ blood, I’d been almost immediately checked into the psychiatric ward of the local hospital for “trauma”. However, after the police had asked me who’d killed my parents, and I responded “a vampire did it,” I was sent to Bloomfield’s.

For the first few months, I’d refused to talk to anyone about what had happened. I’m sure they all thought I’d done it; a bratty kid who’d snapped at her parents and gone psycho.

I soon realized a couple months into my stay at Bloomfield’s, it would be better to give in and tell everyone what they wanted to hear. Not that I’d killed my parents, of course, but that a man in a ski mask had done it. Some of the doctors probably didn’t believe me, but it didn’t matter.

Eight years later, and I was still here at Bloomfield’s. When I was fourteen, the doctors told me that they thought I might be able to leave. It was then that I realized that I had nowhere to go outside of Bloomfield’s. The only relative I had was a 93-year-old aunt who was too senile to live on her own. It was either foster care or Bloomfield’s, and I preferred the latter.

So I did what I had to do. I faked a complete meltdown. They’d diagnosed me with paranoid schizophrenia, or something along those lines, and attributed my whole vampire story to the hallucination symptom of the disorder. As far as I’m concerned, I’m completely sane. The only symptom I haven’t faked is my insomnia, but that’s because I’m too scared of my nightmares to sleep.

So now here I am, sitting in my white room, in my white clothes, with my white furniture, drawing with crayons. Expanding my creativity was supposed to help keep me calm; it seemed to always have the opposite effect.

Someone knocked on my door, and I turned around just as one of the orderlies stepped inside the room. “Time for Dr. Martin, Lucy,” he said with one of the half-hearted smiles saved for us loons. I placed the orange crayon back in its box and followed the orderly through the hallways of the building.

We left the housing building and walked through the resident garden to a smaller building where all the medical personnel worked. The orderly led me down a path I knew all too well, and we came to a stop in front of a large mahogany door. The orderly knocked on the door, and when he heard Dr. Martin’s voice bade me entry, he left me standing there.

Dr. Martin had always rubbed me the wrong way. She came across as fake, with her thousand watt smile and bleach blonde hair. However, the crazies couldn’t pick their psychiatrist, so I was stuck with her.

I opened the door to find her scribbling on one of her many notepads. “One moment, Lucy,” Dr. Martin said, and she pointed to a couch, “Why don’t you just take a seat, sweetie.” I cringed at one of her many pet names but obliged nonetheless.

After making myself comfortable, Dr. Martin clicked her pen and walked over to the chair next to the couch I was laying on. She smiled down at me, and I resisted the urge to snap at her. I don’t know what it was about Bloomfield’s, but the longer I stayed here the more repressed I felt.

“How are you doing with your sleep, Lucy?” Dr. Martin asked. “Still having nightmares?”

“Yeah,” I replied, “always the same; the vampire killing my parents and sucking their blood.”

“Do you know what today is?”

I frowned. Was I supposed to? “No,” I said honestly, “I don’t.”

Dr. Martin made a clucking sound with her tongue and seemed to make a mental note. “It’s the eight year anniversary of your parents’ death. Don’t you remember?”

No.

I didn’t want to.

I shook my head. “I guess not. Maybe I blocked it out of my mind.”

“Maybe,” Dr. Martin echoed, but she looked doubtful. “With that knowledge, do you think that your nightmares have intensified due to the date?”

Now that I thought about it, she could be right. Last night, my nightmare had felt so real that I’d woken up screaming, and I’d been heavily sedated so I’d calm down. However, if I told the truth, my meds would be jack up, and I really didn’t want that. So, I lied.

“Not really,” I said, and then my fingers started to shake. They did that whenever I lied, which was often. “They seem to be the same as usual.”

“Interesting,” noted Dr. Martin, and I nodded, willing her to believe me. Dr. Martin might seem like one of your classic, ignorant blondes, but she knew when people were lying.

 Dr. Martin starting talking about my symptoms and asked if I liked my medicine dosage. I nodded when I was supposed to, and muttered fluff words when she expected a verbal response. This was how our sessions would usually go, and for some reason, Dr. Martin thought it was progress.

After forty-five minutes, Dr. Martin called an orderly and told me that I could go down to dinner. I thanked her for her time as usual and walked back to the residential building next to the orderly. 

A couple minutes later, we entered the dining room and I padded into the serving area. Tonight, we were having spaghetti and meatballs, one of my favorites. I carried my tray to a vacant table and sat down quietly. Within a few minutes, a couple real schizos sat down around me, muttering to themselves.

 “H-h-hi Lucy,” stuttered Paul as he settled down in the plastic chair next to me. Paul was the closest thing I had to a friend. He has split personality disorder, and he was locked up in here because his alternate personality, Tyson, was deemed too volatile to live in public. I’d had the privilege of never meeting Tyson, though I’ve heard him screaming at night.

“Hey Paul,” I replied, twisting the spaghetti around the fork and bringing it into my mouth. We ate dinner in silence, like usual, and then I was escorted back to my room. I heard the door lock behind me, and I settled down on my bed.

My session with Dr. Martin came back to me, and I couldn’t help but think back to that night when my parents were murdered. I knew it was a vampire who’d done it, because who else devours someone’s parent’s, leaving them drained? I wasn’t crazy and I wasn’t hallucinating.

“I will come back for you, Lucy.”

I jumped and whipped around. His voice came like it was coming from right behind me. No one was there, though. I guess it was just my imagination… but it had felt so real.

An orderly came in and handed me two paper cups, one with water and one with blue and white pills. I dropped the pills in my mouth, and as I swigged back water, I trapped the pills under my tongue. This didn’t fool the orderly, since I’d done this before, and moments later, the pills were traveling down my throat to take their effect.  

I pulled the worn copy of To Kill a Mockingbird from beneath my mattress and found my place among the many dog-eared pages. Serving as my only form of entertainment, other than an hour of supervised television and sitting outside, I’d read it cover to cover numerous times.

After an hour, the lights shut off, leaving me in sudden darkness. When I’d first started at Bloomfield’s, this collapse into pitch black scared me because I hadn’t felt safe. Now, it was something I found annoying, but also something I expected every night.

I folded the corner of the page I was on and shoved it deep under my mattress. I was a bit paranoid when it came to orderlies snooping in my stuff, since I’d come back from a session with Dr. Martin to find my stuff disturbed.

I got a sudden chill and bundled underneath the stiff comforter. I gazed through the small window next to my bed and sighed. I didn’t want to go to sleep; I never did. However, I could feel the insomnia pills taking effect and my eyelids started to droop.

Just as I was falling into unconsciousness, I heard someone scream and my eyes snapped open. At first, I thought it was just Tyson screaming again, but as more and more voices chimed in, I realized this wasn’t just the normal loons screeching.

I peeled back the covers and crossed the room to the door. I pressed my ear to the cold wood and listened hard. Suddenly, something heavy slammed against my door, and I screamed and jumped back.

My heart started to beat loudly in my chest, and there was another loud bang on my door. As I heard the distinctive crunch of bones, I realized that the things that kept hitting the door were bodies.

“Oh my god,” I breathed, and I jumped as yet another body smashed against the door. Thinking quickly, I lunged at the door and grabbed the chair from my desk. I tucked it under the door knob, locking myself inside. Then, I jumped over my bed and crouched behind it, hopefully hiding my body from the door.

Suddenly, everything went quiet, and I frowned. Just as I debated getting up and looking through the small slot in my door, I heard the door knob being turned. Then, I heard the door scrape slightly against the floor, and I peeked around the bed to see it holding its ground.

“Lucy.”

“No,” I whispered, my eyes widening, “No, no, no!”

It was him; the vampire who’d killed my parents. I could recognize that voice anywhere since it haunted me every moment of every day. There was a monster right outside me room, and from the screaming I’d heard, I could guess that he’d killed a fair amount of people to get to my room.

“M-m-my name isn’t Lucy,” I called hoarsely, but I knew he wasn’t going to believe me.

“I know it’s you,” the vampire replied, “I can smell you.”

If I wasn’t so terrified, I’d probably be cringing at how creepy that sounded.

Suddenly, something thudded against the door, and this time, the heavy wooden door cracked under the force of whatever hit it. I jumped back and lost my balance, which caused me to fall against the wall. There was another thud, and the door gave way, crushing the chair I’d used to lock the door under it.

There, standing in the doorway, was the man who’d haunted me for the past eight years.

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The unofficial cover is on the side.

I wrote this because I wanted to try a new genre a while ago.

I posted it for a couple hours before taking it down to focus on another story.

It's not going anywhere. 

Woo. 

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