My heart hurts and my legs are weak.

I stumble back to the box reluctantly, wishing not to find the torment that had awaited me my first time entering. I know that I've done something right though a cruel worry creeps inside of me, wondering where I would have been if that wasn't the case.

I glance at the walls that still hold my old dreams in the ugly wallpaper, the walls that saw me shift from an innocent angel, an evil demon to the person who just wants to be okay.

Who doesn't wants a second chance?

The doors shut. I stay still and watch my younger self fade out of existence through the swaying jungle foliage creeping back from its death, choking out the last shards of the "Real World."

"Goodbye." I choke out a delicate whisper, nearly as soft as that of the leaves that graze my palms and face. "Hopefully, not forever."

I blink.

It's dark when I open my eyes and oddly silent. I was relieved that the sounds that had once driven me into madness were silenced and now I wish for some kind of noise inside this telephone booth contraption. Yet it's none.

A hiss sounds, shaking the doors of the booth until it cracks open to a dim world of midnight skies dotted with white specks of light and a grey and black structure reaching towards the black sky. Heavy eyelids and a chill that seeps down through the light cloth of my jacket pull me back to the innards of the box.

I stand inside for a few minutes extra, taking in the world outside. Smothered in darkness, huge walls rise around the castle with menacing gargoyle beasts watching from their post above, fangs and claws glittering a cold white.

A driveway lays beside my box, yet it seems to lead to no carport but rather makes a perfect loop around the castle and back to me where it stops at a hazy forest reaching the bottom of the sky.

One lonely light illuminates the bottom floor, dazzling a beautiful orange. A chill sweeps into the open box, sending me into another shiver that ripples down my spine to every vein in my body.

I sigh, watching my breath catch the air through tired eyes that want to close however the cold forces them to stay open. Walking out of the safety of the box, I take to the path with my footsteps for company.

With every step I swear the path changes direction, shifting from left to right. It moves two steps left and the next thing I know the grey shifts, stones that had once laid on that side now decorate the other.

A crack in the gravel crawls up the pavement like a companion, moving with me but with my tired mind, it could be my brain playing tricks on me. I keep going in search of warmth and a place for rest until the path stops shifting every few seconds. The crack retreats, leaving not a trace of its existence.

An uneven porch stands between me and the front door which spills light from the castle, changing the grey stones into a soft gold.

I knock twice. Only a hollow echo answers back. Opening my mouth to call out, my trembling lips don't allow a sound to come out besides that of a shrill cough that comes with horrid chest pains.

Carefully, I drop my fist away from the metal lion's head of the door and lay on the hard material. It creaks, just loud enough to snap me away from it.

I keep pushing, taking in a welcoming heat that beckons me closer and closer to the inside. Bright scarlet walls, vases full of unnaturally large roses painted black, red, and purple along with a large black taxidermy creature sprawled out in front of a fireplace meet me.

I swear the creature blinks though its eyes are glazed and lifeless, fangs glittering like daggers under the flame. A dead panther yet too huge to be.

"Nice night for visitors, dear." A raspy voice says. "Don't you agree?"

"Pardon me." I sputter in fear, shifting my eyes from one side of the room to the other for the owner of the male voice.

"Stay dear."

"No, I-"

"I insist."

A man stares into the fireplace, his face stern and pulled into a tight, unreadable expression that strikes me first next to his skin that reminds me of snow on the roof after a Minnesota snowstorm. His black hair falls perfectly in contrast with his pale skin in an oddly beautiful way.

"My apologies. It's just so cold, a bit too cold for the early fall months." I walk in a few steps from the threshold.

The man stays facing the flames from his velvet chair, digging his fingers into the armrest with nails so long that I fear he'll rip into it.

"No need for apologies." His features are so young and flawless. For a second he smiles and watches me with eyes so grey they look silver. Then they aren't.

They match the walls, a red brighter than any shade I've known to exist. He moves them up and down me, their glow getting brighter and bolder.

Fear and unease take over. Without another thought I head towards the door, mind on nothing but the fresh air of the outside which even if cold seems better than being here. The porch, which had been only a foot away seems farther away as the man speaks.

"We should get acquainted, dear." He purrs. "I'll go first, even though I prefer the guest do it first."

I hold back tears and the internal scream to give up and let go. To let the vampire creature have me but I hear him out as if I have a choice of the matter as my mind tries to let exhaust and terror be the end all.

He lowers his red gaze. "I am known as Bertrand Romania Wolfgang by some but most just say I'm heir to my father, count Vladimir Wolfgang's throne as his first son."

"Birthrights, am I right?" I chuckle and start small talk. "Sometimes you inherit the family kingdom and other times you get their bills and mental illnesses but you can't pick and choose."

His eyes glow brighter. "I presume that's the case for humans."

"Righto and this human has to go so if you'll excuse me."

I shoot for the outside again just to hear a loud snap of fingers and then watch the door slam shut. My heart drops.

"We're just getting familiarized, aren't we?" He flashes fangs and leaps forward from his chair without a warning other than that of squeaking wood. He lands a foot away, snarling like a rabid animal.

I scream and dart towards a hallway lit with scones holding hovering flames, pushing myself through protruding dull leather-bound books sticking out from the walls. It tilts, moving from an upper segment of the house to a lower one.

Doors flank me as the hallway narrows to a slit, each one a different color.

Red like his eyes.

White like his fangs.

Black like his creature.

Grey like his eyes.

"I've already associated his eyes with a color. Fuck."

Blue like-

My hands crash into the door which forces it open to a room of dull white and yellow. I shut the door, pressing my back to it momentarily as a hiss sounds from just outside.

Another door waits in front of me, painted in the same blue as the one for this room. In front of it lays a stretch of objects that I scramble to reveal in desperation.

A ladder split into two halves, a giant mirror covered from top to bottom in dust, a raw chicken leg sitting right beside a bottle of blood labeled with Ozzy Osbourne's name, and a coffin lid with fabric interiors still hanging from off the door. Nothing else is in the room but something has to work. I can't die.

I go for the door first, fighting with the doorknob to free it from its hinge. I go for one of the ladders, shoving the bars into the gold knob harder with each relentless bang on the door from the vampire dude.

With one push away from giving up it falls off, opening up to a dark staircase that slowly descends the first few steps before curving with a vicious twist.

It has to work or I'm dead.

I feel spirits everywhere, more than the ones in Eyam. He's killed many and I'll be another if I let him triumph. No.

He hisses and bangs into the door again, wide splits crawling up the bottom of the door at the force of his strength. Splinters spill from the wood.

I work faster, covering the meat with the blood before plastering it to the mirror and tilting it to the stairway just enough to keep it perfect. If he's strong enough to break a door in a bit of control he'll break a mirror in rage.

I place the coffin under the mirror, keeping it in place under the weight of the massive object. Its weight pulls down on my body but I ignore it and keep working.

Bertrand slams his fist into the door, wood exploding in shards across the carpet. I stand in front of the prop, ready to run as soon as he finally breaks it.

He goes at it again.

I bite my lip.

The door screeches in an earsplitting yawn and cracks into an uneven half that falls right at my feet.

He gives a twisted toothy grin, everything about him just as perfect as before as if he hadn't destroyed a wood door. One thousand percent a vampire.

"It didn't have to end this way."

I lift my chin, failing at hiding my terror as I meet his bloodshot glare.

"It's not, vamp."

"Oh? The prey has confidence?" He's so consumed by me and the smell of blood that I'm the only thing in his line of view.

"What if she does, you freak?"

"Then she gets the fate as one who gives up. Maybe I'll let you suffer for the hell of it."

He runs at me. I dodge just as one of his leather boots collides with the bars of one of the ladder halves. A strange curse leaves his lips and I'm left to cover my face from a shower of glass. He falls but as if not one hit on the metal stair causes him pain, he only yells rage-induced insults.

"Skateboarding but with a coffin." I whisper.

I shut the door and jab the remaining piece of the ladder under the knob. The sound of the lid ramming the staircase fills the room like drums.

Then I run like it's no tomorrow.

Through the narrow hallway. Past the weird roses and the dead panther. Through a half-opened window to wherever my sneakers carry me.