My New Life

Before my eyes was a girl of my age with long brown hair. I could not see her face from where I stood, but I could hear her sobbing softly as I drew closer towards her with each step, an unknown force urging me to see her face.

She was crying, but the tears that streamed from her eyes were a bloody red, as though she was bleeding from her eyesockets. She continued to weep softly as I drew closer and closer, seemingly oblivious to my approach even as I stood right before her. Perhaps out of curiosity or malignant influence, I brushed my finger against her tearing eyes and tasted her tears, their spicy, salty splendour overwhelming my senses with a relish unknown and unfelt of before.

It was then, as I suckled upon my bloodied finger that she turned her gaze towards me in a sharp jerk of unnatural fashion that sounded like the snapping of bones. Her eyes were still streaming lines of bloody tears, but now her face had turned into a pale, deathly grey, even as those bloody tears of hers dripped off her lips and stained them red. Seemingly now aware of my presence, she let out an ear-piercing wail, lunging towards me with the fury of a starving beast as she sunk her long, black fingernails into my flesh. I tried to shake her off, but I could no longer move, and all I could do nothing but scream until I awoke, my body bathed in cold sweat, my heart cramped and aching.

I sat upright in my bed, chest heaving even as the ordeal was long past. It was the same dream night after night, growing increasingly worse as my consciousness lapsed between waking and sleeping. But I was finally awake and fully conscious for the first time in what seemed to be forever.

A glance at my phone told me that three weeks had gone past since my last moment awake. Three weeks ago, I had encountered some kind of madman on my way home from school in the alleyway that I frequented as a shortcut. I tried to run, but he was too fast, almost unnaturally so, as if some inhuman starvation was driving him. Isolated and unable to elude my assailant at that dreadful moment, I pushed past him with all my might, hoping for the best. But even as I somehow managed to get away, he had managed to tear multiple nasty gnashes into my arms, wounds that flowed freely with blood.

In spite of my wounds however, I mustered the remainder of my strength, limping back to the relative safety of my apartment. Upon further inspection within my bathroom, I found that my skin was now a pale white complexion, as if my attacker had somehow almost drained the very life out of me. But I was too tired to think about the danger I was in, and after dressing my wounds to the best of my ability I stumbled towards my bed, blacking out as soon as I collapsed upon it, drifting in between waking and lucid nightmare as my head burned with fever until now.

I checked my phone again. It was filled with missed calls and messages from my friends and teachers, asking if I was okay. I wanted to reply to them to say something, anything, but I could barely muster the strength to focus. I doubt they would have understood. Perhaps it would be best instead to see them in person again, I reckoned. Especially so, since it was time for school, as I had awoken on a Friday at 6 a.m. Looking out through a window, the sun was nowhere to be seen as usual, and the sky was as dark as it would be at midnight, as it always has been in my beloved city.

Much to my horror as I gazed into the bathroom mirror, my skin had turned pallid and wrinkled, and my normally silky brown hair was stringy and dishevelled, much like the monster from my nightmares. But worst of all were my eyes, for they now had a faint blue glow that was horrifying to look at. And much to my chagrin, a warm shower did little to fix my ghoulish visage. Copious amounts of makeup seemed make things slightly better, but even then I was still ugly, like that fiend who attacked me that night in the alleyway, or that demon from my nightmare.

I put on my uniform and headed out, hoping for the best. But I could barely focus on my steps as I went down the stairs and into the street, staggering and clinging on to the rails to avoid collapse. I made it as far as the alleyway when my body gave out completely. There, I made the decision to take a moment to catch my breath, crouching against a wall as I closed my eyes and tried to re-focus my breathing.

I felt someone tap me on my shoulder, asking me if I was okay. Turning my head, I saw Yuna, my neighbour and classmate, looking at me with a concerned expression. The alleyway was our usual meeting point before walking to school together, but no doubt she had been walking alone for the past weeks. And from what I could tell from the silence around us, it was just the two of us, alone in the dimly lit darkness.

“Yuna?” I called out, standing up to look her in the eye. She smiled at the mention of her name, but her smile was one of politeness, and the nervousness in her eyes made it clear that she did not recognise me.

“You are?” Yuna asked, still smiling. “Are you new here? How do you know my name?”

“I’m Ayase from the third floor!” I replied, realising that my distorted appearance had rendered me beyond recognition, and that my voice came out like a distorted shriek.

It was then that Yuna’s smile turned to that a scowl. Her eyes were now like daggers, and she glared at me with a mix of anger and annoyance that made it clear that she was dead serious.

“You look nothing like Ayase!” She shouted. “You’re... you’re some kind of fiend! What kind of sick joker are you to do something like this?”

I should have been angry at the way my friend dismissed me based on my appearance. I should have tried to convince her otherwise, to explain the strange events happening to me. But all I could feel as she berated me was an overriding sense of hunger that consumed my every thought and feeling. Her words were nothing more than mouth movements- all I could hear was her heartbeat calling out to me.

Reaching out towards Yuna with both hands, my fingernails dug deep into her flesh like the claws of a ravenous beast. She struggled with all her might in an attempt to push me away as she screamed at the top of her lungs, but those screams were cut short as I tore her throat open with an unholy desperation fuelled by raw hunger. Bringing my head towards her bleeding throat, I drained her until her skin turned pale and lifeless, much like what should have happened to me that fateful night. Something must have scared away my attacker then, but now there was nothing stopping me from feasting upon the lifeblood of the girl I was once close friends with.

I revelled in the spicy and salty splendour of her lifeblood, savouring each mouthful of blood as if it was my last meal. Only after I had fully engorged myself did I finally feel my senses return to me. And it was then, as I stared at the pale, bloodied and lifeless husk of flesh that was once my friend, that I felt nothing. No remorse, no sadness, not even a tinge of regret. I tried to think of our walks together where we shared jokes and gossip as well as our friendship, but I still felt nothing. In fact, the lack of any emotion frightened me so much that I began to shiver uncontrollably, not out of guilt, but rather, mania.

Not knowing what to do, I fled to the only place I felt perversely safe, my apartment, where the mirror in my bathroom showed me a bloody, but renewed and more beautiful me. But even as her blood had rejuvenated me, I still felt scared and confused. Not knowing what to do, I collapsed upon my bed, still in my bloodied uniform, hoping that the darkness of my home and the night sky would take me away, that all this was just a horrible dream.

Nights passed me by like a blur, and I felt myself withering once more. In the bathroom I watched fearfully as my own appearance turned monstrous and ghoulish as time went by, knowing what it would entail. But even then it was not the thought of hurting someone that I feared, but the fear of feeling nothing once more, for that was something unnatural and beyond my comprehension, much like my newfound hunger.

It is a strange feeling indeed, to realise that your own humanity is slipping away and yet be helpless in the face of such a change. And it was this that led me to resolve to starve myself until I withered away for good. Perhaps then, I could redeem myself for what I did to Yuna, though the concept of redemption was now incomprehensible to my cursed mind.

It would have ended there, but the next night of my self-imposed starvation, I heard a knock on my door.

“S-sensei?” I choked after seeing the man behind the door, my face turned away from him. I did not want anyone to see me like this, least of all Hiroto-sensei, my homeroom teacher.

“May I come in?”

“Now’s not a good time...” I replied nervously as I tried to close the door, only to have him stand firm in my way.

“Please, Ayase, we need to talk.” It was then that I raised my head to look at him, and saw the same faint blue glow in his eyes. He seemed to notice my shocked reaction, for he smiled as he gazed into my own pallid eyes.

We sat at the table, the lights on in my home for the first time in a month at his insistence. He handed me a bottle of crimson liquid, the contents of which I snatched from his hands and gulped down without a second thought or question, as if my resolve for the past week meant nothing in the face of self-preservation. He smiled again as he watched the lethargy along with my hunger-induced ugliness disappear as fresh blood smeared my face and clothes once more, but all I could do was fixate on the floor, ashamed at my behaviour in the face of my teacher.

For what seemed an eternity we sat in awkward silence. I had so many questions for him, but I was afraid of asking, afraid of knowing.

“You should come back to school. We miss you very much.” Hiroto-sensei said, breaking the silence.

“I can’t...” I replied, still averting his gaze.

“Why not?”

“I did something terrible! And yet... I felt nothing.”

“Oh? And what did you do, Ayase?” Hiroto-sensei asked, but something from the way he said it made me feel like he somehow knew what I was about to say.

“I killed...”

“No. He killed Yuna,” his tone was dead serious. “Look.”

From his briefcase he handed me a newspaper, the headlines of which reported the cornering and subsequent gunning down of a withered zombie-like figure that had been stalking my neighbourhood by the police. He had been, as claimed by the article, behind the recent killings.

“He’s a real piece of art, is he not? That, Ayase, is what happens when you try to become blood-starved. Eventually, the hunger overwhelms, you go feral, and you find fresh blood, or die trying.”

I gasped as my eyes fixated upon the picture of the bullet-riddled carcass of my former attacker. Even in death his ghoulish visage sent chills down my spine, for he was what I almost was when I tore into Yuna, and from his monstrous image I saw a piece of myself I did not want to acknowledge.

Looking up from the newspaper, I looked upon Hirohito-sensei’s face with a mix of shock and horror, at a loss for words as his the faint glow of his own pallid eyes gazed into mine.

“You felt nothing when you killed her, didn’t you? Without guilt, can the “crime” even be yours to bear?” he asked, breaking the silence once more. “It happens to us when we turn. I know how you feel, I mean, your confusion. I too felt that way at first. But give it some time.”

“But what I did was horrible! It should have been, but...” I stammered, aghast at the callousness my homeroom teacher was showing to me without even so much as a care. “It doesn’t feel that way. It shouldn’t be like that!”

“Before I go… I have something for you.” Hirohito-sensei said. He reached for his briefcase once more, handing me a large, get-well-soon card from my classmates, filled with all manner of well-wishes and loving thoughts from them. “You know, they wanted to come see you, the whole of 3-A, but I forbade them from doing so, told them you were in the ICU and could not be visited,” he continued, still smiling. “But not to worry, their thoughts are with you, as they are for Yuna. Such a shame that she died, really.”

“But why didn’t you let them come see me?” I asked, my eyes tearing up at the thought of my friends, of what they would think of me if they knew the truth. Had they been there, they might have saved me from myself somehow, even if I knew that to be a lie. “In fact,” I choked, “How did you know about this? About... me?”

“Your landlord, Mister Miyagi told me about it. He saw you with that feral fiend while he was up there smoking by the balcony. He and I go way back. He’s like us, no, older- an Ancient. He is our Bloodfather, one of the first turned by our Mother. You should go see him when you can. He will teach you how to live.”

I was truly at a loss for words. I could do naught but stare silently as tears rolled slowly down my cheek while Hirohito-sensei stood up to leave. But as he was about to open the door and leave, he turned around once more to address me.

“Come back to class when you’re feeling better, won’t you? We all miss you very much,” Hirohito-sensei added, a warm smile on his face, something more akin to the friendly but distant homeroom teacher I once knew so well, as if his earlier persona was but a figment of my imagination. And with that, the door closed shut in my face, leaving me alone in my home once more.

Following Hirohito-sensei’s advice I sought out Mister Miyagi, the landlord who lived on the fifth floor, the top floor of my apartment complex. Up to now, he was known only to me as a reclusive man who liked drinking and smoking as much as he liked rent money. After all, I had never seen him around before, having paid my rent on time via an envelope through his door’s mail slot. Those not-so-punctual, I heard, he visited in person, and often they would pay up and move out soon after, horrified by something they would refuse to speak of.

It was just past midnight when I showed up at his door. I had tried to see him at 8 a.m while he was smoking, but he told me to come back at midnight. The air was chilly as always and the moon glowed dimly in the night sky, causing me to shudder slightly as I withdrew my folded arms to knock on his door once more.

The door opened and I stood face to face with a pudgy man wearing a pair of plaid shorts and an overstretched singlet, whose potbelly betrayed his love for good food, or perhaps something more than that, now that I knew what he truly he is. A mutual feeling, judging from the way he grinned at me, a can of beer in hand, as the pallid blue glow of his eyes met my own. It was almost as if I was standing before a giant, blood-engorged flea.

“Bloodfather, my teacher, Hirohito-sensei, told me to find you.” I said, trying my best to be polite rather than frightened.

“Indeed,” Miyagi said as he took a swig of his beer. “I may be your Bloodfather, but you’re a rare mistake, just like that alley fiend,” he said rather gruffly. “But, since I owe Hirohito a favour and you’ve been such a good tenant, I’ll help ya get used to your new, diseased existence.”

He put down his can of beer on the balcony and beckoned me to follow him. I was taken aback at the silence of his footsteps on the stairs despite his clumsy frame, having attributed my own silent movement to my own relatively light frame. But watching Miyagi walk made me think otherwise.

We stopped at the second floor, before the door of someone’s apartment. No one was around but us as he fished out a master key from his trousers and opened the door. Beckoning me to follow once more, we tread silently into the darkness. I found myself able to see clearly in it, as if the lights were on, much to my surprise. Walking through the living room and into the bedroom, we came before the home’s tenants, a man and woman fast asleep and tucked snugly into the sheets of their bed. Upon closer inspection, I identified them to be Mister and Mrs Ushi, a young couple that I had exchanged pleasantries with before on the staircase on occasion whenever I met them on my way home from school.

Miyagi smiled at me, signalling me to watch closely as he bent his head towards the sleeping man. He stuck out his tongue, and in an instant it curled up and extended itself into something long, thin and taut, much like the proboscis of a mosquito. Inserting the now transformed tongue into the man’s neck, he siphoned and drank his blood as a mosquito would, an act that felt right and natural to me in instinct, despite all that I have ever known that would have claimed otherwise.

A medium-sized lump of swollen flesh festered upon the still-sleeping man’s neck, no different from an insect’s sting. Uncurling his tongue back to normal, he signalled for me to follow suit. All my concerns about draining the sleeping lady were soon allayed as the blood flowed down my throat once more as the feeling of nourishment overwhelmed my senses once more. But even as I relished in the sweet splendour of her blood, I could not help but wonder how Mrs Ushi would have felt were she awake to witness what I had done to her.

When we returned to the entrance of Miyagi’s apartment, he pressed into my palm a key similar to his. That, he said, would be my means of survival. So long as I fed at least once every two days, I would not become like that dead fiend, feral and monstrous, unable to siphon blood without extreme violence. And with that he left me for his home, reminding me to pay my rent on time, or else.

It dawned upon me at that moment that this entire apartment complex was but a farm for Miyagi’s hunger, its tenants his cattle, and that those mosquito bites on my neck over the past few years of living here were of a far more sinister nature. No doubt there were more like us in this city, draining the lifeblood of its people as the endless night shrouded the sun. But even as I now realised this, I could do nothing but follow, especially since he had let me into his world so that I may thrive as he did.

A week later I returned to school, sated and fully nourished with blood. The whole of 3-A welcomed me back with open arms, relieved and overjoyed at my supposed miraculous recovery in the ICU. It was so nice to have good news for a change, they said, especially after Yuna’s untimely death at the hands of a monster.

As I took my seat, I could not help but notice a tiny vase of flowers placed upon the empty desk next to me that was once Yuna’s. But all I could do was look away from it, for it was a stark reminder of my true nature, and what I was capable of.

Over the next few days, I found it much easier to talk to people, to be at the center of attention where I would once otherwise be relegated to the side. I began to wear my uniform with a newfound boldness, going as far as to have the majority of my clothes modified to fit tightly around the curves of my blood-nourished body. It became bafflingly easy to make people around me smile and laugh, as if I exuded some kind of otherworldly charm when nourished with blood. My classmates, and even people from other classrooms began to crowd around my desk in-between lessons, clamouring for my attention and approval, as if my every word meant the world to them when it was once mere background noise. Among them I gave my affections to the ones I thought were the sincerest, but in truth, all I could discern with my eyes were their beauty. We formed a clique of sorts, a group of mutual friends for my own protection, as Hirohito had advised me upon my return to school with my new life.

It was around then that I noticed that there were others like me around in school, surrounded by their own friends as I was. I wanted to speak with them, but whenever our pallid eyes would meet I could feel their hostility burning into me, warning me to stay away from them as they would do the same for me. Sadly, the only one of us that I could relate to was Hirohito-sensei, but aside from a knowing smile here and there and the occasional chat on the school rooftop, he would keep his distance from me otherwise, as he did for everyone else.

“Tell me, why do you keep away from everyone else, Sensei?” I asked one time when we were alone on the school rooftop, watching the dark sky as everyone else on the ground floor scurried home.

“I just don’t feel like it,” he replied dryly. “I know, it reeks of teenage angst, but I just don’t... see the reason to. I can’t feel it anymore.”

“Feel what?”

“This... “disease” corrupts us, you know, not just in flesh, but also our soul.”

“Souls?” It was incredulous to me that a teacher devoted to scientific study would say something like that.

“Yes. You feel it too, don’t you? Self-preservation is all that matters to our kind. Everything else is irrelevant. Why else would the other students like you wish to shun your presence? They know how dangerous one of their own truly is. In a world where there is no right or wrong, there is only the predator and the prey.

“That’s not true,” I retorted in the face of his incredulous assertion. “I care about other things. And as for them, I guess you’re right...” I did not want to admit it, but even I could sense the danger of my fellows, as they probably did too when they first discovered my presence in the school.

“Oh? What do you care about, then?” He asked in a rather patronising tone, as if entertaining the concerns of a hapless child.

“I care about my friends. I care about my future, and I care about the people I love.” I stated, looking him directly in the eyes the best I could. “I...”

“You care that your thralls keep you safe, and the only future you desire is your next feeding!” Hirohito-sensei all but spat the words before taking a moment to regain his composure. “And love... love is for the healthy and pure.”

“I don’t believe you. Why, I...”

“Why else did you feel that way when Yuna died?” he asked with an almost sarcastic tone, eyeing me carefully as I winced from his words.

“Shut up, damn you!” I screamed, watching Hirohito-sensei’s eyes widen at my outburst. “I don’t know why I felt that way, d****t!” I covered my face with my hands as tears streamed down my face. “But I do know one thing- I don’t wantit to be like this!”

He was clearly taken aback at my anger from the way he lost his normally cold composure, perhaps unused to such outbursts of emotion from his students. But even as I wept, I knew in my heart that my tears were not for Yuna, but my own pathetic self.

“I guess I went too far. I’m sorry, Ayase.” I felt his hands squeezing my shoulders gently as he moved closer to embrace me. It felt aloof and insincere, like he always was to his students. Perhaps he did mean something when he tried to embrace me, but I pushed him away, disappointed and disgusted by how I had let him get to me like that. 

“I’m sorry, Sensei.” I croaked, still tear-stricken as I walked briskly towards the stairs. From the corner of my eye he was still standing there, watching me leave silently. It was the last time we ever spoke aside from customary teacher-student pleasantries, and we became as distant to each other as the others of our kind.

But even as I left his company I still pondered his words, for even as much as I would want to deny them, I could feel some measure of truth within them that I feared with all my heart. Was self-preservation truly all that mattered for our kind? I liked to believe that despite our accursed condition, we were still human on the inside so long as we remained sated with blood. It was the reason I wanted to believe, that my stalking of my neighbours as they slept so was only to keep the monster within at bay, that my feeding was the right thing rather than something selfish. After all, I was blood-starved and about to turn feral then when I encountered Yuna in the alleyway.

Living only for the sake of survival was something for the beasts, not me. But I began to wonder if I was perhaps no different after talking to Hirohito-sensei and observing the others of my kind act with such callous indifference to others. After all, I had only hurt people up to now under desperation rather than mere sadism. And thus, I began to wonder if I would feel any guilt if I knowingly hurt someone.

I just had to know. A perverse desire within me demanded answers, if not to prove my teacher wrong, then to at least make peace with the turmoil in my heart, that I would know if I still had any humanity within me, even if it meant hurting someone to do so.

An opportunity arose a week later when my friends told me of a girl from the junior year that allegedly had magical powers, and could invoke a hex as easily as she could divine the future. While I initially found the whole rumour charming, almost everyone in school, even my friends from 3-A seemed to think otherwise. Hoping to change my mind, they told me to go see her to believe it for myself.

Being someone used to requests about love and their immediate future, she was without a doubt surprised at my audacious request. The way her head shook at the burger bar as she spoke made it clear she wanted nothing to do with my special request, but she was quick to reconsider when I dropped the slightest hint that were she to do it, she could be my friend, something that should have meant nothing and yet meant the world to her.

I remained on my seat, watching her quietly as she set off on her quest, a skip in her step fuelled by the hope I had dangled in her face like bait. Sipping my soda slowly, I sat in quiet contemplation. Hirasaka Yuki was, after all, a newly moved in tenant in my apartment complex, occupying the apartment that was once Yuna’s. He was a scrawny boy that was of no real threat to me, but I wanted to see if I could so easily condemn someone to death without any consideration. Perhaps it was so easy, because I knew Kaori to be a fraud, incapable of the task set before her.

She was not up to the task, unsurprisingly, and for the rest of the week I tormented her for her failure. All it took was a simple, vague statement every day and she would shiver uncontrollably at my presence. Never once did I ever need to re-iterate my demand- my presence at her table and her own paranoid thoughts were more than enough. And as much as I hate to say it, watching her squirm as the faith of her newfound friends wavered amused me greatly.

In time, she grew more desperate, egged on by the fear of losing her newfound popularity, and the desire to join my clique of friends. I smiled as I stood in the shadows, watching her perform her silly rituals in the darkness of the alleyway, curled up in a corner like a madwoman. Watching her from the third floor, I chuckled at her desperate pleading to her so-called spirit guardian in-between fits of rage and maddened gibbering, violently shifting between threats and pleas to invoke something out of nothing. Her maddening pleas soon turned to silent, tearful sobbing, as if perhaps her so-called guardian spirit was never there to begin with, and she was nothing more than a hallucinating freak, just like the names they called her. 

She was tearing herself apart in desperation all because of my false promise, and much to my dismay as I reflected upon myself in the shower before school, I enjoyed every moment of it as it happened.  She was still there at seven a.m., unconscious from an entire night’s worth of rage-filled chanting. Surprisingly however, Hirasaka Yuki was not in school either.

“It’s that accursed mystic from 1-E! She’s the one that did that to poor little Hirasaka-kun!” Haruka, one of my friends, told me as I bit into my homemade sandwiches, filled with ham and buttered with blood. “Told ya she’s for real!”

“I see.” I replied after swallowing my food. “Is she in school today?”

“Yeah!” Osana, another one of my friends, interjected. “She’s here, but I heard she fainted during homeroom, and now she’s in the Nurse’s Office, and she-”

Before she could finish her sentence, I was out of the classroom, walking briskly towards the Nurse’s Office. I knocked on the door and behind the school nurse I saw Kaori lying in bed, awake but visibly weak.

“May I speak to Miss Tsubaki in private? It’s very important.” I asked.

“Sure.” The school nurse seemed nonchalant about  the whole thing, seemingly more excited that my presence meant that she could go out and take a break. She turned around and addressed Kaori briefly, informing her of my presence before heading straight for the door.

With no one else around, I locked the door before taking a seat by Kaori’s bedside. She had the look of someone broken in both body and spirit. Smiling, I told her of Hirasaka Yuki’s fate, which made her lethargic look of defeat turn to that of joy, satisfied that her efforts had meant something in the end, even if those efforts might have been nothing at all. When asked if she could do it again, however, she began to laugh as maniacally as her hoarse breathing allowed, delirious in her victory and yet fearful of the future, for she seemed to know what we both knew. She laughed so much that I began to wince nervously at her mania, unsure of what to say in the face of such insanity. But it was just as well, for she was far too distracted to notice my tongue, and by the time I was upon her she had finally stopped laughing, no longer so assured of her success, for her face was now locked into silent terror as I stung her neck and drank her blood.

Until now, all I had fed upon had been unconscious, unaware of my presence as I siphoned their lifeblood to rejuvenate mine. But to have someone watch in silent terror, powerless to stop me as I performed my profane act upon them- that was truly the greatest feeling of all.

After an exhilarating ten seconds or so, I released my grip upon her shoulders, my tongue uncurling and shifting back to normal as I smiled. But while I revelled in my satisfaction I could see her fearful visage from the corner of my eye. She could be my friend, but no one would believe what happened to her, and from the tears forming in her eyes she knew it to be true as well.

I left the Nurse’s Office with a smile on my face, relishing the memory of the pure terror on Kaori’s face as I licked my lips in satisfaction. I was not hungering for blood then, and her blood tasted foul, but her fear and suffering was what made it special. And for that alone I realised that I was nothing like Hirohito-sensei, who spoke only of self-preservation, but neither like what I envisioned myself to be. I was something else.