The Hunger

A brief exploration of vampire myths. Some are true, some are not, and to the consternation of one young vampire, some are slightly distorted.

The hunger surged in his head, and his blood-starved veins burned with the fever it induced. The pain in his head grew in pounding waves. The hunger had control; he had no defense but to obey the hunger and satisfy his lust. Despite his revulsion at what he must do, he was unable to resist the hunger.

 

His acute senses were assailed with an influx of stimuli. The night air held the first twinges of autumn coldness mottled by warm drifts that carried the odors and sounds of the festive crowds. Carnivals and fairs were always full of too many scents, too many lights, too many watchful eyes. But here he could feed. He would be able to appease the hunger and abate the pain.

 

He sniffed the air. He knew that what he sought would be here, but he could not pick up its scent over the smell of cooking food. Odors of dead meat ripe with age and fried in fat filled the air. The young girl he passed reeked of it. It filled her belly, infused her blood, and seeped from her pores. The girl brushed against him as she turned. He shrank away from her touch. She stammered an apology, and the stench of cooked meat on her breath nauseated him. If his stomach had not been empty, he would have heaved its contents at her feet.

 

The gaming booths stood back to back like a makeshift alleyway. He turned down the dark passage they created and walked swiftly toward the far end. He smelled it before he saw it. The cattle barn. He knew that he could feed here away from sickening stenches and prying eyes. He feared neither capture nor exposure for what he was. He was a vampire, and there was no one here that could harm him.

 

In the few years since he had been turned, he had learned that nearly all of the legends about vampirism were false. He could not be killed by stake or sunlight or holy relics. If it was truly that easy to die, he would have chosen death over the hunger a long time ago. The hunger was real though. That legend had proven to be the part of this nightmare that held the most truth.

 

The hunger pushed him. He must feed, and he found a dark stall in the barn, and he crouched in the corner. The large cow slept and never knew he was there. He hid, and he fed. He hid because he could not bear to show what he had become. He hid his own revulsion at what he was doing. He had once longed for this existence, and now that he had it, he loathed what he was doing.

 

He hid to hide that there was one more legend about vampires that was not true. Vampires fed not on blood, not on flesh. He picked up the dark colored clump lying in the hay behind the cow. It was fresh and steam wafted between his fingers as he lifted it to his mouth. With his eyes pressed closed, he fed and the hunger began to fade. 

Reviews

[Salvatore Buttaci]

Congratulations on your vampire-contest win!

Sal

[Rawhide]

When I started writing this story, I was thinking of the vampire legends. I imagined a teenage boy who was enamored by the glamorized version of vampirism, the romanticism and "super powers". I tried to imagine what it would be like to finally get something that you had wanted so bad for a long time only to find out that very little of what you thought was true and had in fact chosen a horrific life for yourself.

The point of holy relics, as well as stakes and sunlight, having no power over him served two purposes.

1. It established that many of the basic vampire legends were not true. This was neccessary to establish because the very nature of the story requires that the legends are not true.
2. It helped show that even though the existence he had chosen was so horrific to him that he would gladly die to get out of it, his "outs" were gone, and he was trapped as what he had become.

[R.S. Wilder]

The vamp not being affected by holy relics...interesting point, one that I myself have used time and time again in my own writing. But why isn't he affected in your story???? Just curious about your line of thought when you wrote this.