Three A.M., and I'm leaving my computer again. The anime I had playing is put on pause, I don't even get to tell my companions on Instant Messenger that I'm going afk.
Left. Right. Left, Left. Right. Left. A common pattern, performed at that speed. The wails and moans coming from my target refuse to die down... And, in fact, even escalate. Only part of this is actual pain, the other part, a show to try and convince me. The same show I've seen every night for the last 3 years of my life. The same show I'm doomed to see as long as the actress lay within reach.
I finally get back to my computer about 4, yawning, with my eyes watering and itching as though the seams holding their corners together are instead ripping through my skin and leaving salt or vinegar in it's place. When I look in the mirror, I will spy the heavy red appearing at the edges of the whites, both under my eyelids and openly visible, and even streaking accross my iris.
The brown and gold world is streaked with stress and fatigue. And even as I sit, I realize something... My body calls for release, and the only available bathroom I can use without waking the demon is occupied by my piggish louse of a sister... Sitting on the bowl reading some manga, rather than doing her business and getting out of the room so others may repeat the action.
As I think about it, I am both glad and remorseful my uncle is not on the premises this evening, he has been called to his brothers... For what, exactly, I don't know, but all the same. So I sit at my computer longer, long into the night, and as the sun begins to rise.
As I begin to drift off at my desk, the monster in the other room calls again, sending it's wails and moans through the house. My sister still rests her bum in the bathroom, so I've yet to have used it. The sad part is that she's still alive in the restroom, she must have been in for an hour and a half or so, and not even the shower running.
I flit to the call, dragged on an invisible leash few have the integrity to spot... A leash I have been on for several years now. It calls, I come.
The creature moans about another pain, perhaps in it's neck or leg, or begs me to apply some foul salve to it's dry patches, visible and -not under the spring green blouse and hole-riddled, pepto-bismol colored leggings.
This monster... No known morals, no appreciation for anything done for it. Rarely shows it's grattitude to it's assistants... The harmless, helpless creatures that we are.
My life, I have given to this monster, from before I graduated my basic training courses, among those others who will never know the leash I suffer, most who won't know the undergone abuse, and not a single one who will know the extent of either.
I wait on the monster hand and foot, rarely feeling appreciated or listened-to. I doubt my opinions matter to the monster. It insists on torturing me with bad sitcoms and frightening competitions and reality T.V. series' who never had right for conception. Things it knows I hate.
My only reprieve when I need it is my uncle, who of course, isn't here.
Durable as I am, there's only so much I can take from this monster, whom I'm absolutely certain is testing my limitations little at a time. Sadly, I am nearing the end of my rope. The creature constantly attempts to convince me of my worth to it; listing the things done in my favor in the past.
But there are things this beast does NOT see. Because I was raised the way I was, I became obediant. Obedient and withdrawn, with few friends. This was not, however, the fault of the creature yowling for attention in the other room, but the one settled in the bathroom, taking up space and ravaging food stocks and supplies who are owned by creatures not that one.
Drained, is how I feel.
I finally get to bed some time after dawn, with the sun beginning to peak through my window. I wanted to go to bed hours ago. There is little left that would surprise me, however, in the way of my bedtime. I've grown used to an erratic sleeping schedule. That the creature remains mostly predictable is a wonder.
However, in just a couple of hours, I am needed again. So I skitter through my turns to help the monster roll over, then take some verbal abuse and sigh, waddling back to the door, only to hear a muttered calling from the monder. Obediently, I turn around and approach the bed, requesting a repeat, only to be yelled at and told to nevermind it. I am a little hard of hearing, yes, but I don't think the monster realizes that.
A vampire... A vampire is what I service. A vampire in her human shell of existance, feeding off the energy and time I put into her care. A vampire, claiming to be innocently-intentioned, even as she is drinking from the bloodvein of my arm, as I work to please, to pride the beast.
Alas, something of my energy never seems to appease the creature, no matter how much I give, what I do. If I try to make it a meal, I'm told it's wrong, compared to the last fixing, or there's an ingredient that makes it unable to eat.
Knowing this creature's allergies, though, I can understand the inedibility of some projects. However, with a beast who's temper and preferencial allignment of this order, it is hard to get anything just right.
Even after oral surgery, the vampire continues to yell at me. I am admittedly a touch clumsy, yes, but I'm much better now than I used to be. This vampire just does't see that, and there's no way I can make it.
I'm beginning to believe my sister... That beast in the bathroom, is also a creature of blood and spirit-sucking. Either of their presence drains my soul of it's will and energy to go on living.
Life... What is Life? I seem to have forgotten. The days just seem to mould together, now, forming into weeks and months of indiscernible time, despite the callendar and clock on my computer and the wall behind the monitor. The months seem to take forever, however, to string into years, and always, I feel more drained. With every interaction, more drained.
The creature in the other room proceeds to convince me that I am worthless, and has begun claiming I do not love it or care for it. This is not true, of course, but I can't help getting defensive. It is amazing what backing the most timid of creatures into a corner can do, I muse, as I lash out at the creature, verbally, at the same time it lashes out at me.
There will be no reprieve. It is 4 am, and I've noone to turn to to talk, or hug, or cry into. The will to sleep had left, and I am unsure if it is returning or if it is merely the light of my lamp searing into my cornea painfully, after watching anime in the dark for hours. I will not know. Not now, at any rate.
As I consider the options, the only one I can think of brims to mind. I must now name the creature on whom my life is sworn, to whom my leash is led, who will drive me mad before I am to grow to 21. My efforts are for naught... My work, ignored, or glanced at passively and criticized for being of a certain style, before I am told, contrary to what this monster told me when I was younger, 'You will never make it in this world.'
'This world'? 'This world'!? I've no time to think of making it in the world. I must make it first in this HOUSE, and live through the vampires, before I can even consider the world.
This vampire... This... Creature... Is MOM. This monster that so restrains me is the sole parental unit I have suffered the entirety of my life, my only reason for living, and the whole reason I am going insane.
So dependant am I on this vampire that I, by my own obedience, will rarely leave the house, and never for long, lest it be a vacation of sorts.
Mom, and Sister, the two most frightful things in my world, one whom I depend on wholely.
It is depressing, as I consider it, that I can take this abuse. The words pass straight through my ears, but are filed in a cabinet deep in the back of that organ that keeps blood running through my system with fresh oxygen.
That does not mean I do not feel it.
The words hurt, they sting, like a sunburn concentrated in my chest. Though an emotionally strong person I once was, I now am a husk, a shell. I am easy to ignite, and while I take the words, I keep their effect on me in the form of apparent anger, or distaste.
But it is fear, grief, pain... All the emotions most do not let permeate the solitude of their minds, to the back of their beliefs and the front of their mental pews. The emotions do not take over until I am safe in my own corner of the dwellings, but they are there.
For once... Once every month or two, depending on the level of stress, I cry. I cry long and hard, and I can't breath while I cry. Salty tears slip past my palms, coating my eyes, to dribble down my cheeks and into my ears: Drool slides from my mouth, mucus pools and begins to leak from my nose, heavily enough that it requires the service of a whole towel to contain just a few blows of the nose.
It is my belief that any who knew what I suffered would pity me, or perhaps envy my evolution from fluffy to falling-apart. However, optimistic on the surface, they see nothing of it... Perhaps resent my happy-go-lucky attitude. That was the only thing that kept me sane, and slowly, the walls I had set up since I was little and continuously fortified are broken down. The more fortifications I put up, the weaker they become, and the easier they are broken down to nothing, that the vampires may feed again.
It is my pleasure and my burden to serve the vampire, but perhaps the pleasure is merely an illusion. Something I force on myself to hide it the pain that comes along with it.
I am called time and again to help the beast, and each time I feel more drained, less resillient, and that much more ready to find the courage to thrust a gun in my mouth and pull the trigger. Alas, it is a true coward what won't consider even overdosing on Ibuprofen as an alternative to life. Perhaps my reasoning is that it is the easy way out... Perhaps it is because such things are the coward's way out, and I do not want to prove myseolf a coward once more.
Whatever it is, I'm not sure how much longer this cowardice will last. It is not that I fear death, but... Rather... I imagine I've so much to live for. Perhaps it is not so much as I think, but surely there is a better position out there than the caretaker of a yin-drinker. Mayhaps I actually have a purpose to fulfill.
I can only hope this is so.
-{Based on the Author's real life and true feelings. Comments appreciated.}-