The flames licked at the walls and crackled wickedly. Peter frantically looked for some form of escape. He thundered into his sister's room, only to find the fire bursting into his face; forcing him to stagger back into the hallway. He inched back into the room, finding his sister engulfed in the flame, dead. He let a strangled cry escape his parched throat and broke into sobs. He threw himself into the fiery debris and flung himself out the window.

It was raining, as if the whole world was mourning along with Peter for the loss of his family. He saw the ground through tear-brimmed eyes, and then heard a sickening thud.

And everything went black.

Light flooded the world in the morning three days after the catastrophic incident, lighting Peter's pale face. He awoke with a start, trying to figure out how long he had been asleep. All he remembered was that he had been in agonizing pain. He sat up and rubbed his eyes groggily, trying to clear his vision. Peter had seen several frightening images, as if the three days had been one long dream. He saw a young seven year old girl sneering at a man. But the frightening thing about it was that the man was writhing about on the floor, pleading for her to stop. Stop what? he thought to himself. The image had flashed away and was replaced by a boy of about the age of ten walking out of a pit of flames, lips curled up in a snarl; and then he lunged at someone, or something, beyond his own vision. That's when Peter had woken up.

The landscape was misty, a thin sheet of white over Peter's family property, a creamy blanket over a blackened, disheveled estate. His home was no more. He looked at himself. His skin seemed much paler than it normally would have, and appeared to glisten in the sunlight.

Peter was afraid.

Am I dead? He thought to himself. Is this heaven? Why is my home still here? There were millions of questions he wanted an answer to, but there was simply no one that could possibly explain this. Everything seemed to be clearer, sharper, like a thin sheet of warped glass was removed from his mind. He whispered to himself,

"What am I?"

And he not only saw, but heard. His voice! Oh, his voice was as though he were singing everything he spoke. He stood up, and a lot faster than he would have liked to. He gasped at the quickness of his movement. Instead of feeling a jolt of his heartbeat, he felt nothing. Shaking now, he put a hand to his chest, expecting to feel a pulse. Again, silence.

Peter was afraid.

He wondered if he would ever be the same again. Despite all of the trauma he was experiencing, he felt surprisingly hungry. But it wasn't exactly a hunger for anything, it almost felt like a thirst. He ran into the forest, hoping to find some sort of animal. He realized his movement had increased thousands, no, hundreds of thousands times than he normally would have moved. He saw a deer, and instead of using his bow like he normally would, he charged the beast head-on. The next thing he knew, he was dining on the blood of the creature. He flung himself bodily from the carcass into a tree, which split in half.

Peter was afraid.

He had just drank the blood of another living thing! He couldn't get over the fact that he did so, but was now more intrigued about how he had destroyed the tree. He decided he would purposely test his strength on what was left of the tree. I'm faster, why not stronger? he thought. Before he could comprehend his actions, the tree was above his head. In his hand. In one hand. He felt like crying and cheering at the same time. He took a long, thorough look at the woods; a sudden feeling of his being invincible rushed through his veins. Like he could do anything.

But that was four hundred years ago.

I'm not exactly sure why I've been doing my freshman year of high school over and over, at least that's the way it seems. I'm fifteen, and I've been fifteen for 400 years. And I've been through high school so many times I can repeat the teacher's lessons word for word. I have thought recently that when I graduate (for about the 350th time, at least,) that I should go to college.