The True Life
A/N: A bit AU, but you'll see. Alfred didn't become a vampire. Might become a two-shot, so hit that review button afterwards and tell me!
Dislaimer: None of the characters are mine, Roman Polanski owns them.
I can still hear the count's voice in my head, it haunts my thoughts during the day and at night I see his face. He still tells me that he can show me the true life, the dark sins that I have longed for. Back then I was too scared to believe him, but lately I'm not sure if he was completely wrong. Maybe some part, deep inside me, really wants to be as powerful as the vampire could make me. I wouldn't have to follow the Professor around anymore, I'd be the one that everyone looked up to in respect and awe.
Sometimes I think about how it could have been if I had been a vampire before, when I met Sarah. Maybe she would have followed me, came to me when I called her. But as it is she was never interested in me, a student, a coward. When the Professor and I fled the castle she didn't come with us, I can still feel her hand as she pulled it from my grasp and walked towards the dark figure of the vampire count. It had been so soft, and so cold.
But my teacher didn't let me linger and he was the one who eventually saved me. We made it to the next village where we stayed the night until it was safe to return back home. The journey was long and hard but we arrived in early spring and everything that had happened seemed more like a dream than reality. I accepted that and returned back to my normal life as a student and assistant to a Professor who doesn't leave his study. Professor Abronsius is writing a book about our adventures, I tried to stop him but he never listens to me. Nobody will believe what he writes, and they will make even more fun of him as they do now. I can hear it when I walk through the corridors of the university, people whispering and pointing at me. The assistant of the mad Professor, who has lost his mind too.
Lost my mind? I guess you could say I have. Nothing is the same anymore and every day is fight to get out of bed and do what is expected of me. For a short time I got to taste what the real life feels like. No morals, no rules and no people telling me what I can and can't do. Show my feelings without fear of being called a weakling. But back here in Königsberg I'm nothing, I mean nothing.
In the darkest hours of the night I can hear his voice calling to me, my name sounds beautiful on his lips. He tells me to go out and do what I want. I obey. I don't want to, but every night again I do his bidding and wander out into the night. The sins that I've committed can't be described and once the sun comes up I don't want to anymore. The light scares me now. It sees what I have become and fears everything that's still in my mind. I've begun to love the night, where nobody sees me or despises the monster I have become.
I can imagine now the pleasures of becoming a vampire. Without the need to follow human rules I could finally be free. All the things that happened over a year ago are making sense in my head. Why Sarah was so attracted to Count von Krolock. Why the count's son behaved as he did and why the graveyard vampires reacted so heavily to the presence of mortals on their ball.
But most of all I understand why the people in the village feared the vampires so. It's not like I didn't fear them, I guess I was most scared of all. But those other people could see the humanity in the dark creatures, they knew that it didn't take a bite to become like them. Because sins are everywhere and the longing for a different, more adventurous life, rests in all of us.
There are times when I scare myself, or better, my thoughts scare me. They keep wandering back to Transylvania and the black castle in the mountains. My mind tries to imagine what it would be like to return and be welcomed like a long lost friend. To become one of them and only fear the sunlight. I know I can't because it will mean my dead, but still I can't seem to stop fantasizing about it.
I have decided, this morning I gave my resignation letter to the Professor and walked away without explaining anything. The letter would do that for me. I wrote about all my hideous deeds and how it's impossible to stay a loyal assistant to him any longer. I confessed and when we crossed paths in the hallway later that day he nodded, and accepted. In a way he has forgave me for all the things I had yet to do. He understood, for the first time since I've met him he understood.
I packed my bags, payed my last rent and held a carriage to drive me as far as possible. It's winter again and the landscape is covered in snow. I can see it is cold outside, but not as cold as my soul. I don't believe it's going to be warm again until I can taste what he meant. Until I can experience the true life for myself. We cross the border and I sigh in relief.
Freedom is so close that I can taste it, it tastes like warm blood.