-1Part One: The Beginning of All Beginnings
My name is Elyria, or so I'm told. I don't remember much about my childhood other than the lab. I remember slowly peeling my eyelids apart and seeing a blinding light. And I remember the voices. Those quiet voices. The voices that have haunted my dreams for ten years. I never noticed the voices until I was about 5. Yeah, that would make me about 15, right? Right. Except, I only have a rough estimate of how old I am. I don't really know. Being kept in a cage has its disadvantages. Like, it hurts to be walking around for once. The light hurts. And, most of all, there's the fear. Once they open those cages ,you never know if you're going to be one of the lucky ones, or if they're gonna keep you in those horrible cages. Those horrible cages that they feed you through. Those damned cages that drive most of us mad. Yes, I'm not the only one that is confined to a cage. There are others like me. The children on the other side of the fence call us "freaks', but I wouldn't really know, would I? I was raised around these "freaks". I'm a "freak" myself. See, the difference between us and those children are that we don't look like them. Well, some of us do, but not most of us.
Take me, for example. I'm pale. I have straight, black hair that has nasty tangles in it from not brushing it ever since I could remember. I also don't eat. Well, I kinda do. But, it's not what other people eat. Not what the "freaks" around me eat. I drink blood. Or whatever form of it I can get. Sometimes, I feed from myself, sometimes, I get the artificial stuff. Then, there are my dark times. Those are the times where I black out, and then come to in a big, white room, not knowing how I got there, or where I am. All I know is that I'm in big trouble. As I am every time I wake up in that room. I also know that every time I end up in that room, someone disappears. I think they get released. But I can't be for sure.
There are other "freaks" that have the same problem as I do. Such as, there's William, who we all call "Vill" since we can't really pronounce our "w's" that accurately. It's kinda hard with our fangs. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that. We have fangs. Big, pearly white shiny ones. I have no clue how they stay so clean since we don't have toothbrushes. It stinks, since our breath always smells bad. Like blood. Which is what triggers my black outs. Or so they say. The "scientists", at least. They spend most of the day poking and prodding at us. It sucks.
Anyway, there's me, Vill, Chelsea, Lola, Emilie, Syn, and Mattie. Mattie's the baby of the group, since he's only 6 years old. He's brilliant, though. He just sits in his cage and thinks about things for hours on end. While I and the other 5 manage to get our heads out of our cages and just talk to each other, he sits and thinks about stuff and works out mathematical formulas. We're all situated near each other for easier access for the "scientists". Just so that they can keep track of what kind we are. They call us the "vampires", whatever that means. It's funny, since I've heard the children at the fence talk about vampires, they say that they drink blood and sleep during the day, since the sunlight hurts them. We can go out in the sunlight, it just makes us glow like some really pretty gems. We sparkle in the sunlight as it warms up our skin. We've stayed out in the sunlight for a few hours when we've had outside time, and we never get any darker. We just stay deadly white. Well, except Lola. She's a pale kind of dark. But other than that, we all look like the dead corpses the "scientists" walk past us with on a daily basis.
Anyway, Mattie, the baby of the group is short, but tall at the same time. He has a muscular build, like we all do, and he has long black hair, brown eyes, and pale skin with long eyelashes and scraggly fingernails like we all do, for lack of proper hygienic conditions. Lola, is about a few months older than Mattie, and has a bit darker skin, brown eyes, black hair, soft face, and is about the same height as Mattie. She sings fantastically, her voice drifts through the air and soothes anything or anyone to sleep. She spends her time talking to us in her melodious voice that makes anyone happy. Syn is the rowdy, outgoing one. He's about 12 with black hair with natural blonde highlights. He has brown eyes like most of us, including myself, and he is taller than me, but not taller than Vill. Emilie, the 10 year old is the angelic one. She has the most angelic face of us all. She looks like us, but there's something about her face that brings a priest to his knees in prayer. She's so beautiful. He hair is always straight, something none of us can ever manage. Which brings me to Vill, my best friend. I love him like a brother. He's about 16, a couple of months older than me. We've literally known each other our whole lives. He's fantastic. His long, white hair, pale blue eyes, and slender face is enough to woo any girl. He's the tallest of us all, and has a medium muscular build, not too bulky, not too wimpy.
It's sad to see us all like this, we act as if it's a normal setting, like it's some kind of freaking high school or something. Ha. More like the high school from hell. Which is why I've decided to break out of here. It was the best and the worst decision I've ever made in my life. It was the best decision mainly because that meant that me and the other "vampires" were free. It meant that we were no longer confined to those cages, wondering day in and day out if we were going to die. It was the worst because we were pursued afterwards. We spent all of our days making sure that we weren't exposed.
You see, we're part of this experiment. They wanted to breed a new kind of superhuman beings. We are those beings. But anyway, I'll bet you're wondering how we got out.
Well, one day, we were being prodded at, and injected with this stuff that made me feel all funny. It was in this long needle with this blue liquid in it. It was a real pretty shade of blue. Kinda neon-ish. I stared at the bottles of it on the counters. Then, something came over me that I've never felt before. I became mad with rage. This feeling scared the hell outta me since I've never been this randomly angry before. I tried to hide it since I had a feeling that if they figured out how pissed I was, they'd send me to the therapist and I'd get shocks…again. They suck, believe you me.
Anyway, I pushed the anger into the back of my mind until I got back to my cage. I spent the following hour ranting about how unfair stuff was at the lab. Then, an idea came over me. I decided that since those bird kids broke out, we could too.
"Hey, I got an idea!" I said, making the others look at me.
A sweet voice echoed in my head, "What is it?"
"Why don't we get outta here? I mean, we're smart in that kind of stuff, we can pull it off, I think." I pitched.
"I don't know, El. What if we get caught? They'll give us shocks again!" Mattie said, a worried look washing over his face.
Suddenly, we heard footsteps, and we all stopped talking, pretending to be asleep. When the orderly passed us, we opened our eyes a crack and peeked. When we were sure the coast was clear, we continued talking.
"Well, that's a chance I'm willing to take, Mattie. If it's for freedom, I'm willing to risk my life. If you guys are in, then that's cool. We need to make a plan now. If you're not with me, then I'm going alone. Who's with me?" I asked.
Emilie raised her hand, accompanied by Lola and Syn. Mattie was hesitant at first, then raised his hand timidly. I felt a surge of triumph well up in my bosom. I looked at Vill. He was sitting in his cage, shaking his head.
I pouted out my bottom lip, "Come on, Vill. We need you most of all."
"You guys are fucking retarded." He sighed, raising his hand.
"YAYYY!!!" We all cheered, then quieted down when Syn thought he heard footsteps.
We pretended to be asleep, and peeked our eyes open and made sure that it was clear. Then, when it was all okay, we set up our plans.
It took me an hour-and-a-half to pick the lock on my cage, mainly because orderlies kept coming in and checking on us. I finally got the lock picked open, and felt a nervous kind of fatigue. I sighed in relief, since I knew that the last orderly had come in about 5 minutes ago. I smiled contentedly, and hopped down to get the other locks. About an hour later, we were all free. I was comforting Lola by giving her a hug. Suddenly, a hand on my shoulder made me jump. I turned around to look right into his eyes.