My name is Chuck Bartowski, and I am trapped.
Chuck closed the leather journal and tucked his pen in his pocket. He felt so alone in his empty house with the empty bedroom where his parents should be but they were not because the vampires devoured them and it would only be a matter of time before they devoured him because he couldn't hold the act forever.
Chuck wanted to live in a house bathed in the sun with living, real parents who could hold him when he wanted them to, who could comfort him and reassure him that the world he lived in was not hell, and vampires didn't exist because it would be foolish to think they were real. They were real. And his parents were dead, though he did not know how they died, and did not want to. He wanted to cry, but vampires did not cry and so he did not. He held in emotions because emotions got you killed. Oh and do not think it was going to be quiet, peaceful death if you were caught by the vamps, no it would be a gory feast of teeth and nails as the vampires would gnaw on your bones and do horrendous nasty stuff that he did not want to imagine.
Living in a world overrun by vampires was not ideal. He had to wake up every night at precisely 8 pm, jump out of bed, shave all body hair since vampires didn't grow body hair, and he couldn't miss a single strand of hair lest they find out and that wouldn't be good no it wouldn't. Vampires didn't feel cold, and any sign of being cold could betray his disguise. No shivering, goosebumps, teeth chattering, none of it. And Chuck had to bathe three times per day to get rid of his body odor, which smelt like steamed chicken to a vampire.
He was lost in a world that laughed at his pathetic race, a pathetic race that was on the verge of becoming extinct. Chuck was one of the last if not the last of his kind. His parents taught him how to blend in and fool the vamps into thinking he was one of them, but eventually he would slip up, and then die the horrible death that his parents received though he did not know or want to know the details.
The sun gave Chuck a reprieve from the hell he lived on, though it was always short lived. Vampires could not venture in the sunlight and because of that they scheduled school to start the precise moment the sun disappeared over the horizon. Occasionally Chuck would go out during the day and walk across town, across the shielded houses with curtains drawn like capes to conceal the savage inhabitants within, across the boundary line that cut off the circulation of the town, and across the miles and miles of desert to a secluded slice of paradise that he doubted anyone knew about. There were apples and oranges flowering above his head on the branches of great oak trees, the greeny earth at his feet a contrast of life among the sandy dunes stretching thousands of miles in any direction. Sometimes, and just sometimes, he would hike all the way out here, reminiscent of when his dad used to take him, and grab a bunch of apples to bring back home.
"What are these Charles, these red shaped fruit I have in my hand?" His dad said the first day he took Chuck to this place.
"I don't know.." Chuck eyed in wonder at the red round things his dad was holding. Stephen Bartowski slowly lowered his mouth to the apple and bit in, juice gushing around his mouth as he crunched down on it.
"Aces, Charles, aces."
The bus pulled up outside his house at precisely eight. The sun drifted off in a sleepy haze a couple minutes earlier, and now the hell demons were waking up. Chuck smoothed his curly black hair, breathed slowly to calm his nerves, and grasped the doorknob. Each night he did not think he had the courage to open the door and live among them, but somewhere, somehow he did find the courage, the strength to survive, the braveness, and would open the door to faintly make out the bus huffing and puffing its exhaust into the air. There was no light, the vampires had no need. If he so much as squinted the vamps would become suspicious. And more suspicious they would become if they decided that everything about loner Chuck Bartowski did not seem to add up. No parents, did not go out to all the college games that preoccupied the hours before the sun would come up, and his best buddy happened to be a vegan which was ridiculous, it would not take a dumb vampire to piece the clues together.
Morgan did not know that he was human, but if he did... He didn't know what would happen. Chuck spent the years of his life blending in to avoid suspicion and so far it worked, but one slip up and it was over. Over. Morgan the Vegan and Chuck the Loner.
He walked towards the bus with his head down, avoiding eye contact and walking with a slump to make people stay away from him. Nothing screamed interesting about him, and that meant less social contact and less chance of getting caught. He sat at the front of the bus, where the quiet vampires resided leaving the loud and often obnoxious ones to the back. Gratefully there was an empty seat to his left, and he muttered a quick prayer of thanks as he sat down with his head looking out the window. Only a few stops left after his home before they made their way towards the campus. It was a long ride there, and gasoline was very, very expensive nowadays, leading to more and more vampires choosing the bus over expensive car rides.
The doors of the bus squeaked open but Chuck was not paying attention. He could not give a damn about any of these vampy assholes in this world (except Morgan), let alone on this bus, so it took him by complete, utter surprise when he heard, "can I sit here?" being asked softly to his right. Sarah Walker regarded him with impatience, although she looked a bit nervous and insecure, with her pale, smooth fingers twitching against the top of the seat.
"Uh sure", he muttered, cursing every God out there and hoping to death that she would change her mind. She didn't. Not only was he about to be sharing a bus seat with a deadly vampire that was not Morgan for almost 30 minutes, he was sitting next to the most beautiful, popular vampire in school.