Death

I was aware I was no longer on a bus, and the weird girl wasn't there. All I could remember was getting my neck kissed, then my neck started to burn, hotter and hotter, and I felt myself going light headed, I placed my hand on my neck and saw it was covered in blood, when I looked up Marie had gone, and I could no longer hold on to consciousness.

I could hear around me again, but I couldn't open my eyes, they seemed too heavy. The pain of that fire in my neck had spread all over my body; I never knew a pain like this before. I began to writhe around, hoping that maybe if I shifted from that position it wouldn't hurt. I was wrong.

"HES LOSING TOO MUCH BLOOD!!! WE'RE GOING TO LOSE HIM!!!"

"WHAT DID THIS TO HIM!? Is it poison?! Nurse, find out if that blood test is back, his blood is too thick!"

"The lab couldn't come up with anything, he's in pain from some kind of poison obviously, but we've never seen it before so there's no anti-venom..."

"I'm not losing him over thick blood, get a transfusion in there."

"Doctor... we can't."

"Why the hell not?!"

"Because the needle keeps bending on his skin."

WHAT?!

I could only focus on that for a moment, before the burning continued, it was getting worse. I normally simply stomached pain, but this was impossible to ignore, it was so bad I became sure I was going to die. I'd never heard of anything like this, and I watched those 'World's deadliest sting', and 'Americas most dangerous fish' programs on channel 5 all the time.

The fire in my veins continued to burn, I could feel each heartbeat only making it worse. How long had it been? How long was I unconscious beforehand? I estimated about an hour, but for all I knew it could have been days. I couldn't hear anyone around me, only the beeping of a machine to my left. I could hear people outside discussing something about blood congealing, but who knows what that was about. To be honest, I couldn't care less what it was about because of the fire. It was like someone skinned me and threw me into a volcano, and the lava wasn't hot enough to kill me, but hot enough to hurt a hell of a lot. I tried the writhing about thing already, didn't actually do anything, and I had a good idea that if I cried out it would make things worse. So I laid there, listening to the ticking of the clock on the wall, and the beeping of the monitor on my left.

Who knows how long I had waited, I lost count of the beeping and ticking, the pain became too much to remember which number I was on. But finally, miraculously, the pain began to dim. My fingers were now free of it, but my heart began to burn even hotter, which at first I considered impossible. As the fire continued to recede from my extremities, it all seemed to rush to my heart, which was now pounding harder than it ever had done. I feared for the heat, I had a good heart. There was no way it was going to lose to some poison a girl stuck in my neck. Apparently I was wrong, and my heart thumped once, the once again, then was silent.

I panicked. IM DEAD!!! IM DEAD!!! My heart has stopped! HOLY SHIT!!!

But where was the bright light at the end of a tunnel? Why was I now more aware of my body than I ever had been before? There was no fire, but a dry ache in my throat. It was annoying.

My eyes opened, and I looked above me for a second. The ceiling was a simple painted white, with the typical hospital square lights. As I looked up, my chest heaved. I threw myself to one side, and my lungs seemed to convulse and shake in my chest. They compressed themselves, and I coughed out a disgusting black and yellow tar.

I knew nothing of medicine. But I knew enough to know that after coughing out that black tar from my lungs, and being able to breathe more clearly than I been able to for 3 years was definitely something above and beyond the norm. After being a smoker for that period of time, I never actually considered what my lungs might actually have looked like, but I knew now. For a brief moment I was consumed with disgust as I looked at the black mess in front of me, but that feeling quickly disappeared when I noticed I could see EVERYTHING. Before the black pile was dust, floating in the air, shining and dancing as the light reflected from each tiny particle... What exactly had happened to me? But more importantly, just what the hell had I turned in to?!

Before I could use my rational thinking to create a solid picture of what happened, I heard a small gasp, and the little dry ache in my throat began to burn, it faintly reminded me of the fire I had suffered through. The small nurse looked too startled to form a sentence, and I instantly had this urge to HAVE her. I must have her. There was no discussion in the matter, I could hear her heart beating a thick and warm liquid around her body, she held a glass of water in her hand and that smelt repulsive. The only thing that I could smell was HER. She smelt like the best food in the world. Without thinking, I stood up, much too quickly, far quicker than I ever had done. I only cared about that for a second. My mind was too concerned with quenching this horrible thirst in my throat. It only took me a quarter of a second to lunge towards her, and sink my teeth into her neck. I drank, and drank, and she went limp in my arms. She didn't even scream.

I dropped the body from my arms, horrified at what I had just done. I just killed a woman. Wrong place, wrong time, because I had an ache in my throat?! What the hell was wrong with me?! I pulled my mind together in half a second. No-one was going to come into this room for the moment, I decided, so I looked at myself in the mirror. The first thing I noticed was my eyes. They were burning a bright, deep blood red. Obviously not contacts then. The second thing was my skin, which had become incredibly pale. Like I had been shut in a sunless room for 20 years. I breathed in deeply to steady myself, but my lungs didn't do anything but take the air in, they just breathed out everything I had breathed in. It seemed pointless to my body. What was I?! Clearly still human. I looked human. It was obviously just a reaction to the medicine the doctors had given me to stop that poison. It would fade away. I'd heard stories of a girl drinking Sunny Delight and turning orange, why couldn't powerful anti-venom turn me pale?

Ok so you're really pale. Red eyes. Burning in your throat. You just drained a woman of all her blood and you're pretty fast. Are you strong? I barely noticed I was thinking to myself, when I grabbed the bed. The metal handle on the outside edge was closest, so I gripped it. With no effort at all, my hand created a perfect divot into the metal, and with a small tug I ripped the entire thing from the bed. Cool. I'm like a superhero or something. Yeah. A superhero that drinks blood. I unconsciously stared at the body in the corner, still with that frozen look of fear on her face.

When the thought had entered my head to try to leave with no-one seeing me, the door swung open, and a small, musical voice chimed in.

"You took no time at all David, barely over a day. I'm very impressed! And what a kill! I didn't even hear you do that! I knew you were going to be something special!"