Hunger, intense hunger. Not for food, no, but for the blood of the humans surrounding me. This has to be some insane dream, some figment of my imagination gone wild. I can't have been turned into what I think I have been. It would be too awful to face. But each day, when I look into the full-length mirror hanging on my wall, my reflection is just a little bit more faded than the previous day. It is only a tiny bit every day, but it still makes me think about my time as a human. How when I look in the mirror, I should be able to see a bright, detailed image of myself. How my life once was, and how it is now. How I've been turned into a vampire. I know it sounds unreal to you, but it is true. Those of you who don't believe are the next victims on the lists of the great vampires. And that can never be good. I'm sure whoever is reading this is another unbeliever, but by the end of my story your thoughts might change. I, too, was once a normal boy is the midst of the great war going on around me. It was a quite famous quarrel around here. Not really a quarrel or a war, though. More like a neighborly feud. My family, the Smiths (quite the common name, as you might have realized) and our interestingly strange neighbors, the Mepirvas (an extremely odd name, fitting the family perfectly). Not many people in town favored the Mepirvas over us in this "war". Those who did were as strange as the Mepirvas themselves. They were strange in a very different way, and no one could pinpoint the exact reason for their weirdness. The most recent fight was over the most prized possession in our family, a large egg, made of solid gold. We had returned home from church one day and found the mantle where it usually stood bare. Automatically, we assumed it was the Mepirvas. Since I was the baby of the family, and at the age of 13, still quite small, my father bid me to sneak into the Mepirva's house and steal something valuable of theirs. (My father often said, "Don't get mad, get even." Yes, once again, it's common, but we're common people. Does that make us any less human? Well actually...that will come later.) While looking around in their basement, I spotted two large freezers full of God knows what. Since they were locked, I figured they kept some kind of valuable food product inside. Perfect. I was a master at picking locks by now; I'd had so much practice. It took me about thirty seconds to open the simple padlocks on the doors. As soon as I opened the doors to those freezers, I knew these odd people from next door weren't just strange. They were vampires. I grabbed two full bottles of what I believed to be blood and ran out of there as fast as I could. When I showed my father what I brought home, I was spanked, hard, and sent to my room. Grounded. Two weeks. DAMN! But I knew I had to get back to that house. So I did. And apparently, at the wrong time. When I got to the basement, the Mepirvas(I later found out that if you move the letters of Mepirvas around you get vampire) were what appeared to be feeding. On the floor were two little children, obviously tricked into coming here with some vague offer for candy or a present. Yeah, the present of becoming one of them. I had not told my father I had left the house (duh!) and since they had seen me come in, I looked like I had no choice but to become one of them. One of the vampires. I had no chance against these monsters. Even though they had a massive body size that could crush me in a second, vampires usually used their minds to weaken you first. And that's when it happened. That's when I came into this world. Thirty years ago I was alive and well. Thirty years ago I was a human, just like some of you, with a great future ahead of me. Thirty years ago I had my reflection was clear. Now it's gone. So all of you must appreciate the life that you lead, even if you don't turn out as good as you expected. At least you're not a vampire. At least you have a reflection.