Jamie rose from the bed with an expression of fear, sweat running down her pale face and across her exposed breasts, and the starts of a scream in her throat. It died quickly, though, just like it always did. The scream never quite made it past the initial moans deep in Jamie's slender throat.
The nightmare always caused this sort of reaction. The nightmare was always the same.
She was standing on the outside of a forest, looking up at the silhouettes of the trees before her. A storm was beginning to blow in, upsetting the leaves on the ground around her. It was midnight. Not that she had a watch to tell the time, she just simply knew. Knew the hour like she knew that she wasn't herself, standing there in the white gown flowing in the breeze blowing about her. The path before her was dark, ominous, terrifying, but she found herself walking it anyways and leaving the faint sanctity that the open field behind her offered.
As she walked she saw many things. Quickly darting shadows at the corners of her vision, eyes looking out at her from the darkness just beyond the dim light of the path. The feel of cold hands on her arms, her back, and her neck happened often as she walked but when she turned to see their owner, there was nothing but the path already traveled behind her. Voices and soft cries wafted past her on the light breeze, bringing with them the feeling of dread and the feeling of hopelessness. But still she walked.
She heard them walking, matching pace with her own footsteps on the cold stone of the path, and she felt the fear that came with them. She heard their steady breathing, matching pace with her own quickened draws, and smelled the blood in the air that came with them. The wolves were the harbingers of something menacing and something horrible. They were keepers, watchmen, vengeance, and hatred and she knew this because she wasn't herself. She was someone else, enthralled in the steady draw of whatever was pulling her there. She saw them walking, just off the stone path, illuminated finally in flickers of lightning in the starless sky and though she felt the terror that they brought with them, she did not run. Running would do no good. Their master had chosen her.
The beast was too horrible for words. Great and tall, it loomed skyward over her in the heart of the forest. From each of it's countless arms, a helpless soul hung by it's neck….some crying out to her in cracked voices, some holding their emaciated arms out to her, some just simply staring at her with bulging, bloodshot eyes. And as the wolves came closer and the wind began to pick up, blowing the white gown she wore into shreds to leave her bare and naked before the beast, her eyes came upon her destiny.
One lone arm and one lone noose.
And just as the wolves lunged for her, she would wake up, the starts of a scream in her throat and sweat on her brow. This was the way it'd been happening for weeks now and Jamie still couldn't get used to it. Her clock told her it was two in the afternoon, still early for the recently embraced Toreador, and she knew that sleep would not return to her today. As long as the heavy blinds and curtains covering the windows of the three-story brownstone she owned in the heart of the Garden District didn't give way, she'd be alright. Besides, this had become common lately, tiring her throughout the night in a way that someone of her…condition…shouldn't be tired. But no matter the state of her, she was tired all the same and the thought of this woman, wrapped in white and standing before her end, wouldn't leave her head.
Getting to her feet, she let the sheets drop to the bed before walking towards the bathroom connected to her expansive bedroom. Catching her reflection in the mirror, Jamie couldn't help but stop and look at what she'd become. She had been beautiful. No, she'd been breathtaking, as her former publicist often liked to say when trying to get her into bed. And she still was, at least to the eye. Standing naked before the mirror, she tossed her soft blonde hair so it cascaded down her shoulders and back and curved one leg just slightly to hide more private parts of her body. With her hands on her breasts, she had to smile a little in admiration, but the sigh that escaped her lips was just slightly forlorn. This was a pose that sold millions of photos to many magazines and a body that sold countless sets of lingerie that were destined to be worn for a moment or two before ending up on the floor. She had loved her life and she had loved herself. Unfortunately, her late sire had loved her as well. But the year that had passed since her embrace and subsequent vanishing from the modeling world had shown her an ugliness she despised as much as the fangs in her mouth. It was a primal side of her. An unclean side that took the decadence she had often lived in and amplified it a hundred fold. While this was amazing in it's own right, she had seen all-too-early the predatory side of the world and knew she was now a part of it. And to Jamie Reading, that was ugly, but something she knew she had to live with. Death…complete death…was not something she was ready for just yet.
Lowering her hands from her breasts and taking one last look at her nude reflection, she made her way into the bathroom and towards the waiting walled-glass shower. The hot water was a godsend, enough to push the nightmare from her mind and rest her enough to consider the possibility of sleeping the rest of the day away unmolested. But as she let the water splash across her face as she pressed her hands against the tiled wall, an odd sound caught her distracted ear. It was a squeaking noise, as if someone were wiping off a mirror or…
Jamie turned so sharply she had to reach out behind her to the only non-glass wall in the cubicle shaped shower to keep from falling. Her eyes immediately came to the source of the sound as it appeared on the glass of the large door of the shower. Writing was slowly appearing on the foggy glass, words being brought into existence as if someone were drawing their finger slowly across the wet surface of the glass. And when she read the words, she knew her dreams weren't just dreams. That the terror that plagued her sleep during the day wasn't the result of a bad horror movie from her childhood or the blood laced with alcohol…or some other more illegal substance….from her most recent victim. No. The words were real and even though the water falling on Jamie was near scalding, she felt cold. A cold she'd only felt once before. The cold of death.
And as she stood there shivering, she knew she wasn't alone.
The steam that had filled the bathroom gave its visitor away, though the form was as soft and drifting as the steam that seemed to make it up. The woman had no color, only that of what made her up, and she seemed to barely exist as a figure in the fog, but despite her lack of true form Jamie knew her. Knew the name written on the door was hers and knew the look of sadness in the figure's eyes was only a cover for the truth that lay in them. The truth that Jamie felt right then. Pure and whole fear. Even though she knew she didn't want to, Jamie knew it wouldn't end until she did. She had to give this tortured soul what it wanted. And the words on glass told her of a familiar place. The first step.
Just as quickly as it had happened, it ended. The figure was gone and the cold vanished, leaving the steam to attempt to cover up the words on the glass of the door, not that Jamie would need them anymore. As she cut the water and picked up her towel to dry her hair, she knew she had a long night ahead of her. And something told her, speaking in a small voice in the back of her mind, that she had yet to see the true ugliness of the world. If she played her cards right, though, she just might. She just might indeed.