The dinner table was quiet. Florence pushed her fork around her plate with boredom, and though she felt a tad hungry she wasn't in the mood to eat. She'd been wanting to go thrifting for days now, but whenever the topic was brought up… Well, maybe they'd changed their minds.
"Since we're out of school now," she started, and saw her family lift their heads from their plates, "I was wondering if you wouldn't mind me taking a day trip to Seattle this week."
Matthew sighed, closing his eyes.
"No," said Karen, setting her utensils down. "We've already had this discussion, Florence, you aren't taking the car-"
"I think you mean my car," Florence interrupted, feeling testy. She'd spent almost 18 years like this, deferring to her parents wishes and wants. She'd had enough of it, being a child again. She could remember what it was like to not answer to anyone about her decisions, and it irked her as it always had that she now could not do anything without permission. "Which I paid for, whose insurance I pay, whose gas for I pay."
"Enough," Matthew said forcefully, slamming his hand onto the table. She couldn't help her jump. Mike looked at her from the corner of his eye. "Listen to your mother. You're not going."
"May I ask why you've come to this decision?" she demanded as politely as she could, restrained anger clear in her tone. "Perhaps understanding your reasoning will help me."
Karen sighed, rubbing the space between her eyes. "Go to bed, Florence."
"But-"
"Now," Karen interrupted, "Before I ground you. Again."
Florence could have spat on her. She wanted to, desperately. To show her just how little she cared for parental authority. Perhaps when she had been newer to this life, to the constraints, she wouldn't have argued at all. 18 years was a long time, though.
But being grounded… She would just have to earn it, wouldn't she? If it was going to happen either way, she was going to do what she wanted. God, she hated being a kid again.
Tossing down her utensils and not bothering to clean up her plate, Florence pushed back from the table and let the chair screech against the floor. Aside from that, she walked calmly to her room.
She locked the door behind her and turned on her radio on her desk. Setting it as loud as it would go, she slid the window up and open. It was only a two-story drop from there, and she knew there were no windows below. Grabbing her purse, she slid out the window and propped her feet on the piping that went up the back of the house, closing the window behind her and leaving a small gap open for her to climb back in later - that is, if she wasn't caught. She'd probably be caught. Seattle was hours away, there's no way her parents wouldn't notice her being gone. They probably weren't going out to their cars any time soon tonight, so they hopefully wouldn't notice her car not being parked on the corner.
Dropping down from the ledge, she slammed into the ground with a thump. She didn't wait to hear if her parents had heard, running around the far side of the house and towards her car. She jumped in as soon as it unlocked, and started it up. Within ten minutes, she was out of town and headed towards Seattle.
The drive was long, but not quiet. She turned the radio on and jammed out to the hits of her first childhood. It was nice and nostalgic.
Seattle at night was very different from Seattle during the day. She felt a little unease walking around - she hadn't really thought this through, she realized. Most of the thrift stores were closed by now.
But, she realized, passing behind the latest one she'd checked that had closed 15 minutes ago, they do have dumpsters.
Dumpster diving wasn't usually her prerogative, but in her last life she'd heard of people doing it and finding cool things. She might as well give it a try since she was here.
Heading for the dumpster, Florence lifted the lid up and gently set it down backwards so that it wouldn't clang loudly. Propping her sneaker on a wooden box next to it, she hefted herself into the dumpster, straddling the edge of it. It was filled to the brim with trash bags, so at least she wouldn't have trouble getting out.
She'd gone through three unhelpful trashbags when cold hands grabbed her from behind - and razors slid into her throat.
Florence screamed, high and shrill. The mouth on her throat clamped down harder and tears slipped out of her eyes. The hands held her down in the trash as she tried to thrash out of their grasp, hard and unyielding. The pain was too much.
Her vision went black, quite like it had when she'd first died.
She was in Hell. She had never given the concept much thought in this life, avoiding any thoughts of the afterlife as it were, but Hell must be real. The fires burned from within her very own body, lighting her up inside-out.
She cried and screamed as best as she could, her mouth gagged. She tried to get away from the fire, but her limbs were tied and no matter how much she struggled or inched away, the fire followed.
As hell went on and on, seemingly endless, she began to quieten. It was almost like she was getting used to the fire. She wondered how she had died this time, unable to remember past the hands and the bite. Had a cannibal eaten her? It was funny, in a morbid way, how she was always the cause of her own death. Fighting against Karen, in this one; trying to help someone who didn't want her help in her last.
Eventually, what once seemed endless quieted and sunk in a deep cold past her bones and to her soul. When the fire receded to only her throat, and she realized her limbs had been unbound and her mouth freed, Florence opened her eyes.
She was staring at an intricate wooden ceiling of a storage shed. She wasn't dead. She could see every curve and indention in the wood, every splinter making up the whole. She wasn't dead! Bracing her hands against the floor, Florence pushed up - only for her hands to go through the floor. Lifting up with core muscles she didn't know she had, she shook her hands out of the holes in the wood flooring, shaking off splinters and wood dust. She examined her hands, but couldn't find a single cut or splinter embedded in her skin.
"You took your sweet time," said a voice, and she jerked, spinning on her knees to look behind her and crouch down protectively. Something inside her wanted to be low to the ground, where she could push off with more force to protect herself.
There was a blond man standing in the corner of the shed, regarding her with solemn red eyes. His skin was pale and she could see every detail in his face from this far away in high-definition. Every thread of the shirt he was wearing, every minuscule tear in his jeans. She could smell him, even. He smelt like death and raspberries. He smelt like danger.
A growl ripped through her chest, animalistic and low. She didn't want this guy anywhere near her.
The man rolled his eyes. "Oh, shut up. That's not going to help anything here."
"Who are you," she spat. "What did you do to me?"
He smiled then, and she could have almost called him handsome if she didn't already hate him with every fiber of her being.
"I made you into a near God," he said grandly, raising his arms in a smooth motion. "I am your sire, making you anew. My personal first."
She didn't understand, but it was peicing together in her brain either way. Her improved sight, the smells, crushing the floor… She wasn't human anymore.
"You said near-God," she whispered. "What am I?"
"You're a vampire." He said it like it was a prize she'd won. "And you're part of my coven. I'll take you to the others - just as soon as you've fed. You must be starving."
She was. At the mere thought of eating had her salivating and the burn in her throat ignited into a raging forest fire. Florence clutched her throat tightly, clamping down on it as if that would put the fire out. Vampire. Vampire. What did vampires eat? Human blood.
Nope, she thought in horror. Not happening.
As much as she wanted it, as much as every fiber of her being begged her to listen to this man - who hadn't even asked her name, nor did she know his - she didn't want to. She just really didn't want to. Florence hadn't listened to many people in this - her second life. Why should she do that in her third?
"Not happening," she said. "I'll take my leave."
She stood - but he was in front of her then, holding her against a wall by her throat and wrists.
"You don't understand," he smiled prettily in her face. Something about his features was almost familiar but she didn't have time to think about it. "You don't get a choice here. You're mine."
Florence snarled at him, rage like a more metaphorical fire in her gut. It consumed her in a way it never had before. This man dared to call her an object to be owned? How fucking dare he? She was going to tear him apart.
Remembering how she'd crushed the floors, she didn't press forward against him but backwards and down. Her hands cut through the wooden walls behind her, raking downwards and out of his grip in a millisecond. He tried to grab at her with his suddenly free hand - but when it came to her direction, she opened her mouth and grabbed it between her teeth and tore, using her hands to grip his wrist and snap it like a twig.
The man howled like a dog, ripping himself backwards away from her, but she didn't let go of either of her grips. Instead, he simply tore himself away from his hands - half of his left was still in her mouth, his right clutched between her hands, nails dug into the flesh like claws. He didn't bleed, the sound of his body tearing into pieces like granite crumbling; instead, a clear liquid seemed to coat the broken bits.
In the milliseconds between him stumbling backwards and her launching herself towards him she had spat out the hand and dropped the other one. How the hell was she supposed to kill a vampire?
She'd start, she decided, by decapitating him. Most things couldn't live without their heads, after all. Time to find out if vampires were the same.
Florence tackled the man to the floor, legs wrapped around his arms and clamping them to his sides. He turned his head and caught her arm in his jaw, thrashing against her grip, but she held tight with superior strength. Gripping his head by the hair, she ripped him out of her arm, taking a chunk of her skin with it.
She held him by the hair and the jaw, and twisted until the sound of concrete tearing signalled the end of his snarls. His body beneath her stopped struggling and simply started to twitch before stilling.
Florence looked at the head that dangled from her grip in its hair. Blank red eyes stared into her own, and her flesh dangled out of its mouth. Using her free hand she pulled her flesh free and frowned down at her arm. It was a good chunk of skin, but would it grow back? She was dead, technically. There was no blood oozing from the wound, just a clear liquid that smelled sickly sweet.
Tossing the head behind her, Florence decided to see if she could slot it back into her arm. Duck tape was always a solution, or maybe she could sew it back in? However, when she pressed it into the wound, it seemed to stick like glue. Before her eyes, the clear liquid seeped around the seams where the man's bite had been and hardened like crystal, trapping the flesh back to where it had came from. She could see the scar clearly, but it was whole again.
Interesting, she thought.
Still, now that this guy was deader than dead, she needed to get out of here.
Standing up, Florence left the shed and stepped foot into someone's backyard. Lights were on in the house, and she could hear the people inside. Someone banging pots and pans around a kitchen, someone sleeping, someone writing in something. People. Humans. Blood.
Before she could think, she was inside the house. Their backdoor had been left unlocked. From the back entry way, she took a deep breath. The house smelled lived-in, like this family had been here a while. Pictures of them lined the hall she stood in; they were all smiling and happy.
She wasn't happy. She was hungry, starving in fact.
It didn't take long. None of them had enough time to scream, but their blood stayed warm long enough after for her to guzzle it all down. By the end of three human lives, she found her throat was still ablaze. She was full enough to think straight, though, surrounded by the smell of blood. There was a mirror in the living room, where she had wandered. She stared into it and at herself; it was still her, but redefined. Paler skin, more pronounced cheekbones, as if the fat had burned away. Something about it seemed familiar. Her hair seemed more warm gold now than simply blonde, but it was also streaked with blood. Everything was, really. Her clothes were soaked, her face was covered, and there was even blood under her nails.
She needed to shower.
There was a bathroom upstairs, so that's where she headed first. Showering felt long overdue. How long had it been since when that guy had grabbed her? She'd figure that out once she was clean.
Once she was done, she wrapped a towel around herself and abandoned the blood-stained bathroom for the bedrooms. Of the three she had killed, one had been a teenage girl. A speck of guilt hit her as she entered the bedroom and peered at the body by the computer desk. She even looked like she'd been around Florence's age.
The closet was filled with clothes that definitely weren't her style. She found a pair of jeans that fit her loosely, a belt, and a v-neck, black, long-sleeved shirt. She grabbed a red ball cap and a pair of sunglasses to hide the vibrant red of her eyes. None of the shoes in the house fit her, so she kept the bloodstained sneakers on and left. After all, she couldn't stay here in a house of dead bodies.
As she walked down the street, she surveyed the stars in the sky. Normally, pollution covered the majority, but she could see them all in shining brightness. It was beautiful.
A/N: Hope y'all don't mind the non-chronological order of the story. Maybe when it's finished I'll take it and rearrange the chapters to be chronological, but I like posting once I've finished writing one and I don't like writing in order. It's easier to write the bits I want to write first and then write the filler.