I didn't know how long I'd been in the dark. I'd been suffering until the screams were all but gone, and the sounds of everyday life seemed to continue. I couldn't separate hours from days, or days from years. It all seemed to be a mesh. My eyes had been closed for what seemed like eternity, or was I still in the dark because I was blind? I forced by eyelids open, and I pushed myself out of the pile of what I knew now to be potatoes.

I was immediately blinded, since I hadn't been before. The snow sparkled so much in the morning sun that I fell backwards again. I never remembered it being this bright! I felt like I could see ever individual snowflake in the drifts, and every speck of light that reflected off of them. It was overwhelming! Were my eyes so sensitive because I'd been seeing nothing but darkness for however long I'd been under? I wasn't sure. I pushed myself out of the drift, but when I looked down at my hand, I was shocked. It was pure white, the same color as the snow itself. Frost bite? It seemed like it, but I could still move my hand. I could still feel my hand, but it just felt different. Maybe it was only a minor case of frostbite, the first stage.

When I looked down at my hand, my hair fell in front of my face. I reached up and took a lock of it between my fingers. I could definitely feel it, but it came as a double shock. I hadn't bothered to brush my hair before I left, but now it looked as if it was from a painting. Everything was perfect, with a silky texture that made my fingers nearly slide off the strands. It was almost beautiful. Instead of a dirty blond and brown mix, it was almost a golden blond, shining in the light before the sun faded away behind a thick layer of snow promising clouds. How had this happened?! It was another question that I could not answer, and the sense of unknowing was driving me insane!

I stood up, and I was stable. It was surprising after being off my feet for a still unknown amount of time. I looked out on the streets, and there seemed to be no one. "It must be Sunday" I said to myself. Three days. I'd been under the pile of potatoes for three days. What a disgusting thought… I went out into the empty road, and I was able to kick through the snow with ease. As I looked around, I could see faint red marks in the snow. I shuttered. Blood. It was in the snow, and on the buildings, and my throat started to burn. I was so thirsty. I knelt down and in desperation, I took a handful of snow and started to eat it, but something strange mixed with the melted water, and I spat it out. What the hell? I thought to myself. I could feel a liquid in my mouth, but it was like nothing I'd felt before. I swallowed it, and gagged a bit. I didn't know what it was like to have been starved and parched for three days, but I supposed that this was only the start.

I kept walking, and I passed my father's church. I opened the doors quietly, and the choir was singing. It was my favorite song, but it was supposed to sound happy. Instead, it was a lament. Lux Aurumque, Latin for Light and Gold. It sang of the celebration of birth, but how come it sounded like a hymn of mourning? I looked through the choir, and saw Audrey Gray. My Audrey Gray. I'd been courting her for years. She had the most tragic look on her face, like she could barely sing. She had a gorgeous voice that could be heard above all throughout the cathedral, but today, I couldn't hear her at all. What was wrong? I forced myself to close the doors, not wanting to find out.

I felt bitterly alone. Bitter like the cold. Bitter like the taste in my mouth. Bitter like the vampire that attacked me. The burning, was it all a mind game? Had I only imagined it all? It seemed too real for the imagination. I reached up and touched a bit of my neck under my coat and felt squeamish at the touch. Two holes at the base of my neck that had been scarred over resided there, reminding me that it had not been my imagination. I had been bitten, and I couldn't take that moment back. Then it hit me like nothing else before, and I was struck with absolute, unqualified fear. My skin, my hair, my throat and its burning, it all made sense now! I broke out into a run, and I was so shocked I had to stop myself. I was going too fast for a normal human! In just two seconds of running, I'd passed two blocks! I looked back at my tracks. Was there a trough of snow before I started running, or did I kick it away with such ease that I couldn't have known the difference?! I was more frightened than ever before, and I kept running, jogging now. It was just a bit slower than running, but it still made me want to keel over and throw up. What have I become?!

I ran for miles, up to a hilltop outside of town. Gravestones decorated the hill, helping people remember those who have been lost in previous decades, years, months or weeks. I knew my mother's grave location and chiseling like the back of my old hand.

Elizabeth Josephine Cullen

August 21st 1620-February 13th 1642

The grave was next to all my other ancestors, and there were quite a few of them. My grandfather, Carlyle Cullen had been a priest, the inspiration for my father. I was named after him, but my grandfather insisted on having it spelled differently than his name. Then there was my aunt, whose husband had been charged with abuse and rape, and who did not lie next to her. Some of my cousins lie in the ground next to their parents, and there were people who lived during my time that I never really got to know. My father's plot was reserved on one side of my mother, and mine was to be on the other side. I walked up the hill to the Cullen plots, and weaved through to my mother's. I was upset when at a distance I saw a gravestone next to hers. Had some illiterate grave digger put someone in the wrong spot? No, they had educated people hold that job for a reason. I got closer, and when I could read the chiseling in the stone, I fell to my knees.

Carlisle Fairfax Cullen

February 13th 1642-December 29th 1665

I wanted to scream again. I wanted to scream to the heavens "I'M NOT DEAD!" I wasn't buried in the ground. I was alive, and I always would be! I was a VAMPIRE! A dreadful, damned VAMPIRE! It wasn't the fact that I was being falsely accused as being deceased that I was becoming tense. It was the knowing that I was lost for only three days, and no one wanted to look any harder to find me before they pronounced me gone and dead!

I went closer to the grave, and I saw some items by it, some flowers and a note. I bent down and grabbed the piece of paper. It had a smell to it, a strong one at that. Perfume. It was Audrey's perfume. The kind she always wore with me because I loved the smell of it. I opened the note with shaky hands.

Carlisle,

I don't know why it had to end in such a tragic way for you, being killed by one of those savages. When I heard the next morning, I spent the rest of the day crying. You were innocent, and your father says that the innocent should be rewarded! You were killed! The witnesses said that they saw you bitten by that leech, and then you were gone! I wish we could have had a proper burial for you, with your body present, but it was nowhere to be found…

There were ink blots and what seemed like tear drops after that for a long while. It was like she tried to write, but she couldn't control her hand enough to do so.

Perhaps you were rewarded, but in a cruel way. You don't have to endure this horrid, murderous world any longer. You can live in heaven and watch over me.

I'll always be yours, and you'll always be mine. No other man can have me after how you've treated me, Carlisle. Your name shall always be on my lips, longing to be with yours just one last time. I love you, and I always shall.

-Truly Yours, Audrey Cullen

Frustration was mounting in the pits of my stomach. Not only was I a vampire, but my one and only love had been RIPPED away from me! I can't go back to London with everyone believing that I was no longer on this earth. Surely, I probably looked like a spirit, but I didn't act like one! My heart wasn't beating. It was as if it wasn't there, and yet it felt like it'd been ripped in half. We were two lovers who could never meet again in person. I was innocent and punished! I could never leave this horrible world and live in a place of eternal peace. I would never rejoin my Audrey in heaven, and the very thought was driving me insane!

Without thinking, I ran. I couldn't stay in London any longer. I would risk being recognized, and if everyone around thought you were dead and they found you again, it was much worse of a fate than you'd already been destined to endure. The wind has started to pick up again, and the snow blew into my face, but I felt as if I was going so fast that it wasn't touching me. I kicked off a low tombstone and thrust myself forward over the snow. It was nothing more or less than flying. I extended my legs downward, hoping perhaps that they would break on the inevitable impact that I would feel in just three…two…one.

It never came, at least in the way I wished.

My feet became planting perfectly on the ground, not unlike a cat's. I was balanced. There was no force pushing my upper half forward into the ground. Instead, I was sure I felt the ground shake under my weight. In another act of desperation, I took a running start and jumped again. Perhaps I could break my neck this time. Surely that would kill a vampire as well as it would a human? I closed my eyes, waiting for the crack to end my life, but instead, my eyes snapped open in reflex as I lost altitude, and I stretched my arms in front of me to fall into a roll to absorb the impact of the fall. I sprawled out my legs to keep me from rolling down the hill any farther, and I lay there, looking up at the gray sky. The snow fell on top of me, and I kept blinking it away. Soon I just ended the struggle and closed my eyes completely.

I wanted to cry. I wanted to cry more than any other time in my life. I tried, but no matter how hard I wished, no tears would come out of my eyes. Could vampires not cry?! Suddenly I thought of crying as one of life's underrated pleasures. I wanted what I couldn't have. I wanted to have my throat sting in a different way. I wanted to look like a child who only fell on the ground. Yet I couldn't. I was forced to endure pain and anger without the luxury of tears to vent it out with. I was like a stuffy drawing room, where there was enough heat inside to cook a piece of meat, but the windows were jammed shut. Then I broke through those windows with something hard to break the glass, and a scream erupted from my burning throat. I wanted someone to find me, to kill me because of what I had become.

It was then that the clouds started to clear up again, and sun shined through them. I felt something strange on my skin, and looked down at my exposed flesh. It was mesmerizing. I was a human jewel. I was glittering with a spectacular gold. Lux Aurumque, light and gold. How could a song of birth and happiness, and how the angels would sing describe my life now? It was a beautiful song describing something beautifully horrible. I laid back down, , flipping onto my stomach so my face was down in the snow. The flakes stuck to me, my face lacking the warmth to melt them on contact. I was alone on the hill, wanting to embrace the death I knew would never come

But hell, I was going to try.

Please review! I'm working through most of my classes to get this done...

Also, Lux Aurumque is a choir arrangement by Eric Whitacre, also arranged for bands, which is where I heard it. You can look it up at JWPepper's website

Lux,______________________Light,
calida gravisque_____________warm and heavy
pura velut aurum ___________pure as gold,
et canunt angeli ____________and the angels sing softly
molliter modo natum_________ to the newborn babe.