Hunger: A Vampire Novella

by James, M. D.

  “Yeah, I did. You’re my girlfriend, and I had to make sure you were okay, and let you know I’m here for anything you need.” It was the first time I had called her my girlfriend and I could tell that Jane liked hearing herself referred to in that way.

  “I’m your girlfriend?” she asked, playfully.

  I was starting to get self conscious. “Yeah. If you want to be.”

  She smiled and said, “I wanna be.” I had to lean over and kiss her. The feel of her silky lips on mine sped up my heart, but also seemed to calm me down. That one kiss conveyed everything I needed to know. I could feel that she was okay, and I didn’t have to worry so much anymore.

  “So, what happened?” I asked. I immediately felt bad, though. What if she didn’t want to relive the accident? I told her she didn’t have to talk about it, but she didn’t seem upset by it at all. She recounted the story, very similarly to how Julie told it to me and Garrett. “What happened to the person in the road?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. I crashed, and never looked back. I know I didn’t hit them, though,” she added.

  Garrett and Jane walked in without any flowers, but Garrett pulled me aside and told me he left them sitting right outside of the room, so I could give them to Jane myself. I felt very lucky. I not only had the best girlfriend in the world, but also the best friend in the world. It’s rare that you ever really find someone in life that would put you and your needs first, and if you do find that kind of friendship during your younger years, it usually doesn’t last past high school. I knew that Garrett and I would be friends for life. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for him.

  Chapter 10

  As I stepped into the hall to grab the flowers Garrett bought for me to give to Jane, I was overcome with hunger. My senses were stronger and I could smell blood in the air. I tried to ignore it, but I kept hearing Adrianna’s voice in my head saying, “You know you want it.” I willed myself to remain strong, and resist the temptation. Instead, I reached down to pick up the bouquet of red roses. When I stood up, Adrianna was standing in front of me, in a pair of scrubs, holding a bag of blood.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked. I knew it wasn’t a coincidence.

  “Watch how you talk to me,” she angrily replied. It was probably good advice since I didn’t really know what she was capable of.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, but only half meaning it. “What are you doing here though?”

  “I’m visiting your girlfriend,” she answered innocently, but the wicked grin on Adrianna’s face told me that there was much more to it than that. I grabbed her arm and pulled her to a more deserted area, farther away from Jane’s room. “Oh, you like it rough, don’t you, Matty? I almost forgot.”

  “What do you mean, you’re visiting my girlfriend?” I demanded to know, while ignoring the comments about our previous sex together.

  “I heard she was in an accident,” Adrianna said, putting on her most concerned face. It wasn’t fooling me for a minute, but I doubt she really wanted it to.

  “Yes, she was in a car accident and broke her arm,” I explained. It wasn’t any of her business, but I figured I’d go along with whatever game she was playing for now.

  “Are you sure you don’t want some of this tasty blood, Matty?” she asked, as she swung the blood bag before my face. It was like she was a hypnotist swinging a watch back and forth before my eyes in order to put me into a trance.

  “No.” I was able to resist it, at least while it was still in the bag. The bag helped to mask the scent somewhat, or at least the intensity of it.

  “Have it your way,” she said, as she tore her teeth into it and began drinking. I couldn’t believe nobody saw her, and I pushed her into an empty room and closed the door before anyone did.

  “You’re such a prude,” she complained, but with a sinister grin. Blood was again dripping down her chin, and it reminded me of when she appeared in the doorway of art class. I knew I was also a vampire, but seeing her transform, and covered in blood made me shudder. She was a monster. I hope no one looked at me the way I was looking at her now. “Don’t be so high and mighty,” she added as she saw my look of disgust.

  “Enough of all the games, Adrianna. What are you really doing here? Did you come for the blood?” I figured maybe she did come here to steal blood, rather than bite humans all the time. But, her being here at the same time as Jane was too much for me to believe they weren’t related.

  “I was just worried about your girlfriend.” Every time Adrianna said the word girlfriend, it came out venomous. She continued, “She shouldn’t drive so fast when people are in the road. It’d be a shame if she wasn’t so lucky next time.”

  I felt myself slump to the floor as I almost fainted. Adrianna was the person Jane saw in the road. She made Jane have the accident on purpose, all because I didn’t stop seeing her. As I contemplated this, Adrianna left, and I could hear her wretched laughter echo off down the halls.

  It took me a few minutes to recover. As much as it hurt, I had to let Jane go. I couldn’t let her get hurt again. The next time, she might even get killed. All the feeling left my body, as I dropped the bouquet of roses and walked out of the hospital. If it weren’t for the single tear streaming down my cheeks, I would think my emotions had been removed.

  Chapter 11

  Over the next few weeks, I stopped talking to Jane. I knew she hated me, but it had to be that way to keep her safe. Even my relationship with Garrett was strained. He spent more and more time hanging out with Jane and Julie, and when we were both in the dorm together we did our best to avoid one another.

  I started seeing Adrianna, but hated every minute of it. I tried to picture Jane as I was having sex with her, but it didn’t really help. I had hoped that if I didn’t really seem into the relationship, Adrianna would eventually get bored of me and move on to some other unsuspecting guy. That didn’t seem to be the case, though.

  Most days, I stayed in the dorm, so I wouldn’t have to run into her. Since my plan to make her bored with me wasn’t working, I spent more and more time reading and researching vampires. It was extreme, but if I could find a way to kill Adrianna, at least I’d finally be rid of her and Jane would be completely safe. After all of the things I had done, though, I knew Jane would never take me back. Still, I would be happier knowing that Adrianna could never hurt her again.

  “So, what’s your deal?” Garrett asked one night after he came home from a date with Julie.

  “Just leave it alone,” I urged. I hated being cold to my best friend, but I didn’t want to put him in danger either. The less people I was close to, the better.

  “No, that’s bull shit!” he yelled back. “You had a great girl like Jane, and just left her in the hospital without even a goodbye. Do you know how much you hurt her?” I had an idea. It killed me inside every time she would call me for those first few days after I abandoned her. I’d listened to the voicemails, each one getting increasingly more painful to hear. I couldn’t stand to hear Jane cry, but I had no choice. It was for her own good.

  “She’s better off without me,” was all I could tell Garrett. It was true.

  “Is this about Adrianna?” he asked. I figured he knew all along, but I refused to offer him any explanation before. I had to shut off my emotions and keep my mind focused on other things just to get through each hour. “Dude, she isn’t going to hurt Jane. It was just a threat.”

  “She already did hurt Jane!” I snapped back. I didn’t plan on telling him about my visit with Adrianna at the hospital, but it just came out. “I saw Adrianna at the hospital. She was the person that Jane almost ran into that day. She was sending a sign to me that I’d better leave Jane or next time she’d get hurt worse.”

  The hardness that had been on Garrett’s face since that day had finally softened. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked.

  “I didn’t want to put you in danger either,” I told him. My emotions were all flooding back to the surface. Before I knew it, I
was openly sobbing. Garrett didn’t know what to do. It wasn’t that often where guys had to console their sobbing guy friends, after all. He sat next to me and hugged me though, while rubbing my back. It did help. It was the first time in a while that I was even touched by someone I cared about. That human contact helped calm me. “I had to leave Jane and you alone, so Adrianna wouldn’t feel threatened.”

  “Hey. I can handle myself,” Garrett said with as much bravado as he could. I wasn’t sure if he was being serious or just trying to lighten the mood, but it did make me laugh. “There you go…that’s the Matty we all know and love.”

  “I’m sorry,” I told him. I didn’t apologize for anything specific, but I think he knew I was bundling everything together.

  “It’s fine. We’ll always be bros,” he assured me. “So, what’s the plan, though? Are you just going to keep seeing Adrianna forever?”

  “I hope not,” I replied, while feeling like I would vomit from the mere mention of spending forever with that monster.

  “Well, then what?” Garrett didn’t like not knowing anything, and I think he got excited about the thought of being a vampire slayer.

  “I’m trying to find a way to get rid of her.” It wasn’t exactly the entire truth, but I didn’t know how well Garrett could handle the idea of actually killing someone. I would love to just get her to go away, but even if that was possible, I’d always worry that she’d be back.

  From that point on, Garret and I spent some time each day doing research and trying to put a plan together. We really weren’t getting very far. We didn’t know the extent of Adrianna’s abilities, and that left a huge question mark in our minds as to what would be needed to conquer her.

  Every day in class, Jane would try to get an explanation out of me as to why I left her in the hospital, and why I’ve been dating someone else. I just ignored her, which broke my heart into a million pieces. I was afraid, though, that if I spoke to her at all…even in a harsh way, that she would beak me down like she did when I originally tried to break up with her. I just wished the semester would come to an end, so I could finally get away from her. I hated the thought of never seeing Jane again, but I couldn’t keep torturing either of us for much longer. In the end, it’d be better for her to be rid of me once and for all.

  I know it was hard on Garrett too. He had to keep the truth from both Julie and Jane, and hide the fact that he and I were once again friends.

  Towards the end of the semester, Garrett and I finally stumbled onto some useful information. It was a way, to weaken a vampire’s abilities. Almost like a tranquilizer effect. It was a mixture of herbs and flowers, mixed with wood chips from a certain tree. According to what we read, if you finely ground those ingredients into a powder, and coated a vampire with it, it would numb their abilities and make them more human-like.

  It took some more research and time to find all of the ingredients since many of them were only found in far off regions. Thanks to the internet, though, we were able to get them all.

  “So, what are we going to do with these?” Garrett asked as we filled some small plastic canisters that were once used to hold rolls of 35mm film with the powder. The thick plastic canisters would help to keep the smell from Adrianna so she wouldn’t detect it in time to stop us from using the powder on her. The plan was to use the powder on Adrianna to weaken her, so that I would have the upper hand. From there, I planned to kill her with a steak to the heart. That part of vampire folklore was true. It was supposedly the only way to truly kill a vampire. I had no idea how or where to do it, and was still pretty scared that the plan would fail. If the powder didn’t weaken Adrianna, I could very well end up dead myself. My only hope was that it would work, and that I had been fooling her well enough that she had no idea what I was up to.

  I finally decided that I would lure Adrianna to the tree house where Jane and I had our romantic date. I hated the thought of bringing such a vile woman to the same place I built for the woman I loved, but it would make her think I was into her, finally. Plus, there was plenty of wood around to stake Adrianna with. Garrett wanted to be there too, but I knew Adrianna would sense him there. Instead we decided that he would follow us at a distance, so that he would be nearby if the plan went bad. He’d be able to maybe throw the powder onto Adrianna if I failed.

  I was so nervous all week. As I left class on the last day of the semester, I thought to myself how this whole nightmare might finally be over in just a few days.

  “Hey!” I turned around to see Jane running up to meet me. “What? You don’t have anything to say to me?” she asked, angrily.

  I tried to keep walking, and ignore her, but she ran around me and blocked my path again. “I’m sorry I hurt you,” I said. It sounded cold and like an excuse, but I really meant it, and needed to tell her at least once.

  “Why?” she demanded, “I want to know why!?” I could tell that she wasn’t going to let it go. I didn’t want to make a scene though, so I pulled her over to the gym. It was being renovated, but the construction workers had all left for the day. The entrance was kept open so that people could get to the pool on the lower level.

  Once we were inside the gym, and away from prying eyes and ears, I stumbled to find a place to start, or a way to explain without telling Jane the complete truth. “I told you before, that I wasn’t good for you.” It was lame and didn’t give Jane the answers that she wanted, but it was an honest explanation.

  Before Jane could even respond, she was thrown against the wall by Adrianna, who must’ve followed us into the gym. Jane’s eyes bulged as she saw the animal-like face and fangs of the girl that was holding her to the wall. “Knock it off, Adrianna!” I yelled while trying to get her to release Jane.

  “I told you I’d kill her if you ever saw her again.” I could tell Adrianna meant every word. Her eyes were on fire, and I feared that Jane would only have a few more breaths before Adrianna exacted her revenge.

  Instinct kicked in, and I changed for the first time, into the more primitive version of myself. I felt my muscles bulk up, and my jaw protrude. My teeth grew into fangs, and my breathing turned into more of a growl.

  All I could hear was Jane’s frantic screaming. I thought Adrianna hurt her, but realized that she had freaked out after realizing that I was a vampire. Even worse, that Adrianna was too, and had just threatened to kill her.

  “Say goodbye to your precious love,” Adrianna mocked as she was about to bite into the flesh of Jane’s neck, likely to drain her completely, leaving her body void of any blood and therefore dead.

  I rushed to them as fast as I could and barely was able to throw the contents of my film canister at Adrianna before she could pierce Jane’s flesh. Immediately, Adrianna transformed back into her human form. Because the powder was in the air, it took its effect on me as well. Luckily, as humans, I was stronger than Adrianna…if just barely.

  Jane had passed out, while Adrianna and I struggled. I didn’t know how long the powder’s effect would last on her, so I had to act fast. Unfortunately, I couldn’t seem to get to a stake. Adrianna was a girl, but she had also been a vampire much longer than I had, and maybe the powder didn’t take away all of her strength. We rolled around, and before I knew it she had the upper hand. She had me held to a wall, and I could see her transformation begin to take shape again. I saw my life flash before my eyes and knew hat both Jane’s and my life would end that day. First Adrianna’s face changed shape, and then her fangs grew. She had the look of victory in her eyes. It quickly was replaced by a look of surprise though. Blood started bubbling out of her mouth, and she slumped to the ground.

  Behind her was Jane. I didn’t quite understand until I looked over at Adrianna’s lifeless body and saw the piece of a 2x4 sticking out of her back. Jane had plunged the broken board into Adrianna, killing her.

  Chapter 12

  I quickly stood up as I realized Jane was in shock. She wouldn’t blink, and was sobbing loudly, and shaking uncontrollably. I wasn’t eve
n sure she knew where she was anymore, but I wrapped my arms around her, and lead her to the doorway. I had to get her out of there, and figured the fresh air would help her.

  As I looked back at Adrianna’s body, it was no longer there. All that remained was the broken piece of wood that Jane used to plunge into her heart. Finally, maybe this nightmare was behind us.

  Jane didn’t utter a single word as I walked her back to my dorm. Garrett was there, and immediately jumped up as he was Jane’s state of being. “What happened?” he asked, as he helped me sit Jane down on my bed. I took him into the living room and told him everything…how Jane confronted me, and how Adrianna attacked us in the gym. And, finally, I told him how Jane ended up being the one that killed Adrianna.

  I checked in on Jane but she was asleep. I was worried about her, but at least I knew Adrianna could no longer hurt her.

  Jane slept for several hours, but when she finally came to, she entered our living room. Both Garrett and I looked up at her, and waited to see what she would say. “Did that just happen?” were the first words out of her mouth.