The Anatomy of Vampires: Volume 1 (3 page)

Holding my breath, I dared not move. My gaze stayed wide and unwavering on what I could see of her through the glass. In the time it took to blink, she shot to her feet and sped so fast to the window’s sill, I jumped, taking a single step backward. My heart slid into my throat. She looked ghostly, her face white and sunken, her eyes dark and demonic. I knew she saw me, so the first thing I could think of was to try and reason with her.

“S-sweetheart,” I stammered like a fool, instantly dropping the twig, but lifting my hands as some pathetic barricade between her and I. “You don’t want to do this. S-stay in the house. Please. I will not come any closer. I know how difficult this must be for you.”

My wife cocked her head to one side, nothing human coloring her expression, but instead only animalistic instinct. I drew in a deep, slow breath through my nose, waiting for her to lunge through the glass and attack me. What happened next was like nothing I had ever expected.

Above me, golden streaks of early morning light began to color the sky. And with the coming of the day, my wife shrieked, reeling back and away from the window. Some voice from the back of my mind spoke to me, and I knew just what was happening. It was the light of the day that would fend her off. It was the light of the day that would destroy her. What I didn’t know was just how many times it would destroy her.

Again, through the glass, I could see her fold up into the ball, but this time shrieks and wails of pain shattered my eardrums. Something was wrong, and despite my own selfish fears, I raced in through our front door to help. She continued to moan and cry, her hair hanging limp in her deathly-white face. I collapsed to my knees and grabbed her up by the shoulders.

“You’re going to have to talk to me, now,” I told her, “so I can help you. What is happening to you?”

Her breathing was erratic, and though her entire gaze was still engulfed in black, I could see the shimmer of fear as she looked up at me, her mouth gaping. “Dawn,” she groaned, her voice low and gravelly. It was the first time I’d gotten close enough to see the tips of her new fangs from behind her lips and I’d forgotten how to breathe.

I held her in my arms, the adrenaline in my system urging me to run every moment I stayed there with her. But I paid incredulous attention to what was becoming of her. In my arms, she shivered. I’d never felt someone quake so violently in my life. I squeezed, only trying to hold her together, less she combust to pieces. She moaned, the sound harrowing and haunting, so I might never forget it and be tortured by it until the day I die. Looking down, I nearly screamed, drizzles of blood pouring down across her alabaster cheeks from the corners of her eyes. Her mouth remained slack, and though she continued to move, I could tell she was dying against me.

Her body began to shrink, visibly losing mass, and soon all muscle was reduced to paper-thin flesh covering a skeletal body. Her hair grew course and brittle. Soon, I could count every one of her ribs, her bones breaking with even the gentlest grasp, as though they were nothing but sand.

Finally, her eyes shifting to my face one last time, I watched all light and thought vacate them, and she fell still. Unable to let her go, I wailed with her in my arms for hours. I couldn’t move—couldn’t think, believing she was gone from me forever.

As the morning grew older, the warm light of the day crept farther and farther into the room. Unsure of the effects of the deadly sunrays, I moved her fragile body from my lap and moved to douse the light by coving the windows with coverlets, coats, and any other thick materials I could find about our house. And then I crawled straight back to her and began my grieving again, rocking her side to side as though she were my baby. For even in her most monstrous hours, she was still mine. And I loved her.

At long last, I grew weary of mourning and once again, set her down over the cold floor. It was sometime in the late afternoon, but I didn’t make it my business to pay attention too much else. And I still refused to leave the room with her. Spent, I pulled myself up on the sofa, collapsing with my head resting over one of the jade cushions. I laid there for what felt like more hours, and just stared at her corpse. Ghastly, it was, something from my worst nightmare, but I just could not tear my focus from her. Something within me was disbelieving she could be truly gone in such a flash, when just several hours ago lived the promise she would exist forever.

My eyelids grew heavier, and eventually, they closed. I don’t remember drifting. I only remember floating in the soft blackness, asleep. It must have been some time around seven in the evening I was jolted awake. I blinked heavily, rubbing the sleep away from my eyes, sitting up to see her impossibly looming over me in the deep shadows of the room. Silver moonlight pooled over the dusty floors. I gasped at the ghostly vision of her, the chills rolling wildly under my skin throughout my whole body, believing my grief had surely driven me to madness. She seemed so frail and in dim, murky light, her dress torn, looking improper, scraps of fabric hanging off from the shoulder and hips. Places where material was missing, I could see the pure color of her skin.

My pulse was swift, and I do not recall breathing as I waited for her to strike, but ever so gently, I felt her cold grip wrap around my wrist. The action was gentle and did something to relax me. I released the breath I’d been holding. She hushed me and knelt before me on the sofa, her eyes blue, her face…human. I struggled to believe what I was seeing. I watched her reach to one of the corner tables to turn on the gas of one of the lights. My focus shifted for only a moment as I watched the little flame come to life from behind the glass, illuminating the severe angles of a face I knew so well, but then, did not know at all.

“Darling,” she whispered, her full lips quirking with the hint of a small smile. I never wanted it to disappear from her face.

I leaned forward, touching my palm to her marble cheek, her blue irises shifting instantly to black. My wrist—my pulse had gotten too close. I did not retract, however. Not immediately. I was too fascinated with what she had become. “Sorry,” I muttered, finally.

She shook her head. “I won’t hurt you,” she spoke gently. “I’ve already fed this evening. Multiple times.” She even chuckled and the sound was positively musical. It ran circles around my head and I felt a wonderful warmth spread through my center. For the first time in days, I felt myself smile.

“How are you before me when I watched you die in my arms only hours ago?” I asked, blinking hard to ensure I was truly awake. The bridge of my nose stung as my eyes started to water. She
was
there. But something about her still seemed ghostly, like she’d disappear any moment. The walls of the room felt like they were closing in on the two of us. The periwinkle-patterned wallpaper, torn and warped in several places, was alien to me. The art scattered across the walls, pieces I was all too familiar with because we had collected them together, felt like they didn’t belong to me at all.
She
didn’t belong to me, anymore. The night had taken possession of her.

To my dismay, her smile disappeared and every corner of her face fell. “I suppose it is something to do with this curse. I don’t know how to fend it off. It comes each morning—the worst pain I’ve ever experienced in my life. I cannot even describe it, other than telling you I literally die with the coming of the sun.” Her eyes lifted to mine again.

I pulled myself forward, my knees hitting the floor. This was the first time since she’d changed that she spoke to me like she was still a person. This was the first time we’d been so close and she hadn’t tried to kill me. Her voice, though now ethereal and strange, was reminiscent of who my wife used to be. I took either side of her face in my palms and watched her sigh, her eyes rolling back with her positive ecstasy.

“You are so warm,” she groaned.

I leaned in, wanted to feel her lips on mine again, but her eyelids flashed open, and before I realized it, she’d shot up and away from me.

In an instant, she was on the other side of the room, her back pinned to the wall, her claws digging deeply into the wood, her breathing ragged again. “I wouldn’t,” she warned. “Not so soon. Or I promise, you will die.” Her fangs glistened in the dim light, and her lips parted. I deducted it was so she did not have to smell me. It was so difficult for her.

I simply nodded, and with my palms raised to her, I sat back onto the sofa again. Out of fear, or perhaps desperation, neither of us broke our stare from one another. The tension filling the room around us was thick enough to swim in. Crossing one leg over the other, I continued to regard her with new fascination, a million questions buzzing at my temples. “Do you…dream?”

I could see her jaw muscles grow tense. She ground her teeth, her gaze growing darker and more violent by the second. Was she recalling something about her hours during the daylight? Her nails dug deeper into the wood paneling. She merely shook her head in a deliberate sort of
no
.

“Fine,” I agreed and thought of my next question. “Where do you go? When you…die?” The words came out breathlessly. Perhaps I shouldn’t have asked, for again the blood tears rolled from her eyes, staining her pearly cheeks.

A few silent moments passed, as we stayed frozen, both afraid to move. Both afraid, even to breathe. “I only recall…pain,” she finally whispered. “Surrounding darkness. And…burning.”

“I see,” I nodded again, and finally released her from my gaze, dropping it to the floor. “I will not question you any further.”

“Thank you,” she said.

I did not say anything more, but nodded again, thoughtfully running my tongue across my lower lip. So many other questions. Perhaps I would need to go elsewhere to find the answers.

“I miss you,” she said finally, forcing me to look at her again.

“And I you,” I admitted.

“I am afraid for you. Afraid to be around you,” she breathed.

I offered her what was meant to be an encouraging smile, but I was sure she sensed the deep sadness filling my chest. “Yes. I can understand why.”

“Perhaps, you should leave for a while,” she said then, searching my face.

My heart constricted, but I did not have a valid argument, for what could I say?
No, let me stay here. I wish to be with you and thereby risk both of our lives!
It is what I wanted to say, but I knew she was right. And I still had questions needing answers.

The next morning, after I watched my wife painfully die for the second time in my arms, I packed very few of my belongings and set forth on my journey for knowledge. I didn’t know what I would find. I didn’t know if I would even find anything more of these monsters of myth and legend, but I went on blindly, anyway. Perhaps, there would be a way to stop the dying. Perhaps, there would even be a way to reverse the effects of the curse. Either way, I would seek my answers to save the soul of my wife, or I’d die trying.

Since those terrifying mornings, I’ve encountered many a beast at dawn. I’ve studied their decaying forms and the causations of what makes the process so painful.

Here is what I’ve discovered….

Firstly, if a Vampire is thirsty and has not fed in a reasonable amount of time, the onslaught of the rising sun proves to be a much more violent adversary. The decomposing process and the physical aging of the skin and organs is made longer by the lack of lifeblood in the monster’s system. The lack of warmth and vitality makes the death nearly unbearable.

I’ve also learned the first things to decompose are the insignificant, exterior physical traits, i.e. the skin, hair, and teeth. The heart, lungs, and other vital organs do not begin the dying process until the strange ailment has completely affected the outside of the body. The brain and heart are the two very last things to cease functioning, causing a dying Vampire to feel every last ounce of pain until their final moments of life.

It is mysterious why the daylight has such to do with this part of the dark curse. I’ve theorized several reasons; one being if the blood and body are cursed with darkness, it is only natural for light to drive away the dark magic enchanting them, and they are thereby reborn with the rise of every moon. A new curse every dusk.

Another theory of mine has to do simply with biology and evolution. There are nocturnal animals in the world, hunting their prey by moonlight. Part of what makes up a Vampire’s body, is what it hunts. Human blood. This is much more easily done at night, where they can stalk their prey in the shadows, easily maintaining the upper hand over any unsuspecting mortal. Though still, this does not explain why, exactly, they have to
die
. I will keep searching for an answer to this.

Vampires are not scavengers. They are hunters. The daily death of a Vampire is an awful thing to bear witness to, to be sure. But for some reason, it is necessary, and a central part of being what they are.

A rough rendering of the beginnings of a vampiric circulatory system.

The heart is dead in the chest, but lives a false life when fed fresh human blood. The human blood spreads through the body in moments, and the effects only last a matter of hours before the Vampire must feed again. Much is the same with human patterns of feeding….