Vampire Manifesto (9 page)

He took the items from my hand, inserting the clip back into the gun, clicking the safety on, then burying it somewhere inside my trunk. I was so glad to have that thing away from me.

“
What are you, sixteen, seventeen?" He asked, slamming the trunk door closed.

“
Seventeen.” I declared. “But what does that have to do with anything? That Man, he’s getting away. We need to call the Police.”

The Guy just shook his head. “Because you smell like a brewery. That’s why it’s not a good idea.” He initiated a step forward and took a sniff of me.

I instinctively moved away. “What are you doing?”

He made a face. “What is that? Marijuana?”

“
Yeah, so?” I answered.

“
You can call the Cops if you want, report what happened.” He began. “More than likely, they’ll just arrest everybody here for underage drinking and possession of illegal narcotics. That’s on you though.” He pulled out his phone and began to dial 911.

“
No, wait...” I called out.

“
Yes?”

“
Is he, is he gone? The Man, I mean. The Man in Black.” I asked.

The Guy put his cell away. “Yeah, he’s gone.”

“
Thank you.” I said in all honesty.

“
You’re welcome.”

“
I didn’t get...I didn’t get your name.” I said.

“
I didn’t give it.” He responded. “What’s so special about you, Madison?”

“
Wait, you know me? You know my name?”

“
I know a lot of things, Madison Amber Rose.” He continued. “But that’s not important. What is important is why YOU.”

“
I don’t understand. What’s going on? How do you know me?” I was starting to get afraid again.

“
That gun, that’s a Colt 1911.” He stated. “Did you know that?”

I went to speak, but he just continued talking, not really waiting for a response.

“
Of course you didn’t, but that’s beside the point. That gun is worth over three thousand dollars. If you need money, if you really need cash, like as in right now, you don’t carjack a person with a three thousand dollar gun.”

I could hear someone calling my name in the distant. It was Ethan. He would be here in just a few seconds.

“
So what you have to ask yourself, Madison Amber Rose, what’s so special about you? What’s so important about you in particular, that a man, using a three thousand dollar gun, would try to kidnap you?”

“
He wasn’t trying to kidnap me.” Ethan where are you? “He, he just wanted the car is all.”

The Guy smiled. “Then you have nothing to worry about, do you?” He started to leave, walking in the opposite way of the voices calling my name.

“
Hey, where are you going?” I called out.

He gave a smile that did anything but put me at ease. “Behind the boathouse.” He motioned for me to follow. “I’ll show you my dark secret.” Then just like that, he was gone. But I don’t mean, gone, as in ran off. I mean gone, as in vanished, disappeared. He just dematerialized in front of me like some ghostly apparition. He was just there and then he wasn’t.

“
Madison!”

I spun around, suddenly afraid again, but it was Ethan, running towards me. I could tell by the look in his eyes, those gorgeous glowing eyes of his, that he was worried. Not far behind him trailed Abigail and Aiden.

“
Madison! What’s going on, are you okay? I thought I heard... something.” The look on his face, the sheer determination to keep me safe made me realize that there was anything he wouldn’t do to keep me from harm.

I collapsed into his outstretched arms, comforted by his protective embrace, the tears welling up in my eyes, a waterfall of emotion that I could no longer contain. “I just wanna go home. Just take me home.” That was all I could manage in-between sobs.

“
What’s wrong? What’s going on?” Demanded Abigail, but I couldn’t answer her, not now. I couldn’t stop crying. It was all I could do to stand, let alone speak.

“
Oh my God, she’s bleeding.” Abigail noted in horror.

“
I don’t know what happened.” Ethan stated. “All she said was that she wanted to leave, to go home.”

Abigail was stroking my hair, trying to calm me down. “It’s okay, baby.” She whispered. “Everything is gonna be just fine. You wanna go home, we’ll go home.”

“
Where are the keys?” Aiden asked. “I’ll drive us.”

“
Goddamn it Aiden!” I cried out, furiously. “You’re not driving the fucking car, so stop asking!”

“
It’s okay, everything’s okay.” Ethan said. “Give me the keys, I’ll drive, everybody just get in, we’re leaving.”

I let the keys pass from my hands to his as he helped me into the back seat. Abigail climbed in with me and I wrapped myself up in her arms and continued to cry softly, my head against her chest as she continued to gently stroke my hair in a vain attempt to calm me down.

I had begun to shake again, the events of the past few minutes replaying over in mind. If it wasn’t for some random Guy, there’s no telling what would have happened to me tonight. I could be in a ditch somewhere, or worse. I just wanted to be as far away from this place as possible. I never wanted to come back.

Ever.

I closed my eyes, my Saviors face staring back at me within my mind’s eye. He saved my life and I didn’t even know his name. The way he just took that guy down, snatched the gun from his hand and shot him in the leg. It was like some Jason Bourne shit. Then he disappeared, just up and vanished. How could anybody do something like that? How could a person move that fast?

He knew who I was, knew my name. I tried to pass that part off considering the small size of our town. Not to mention, if he was at the party, it would have been easy to ask random person number three who I was, yet, the way he spoke my name, it was as if he actually knew me, knew who I was, not in just passing, but rather on some deeper level altogether.

The things he said though. The expensiveness of the gun, the gun that was now resting comfortably in my trunk, God, I hope we don’t get pulled over.

I called out randomly to Ethan. “Don’t speed okay.”

“
Sure.” He was looking at me through the rearview mirror and I could see the worry in his eyes, see the guilt he carried for not being there with me when everything went down. He doesn’t even know what happened and I could tell he was blaming himself because he wasn’t there to stop it.

“
Whatever you say Madison.”

I didn’t want to speak anymore and just closed my eyes, trying not to concentrate on anything at all, but it was futile. I couldn’t get the vision of the gun barrel pointed at my face out of my head. I just kept reliving the Man in Black striking me repeatedly, only to have his face replaced by my Savior. My beautiful, Dark Haired Savior. The more I thought of him, the more I wanted to know more about him.

He was no older than me, seventeen at the least, eighteen at the most. He knew how to handle a gun with ease and when he shot that Man, there was no remorse, no hesitation, just BAM! When he ejected the clip and cleared the chamber, he didn’t even look at the gun when he did those things, he was looking at me the entire time. Something like that, you just don’t pick up randomly at The Dave’s, smoking weed and playing video games.

“
So you have to ask yourself Madison. What’s so special about you?”

That was the last thing I thought before sleep overtook me in the back seat of my Father’s car.

I was in the forest again. The rain was dying down to a mist, the darkness of my situation overwhelming. A dead Vampire lay at my feet behind me, the essence of his Soul drained away into the Blade of Osiris for all eternity. At my front was impending doom as the Vampires attempted to circle around me and cut off any means of escape.

“
Well what are you waiting for?” I screamed in challenge. “I haven’t got all fucking night!”

It was the dream again, the same nightmarish hell that has been plaguing my afterthoughts every night for the past month. Yet this night, this one time, the dream held no sway over me. Tonight I had experienced real terror, came close to true death and not this subconscious facsimile of one.

Everything freeze froze, going from normal, to slow, then from extreme slow to stop. I was taking control. Taking back what was mine. I refused to be terrified by the phantom images my mind created. Not now. Not ever.

I was looking at myself. Looking at the still frame of me that was bent low in a warrior’s crouch, about to strike out at the closest person, the closest Vampire that was near me. I didn’t recognize the dress she was wearing, the torn little white dress that clung to her skin because of the rain.

I walked close to myself, circling the Dream Me, that innocent little girl with a face twisted into a hate fueled, murderous rage. I didn’t even recognize this girl, even though she
was
me. I couldn’t imagine what had happened to turn her from who I am now, to what she was, yet I could feel strength radiating off her person, a kind of power and conviction that I never possessed in the real world.

I wish I was as strong as her. I wish I had her singular vision of authoritative dominance. She welded the Blade of Osiris as if it was her own, like the strange translucent metal was just an extension of her arm, then a mere weapon. I tried to gain a better vantage point, to examine what the Blade really looked like, but upon coming closer, it emitted some type of solar flare, a bright, blinding flash of brilliance that overwhelmed and bewildered my senses all at once.

I turned my attention instead towards the Vampires in front of me, if that’s what they truly were. They looked normal enough, nothing very Vampy about them. Nothing except the eyes. The glowing eyes that seemed to drip with death and destruction. If I saw nothing else but them, nothing except the eyes alone, I would be in fear. They reminded me of the Man in Black. The way his eyes looked every time he punched me. His weren’t as venomous of course, nowhere near as defiantly demonized as theirs, but they were of the same brood, belonging to those whose only intent was to do me harm.

“
Reverse.” I said out loud.

The dreamscape followed my orders explicitly. The world around me moving in rewind as I watched it all unfold methodically, searching for something that I didn’t even know existed, yet knowing I would recognize it nonetheless once my eyes fell upon it.

The Vampires disappeared back into the forest. The dead Vampire rose from the ground, my Dreamself rising in the air, to be held in his grasp, pulling the Blade of Osiris out of his chest. I’m hiding it behind me now, the Vampire is falling backwards into the mud, covered in black smoke and crackling blue lighting.

The splintered tree reforms. Lightning from the Vampires chest flies into the sky. I'm chanting now. The Vampire is talking, yet I don’t understand his words because they are in reverse. He’s staring at me, cold and calculating. He’s not moving, not breathing; he’s not doing anything other than casting his menace in my direction

I wonder what is going on in that mind of his? What exactly do the dead dream of? I can’t shake his stare; the venom that’s woven into it so intricately, one could not separate it from the other, not knowing were the one ended and the other began. I could feel his hatred, so strong that it was almost palatable.

That’s when I noticed it. When I realized that he was staring at me! He had long stopped paying attention to my Dreamself, giving her no more thought; yet he could not keep his eyes off of me. The real me! The me that was in control of the dream!

I awoke, jerking myself foreword, choking off a scream. We were pulling into the driveway to my home. I think I scared Abigail; her face was pale white, no doubt do to my sudden night terror thrashing out the blue.

“
I’m okay.” I managed, cutting off any response she could muster. I wasn’t in the mood to explain myself. Not right now. All I wanted was the safety of my own bed. I didn’t want to talk, didn’t want to explain what happened to me at The Dave’s, nor did I wish to speak of dreams one could vaguely extrapolate the meaning of.