18th Century Vampires
You take your boots off.
You eye the page on the chest before flopping down on the bed.
You consider what you experienced just a few short hours ago. Or did you experience it at all?
You start to wonder. It felt so real and it's still so fresh in your memory.
Then again, dreams sometimes feel very real. And you don't remember going to bed.
Or do you? Come to think of it, maybe you do remember having an uneventful evening and then going to bed.
But, fully clothed? Oh right. You were pretty drunk. That must be why you didn't change out of your clothes.
You breathe a sigh of relief. Obviously it was just a dream. Obviously.
You briefly consider changing out of your clothes, but decide it's not worth it.
You roll over, lay your head on the pillow, and close your eyes.
*****
You sleep fitfully, moving from nightmare to nightmare, each one about the mysterious girl. The one you're quite sure now that you first met in a dream.
You roll over and sit up. It's nearly dawn. You decide it's time to get up and start getting ready to check out of the room. You stand and move to a mirror on the wall. It's definitely time for a shave. You'll have to hit the shared bathroom before heading out.
You turn back to the window. The sun has come up, but you're not as glad to see the sun as you thought you'd be after the fitful sleep of the previous night.
You cross the room to retrieve your boots. A sharp pain catches you by surprise. You stop and the pain worsens. You smell the scent of burning flesh and realize it your side. You fall to your hands and knees, gasping and wincing.
The pain fades. You lift your shirt and find a serious burn on your skin.
You carefully begin to stand when you experience the same pain in your head. You duck.
The sunlight? How could the sunlight be burning your skin?
You crawl under the ray of sunlight and sit in the chair in the darkest corner of the room.
You puzzle over your current predicament for a moment. Somehow, you'll have to devise a way of getting to somewhere dark at least until the sun sets again.
No shades on the window. Perhaps you can use the bedsheets to block the sun? No. You'd have to cross the sunbeam again to get to the bed.
Perhaps you can get to the door and out into the hall where you might be able to find some dark places. But the door is in the most illuminated part of the room.
As the ambient light in the room increases, you start to feel a burning sensation on your skin, even here in the darkest corner. You realize time is of the essence.
You get up from your chair and crouch behind it in its shadow.
This proves to be only a temporary fix. Soon, you feel the burning sensation.
Your mind races. No options come to you. The burning sensation increases to an unbearable level.
You begin to scream. The sounds you make are inhuman. They sound like shrieks of the undead.
Blisters form and pop rapidly on your finger tips and face, then your fingertips begin to form ash.
You watch as your hands, feet, arms, and legs disintegrate rapidly.
Finally, all that remains of you is a pile of ash intermixed with your clothing in the corner of the room and you cease to experience.
Your screaming has drawn the tavern staff, but they are too late to witness your fate.
You are soon swept into a dust pan and disposed of.
History forgets you existed.
But the girl knows you experienced immortality, even if only for a few hours.
(Image By J. Samuel Burner [CC-BY-2.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons. Retrieved from http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chinese_broom_and_sweeping_tool.jpg )
You eye the page on the chest before flopping down on the bed.
You consider what you experienced just a few short hours ago. Or did you experience it at all?
You start to wonder. It felt so real and it's still so fresh in your memory.
Then again, dreams sometimes feel very real. And you don't remember going to bed.
Or do you? Come to think of it, maybe you do remember having an uneventful evening and then going to bed.
But, fully clothed? Oh right. You were pretty drunk. That must be why you didn't change out of your clothes.
You breathe a sigh of relief. Obviously it was just a dream. Obviously.
You briefly consider changing out of your clothes, but decide it's not worth it.
You roll over, lay your head on the pillow, and close your eyes.
*****
You sleep fitfully, moving from nightmare to nightmare, each one about the mysterious girl. The one you're quite sure now that you first met in a dream.
You roll over and sit up. It's nearly dawn. You decide it's time to get up and start getting ready to check out of the room. You stand and move to a mirror on the wall. It's definitely time for a shave. You'll have to hit the shared bathroom before heading out.
You turn back to the window. The sun has come up, but you're not as glad to see the sun as you thought you'd be after the fitful sleep of the previous night.
You cross the room to retrieve your boots. A sharp pain catches you by surprise. You stop and the pain worsens. You smell the scent of burning flesh and realize it your side. You fall to your hands and knees, gasping and wincing.
The pain fades. You lift your shirt and find a serious burn on your skin.
You carefully begin to stand when you experience the same pain in your head. You duck.
The sunlight? How could the sunlight be burning your skin?
You crawl under the ray of sunlight and sit in the chair in the darkest corner of the room.
You puzzle over your current predicament for a moment. Somehow, you'll have to devise a way of getting to somewhere dark at least until the sun sets again.
No shades on the window. Perhaps you can use the bedsheets to block the sun? No. You'd have to cross the sunbeam again to get to the bed.
Perhaps you can get to the door and out into the hall where you might be able to find some dark places. But the door is in the most illuminated part of the room.
As the ambient light in the room increases, you start to feel a burning sensation on your skin, even here in the darkest corner. You realize time is of the essence.
You get up from your chair and crouch behind it in its shadow.
This proves to be only a temporary fix. Soon, you feel the burning sensation.
Your mind races. No options come to you. The burning sensation increases to an unbearable level.
You begin to scream. The sounds you make are inhuman. They sound like shrieks of the undead.
Blisters form and pop rapidly on your finger tips and face, then your fingertips begin to form ash.
You watch as your hands, feet, arms, and legs disintegrate rapidly.
Finally, all that remains of you is a pile of ash intermixed with your clothing in the corner of the room and you cease to experience.
Your screaming has drawn the tavern staff, but they are too late to witness your fate.
You are soon swept into a dust pan and disposed of.
History forgets you existed.
But the girl knows you experienced immortality, even if only for a few hours.
(Image By J. Samuel Burner [CC-BY-2.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons. Retrieved from http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chinese_broom_and_sweeping_tool.jpg )
