Vampire Story 3

I used to be a little girl.

I used to live in the sun. I used to go to school. I can’t do those things anymore.

I didn’t understand what happened. Last fall I stayed late at the library in Brooklyn. I had to do a book report, and my family couldn’t afford the internet, or the book. I was trying to write about Bridge to Terabithia, but I couldn’t, the ending made me cry.

I was walking home and a man, a very fast man grabbed me and dragged me behind a building. He hurt me, down there, and then bit me. He left me for dead in a dumpster behind a building still bleeding both above and below. I don’t know how I survived.

I didn’t know what happened to me, but everything changed after that night. I used to love the sun. I used to love laying on the beach in Coney Island watching all the boys play in the water. I used to love cotton candy and soda. But that isn’t me anymore.

I think I’m a vampire. All that is me is hunger and pain now. All I want is blood, all the time. I didn’t understand at first. After that night I went to the police and filed a police report, but it was hard because he hurt me so bad. They made a sketch; they took out an APB. They never really did anything though.

I think I started getting really hungry after the third day. I thought I was just sick because I was hurt so bad, but the light was blinding, and mom’s food didn’t taste good anymore. It was like eating dirt. I was just so hungry, and my teeth hurt. They hurt really bad. One day I looked in the mirror and I had fangs.

I couldn’t take the pain anymore and I did something horrible. I killed my cat. She tasted ok, better than food, but not quite right. I needed more. I threw her out the window and pretended she had just run away.

I lived with my mom. My dad left her a few years ago for some woman. I never see him. She was alone with me, trying to make everything all better. Then one day I passed out, and when I came to, she was torn apart. I screamed. I realized I felt full, and I realized I had torn her apart.

I left the house that night. I’ve been living in dumpsters ever since, just to get out of the sun. I have to get new clothes every few days, but they never notice me shoplifting. It’s like I’m invisible now. I also sleep with men that like little girls and tear their throats out. They are easy prey.

I have a move I like to use. I’m still really little, but I am fast and strong. I run up to them when they aren’t looking, jump up in the air, sink my fangs in their neck, and swing around them horizontally. It tears their throats all the way around. Then I just drink from their open veins.

It reminds me of drinking from the garden hose on a warm summer day. Back when I was a real girl.

I want to find the bastard that did this to me. The police made a sketch, and I have a copy. I keep searching the neighborhood, trying to spot him. Everything about my life before him is getting foggy now. I barely remember things from before anymore, but I do have the sketch. When I find him, I’m going to tear off his head. That’s what you have to do to vampires, right?

I have been going back to the library. They are open late in NYC fortunately, though I have to use the big main branch. I’ve been reading all I can about what I am now. Most of its bullshit. They never talk about all the hunger and all the pain, all the loneliness. They never talk about blacking out from hunger and eating your own mom. The one person that cared for you.

The one thing that scares me is that in the books, a little girl that becomes a vampire never grows up. I want to grow up.

I’m not a little girl anymore.