a/n: This is my latest story that I have been working on for a long time, so no this isn't the only chapter I have for it, but before I post more I want to see what people think, so I would be most gracious for ANY feedback, flames included. Thank you.

Chapter 1

NOW

Staring at the backs of my eyelids, I feel a cool breeze brush my face. Opening my eyes, I look out and see only darkness. The black that surrounds me, engulfs me, is thick enough to choke. I can’t even tell if my eyes are open anymore. I try to remember where I am, why I feel so cold and tired. Trying to lift my hand and feeling as if a weight is holding it down, I manage only to lull my head to one side.

I’m so exhausted.

Trying to make sense of this all, think back to see what I do know about where I am now, yet nothing comes to me. I don’t remember why my limbs feel like lead, they just do. I don’t remember why this place is so dark, it just is. My world never used to be this dark. I never used to live in darkness. So why am I here now?

Trying once more to sit up, I succeed, and see that it is not as dark as it seems. On the far side of what seems like an ever-lasting room, I manage to see a speck of light that seems to be a single candle. Reaching out into darkness, I feel nothing around me, so I grope helplessly at the side of what seems like a box. The sides are cold, and hard, and very shallow. The ground is not a far drop at all.

Slowly, I test the strength of my legs, bending my knees as if I move too much they might just snap right off. Confirming that I am only simply sore, and not injured to the point of incapacitation, I swing my legs over the side of the box and touch the floor with a resonating click confirming that I still am wearing my boots.

Wanting nothing more than to find out where I am and yet terrified to leave the safety of the box to the secrecy of the darkness, I whimper into the seemingly empty room. Moving cautiously outwards, I take one step – click – and then another – click – with each movement becoming more confident. At last I reach the single source of light, a dim candle, just sitting on the floor, as if waiting for me.

Carefully lifting the slight flame off of the floor, I notice that it seems freshly lit, as if someone was recently in here. Maybe I’m not as alone as I thought.

Tilting the candle slightly to avoid any drips of hot wax from touching my skin, I slowly lift the candle and see that I am against the wall of the room.

The walls are simply graying stone, slightly wet to the touch and unforgivably cold. I press my hand lightly to it, as if anchoring myself to reality, checking to see if I really am awake or if this is all just a cruelly realistic dream.

Fearfully taking a few more steps, it doesn’t seem to take too long to reach the first corner in the room, which seem to make a sharp turn at a more rosy colored stone. This seems to be almost a mineral, more so than a stone, but when I touch it, I discover the rosy tint is simply from algae or mold that has started to grow there. Recoiling in disgust, I quickly continue along the rosy wall until I reach what is plainly another corner and this one is once more just plain stone. Walking along this a few more simple steps, I reach what may be the last wall, this one covered in a greenish moss. Carefully watching my steps, I continue my slow passing through the room until I reach another corner and finally settle back to where I picked up the candle. I know this is the spot from a few drops of wax that had accumulated before I picked it up.

I have only confirmed two things by this slow passage: this is a small room, and I am utterly alone.

Moving back in the general direction of the safety of my box, I easily stumble upon it, realizing now in the light that it is much closer than what it originally seemed.

Kneeling over the seemingly impregnable object, I quickly feel my blood run cold. My mouth dries instantly at the heart stopping sight of the box, for this is not any normal box: I had been sleeping in a coffin.

I suddenly hear a heart-wrenching scream and it takes me what seems like forever to actually realize that the scream is coming from my throat. Closing my mouth and panicking, I quickly run to one of the walls, the candle dropping and leaving the coffin lit unabashedly.

Pounding against the wall where I found the candle and clawing desperately at the stone, I simply try to scream for someone, anyone, possibly even the person that left the candle.

Feeling tears start to stream down my face I continue to scream, but to no avail. Finally losing my voice to simply a hoarse sounding whisper, I give up my frantic calls and simply let the tears stream down my cheeks.

Curling up on the cold stone floor I simply let myself cry. Suddenly I notice a copper taste in my mouth. Reaching up tenderly to my lips, I feel that I’ve split my bottom lip open at two points. Sighing helplessly, the tears still lightly pooling in my eyes, stinging as they form, I try and feel the full extent of the cuts when something else catches my attention. My canine teeth seem strangely long. Letting my fingers travel slightly further backwards, I rest them on the two elongated teeth and run them down the length. The ends, I feel, are pointed. They’re fangs. My teeth are fangs.

Sending myself into another howling frenzy, with renewed strength I continue to pound on the wall, and I keep pounding until my hands throb and bleed.

I step back and look at my hands, the warm sticky blood dripping down my arms. Standing there, I start to feel a hunger twist my stomach and eat away at my resolve. Then next thing I know, the coppery taste of my own blood fills my mouth and I see that one of my hands has a swipe where something licked my blood away, where I licked my blood away.

Turning away in disgust, and yet licking my lips at the same time, I quickly take off my jacket that I still have on and see a blood stain around the left side of my neck. Quickly tearing pieces off and bandaging my hands, I reach up and feel the left side of my neck tenderly. My fingers brush by two punctures in my neck, which I realize must be from fangs.

What happened to me?

My breath quickens, and I start to panic once more. My frantic tears return and I feel more like a child than anything else. Panicking has solved nothing before and it is solving nothing now.

Mentally scolding myself and desperately trying to calm down I realize that the room has now completely silenced. Listening closely I don’t even hear my own heart beat. Checking my pulse, I realize I don’t hear it, because I don’t have it. My pulse is gone. Trying to stay calm, I also realize that I don’t hear my breath. I test taking in a breath and I realize that it burns slightly to breathe. I let out the breath and experiment with forcing myself not to take one. I don’t need to breathe either. Slowly trying to stay calm and collected, I concentrate on trying to speak.

Take a breath. Try to make a noise. I barely make a squeak. Try again.

Take a breath. Try to make a noise. I manage to make incomprehensible noises. Better.

After repeating the process many times, I manage to get out the word “hi” before my lungs burn and I force myself to stop.

Looking around once more, I see that the candle has nearly burned out, and as darkness surrounds me, I try to keep myself busy to try to forget my terrible fear of the dark. I remember that this started when I was five, and all because of some stupid movie that I had seen on television. I remember it was Bram Stoker’s ‘Dracula’, and not the original one with Bela Lugosi, which I did see some years later, but the one with Gary Oldman and Winona Ryder. Because of the movie, I learned to love vampires, but I could never shake my fear of darkness.

I laugh at the irony of the entire situation, or I do so mentally, not daring to speak or make a sound with my lungs still on fire.

Crawling back over to where the coffin should be, I slam into it and mentally curse. The fatigue of the situation and the darkness that surrounds me makes me long for the comfort of enclosure, even if that enclosure happens to be in a coffin.

Making no noise at all, I slip into the hard shell that blocks out much of this strange new world. Longing for nothing more than my family, I start to drift into a shallow sleep, hoping against all odds that I will wake up in my warm soft bed and that this will all have been a nightmare.