The darkness is their friend, they slink through it and creep ever closer. They slowly extend their bony, milky white fingers toward your throat. Their hands close around your shoulders and they look deep into your eyes. Their red orbs burn and convince you to tilt your head to the side, exposing your jugular. They lean closer, closer, gleaming teeth glowing with an unnatural light. They sink into your neck and a gentle tug you feel as the blood leaves your body. You’re calm until the nightmares start. All the horrible things they’ve done, that they’ve seen their brethren do, bleed into your thoughts, blinding, deafening, choking you.

Aaron tossed, sweating through his cotton clothes. He sat up, gasping clean air into his lungs. His small hand fumbled underneath his pillow, grasping onto a wooden handle.

His heart beat slowed and he could hear his parents and his uncle downstairs. Their voices were joyful, amused, sharing stories from their youth. His brother was in a bed two feet away, sleeping.

Aaron’s door was open only a crack. Anymore and Andy would complain that it bothered him while he slept and any less and Aaron would scream all night. A small, sliver slipped through, dispelling only a fraction of the darkness.

Dirty blond hair was plastered to his head. Aaron took one more deep breath and snuggled back under his mountain of blankets.

Within moments his breathing had slowed, eyes had slipped closed, and he dropped back off into his land of slumber.

Bony white fingers reached through the shadows. He was paralyzed, unable to breathe as it crept closer. Blood dripped from between two full lips, slipped down a pallid chin and landed somewhere in the shadows. The lips pulled back, revealing ivory fangs that glowed with no apparent source of light. As they brushed across his neck a hand clamped down tightly, painfully, on his shoulder.

Aaron started to shriek, hand squeezing around the wooden handle under his pillow. He swung his small arm up and around, silver glinting in the small amount of light.

Blood was sliding down his arm, dripping on his bed. Another scream joined his wailing.

“Stop Aaron!”

Their voices taunt, seduce, and lie. They capture your mind and feed you falsehoods, making you believe anything they want. They can be anyone or anything. Something never invented or someone long since dead.

Aaron was on his knees, screaming as his hands slipped on the blade’s handle. They wouldn’t get him, they couldn’t get him, his uncle said. Hands were clenched around his forearms as he pulled the weapon back and plunged it forward again.

The arms were reaching for him, trying to close around his throat, scrambling for a hold. And once they had on he would be no more.

The only weapon the hunter could ever use against them was a stake. Not a cross or holy water, because they’re not really damned. What would you do if you met a Jewish vampire? Throw a Star of David at him?

The fingers around his arm relaxed, letting go all together. Aaron’s throat was raw, tears mingled with the blood on his face, making it a road map of red rivers. A small, manic grin spread onto his face.

He had done it. He had won. The shadow thing was done, no more praying on him, no more haunting his dreams.

The door flew open, banging on the wall and swinging back. Light poured into the room, pushing back the remnants of his nightmare and leaving another in its wake. The smile fell off his face, crashing onto the floor.

Pale eyes, blue eyes, stared at him. Cornflower blue his mother had called them once. No warmth, no coldness, no personality. Empty eyes. Blood everywhere, on the floor on the beds, on both of them.

Blood. Sticky, cloying, wouldn’t let go. Aaron’s small stomach rolled, heaved, and expelled its contents onto his bed. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t force even a gasp of air past the lump in his throat.

His vision was graying, white visible all around his eyes. He heard yelling, shouting, screaming, wailing. All sorts of panicked, pained sounds surrounding him, filling his ears. Not a word made it into his mind, nothing coherent managed to penetrate his mind.

His parents eyes, always filled with hate, looked at him. More feet were on the stairs. People he didn’t know, wearing uniforms of all sorts. Arms were pulling his prone body, dragging it across the bed and into the air.

Aaron whimpered, and he must have been breathing all along and simply forgot, for he started to sob. His face was hidden in his uncle’s chest and his entire body shook.

A woman was there, white clad, talking to his uncle. The man was upset, crying himself. He was saying something, something about blame, his fault. Aaron’s mouth moved between sobs, blabbering about vampires and death and how he didn’t mean it.

He kept saying that, he didn’t mean it. He really didn’t mean it. But no one heard, no one looked at him until the white lady walked over. She had something sharp in her hands, a needle. Aaron squirmed, trying to crawl into his uncle’s body and hide there.

He peered over the man’s shoulder as the lady stuck the instrument into his arm. He watched a stretcher, a bloody sheet covering a body, roll towards the stairs. He saw a pale arm protruding from underneath and heard an inhuman sound slip through his lips.

He hadn’t meant to, he really hadn’t meant to. Why wouldn’t anyone listen to him.

His vision kept getting darker and his heart finally started to slow down again. He could breath, the lump gone, his mind clearing, wiping the past however long away. Gone, blank slate. Except for a single thought that no drug, psychologist, or person would ever be able to remove.

He had killed his brother.