It's when the lights go out and you feel something behind you, you hear it, you feel its breath against your ear, but when you turn around, there's nothing there...
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Vampire.
My name is Nastya, but there were those times when I forgot my own name, and it was hard to remember a life before now. Faces had blurred into soft images and past experiences were a very faint memory.
I remembered no one nor recalled anything of consequence from a life long ago.
I had my human habits, ones I had tried to maintain over time, only because they amused me and because it helped to avert suspicion of me: not to stand too still or move too fast; to blink when I gazed at something... it was all so tiresome.
And yet...
Thoughts of actually being human again sometimes plagued me, to be fragile and wonderfully flawed, to once again live on the fruits of the earth instead of blood, no. No.
How contrary.
I understood and appreciated the end of a life – of an existence – had respected it once, I'm sure, and yet here I was, a being without law. The things I had seen: the births and deaths of empires! Art being created; art being destroyed. The world that was ever changing, the clothes and shoes, architecture, styles and technology, how the human race had evolved at a steady pace, and me with them yet not quite one of them.
Vampire.
Nastya. My name. I knew that it meant reborn and at times I wondered if it was from my original life or the name given to me by the one who had made me.
Nastya.
Many names.
Once I was turned I heard the name creature, or cold one used to describe what I was.
Monster!
But I'm a vampire: an ancient and superior being.
I roamed the streets of Paris alone now, unattached to any clan or coven. Still, somehow, I felt I was constantly being watched; bound by unwritten ancient rules.
By day I hid for my own preservation, by night I fed on the vagabond straggler, drawn to me by my ethereal beauty until they saw my fangs, unable to flee because of my speed and strength. I was disgusted by them, all of them and yet... I needed to survive.
I always remember what Ernest Hemingway wrote, Paris is a moveable feast.
How right he was!
I loved the night passionately. I loved it as I loved my city, my master, my mistress, with an instinctive, deep, and unshakeable love.
I loved it with all my senses: I loved to see it, I loved to taste it, I loved to open my ears to its silence, I loved my whole body to be caressed by its blackness. The owl that flew by night, dark shadows passing through the darkness; his sinister, quivering cry, as though he delighted in the intoxicating black immensity of a night sky.
