Your Absence - 1. Chapter 1

It has passed two weeks since I last watched the stars. I used to love the stars. Not because they are beautiful but because you loved them so. The stars would always make you smile. And gods, I love your smile.

Whenever it graced your face a wave of warm happiness would cross my body and take residence on my stomach, filling me with nice feelings. It would stay there for hours after. Even if you could not be there, I would still feel you inside my very being, making me happy.

Not that it would be a common occurrence, we were inseparable after all. Ever since you turned me, gave me my second chance, we were always together, sharing and nurturing that feeling of magic and bliss. I had no need for the stars, because you were my light.

And now I hate the stars for they pale in the absence of your smile. I haven’t seen them since. And probably won’t see them again. There is no light that can illuminate in the face of my sin. My betrayal of what I loved the most. How I want to kneel and beg for your forgiveness, but I cannot, I won’t. There is no forgiveness, only redemption through this pain I’m offering you.

The answer was so simple really. It came to me and it was no revelation. In the back of my mind I always new knew there was no life to be had beyond you, for you were my life. The decision to end it was very easy after that. You gave me a reason to keep living, it was only right that your departure would mark my own.

But I can’t take the easy way out. Not after what my actions cost us. I promised you eternity together. You answered my call and that was my payment to you. Instead I allowed foolishness on my part to take you away. How was I to know? We were among friends, those that had become our family, our safe haven.

You asked me to go with you, like I promised I always would be. But I failed you. I thought it harmless, it was only a couple of hours after all. I should have been there to protect you, it was my turn to go anyways. But that stupid trip to the mall I wanted to go, so I could look for a present for you. I should have known objects were nothing compared to you, I should have felt your despair that night.

I didn’t. When I arrived it was too late. I went looking for you only to find a mess. Your body mangled on the floor of that empty parking lot, a sick vision of blood and grief. How my heart broke at the sight of your torn one. It was an act of bullying, the wounds were meant to hurt, not to kill. Except for that ugly sight on your chest. It was the size of my closed fist and no vampire could ever recover from such a blow. I could see my all life in front of me at that moment. A twisted fast-forward version of a drama movie, and among all the misery I had witnessed and gone through not once my soul wept so loud, so profoundly.

I was terrified but tried to hide it for your sake. Even in that atrocious moment you tried to give me a smile. So small, so suffered, but there, as if it could somehow atone that deep raw cut on my being.

I tried to take care of you. Bring you home and provide some comfort. I could not. As the days passed your skin was getting paler and clammier. Your muscles aching, your body trying and failing to knit the skin together as your sleep cycles became longer. I never left your side, I slept holding you with the utmost care, and I would remain that way long hours after sunset, waiting for the smile you always attempted to give me, a small token of normality. My desperation was only prevented to a fall into the dark pit of madness by your presence, and the wish that mine could somehow alleviate your pain.

But you tried to look content. Telling me over and over again how much you loved me and how much you were grateful you had found me that night, wondering the streets at the high hours, looking for some relief for my troubled spirit.

It took only one look you know? At that single moment of watching you stare at me, the world stopped moving, I could swear my heartbeat halted before its next contraction. A frozen moment that marked the first spark of life in what felt like forever. And when the next second pushed that still moment aside, I knew, somehow I knew that you meant that something good would finally rescue me from despair. I tried to rationalize, ground myself, as you were so out of my league, out of reach for someone so broke apart like myself. You looked like a fallen angel. So much light in your own personal darkness. But you saw something on me as well, something I still can’t understand to this day but that you swear that I have it and that it’s the most precious thing you ever saw in a mortal soul. That was why you approached me, because there was no way in hell I would have the guts and you knew it. You tried to understand me, reach for me, a beckon of light among all the darkness around me. You made it sound like I actually had a choice in my turning, but what else was I to do? I was empty inside and the compulsion to let myself be filled by your existence was too cherished to be refused.

You turned me. I had again a reason to live and all because of you. I lived the most happy moments of my life at your side. And then I allowed for them to take you away from me. And that is what brings us here, to this dark closed and abandoned basement, waiting for her to come and take me to your side.

The sun wasn’t a possibility. It was a part of our dream. We were going to do it together, when we reached that moment in our lives when nothing else made sense. It would be our last moment of bliss, holding hands and sharing a cone of vanilla ice cream.

A prospect I could never possibly face alone. The bitter taste of your absence next to me. It would be too fast, too easy. I know you don’t understand it, but apart from you, pain is the only thing that I completely understand. I need a burning body to ground my bleeding soul. I need to feel like I’m doing something to avenge this fate’s deception, to atone for the guilt marring my heart. I will starve to death, just like you did.

My animalistic side is close. I can feel my gums aching and my stomach contract. My tears are red from the blood filling my eyes. They trace dark, twisted patterns on my face. I cannot see them but I can imagine the revolting sight I’ll be in a few hours time as I lie in the dirty floor. My skin scratched apart in a vain attempt to alleviate the hitching and burning of my muscle cramps. My face smudged in red rivers, my bloodshot eyes, my breathing fast, my screams raw howls of need.

I was careful. Nobody will come, no one can listen. The door properly locked from the outside to prevent for any losses of my rational mind. I’ll die here, this night, or the next, it depends on your body’s natural resistance really. I’ll waste away and soon I’ll be able to see you, even if from afar.

I used to imagine my death in my other life. Scenarios my mind created but that I was too much a coward to make happen. I craved the relief, but I was afraid as well. I used to imagine people’s reactions to my self-inflicted departure. How they would weep, find me a coward, or not care at all, proceeding in their lives after the proper affairs of death were dealt with. What stopped me for so long was the prospect of disappointment in their eyes. Even in death I had to fill the outside world’s expectations. How I’m glad you changed all that, after we first met, you were the only thing I cared for, and it was so easy to make you happy.

While I watch the ceiling, all this things cross my mind. A world of things can cross a ceiling if you are staring at it when the madness comes. When your hunger is beyond the point of survival and tries to burn your blood and consume it to the last drop, leaving you dry.

-

I’m having blackouts amid the hallucinations that started a few hours ago. Episodes of my life and how I would change it all, how I would lash out and conquer the world. A numb awareness beneath the raw hunger for blood. I’m little more than an animal at this moment and all that I mourn is your absence from my thoughts once my nature takes over.

-

I wake up after a particular nasty bout of blood thirsting trashing around. It comes in cycles it seems. I’m in a different part of the room. I can see blood on the walls, probably my fingernails trying to scratch a way out. I turn to watch the ceiling instead. And that is when I see her. A dark gaze in the corner, stalking my very being. Souless eyes that in a glimpse tell me that she knows me inside and out, and that there is no escape to the torments I have yet to face. But it’s all worth it, just so that I can see you once again. Her stare bothers me, even if I know it’s probably another construction of my recently aware twisted subconscious. I look elsewhere, but I can feel her gaze crawling on my skin like worms eating me alive. Maybe is the thirst coming back, if it ever left at all. I can no longer tell in the mixture of raw ache and troubling emotions.

I try to move, somewhere where her gaze is less intense. It’s useless, I know that even before I try to gather the strength to move, but I try it anyways. It’s after I turned around and crawled a sparse inches that I realize I probably won’t go far. The cramps are getting stronger, and this time I can actually feel the darkness taking me as I double over my own body.

-

When I wake next I am facing up, contorted in some mess of limbs I can’t properly understand, but that I also don’t care to because it is at that moment that I see your smile. How beautiful you are my sweet. How pacifying your sight. You are on your knees, hovering over me, gazing and smiling like there is not a care in the world. So comforting, your smell near me. I follow all your body with my eyes, committing all of you to my memory. I trace the dimples in your cheeks, your soft hair, your warm neck. My eyes come to rest on your delicate hands, resting on the hilt of the sword stabbing my chest. It’s only then that I register the heart gouging pain going through me. I’m so weak with pain, but I can still muster an inquiring look in your direction. I try to ask you why you are hurting me, but my parched mouth and my bleeding lips stop me before my raw throat has such a chance.

I notice your smile is no longer so sweet. Its light dims as the pain becomes even more overwhelming, a crushing explosion from the inside that rattles my entire being.

-

When I wake again is to your absence. An emotional ache to join my many physical wounds. I actually preferred that stabbing pain if it meant I could have one more glimpse at you.

How much longer this madness will continue I cannot tell. I just know that sometime soon I just won’t wake up again, lucid at least. And the only certain I have is that the next time I see the stars again it will be through your eyes.