MIK

Chapter 21

Chapter 21

It was all quite surreal.

After everything that had happened yesterday, the murder, the destruction. Everything I'd done. Here I was, sitting in a car next to Sam listening to him explain why The Hangover was so funny. An army of vampires came in to kill me and get whatever Sylvia was protecting, I had killed four innocent non-vampire people. But here I was having a normal one-sided conversation with my best friend about how funny it is to be back-out drunk.

I managed to nod at the right times and Sam didn't really notice too much. He was mostly upset that I had missed the movie with the boys. He couldn't harp on about it too much. He was mostly just trying to fill me in on what I had missed. On some level, he did understand what I was going through. Conner's dumb outburst had made sure everyone did. Even before yesterday, my mood was anything but normal. I let him yabber on and turned to look out at the world rushing past me. We were heading towards the farmlands, not that it was far considering how small the town was.

Where was my father? I wondered, a part of me did hope he was ok. Though he was an abusive asshole even before this whole situation, he with all his black and white thinking had helped. Or at least I thought he did. Maybe it would have been better if he had let mother kill me, maybe locked away in a high-security prison she would have been safe from what happened, I thought darkly. There were too many 'what if's to contemplate it made my head spin, none of them would make a damn difference. The things that had happened, happened. Unless there was some myth that could turn back time I had to struggle to face it. Struggle was the right word. The beast was keeping me afloat, its survival instincts keeping me from doing anything. But it had been such a short amount of time, I wondered how long it could fight the darkness from seeping in.

My future was so unclear, what would I even do with myself? Would Sylvia hunt me down? With all the power she had, I'm sure she would make short work of me and put the beast in its place. Part of me would like to see that but I also know it would mean my death. The beast only really knew a kill or be killed kind of approach. After seeing everything my father wouldn't react kindly and didn't have anywhere else to go. I was caught between the vampires and Sylvia. It would just make my life easier if I just ceased to exist after the camping trip.

What did I even have left to fight for? Should I just let the vampires come for me? The beast growled inside my mind and its presence pushed against the surface. It couldn't be trusted. Like I didn't know that from the beginning, there was little I could do to stop it.

The scent of cow shit hit my nose.

Perhaps this whole camping trip was a bad idea and really dangerous. I had a beast inside me that I could barely hold back from raging and Conner was on this trip.

Looking at the familiar farmlands that rushed passed a part of me knew that it might be the last time that I saw my mortal friends. That after this camping trip I would have to make some major decisions about myself and what would happen. This was almost like fate giving me a weekend off to reflect on my actions if it didn't go horribly wrong that is.

The farms mostly of sugar cane but some cattle as well, they brought back so many memories of childhood with Sam. If I wasn't dealing with everything I was I would have smiled at these memories. Like the time we had been playing with sticks and poked a cow one too many times and had to run for our lives as it charged at us. Playing hide and seek in the sugar cane and getting told off also running then. Or finding snakes by the rivers and quietly watching them to be "brave" though, in reality, we were shitting our pants. So many of my memories included running away from things. The true Australian childhood experience.

What if I had run away from those vampires that night? What if I hadn't protected my family? Would they have been slaughtered? Or were the vampires only interested in me? Since they knew where I lived they would probably go after my father. I wondered if he would understand me trying to protect him. Was he worth staying alive just to protect? That was one of many questions I just didn't have an answer for.