Don't Stay Dead

Chapter Six

Settling into the new routine took me a bit longer than I thought. However, it wasn't even two months later that it started to feel normal. I started to feel normal. I had thought at first, and even while I was volunteering, that I wouldn't be able to do this for long. I was afraid that the smells and emotions of the place would overwhelm me, my hearing, my nose, my psychic senses, and drive me mad.

However, since part of my human disguise was pretending to have dulled senses, it helped me to actually practice ignoring the things that would have set me off so much in the past, like when I first awoke. Learning how to shield myself psychically from thoughts and emotions was my biggest priority, and I practiced it hard. It also helped with the constant hubbub going on underneath my studio as well. Hearing and smell was a little bit harder, and it took me a lot of trial and error to figure out how to muffle those effectively.

I could still easily pull it forward though, and I could pinpoint any particular thing I was interested in. Overall, it was good for me. It would help me later, perhaps, not be overwhelmed when absolutely surrounded by humans, per se, if I ever found myself in such a situation. Practice was always good. Practice would help me set a baseline, so that I could more easily pick out the unusual, if it wasn't practically being screamed in my face, so to speak. So, I made sure I was practicing constantly, every waking minute of every day.

The more I worked on it, the more I realized it simply wasn't something I had a lot of time to learn and come to grips with, while living feral out in the swamps. The longer I spent around humans, the more I was starting to realize that my incident with John may have been a lot of meticulous planning, but a lot more of it was sheer luck. There were a lot of things I was going to have to consider, and learn, unless I wanted to retreat to a cave and live out the rest of my unlife under a rock. Like,for one good example, what if I ran into another vampire, and they weren't friendly? I could handle any human just with sheer strength and speed, but what if they knew how to fight?

It wasn't like I could just go to some boxing or martial arts place and sign up for classes, though. Even when I was in human disguise, I still had to work hard to temper my strength and reflexes. I could easily kill someone. The second best thing I could think of was simply watching, letting my brain pick up the emotions and finer nuances, then practicing at home by myself. It wasn't perfect, but it might be better than nothing. Muscle memory, at the very least, might help avoid getting my neck snapped because I wasn't prepared.

Mark, well, I really was to the point of questioning my sanity when it came to Mark. Had it even been him I was sensing those thoughts from? They smelled like him, the mental image snapshots I tasted and sensed attached to those emotions looked and tasted like him, so what the hell was going on? Why wasn't I sensing him having them for anyone else? Or even for her again? Was it just the death that did it? If so, I didn't know what I was going to do. Maybe I really had misread the situation after all. I could have also just misread his intentions during our interactions while I was alive.

If I had, then I'd just have to take my time here and learn what I could from this situation, while I regrouped and figured my life out. Maybe I wasn't meant to be a vigilante after all. Oh, it was a nice thought on paper, and I certainly did take out John nicely, that much was true. But, in life, I was... soft. I loved to write stories about badass women, and vampires who did all these amazing things, and villains, and whatnot. But it was just an outlet. How many more people would I actually be able to put an end to before the nightmares overwhelmed my sanity? So far, one was doing a pretty good job and destroying my sleep.

The gunshot rang out, for the tenth time in a row. I flinched, for the tenth time in a row. His bloody ghost appeared before me, yet again. Holding out his hands, he pointed at me.