Last Night On Earth - A Short Story

Last Night On Earth

Look me in the eyes and tell me what you see, inside of me.

Look me in the eyes and tell me, can you see how much I need you.

It was night as he walked through the streets of London and home. One of those nights when, despite feeling all alone, he knew someone was watching him, but whenever he turned around, he couldn't see anything.

Above him the moon desperately tried to make its way through the clouds of the London sky. He tried to remember when he'd last seen it clearly visible.

There was a noise behind him, and he turned around again, stopping for a moment, but there was nothing. All he could hear was the sound of his own breathing, a small cloud spiralling from his mouth as he breathed out.

For the past weeks he had felt like someone was watching him. Like someone or something was following him every night that he walked home from work, but for some reason the thought didn't frighten him. It was a presence he felt that didn't scare him, though it made him feel uneasy.

Waiting for a moment he listened, closing his eyes, but there was silence. No footsteps behind him, only the sound of the wind and the water of the Thames. In the distance he could hear a carriage, the hooves of the horses resounding on the cobblestones.

He turned and stuffed his hands deeper into his coat pockets, his fingers cold and fiddling with his keys as he turned the corner, crossed the street, and stopped in front of his home to unlock the door.

He was completely unaware of the fact that he was still being watched as he turned and looked around again before vanishing inside the house, switching the light on inside his room a moment later.

~

Here she stood in the shadows, across the street from his window, like she had done every night for the past 8 months. Watching from a distance how his figure moved across the room, shrugged off his coat and then moved out of sight for a moment.

She knew he had sat down to unlace his shoes, and she knew he would stand back up in just a couple of seconds, she had watched him long enough, had studied him well enough to know his next move.

He crossed to the window, and she smiled when he closed the curtains. Tonight, he was doing it early, but she could still hear what he was thinking, his thoughts giving away that he knew she was there.

For the past weeks he had known, even though she had watched him for so much longer. But she'd gotten too close then.

It had been when she'd started to find her way into his room to watch him sleep during the nights, when she had started to speak to him through his dreams.

She had told him that he didn't have to be afraid, that she wouldn't hurt him, and that she was only there to look out for him, like his guardian angel. If only she could have told him that she wasn't that at all, that two hundred years ago someone had turned her into a beast that would walk the grounds of the earth forever, and feast on human blood. If only he knew that mankind classed her as the evil, the devil, the undead, a vampire.

The lights switched off now and she knew he would be stripping down and slipping into bed next, like she had watched him do so many times before.

In an instant she found her way inside his home, silently entering his room, finding a place in the shadows in a corner of the room. It was so easy for her to get into his room unnoticed and unheard.

She didn't need any light to see him, he was right there in front of her, clear as day, pausing and looking up for a second before unbuttoning his shirt and shrugging it off his muscular arms.