1

580 8 1
                                    

It started with a few chickens, necks snapped and their blood drained. The bite marks resembled a starving animal, repeatedly sinking its teeth into the flesh of its prey. The bodies were left distended from their prolonged decay, and the dead chickens were often hidden under their coop or found far from their pen. Their killer didn't want their bodies to be found.

It was chalked up to loose dogs and irresponsible owners who couldn't keep their mutts chained up. When the goats in the area began being mauled, they blamed it on hungry wolves. After a girl's Labrador turned up dead, maimed, and sucked dry of its blood, the problem couldn't go ignored. Not when the dog had been inside the home when there was evidence of a break-in.

It only escalated from there, attacks seemingly at random popped up here and there. Police would find people dead in their homes, blood sucked out of them from deep bite marks on their necks and shoulders. Nothing would be stolen from their homes, their wallets were left undisturbed. A killer that chooses his victims at random and without an apparent motive was more than enough to send the small town you lived in into hysteria. There was an argument over if the killer was even human, most murders being animalistic in nature. Some proposed that it was a runaway chimp from a city zoo, others said it was a teenager who was the victim of a satanic ritual. People's minds go to the most outlandish places when trying to fill in the gaps.

Then again, you didn't have a better answer either.

Someone, something, able to tear flesh from bone and destroy the sinews of its victims. The blood loss and bites at the neck lead to the next theory of a vampire going around. Based on the few fairytales you've heard of vampires, you would have thought they'd be a bit more... elusive. Not so obvious with killing people. Weren't they supposed to live in castles in Eastern Europe, not harass small rural towns that can barely be placed on a map?

Maybe it wouldn't hurt to stock up on garlic though.

You ruminate on recent events, finishing up your nighttime routine. Applying moisturizer after washing your face, you wince seeing the scabbed over wounds on near your wrist. It didn't hurt, but you have no idea how you got cut. By your guess you hit your hand on a sharp edge and hadn't noticed or remembered. Small, unexplained wounds have been popping up like this recently. On your arms, your calves, the other day before getting in the shower you thought you saw a small cut on your back. You've been trying to ignore it, trying to chalk it up to clumsiness, but it's really starting to get to you.

You grab your toothbrush, going to run it under the water before applying toothpaste. You go to turn the water on, just before hearing a muffled movement behind you. From the shower, behind the opaque curtain. It makes you pause, sends a particular fear up your spine. You look at the shower curtain in the mirror. You would be unable to see someone if they were hiding there, but they would be unable to see you as well. They would only have the knowledge that you're here, in your home, and that they could peek at you from behind the curtain.

You hold the toothbrush in your hand, tightening your grip. There's more movement, quiet and small. But it's movement. You bolt out of the bathroom, racing to your kitchen. You're really regretting not investing in a gun right now. You grab one of the kitchen knives you have, darting back to the bathroom. It hits you that you have no idea what you're doing. You don't know how to defend yourself from a crazed person in your bathroom with a knife, much less an animal or a vampire.

It's not the vampire, it's not a loose chimp and it's not someone who broke in to hurt you. It's nothing, this is not happening to you. You probably should have gotten your phone to dial 911, and you think about running to grab it but you can't risk taking your eyes off the shower curtain. There's another noise, more scuttling. That and your shaky breaths are the only sounds in the bathroom, bouncing off the confined walls. You throw the shower curtain open and it's empty. You blink, looking for the source of the noise. On one hand, you're relieved, if it really were an intruder, they couldn't have escaped the shower in the short time you left to the kitchen without you noticing. On the other hand, if it wasn't an intruder, what the fuck was it?

Your eyes follow the source of the scuttling, an oversized roach making its way up your bathroom wall. You gasp sharply, and the insect stops moving. A knife wouldn't do the trick but maybe a hard hit with the Listerine bottle will. Your hand slowly puts the knife on the sink counter, reaching for the bottle of mouthwash. Your eyes don't leave the cockroach, for fear if you do you'll lose it. The sound of footsteps behind you, just outside your bathroom door make you whip your head around. It was as if someone was trying to get your attention, though as soon as you heard them they were gone.

You still your breathing, straining your ears to hear something. Anything. The sound of footsteps, heavy shoes hitting the floor, it replays in your mind over and over as you try to discern if you really heard it or not. You decide that it must have been an auditory illusion from your paranoia.

When you turn back around, the cockroach is nowhere to be seen.

Amor Sanguinum (Yandere Vampire Feitan x Reader)Where stories live. Discover now