A Surfeit of Shorts

At the Brandenburg Gate

A/N: Written for @Fantasy_Community's 'Prompt #6 - Picture' challenge. I chose to write a story based upon the picture of bats flying against a sunset. (I had to choose this one as my favourite animals (alongside horses) are, actually, bats!!!) Also inspired by the song - 'Brandenburg Gate' as performed by Anti-Flag

Word Count: 1720 words

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I made my way through the late evening crowds, feeling the push and the pull of a myriad of human emotions swirling and battering against my skin. Each and every one of them was but a scent upon the breeze; I detected hunger, anger, sadness, melancholy, insufferable rage and wistful love, each bright and shining emotion assailing my senses. Each human smelt different to me, and their blood surged beneath their skin in pulses of iron-rich red, each vein filled with life-giving fluid that would inevitably sate me and keep me going for another few hours. I had to stop myself from taking any number of them that surrounded me, despite my incredible, insatiable hunger; to do so now would negate the reason for me actually being here. I only had interest in one human, after all and to feed, to sate my blood-urges, would only make me late.

In almost three hundred years of existence, I had never once been late for anything; when one has plenty of time to call one's own, one cannot waste a precious drop of it, and must make every second, every minute and hour count, because each moment means more memories, more experiences, in the great store of memories that reside in my own head.

I sighed my way through the crowds, as they began to thin, and I glanced up, to view the sky that arched overhead, visible between the jutting bulks of the buildings that surrounded me; Berlin was filled with life that night, yet it was bathed and graced by a beautiful sunset. The sky was dappled with a multitude of clouds, patterned in a roiling, rippling mass of fluffy waves. Each cloud seemed delineated in fire, awash in bright orange, and yellow, and red, as though each individual wisp of moisture that floated above Berlin was set afire. I breathed in, smelt the surrounding humanity and the ever present fumes from the cars and the buses and that distinctive tang peculiar to the trams that criss-crossed Berlin streets; I could smell the myriad scents of the food vendors, the Turkish, the Greek, and Indian and the heavier meatier scents of Currywurst and the yeasty smell of soft pretzels. It had been a few centuries since I'd last tasted human food, yet for once, I found that I missed it. Tastes had changed in the years since I'd faced my vampiric transformation, and undoubtedly the food had grown better, more refined over the years as well.

I ripped my mind away from food, from humanity, from the sky, too easily distracted by the world that surrounded me, and away from that which I should have been concentrating on. I crossed Unter den Linden, and continued to the distinctive arches of the Brandenburg Gate, old and wise and undoubtedly as filled with as many stories as I had. I wondered then what that monument had borne witness to, such sadness and madness and unfathomable joy; I only hoped that that evening, another joyous occasion would be added to its eternal stock of history in the making.

Finally, I made my way between its towering columns and breathed in; I could almost taste the years attached to the concrete, and I laid one hand against it, rough beneath my sensitive palms and fingertips. The humans had thinned out a little now, as the hour grew later and the sky grew darker and on into night. I looked up, sharp ears catching the distinctive sound of bats flapping nearby, the sounds of their tiny little squeaks and clicks as they looked for food in the air; those sounds were comforting to me, as the bats themselves were, and were completely unheard by humans. Those bats were my near constant companions, friendly and curious and loving when no other wanted to be near me. Only bats seemed unafraid of vampires, which was why I favoured them, even encouraged them to roost in the eaves and the gables of the castle in the mountains that I called home. In the mountains, the bats seemed freer, almost jocular, yet the ones that crowded round me now were friendly enough, curious of the vampire standing by the Gate, swooping down with leathern wings and furry bodies dark against the bright sunset sky. I smiled, my first of the evening and welcomed them, almost laughing at their antics as they went about their feeding, safe in my presence and comfortable.