Confessions

Chapter One: Confessions

"No," I screamed, wrenching upward from my pillow.  It had happened again.  The terrible nightmare had woken me from a dead sleep in the middle of the night.

"It's okay!  You're all right!  It was just a nightmare, Em," Savanna whispered.  She wrapped her arms around me gently once she had closed the small distance between our twin beds.  She'd been comforting me for the past six months since we'd joined the private school.  We shared a dorm room together in a three-story dormitory.  It was just down the street from the outstretching school campus.

She leaned back from me and smiled.  Her fingertips brushed at my cheeks gently, wiping the tears I hadn't known were there away.  She had become so patient with me since the nightmares had started again.

"I sniffed from crying and sighed, "I don't even notice the tears anymore.  I'm so used to them."

"Are you sure you're okay," she sighed.

"Yeah," I sigh and slide off the edge of my bed.  "I'm gonna get over what happened some day.  It's just gonna take some time.  I'm just gonna stay up for the rest of the night, though.  I don't want to go back to sleep,yet."

Savanna laughed and crawled back under the covers of her own bed.  "You know," she said.  "you're really lucky we don't have school tomorrow."  She reached up to flick the lamp between our beds off.  She'd turned it on when she'd crossed the space to comfort me.

"Yeah," I said.  I crossed the room to the computer desk and sat down in the black leather chair.  I turned the computer on and it dimly lit half of the room.  I left the room after I logged into the computer and went into our kitchenette for a bottle of water.  I returned and logged into the current popular social networking website and typed in my status.  I wrote:

It's 2:56 in the morning and I had another nightmare about the vampire.  It was worse this time.  I woke up screaming tonight.  My mind feels like it's slowly fading everyday.  I've been fazing out a lot lately, too.  And I've been seeing things.  Maybe, I am crazy . . .

Once I'd published my status I checked my messages.  I had three.  The first was from the officer who had spoken to me and Troy when we had escaped the house with the murderers.  Troy and I knew what they really were -- vampires.  One of them was just psychotic.

The message was an invite to a fireman's ball back home.  I wasn't interested.  I deleted the message.

The other two messages were from Trey and Troy.  I clicked on the one from Trey first seeing as how he was my boyfriend.  Text me.  Some message.  I snorted at the thought.  It seemed lately that Trey didn't sleep at all.  I sighed and thought about how that might affect him later in life.  With a sigh I clicked back on Troy's message and read the hand full of sentences that he's sent.

Emiline, I need to tell you about something important.  It's an emergency.  I swear this is serious!  Please call me when you get this!

I picked up my cellphone and dialed the number Troy had included in his message.  It rang through but no one answered so I left him a voice-mail.  After that I laid my head down on the desk beside my phone and stared at it mindlessly.  It vibrated several times with messages from Trey asking if I was okay.  I told him that I had a nightmare but I was fine now.  I just wasn't planning on sleeping for the rest of the night.  He never sent a text back so I assumed he'd fallen asleep.  I laid my head back down in the quiet, dimly computer-lit room and I very slowly slipped into unconsciousness.

I dreamed of a dark place filled with strange voices.  A vaguely familiar face came into view that I eventually recognized as Trey's.  At first, his face was sallow and blank but slowly his face became angry.  He grew fangs and his eyes bled into the color of blood.  The rest of his body slowly came into view.  His face was suddenly marred with a dark, evil expression and he leaped forward to attack me, baring his fangs.

My phone chirped and I jumped to see who's call I'd missed but it was only my phone informing me that it's battery was low.  I carried it across the room to plug it into the charger on my nightstand on the other side of my bed.  I climbed onto my bed and lay spead-eagle save for my arm over my eyes.  I lay there in waiting for the sun to rise and kiss the sky with an abundance of patients that I never knew I had.

Suddenly, I hear the cordless phone ring and I leaped off the bed to answer it before it woke Savanna.  I stepped out into the hall outside our dorm room before I answered, "Hello?"  I kept my voice in a low whisper.  I had to be careful not to wake anyone that wasn't already up.

A voice that I hadn't heard in two weeks sounded quietly from the other end.  "Nicky?"

My face went hot.  "I told you never to call me that," I whispered furiously.  "My name is Emiline!  I hate it when you call me by my middle name!  You know that!"  I had to keep reminding myself that Savanna was asleep about twenty feet away.

Troy sighed and restarted on his end of the phone.  "Emiline, then.  I need your help.  Could you please be so kind as to please help me?"

I was speechless.  He needed me?  Usually he ran to his new friends for any help that he needed.  I opened my mouth to speak, returning his sarcasm.  "You need me?  Really?"  The long empty hall I was standing alone in was dimly light by the moon that shown through the ceiling to floor glass windows at both ends of the hall.

"Yes, I need you.  Specifically.  I need you to promise me that you won't tell anyone about this.  Not even Savanna.  No body!  Do you understand?"

"Okay, I promise I won't say anything to anyone.  Now, tell me what you need me for!"  I was both confused and growing impatient with him.  What did he need me for?  I certainly wasn't the smartest person he knew.  His friend Ben had years of genius far superior to my intellect.

"I want you because you're the only other person who's come into contact with a vampire.  Besides Trey.  When I saw him last, there was something about him that I just didn't like.  I think he might be keeping something from us," he mused.  I heard him sigh.  He was waiting for me to respond.

"What do you think it is?" I bit my lip.  I was intriged by that thought.

"I don't know.  He was very careful when he saw me.  I think he knows . . .," he whispered carefully as if someone were listening in the next room over from him.  What the heck was he talking about?

"You think he knows what," I asked curiously.

"That I'm a vampire."