No more pretending, it's different now

No more pretending, it's different now: chp 2- tied to him

CHAPTER TWO: tied to him

I was eight when i met my first phagous; hematophagous human, if you are wondering what i am saying: haima means "blood" and phagein "to eat" in ancient greek. It’s a scientific name used for all bloodsuckers; like mosquitoes, leaches, some types of worms, bed bugs, vampire bat and oh so many more creatures that you never knew could drink you blood. Or we do have another name; anthropophagus, which means cannibal in latin. So all in all we call them phagus or phagous or of course, if you want to be polite 'vaccinated', the first two are pronounced the same it doesn’t matter to us, we just hide, it's practically impossible to have a conversation with one of them anyway, all there humanity disappears, so there will be no chance to be polite anyway; if you don’t want to lose your leg... or your life.

I saw him from the edge of a meadow, not ‘him’ as in the phagus, but him as in a little boy, he looked around ten, his blonde hair as light as the wheat around me, the same golden sandy colour as the grass that tickled my legs. His eyes were a solid grey, a dusty dirty blue, one or the other but i couldn’t tell, they were the sort of eye colour that you never knew whether it’s one or the other.

He wore a thick layer of mud, brown shorts and a holey blanket around his shoulder that tried to keep the wind from beating against his bare chest. He was running. Running towards me, his pale face contort with fright. It was sunset, it moved hauntingly down, i knew that if i didn’t get back to the castle my life was over.

Then i saw it; a phagus, something of nightmares and fairy tales. I was behind the trees waiting for the shadows to fade into the darkness, waiting for the light to go. It did something i thought it couldn’t, it raced around the meadow the light hitting it’s face; pale from the lack of light. It was a she, or you could say used to be a she. She had a thicket or auburn head, much the same colour as mine, except hers lay in a shimmering tangle, twigs and leaves nesting in it, and as i thought about it, probably blood.

She ran, graceful as a gazelle but you could see the hurried stumbles and eagerness as she closed up on him, that is when i ran, never looking back, i could hear his screams still in my dreams hauting me, all i could do was rush to castle, just as the flood lights turned on. That boy’s beautiful cries stayed on the edge of my consciousness forever, and from then on, i have down whatever i could to get a clear conscious, but i would always be damned and tied to one promise; that i would forever be in his dept, whether he is dead or not, i am his for betraying my own race and leaving him to die, i have nothing to fear apart from fear itself, because that’s what killed him; my fear.