Page 11 of No One’s Daughter

***

I was back in the lake—or was it an ocean… I didn’t know, but it pulled me under. Whispering to me.

Flashes of light.

​Cold liquid on my face.

​Lacing up boots.

​More blinding lights.

​Make it stop.

​I was swimming in delirium.

***

Somehow, despite the haze of it all, I must have gone back to my apartment to get cleaned up and changed. And came to the realisation that staying anywhere near… near what I’d done wasn’t a good idea. Good to know my sense for self-reservation wasn’t completely gone.

​Perhaps a better person would have gone straight to the police station, or at least called them to hand themselves in.

​But I wasn’t a better person.

​I mean, I didn’t feel good about what I’d done. If I’d even done it at all, I still wasn’t convinced I wasn’t dreaming—despite the tender flesh on my arm where I’d repeatedly nipped at myself.

​Even if this was real life, I couldn’t just go to the police. Imagine I’d handed myself in and told them everything, they’d brand me a madwoman and lock me in an asylum.

​No, I had to figure this out on my own.

​My senses seemed to be calming a little, enough for me to retain control over my mind at least. I’d lost a lot of time tonight, that much was obvious, and I’d rather not lose any more.

​I wasn’t sure exactly where I was, only that I’d made my way deeper into the old city, the parts I didn’t normally frequent. The seedy dark corners most people would rather forget about. It was still night, but the streets here weren’t empty.

​I scowled as I walked past a dodgy bloke trying to sell me a rose. My feet were doing the thinking for me, taking me God only knew where. The rain from earlier in the night had stopped, leaving everything wet and glistening.

I looked at my warped reflection in a puddle, between debris and dead leaves that had drained into it.

I looked the same.

​Yet I knew I wasn’t.

​My life was over.

​I swallowed hard at the thought of trying to explain this to Claire. Would I even do that? Could I hide it from her? Would she accept me? Or be scared of me? Would she even be safe around me—from me? Would I even be able to return to my apartment?

​Fuck my life.

​This can’t be happening.

​Yet it was.

​Vampire.

​The word slithered its way into the forefront of my mind, over and over. Digging in deep, like a thorn embedding itself into bruised flesh until it was the only reality left.

​It was absurd. Unfathomable.

​Vampire.