This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/MyImaginaryCatPaw on 2024-10-27 13:13:01+00:00.

I saw my first vamp when I was fourteen years old. It’s not something that leaves your mind, even when you try to fill it up with good things instead.

It happened at an arcade. Dad had brought me to show some retro game he used to play with his cousins. I was winning, about to set a high score when I heard the screams.

They were blood curdling. I looked at my Dad, my heart had dropped somewhere into my stomach. He was pale, he was as scared as I was.

We knew what those screams could mean. We saw every morning on the news a new face, someone who had turned and killed or someone who had been killed by a vamp.

Dad didn’t wait to see who it was. He grabbed my shoulders and guided me straight to the exit.

I shouldn’t have looked back. When I did, I saw a picture that branded itself into my brain, forever. The kid was cute, blonde with big blue eyes. Little overalls. He was clamping his teeth into his young mothers breast, sucking furiously as she shrieked in pain.

The nursing cloth that used to provide privacy was now spattered with blood and lay idle on the floor. It’s something I noticed as Dad rushed me out.

I don’t know what happened to the mother. All I knew was that she would never see her baby again. Not after the cops showed and took it to REHAB.

Everybody knows once you try human blood you can’t ever stop. It’s why young mothers are warned to stop breast feeding as soon as the babies develop teeth.

Dad said it was rare for this to happen, that it was likely she already had a scab or a small cut and the baby had bitten after the initial taste. He gave a small seminar about her stupidity, not paying attention like that.

I thought that it was pointless to criticize her. Her baby was gone. She had learned her lesson, and so had I. I would never breastfeed in my life.

I was paranoid for a long time. I refused to floss despite knowing it was impossible to turn with my own blood. I wouldn’t share chapstick, or kitchen utensils. I lived in constant anxiety and fear.

Then one night, my worst nightmare came to reality. I was walking home, when I saw a man rapidly approaching from across the street. His mouth and chin were covered in dark blood. Fresh.

I froze in fear, I couldn’t move a muscle.

Something clicked when I saw he was wielding a small knife, tipped with blood. I can’t die. Not like this. I ran, with energy and speed I hadn’t thought possible.

While running I tried to think of what to do, how to protect myself. I scanned the area in front of me and located a trash can on the corner of the street. Litter surrounded the bottom. I saw the top of a glass bottle peeking out of the top. I ran as fast as I could toward the trash.

When I arrived at the bin I speedily grabbed the bottle out, scanning it first for traces of blood due to years of paranoid habit. I closed my eyes when I crashed the bottle down on the curb, creating a makeshift knife. I did all this in the ten seconds it took for him to reach me.

I didn’t let him make the first move, I was aware it was my life or his. I aimed for his throat, my heart pounding in my ears. I screamed when I stabbed him. I was still screaming as blood gushed out of his neck.

He tried to stop the blood with his hands, clutching the hole in his neck. In doing so he dropped his knife, which clattered onto the road. He faltered, gasping for air.

After I stabbed him I wanted to run, I mentally commanded my body to move as he bled out. But I was frozen.

He looked at me with desperation and despair in his eyes. Even in my intense fear, for a moment I felt pity for him. Then, with the speed of a striking snake his hand left his bleeding wound and he grabbed my hair. He pulled so hard I yelled in pain. When I did he stuck his fingers in my mouth.

I couldn’t process what had just happened before I felt it. The most amazing feeling. It was like every worry was melted away. I was calm, floating up and up and up till I went from happy to ecstatic to a place where I felt like I was dreaming. This happened in 20 seconds, but it felt like time had frozen.

When I came to, the man was lying on the street. Blood was still oozing out, but the animation had left his eyes. He was smiling. I knew why. He had chosen to do a noble thing in death. He had opened my eyes. Something I had been running from my whole life was something I should have been chasing. I now couldn’t imagine life without another taste, as many as I could get.

I knew I needed to run before anyone saw me and the cops came and took me away. But I had to take some with me.

I took off my jacket and saturated a sleeve in the blood coming from his neck. As I did I made sure that the sleeve didn’t touch the road. I was gonna drink every drop, and who knows what germs could be on the street? I wrapped the sleeve with the rest of the jacket and ran in the direction of my home, holding tightly to my new found treasure.

As I ran I wanted so badly to try another drop, but I knew I would black out and didn’t know for how long. As I gasped deep breaths of the chilly autumn air, it registered. I killed someone. I shook the thought out of my head. It was self defense, and I had a whole new life now.

When I got home I squeezed all I could from the sleeve and stored it best I could manage.

Life has been somewhat surreal since then. Every day is stretched out endlessly now. I’m timeless.

The blood is going bad. Soon I’ll run out.

It doesn’t matter. I’m free. I’ll live eons in days. I’m timeless.