28th February 2014 (18:30)

The only certainty in life

I fall from the bed. Searching in a feverish haze for the sweet comfort of Jude. He can hear her, somewhere far away in a daydream of sunlight and grass.

But she’s much closer, crying out of fear. The darkness was descending on me, as it was with her. And I knew in my final moments that I had caused her death. If I had stayed away as my father instructed, it would be only I suffering now. She would never have fallen in love with me, and I would have died at the wedding as her father planned.

If I could take back the suffering I caused her I would. In that moment I would.

I fall into her arms, hold her hands on the bathroom floor as death welcomes us. In my final moments I am selfish. I am glad for the love she has given me, and I’m glad that she is here with me, to take the first steps into the afterlife hand in hand. Death does not part us.

I take comfort in that.

27th February 2014 (23:45)

Everything beautiful dies

When a rose dies it wilts. It’s petals turn purple and curled like witches fingers and the leaves sag and blacken and in the end you are left with a sinister plant that once symbolised love. Now nothing more than a burnt husk.

Jude was dying in much the same way. She curled on the bathroom floor, writhing in pain. Her beautiful hair surrounded her in clumps and she gripped loosened strands in her singed hands.

Her heart was slowing to a pitter patter and soon it would stop completely. She would be human for less than a minute and then her soul would be freed.

As her final moments approached, her beloved Jake lay down beside her to share their final moments with one another.

26th February 2014 (22:13)

The Grieving Father

An emotional day, the wedding of his sun. The joy of the union, the satisfaction of the conclusion, the horror of realisation and the empty pit of despair that remained.

He had killed his own son. Not by his own hand, but by the revenge he sought. The mission path his great great great grandfather walked lead them to this point and, at the fork in the road where there was no correct turn, he chose wrong.

Kill or be killed, they were his options. But there was a secret path, hidden by blind hatred, and it was the death of his family. And all paths joined this road in the end.

The head vampire was dead, and his spawn and his fanged companions would would be free of their bodies to face trial in front of God.

And the father of Jake and the father-in-law of Jude was left alone to contemplate what he had done.

As his friends died around him, killed in the dying vampires rage, he knew had had caused this, and so much more pain.

And despite this knowledge, he knew his task in life was done and had it been wrought differently, he would be happy.

25th February 2014 (23:25)

The Honeymoon

Jude set her husband down on the bed. His limp arms cold to her touch. She opened the fridge door and took out a vial they had planted there the day before. She prised open the lid and trickled the claret coloured contents down her husband throat.

She forced hit to trickle down and then she waited. It seemed like hours. The clicking clock striking each second with a knock, each minute with a knock.

Her husband lay dead. Knock. Knock. Knock. She started to worry that they had failed, that they had been mistaken all along. The scrolls were old. Ancient. Open to interpretation. Maybe she had killed him, fulfilled her fathers plan all along.

Knock knock knock. The more she listened the slower the the clock got. Seconds took minutes to pass her by. Then hours. She was trapped in a world of uncertainty and there was no end to the ride.

Her entire plan for life started and ended with him. He who lay dead on the bed. Knock knock knock.

Constantly clanging in her head like a leaking tap. Hypnotising like a newtons cradle, the clock mechanism back and forth back and fourth. Knock knock knock. Louder and louder, echoing in her skull which only contained the ticking clock with its knock knock gasp.

She almost didn’t hear it. The clock had been so loud but the thud that followed certainly knocked her out of her hypnosis. Her husband was alive. As he clambered on the floor towards her, desperate to touch her skin to know that she was real, she knew he was alive and they could start their lives together in perfect peace.

24th February 2014 (23:45)

600 Years Ago

“Oh dear sweet God, please save my baby boy. He cannot die, not one so young and pure as he.”

But got did not answer the beggar man, for He is not the one to instil life in those who have already departed. God is there to welcome his children home. It is a lesser immortal who pulls the deceased back to Earth.

The lesser immortal does so at a cost, often one that leads the foolish and the beggars left in an eternity of turmoil. But on the day that the poor beggar man pleaded for his deads sons life with a God who would not listen, he took pity on the poor man. That is not to say that he would not suffer, but a beautiful curse would be placed upon the boy.

The lesser immortal rose from the ground in a fiery storm before the man and bestowed upon him his sons life. The man thanked him from the very bottom of his heart but the lesser immortal simply warned him that placing a departed soul back into a corpse was no easy task, and a toll would have to be paid.

The man asked what the toll was but the lesser immortal would not hear it. He was gone when the boy awake. But he was not the boy that the father had lost he was changed.

Years passed and the boy became a man, an empty, pasty shell of a man with nothing to show for his own life. His father had passed away and the man was alone.

On the night of his 21st birthday, the lesser immortal returned to the man and He explained the terrible curse his father had bestowed upon him, expecting the man to be rage fuelled the lesser immortal told him of his terrible curse. How he would live on Earth until the end of days, how his children would live as he did, by the night, feeding on the life source of the innocent.

But the man was joyous. Rather than being angry at his father he was jubilant. “Eternal life!” He cried, “all the years I thought wasted were mere days in comparison to the millennia I still have on this Earth!”

The lesser immortal grew furious with the immortal man and, seeing that his plan had failed him, cursed the man again and, before he left our realm for the last time he said; “I take back my claim of immortality and leave you with one true curse; May sunlight be your acid, may God strike fear in your heart, may a blade to your chest end your terror and those you love.”

The man was baffled. The lesser immortal was gone and he would not know the true pain of his final words for many years. Not until his murder, at his daughters wedding would he realise the true extent of his cursed body.

23rd February 2104 (11:18)

The Reception – The Feast (second attempt because WordPress failed to save the first one!)

I see him approaching ,em out of the corner of my eye. His precious daughter has just murdered my son and now he is coming to do the same to me.

How predictable of the poor old fool.

This is exactly how Jake told me it would go down, how Jude warned me it would happen and now, with their blessing I shall end the war.

He is getting closer. He will be on top of me in less than four seconds, tearing my had away from my body. I realise the blade hidden beneath the blazer arms, ready to strike.

Three. Two. One. I turn. His eyes open wide as I plunge the blade, laced with that water so pure, into his unbeating heart. He gasps for air as I twist the blade, the holy water joining his body, breaking it down from the inside. His cold hands clamber my limbs, trying to enact his revenge. But it is too late now.

The war is over, after the thousands of years of death, I have done it. Since my long dead ancestor declared the vampires must be vanquished we have fought an eternal war and now, on the day that the vampire thought he could get one over on us we have won. Now that the old vampire was gone it was only a matter of time before the rest fell. Without guidance they will be lost souls in the world.

As he holds me and starts to sink to the floor I speak a prayer for him, a simple statement to allow his soul to go free, perhaps the final prayer I will ever need again.

He gasps for air again. His wide eyes stare up at me as he falls. I like to think that I see a certain peace in his eyes, now his spirit can finally rest, but I know that his anger shines through more than anything, death can only change so much of a creature.

He tries to speak. The final words of a longstanding enemy. I kneel and put my ear close to his mouth, the cold breath licking at my ear. He gasps for breath, trying to get his parting lines out.

“Fool.” He utters, before coughing and spluttering. I do not move my ear, on some level I respect this vampire and know I must hear him until he is gone. “You are a…” He gasps, I can hear the breath whirling within his lungs. “Fool.” And then he is gone.

22nd February 2014 (12:09)

Six days ago

“Dad?” Jake called to the empty hall. The grand ceilings bounced his voice back to him.

He walked around the remaining rooms of the mansion, until he came to the library. He pushed back the heavy oak doors and almost gasped when he spied Jude.

“What are you doing here?!” He screeched, careful not to alert is father who he knew was roaming around the home somewhere.

Jude rose and came over to him, embracing him in her Snow White arms.

He pushed her away, looking over her shoulder to see his dad walking towards him.

“Don’t worry son,” he said raising an open palm. “I invited her.”

Jude smiled at him before stepping away from her love.

“I know you’re in love Jake. And she’s a truly lovely girl.” He put his arm around her. “She tells me you have a plan? So you can be together and…” He paused before uttering the next word. “Human.”

“Yes.”

“Jude forgive me but I must speak with my son for a moment.” Jude nodded silently, smiled and walked out of the library doors.

Once she was gone Jake sighed.

“Son, I don’t like how you went behind my back but that girl,” he said pointing towards the door she left through. “That girl’s something special. Your mother would love her.”

“Thanks dad,” he said with a smile.

“But. I don’t think you’ve thought this through fully. Her father won’t stand for this. Coming the wedding day, if he were to find out. Neither one of you would survive. Even his own daughter, once she’s human, he’ll be as good as dead to him,” he added before his son could butt in. “He still needs to be taken care of.”

Jake nodded, regrettably knowing that what his father said was true.

21st February 2014 (23:20)

Six minutes ago

The head vampire stood against the bar watching the door to the women’s toilet intently. He sipped at his whiskey, enjoying the bitter sweet taste as it trickle past his cold lips.

He knew his daughter was up to something. She’d been up to something for the past year and he could smell the fear on her. He thought she was going to back out of their plan, he thought she had a new plan, a new man in her life to obey.

He watched the door debating whether or not to burst in the and catch her crawling out the window, trying to get a way from the life she had begged him for a chance to be a part of.

The thought had crossed his mind to burst into the mens loos and kill her husband, but he knew that she must be the one to do if. He had bigger fish to get, namely the grooms father.

Even now he could feel him watching him from across the room, small eyes trained to pick up deceit. But he couldn’t see it, that didn’t stop him staring waiting for the old vampire to slip up.

The call for the bride and groom to take their first dance sounded. The newly weds emerging from the bathroom in unison and starting their dance.

The father of the bride scowled as the human, ex-human scum flung her around out of time to the music. As if came to an end, his daughter surprised him. She pulled a stake out, out of where he couldn’t be quite sure and plunged it into her husbands chest.

Then there was panic. The whole room burst out in screams. Screams of terror, of war, of sheer confusion and insanity. Vampires all around him died, a sad loss but a necessary sacrifice for he knew the Great Leader would come unguarded.

He saw him standing still watching his son be flown out of the building by his daughter-in-law, a strange serenity on his face, smudged by anguish as he saw his family fight and fall with the vampires.

The old vampire approached the Grand Leader, unseen by preoccupied eyes.

The time had come for the old vampire to strike, to finally put an end to the bitter war that had seen so many dead. Is daughter being married was the best thing that ever happened to him.

20th February 2014 (22:00)

Six weeks ago

The soon to be bride span around, stake in hand, poised to pierce her fiancés heart.

“No! Jude, you have to come right at me.” He slapped his chest, showing her where to aim. “Right through the breast plate ok. If you don’t get it spot on it’s either really going to hurt or your father will know its fake… And what he ends up doing to you in revenge… That’s going to hurt a lot more ok. Let alone what he’ll do to me after. Ok?”

Jude nodded sullenly. They’d been at it for hours and she just could seem to get it the way he wanted it. She had expressed as much two hours previously and he had given her the same lecture again.

He realised that he had been cruel to her and he opened his arms wide, wrapping her in his embrace. “I’m sorry,” he said softly kissing her head, pressing his nose firmly against her sweet smelling hair. “I am sorry, I just want to get this right, to keep practising it. We’re not going to get to see each other much more, it’s already becoming me and more difficult to get in here. It’s like your father thinks the whole thing is a trap.”

He could feel her tense in his embrace, even though she knew that he loved her, she was far less confident that his family were going to enter the truce peacefully. He kissed her again and whispered to her. “It’s ok sweetheart, soon we can be together always.”

“And you’re sure this won’t just kill you?”

“According to my great great grandfather I shouldn’t be dead for me than ten minutes. Hopefully,” he added, a little too playfully for his liking.

“Good,” she said stepping away from him for a moment only to charge again with the stake held high.

19th February 2014 (22:00)

One Year Ago

The couple sat entangled within one another, their bodies close. Their clothes remained on but only to keep the beast at bay. It’s time would come. When they were married they would make love and then they would be free.

“My father will kill you Jake.” He played with her hair, flicking the ends playfully against her cheek.

“He won’t even know it’s coming. Trust me, my own father doesn’t even know.”

“You really think we can trick them? Really get away with it, live together… In the sun?”

“Jude, they’re too focused on deceiving each other, they won’t think for a second that you’ll pull anything off and my father thinks I’m all set to kill you.”

She smiled. Her gorgeous lips spreading wide, the pink lip gloss shimmering with the flicker I the candle that watched over them. “Oh yeah?” She said pushing his arm. “And how would you kill me?” She said teasing him.

“I could if I wanted,” he replied with a sly smile before he leapt on her and kissed her face.

“Stop it!” She squeezed and then fell back into each other’s arms and talked about the future they would share, and how magical the sun would be.