Through Slitted Eyes

         It began with the dreams. I would awake screaming, and alone. The darkness would engulf me and I would sleep until morning. There were the normal days and then the terror filled ones, each surprisingly difficult to get through. Until the blessed day I became a vampire, a night walker. I remember my last sunrise, my last sunset. The glinting eyes of my father, the man who turned me, they were burgundy with a hint of strange purple specks in them (which was the sign of an elder, a really sage one). His teeth were startlingly white, yet he had not owned a toothbrush since he was a child.
         I never especially loved my reflection, and now I had no choice, since it was now so light you would have to strain to pick out major flaws. I guess that this is one flaw in a curse. I grew up in a small town, population barely reaching 5,000. My friends were once close ones, but now I never see them, but that's partly to blame because of my roaming nature. I'll tell you of my first night, my first startling burn, and the time my father died.
         I awoke one night to a strange sound in our kitchen. I thought that my family were up, maybe making me a birthday-surprise breakfast (that day was to be my 17th birthday). Strange, I had never realized that the sun was not up and there were no normal breakfast smells. I breezed my way through the halls, my eyes still sealed shut with sleep. Walking into the kitchen, I stepped in a gooey red substance. Looking down, I realized what it was. Blood, the one word screamed in my head and pulsed through my veins. My real family, my blood family, were drained and their carcasses carelessly thrown aside. I turned and vomited, crying and retching.
         Why had this happened? Who could do such a thing to me on my birthday? Strange, I'd never felt the presence of a man more so than the one of my sire. He blocked my way out, taking my blows without much pain. He looked younger then, maybe in his mid thirties. I hated him so at that moment. Now I realize now how blind I was, only really depending on my eyesight and ignoring all of my other senses.
         Noticing my potential he gave me a choice, either die a painful death, or be powerful beyond human measurement. Now I sometimes wish for death, no matter how painful. It was strange, the first beginning. My first kill was difficult.
         It was nightfall, the strange noise of silence feeling abnormal. Every once in a while I would walk past a pub and be greeted by the many men that had a scent to them, my father said it was their soul, not really them, crying out with lust for our power. One rather large man followed me, he smelled, and I could smell him, even though I was several paces away. I began to panic, running into the absolutely worst place to go at that moment, a dark alley way.
         The man pinned me up against a wall, laughing and leering at me. I looked him in the eyes, "You're hurting me," my voice was strange and distant. I suddenly became angry, so mad that I could barely see him. My eyes blurred and I slurred these words, as if intoxicated. "Get off of me."
         I pushed him with more power than I normally have. In his fall, I fell on top of him, pinning him down. He struggled and I laughed, my teeth growing out. I leaned down and sunk my teeth into his mortal neck. I had never felt anything so fulfilling, so enjoyable. The warm blood trickled down the back of my throat, and it almost made me laugh from pure pleasure.
         Eventually I grew to hate the night. As my strength grew, so did my courage. One bright, sunny day I decided to awake right before the sun set. I'll never forget the light that filtered in from a window on the other side of the room. It seemed alien and foreign, but beautiful none-the-less. Looking at the light, my eyes burned and they teared up. I slowly walked toward the light, realizing my body was strangely turning red, like a sunburn but I had not actually been in the sun. I reached out my hand and let the light filter around it, nothing happened for a second, then a cloud of smoke seemed to be coming off of my hand. A sharp, piercing pain seemed to stretch from my hand down to my feet, then up to my head. I screamed from pain and, quicker than I ever could have imagined, I was back in my coffin.
         Eventually I grew accustomed to my strange abilities. I traveled with my "father", and we always stayed in large cities. He said that this was because people in the city were already accustomed to even stranger things, and usually never had time to think about a man traveling at night with a daughter that didn't look like him at all.
         The only time that we were run out of town was when I decided to do laundry. There was a man, a strange awkward man, standing besides me. I hadn't reallized then that normal people didn't talk to a skinny, pale girl in the middle of the night. But he began talking to me. He asked where I was staying and if I was staying with anyone. I knew that this behavior was queer, but I thought nothing of it. After returning to our dimly light hotel room, I realized that the bathroom door was open. My father always closed the door, and I always respected all of his strange ticks.