Stories from the Edge: Torment

I had just come back from having dinner with a lovely young girl and had just shut my eyes when they came for me.

It was the breathing that I heard first, the slow raspy intake of breath through their breathing slits. All I could do was lay in my coffin thinking that I must have misheard, that it was all a figment of my imagination. The stairs to my lair were old and poorly maintained and when I heard it creak of heavy booted feet.

I also realized that it was black, pure pitch black with not even a sliver of light coming from the first floor or stair well. My night vision was excellent, but not even my kind can see in absolute darkness, and yet I could hear the slow steady steps, one stair at a time, as they came for me.

There were several of them, moving silent as ghosts once they stepped off the stairs. I bared my fangs and moved towards the footfalls of one of them. Somehow they knew where I was and the others closed around me.

Their voices were hollow and monstrous. They commanded me to stillness and I scoffed. Their hearts were beating faster, I had inspired fear within them and it made me confident.

I wanted to resist, who were these insects, what did they want with me? Surely no human could see in the dark or sound like that.

A bright spark of light and my world was filled with fire. I tried to flee and yet my body would not respond, I thrashed uncontrollably like a newborn child. They bound me tightly in silver wire and slipped me into a rigid coffin of some kind. The burning never ceased and I nearly bit through my tongue when trying to cry out. Eventually I succumbed to the pain and slipped into oblivion.

When I awoke it was here in this room where they have kept me for the last several months. I am fed through a small slot where they drop my food. It is never enough, it is cold and lifeless, the hunger gnaws at me constantly.

Yesterday a rat crawled on the floor, overcame I seized and devoured it utterly. The rat's blood will sustain me, but it has nowhere near the flavor, that essential spark that mortal blood possesses.

Occasionally they come and set my body afire with their devices and yet never to the point of death. The only freedom I have is this pencil and paper, why I do not know, they must be reading and yet I no longer care.

I have driven the pencil into my heart three times already and yet each time I awaken the next night healed and whole.

What do you want?

Where am I?

 Why do you torment me?

*Written on the notepad of Subject NI-0725482**
Subject: NI-0725482
Alias: The Butcher of Babes, Old Red Eyes
Species: Nosferatu Imperator
Known Kills: 47 females, 25 under the age of 15.
Suspected Kills: 250
Origin: France, captured in St Petersberg
Age: 175 Years unlife, ~27 living
Subject Terminated after complete examination August 12, 2005