Insomnia

The sky is a lush curtain of purple and the house I'm in is washed out of any other color—that one hue only, and the rest is silver gelatin. And hints of pink in the clouds, from a sun that has long ago set but still stubbornly throws light from below the horizon. The night is long but I'm more awake than I've been in months, years, maybe ever; and the air is so clear it carries every last smell to my nose and I breathe it in. First among them is the sweet sweat of my lover. Her cheeks are flushed and she's breathing short breaths. I have a hand firmly on her waist and the other has a grip on the back of her head, and from there, her two centers of gravity, head and womb, I hold her sway, and seize into her with a hungry kiss. She collapses almost imperceptibly into my body, moans slightly. Then the blood starts. It is spilling from the corners of her mouth down the line of her jaw. I am sucking her blood up through her lungs, gulping breathfuls of it, but spilling more of it than I'm swallowing, and a small river of it runs runs between her breasts and begins staining the belly of her white dress from the inside. She can't breathe.

Finally, I ease her down into the grass. She put up no fight, even at the end, because she loved me. I am a vampire, but she loved me.

* * *

The freighter at sea groans like a creature breathing, its metal subtly twisted by relentless underwater waves, so the hold is full of sound even though I'm alone. I climb a ladder to the top deck and try to make out details—landmass, iceberg—but the dark is too thick: I see shapes where there aren't any. All I can see are different grades of darkness.

I look a minute more: I'm desperate for some confirmation of what I'd just learned, with absolute certainty but no proof, down in the hold. A single tangible fact to make my next acts easier. But there isn't one, and sadly I turn away from the railing and start climbing the short ladder to the ship's bridge.

It's warm when I step in, lit by an amber lantern, and all of the people there—my family—are huddled around the lantern like it is a campfire. When I throw open the hatch, they look up with expectant eyes, relieved to see me. It is my job, I know, to get them out of this, to save them, and they know I will. And I, too, know I will. But I know something they don't. I know with absolute certainty that the ship is about to sink, and this room full of people I love will soon fill with water, and every last one of them will drown painfully in a dark arctic ocean. I don't know how I know this but I do, and that's why I have the machete behind my back, and why I used it already on all of those people down in the hold. I must kill them to spare them. Because I have failed them.

* * *

Am I dreaming? There's something not right. I don't remember leaving the door unlocked, and I can't explain the smell of cigarette smoke in my studio. Nothing looks amiss, but ... something isn't right.

Maybe I'm dreaming.

Or maybe he was here.

My heart surges thinking about it. Maybe he was here. I haven't turned the light on yet and I'm suddenly glad I didn't. I move slowly toward the window and peek through the half-open curtain. Is he out there? One of those parked cars across the street? Or any of the darkened windows in the apartment across the way?

Has he seen me come home? Because if he has, I'm a dead man.

An axe, I think, is what he used last time. Against the last person he hunted. A hatchet.

How I wish it were a movie, or a dream—I'd have a box hidden in my closet with a handgun. Bullets in the nightstand table. I'd have some way to fight back. But it's just me, inside my dingy apartment—a pile of books, a few pots and pans, dirty laundry. Nothing that actually matters, now that it comes down to it. The tinny set of kitchen knives that seemed like such a bargain now seems worth every penny I paid for them and not a cent more. Barely cut a tomato; useless on meat.

I'm going to die here. And I can't even remember why.

Has he seen me, yet, through the window? Is he walking, even now, quietly up the stairs? I don't know. But if I run for it, he'll see me for sure.

I sit on the floor. With inevitability, I find, comes calm. Maybe I hear him, down on the stairs, the hatchet man. He's coming. Now, or later. There's nothing I can do to stop him.

Maybe I'm only dreaming, and I'll wake up, tired, sweating, frightened, but alive. Or maybe I am awake, and this is exactly why I've been having so many nightmares...