I stood up from where I had lain on the floor of the warehouse. No windows or open doors were within my line of sight, yet I knew it was nighttime. I wish I could say how I knew, because my gut told me it was important, but right now I simply wanted to know why I wasn’t a corpse.

“Finally awake, I see,” came a familiar voice from the shadows. “I was wondering if I had gotten to you in time or not. Looks like I was lucky.” No one stepped forward after those words faded away, leaving me still without a face to go with the idea of my benefactor.

“Where are we?” was about all I could manage, still confused and disoriented. I tried to get my bearings but it simply was not working. In the back of my mind something bugged me, but every time I tried to chase it down, it just skittered away out of reach.

“Why, we’re where I found you,” came the reply from the shadows. “I wasn’t willing to risk moving you after what had happened, so I simply made sure you would not die before the day was out, and let things go naturally from there.”

I simply raised an eyebrow at that. Why would a single day matter so much without medical attention, if I was that bad off?

The other obviously read the look on my face. “Ah,” a smirk carried by that single syllable. “You haven’t figured out yet. I see.” A long pause filled the time before finally the man spoke again.

“I can’t have someone serving me so ignorant,” he began, each word feeling as though it had been carefully weighed before reaching his lips. “it would likely get myself killed along with you. I, and now you, are vampires.”

The word struck like a semi going over 100 miles per hour. I was a night stalking blood sucker? I felt myself begin to shake, likely because shock was setting in. Vampire…

“Not taking it so well,” the other said, suddenly stepping out into the light. He was a tall man, of slight build. Nothing looked out of the ordinary about him. I never would have guessed he was a supernatural being.

I tried to reply, but only sputtered. My brain and lips didn’t want to cooperate right now, not that I could blame them.

The man came up to me, putting his hand on my shoulder. “You’ll get used to the idea soon enough, I promise.”

Something inside me snapped. Even months later I will never be able to describe what happened inside me next, other than I became an animal.

My arm lashed out, catching the man by the throat. He tried to gasp out a word, but before he could get it out I had slammed him into a nearby pillar. I could feel insane strength flowing through me, power unlike any I had ever felt before. Again my benefactor tried to speak, but I slammed my forehead into his nose with all the new found strength I could muster.

Bones snapped under the force of the blow, and my face felt wet with his blood. The very smell drove my insane rage to new heights. More strikes, more attempted resistance by the Vampire, but I did not let him break free.

At that point I found myself completely lost in the moment, unable to register anything. When I finally came back to my senses, I found the man on the ground, unmoving.

Then I noticed them. Puncture marks on his neck. Dry, deep puncture marks. Had I… I must have. I’d killed the man who saved me, drank his blood.

“Some cop,” I muttered, trying to get my bearings. But then I felt the tickling at the back of my mind. Moment by moment it grew stronger, more insistent. Finally it broke over me, like a wave.

Memories. Hundreds of years worth of memories and knowledge. His. Jonathan’s. Everything about him. Everything he’d done, mine now. The killing, the learning, the feeding. Everything. Even the bitter fact that, deep inside he had wanted to die, but never found the courage to kill himself. Too many years the predator, too much time fighting to survive even among his own kind.

The idea that vampires were despicable creatures was not a new one, not that I had believed they were real. But the memories inside me told tales that made even my worst imaginings seem like a fairy tale. And now, now I was one of them.

My family. Images of them sprang to mind, and at once I flinched. I did not dare see them again, now. They would have to think I was dead, after a long missing person’s period, their hope withering and dying as no sign of me showed up. The very idea made me shudder, but I knew it was the right thing to do. Give them up, for their own good. I was no longer the man they knew and loved, just another monster.

“No, not just another monster,” I whispered, hands clenching and unclenching at my sides. “I will not be a monster as Jonathan was for most of his existence, like the creatures his memories tell me about. I must be more, for my own sake. For my family’s sake. For everyone not able to defend themselves from this horrible things.”

Deep down, I knew what I had to do. The only right thing to do was take this new found knowledge, this new found power, and use it as I had been trained in all my years as a cop. Unfortunately, that meant giving up everything I’d worked for in my old life. I would have to push the thoughts of family and friends out of my mind, forever. My career would also have to disappear. Fortunately Jonathan had been a wealthy man, and all the information to get at that money was inside my head now, giving me what I would need to get by.

I had a new goal in life, a new reason to be. Kill the predators of the night, use their own power against them, and protect who and what I could. And find a way to avoid attacking anyone who was not a Vampire the way I had attacked Jonathan. No one but the undead should feel the terror I now brought with me.

Luckily, Jonathan had brought a change of clothing for his new protege, so I was able to change into something not so covered in blood before heading out.

“Time to start this new life,” I muttered under my breath as I exited the building, leaving behind everything I had ever been. Everything except a desire to help those in need.

—

© Some rights reserved. “Wrong Place, Wrong Time” is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike license.

Patrick Sullivan is a Software Developer in Denver, Colorado.  He’s passionate about creative ventures, both writing and technical in nature.  When not writing in his preferred genre of fantasy, he’s studying programming ideas and languages as well as usability issues.

As I woke, I immediately felt the intense heat of the sun on my already sweating forehead. The first motion I made, before opening my eyes or taking a deep breath, was wiping the back of my hand across my brow and attempting to mop up some of the perspiration dripping down my face. It did little to help, but I didn’t think there was much that would help in this heat.

I sat up slowly; keeping my eyes closed in early defense against what I was sure was a blinding sun. I lifted my right hand to shield my eyes and braced myself as I peered through my digits cautiously. When I wasn’t blinded immediately I decided to keep my pace slow. I cleared my throat and readied myself to stand up.

“Hey there, he’s awake!” I heard a thick drawl call out, breaking me from my reverie. The man’s voice was velveteen like, thick and slightly uncomfortable to listen to. His voice was considerably deeper than mine and you could hear a lifetimes worth of tobacco on it. Ironically, the man was quite young, late twenties I figured, and he had those sorts of classic looks that girls always seemed to be drawn to. I immediately didn’t want to like this man. So, of course, he had to be the first to come over and greet me. He walked over and hoisted me up, lifting me as if I was his traveling bag. So much for going slow. “Howdy there,” he said as friendly as the cliché would allow him to. “Name’s Tom. You feelin’ alright friend?” he asked, genuine concern on the man’s face.

Tom was one of those fellows who took the “country music” lifestyle far too seriously for his own good. His clothes looked like something out of a John Wayne movie, except his hat was gray rather than black or white. His face was grizzly with an iron like jaw, his eyes cerulean blue. He was about 5’10” but walked like a man with considerable height to him. The only thing that betrayed Tom’s “tough guy” exterior was his kind smile and the laugh lines around his eyes.

“Yeah, just a little dizzy I think,” I answered, touching my temple lightly as if to illustrate my point. It was really to mop up more sweat.

“Good, good; we was startin’ to worry about ya,” he smiled, clapping his hand against the meat of my shoulder. “Not that it makes much sense to worry bout ya in this particular arrangement,” he laughed at himself. I didn’t get the joke. Tom seemed to pick up on this one. “You’ve been out for a little while now,” he explained.

“Yeah…I don’t even know how I got here…” I trailed off, looking around. Nothing about this place seemed familiar at all. This wasn’t home. This wasn’t where I was stationed. Could I have been hit so hard I ended up this far away from home? “You um…you in charge here?” I asked Tom. He laughed at me.

“I don’t reckon anyone’s in charge round here friend. Least not anyone we can see,” he amended quickly, looking over to the men back towards the hole.

“Well, what are you doing here?” I asked.

“Friend, you just aren’t asking any questions I can give ya a decent answer to. I ain’t sure what it is we’re doing here…” he answered. I was physically incapable of stopping my eyes from rolling as Tom continued to avoid my questions.

“What do you gents do here?” I asked sternly, looking at the countless number of men all digging a very deep, wide hole. The hole seemed about nine feet wide, though that was a rough estimate. As for the depth, I couldn’t accurately even guess considering that there were men of many different sizes in the hole. It was most likely about four or five feet deep. Tom leaned on his shovel.

“Well,” he started. “We wake up and we dig then we go to sleep. Sometimes we’ll take breaks and talk or what have you but mostly we just wake up and dig and then go to sleep. Course, sleep doesn’t really do much for us, but we do it anyway. I reckon it’s somethin of a habit.”

“Why are you digging?” I asked, looking at the hole. “What are you digging?”

“Can’t answer that one either,” Tom shrugged, looking over the hole. “It don’t seem to get bigger or deeper or change in any way really. We just seem to dig it and it just seems to stay put.” Tom looked at me and I must have given him a questioning look because he simply shrugged his massive shoulders again.

“That doesn’t make any sense though,” I stated in a kind of outrage that lacked anger. That hole simply had to get bigger.

“You don’t have to tell me that,” Tom laughed good-naturedly. “Come on friend, we’ll take a walk. You’ll feel better after you get your blood flowin where it needs to be again.”

Tom put an arm across my shoulders and half-led-half-pulled me along side him. The terrain was dirt: that was really all that was there. It was dirt, some patches of dried plants and a few little ledges of chalky-rock but mostly it was dirt. It was dirt and heat and sky. This place was purely nothing. Looking out onto the horizon, there continued to be nothing. Just blue sky and flat, protruding rocks sticking out into the atmosphere. It would have been serene had it not been so infuriating.

It suddenly occurred to me that I wasn’t hungry. I wasn’t thirsty either. I was hot, but that was it. I wasn’t fatigued or exhausted or anything but hot. That didn’t make sense either. If it was this hot than I should have found myself thirsty. It would have been hard for me to walk. Nothing about this place made sense. There was a giant hole that never got any bigger no matter how much anyone dug. There was a man who had no answers and yet seemed to know the most here. There was no hunger, no thirst, just epic heat. This place was eternal, the atmosphere was indifferent and, quite simply, nothing seemed to be anything. How or why this realization led me to understand I’m not sure, but the proverbial light bulb flashed over my head and instantly, the illogical world I was now living in made perfect sense.

“I’m dead aren’t I?” I asked, the epiphany washing over me like cold water, only considerably less refreshing. Tom smiled.

“Course ya are friend.”

“Are you dead?”

“Well one ought to reckon,” Tom chuckled, looking back to his comrades with the shovels. “We all are.”

“Where…” I started, clearing my throat lightly as I tried to gather up the courage to ask the question. “Where are we?” I asked.

“Now see friend, that is a good question,” Tom sat down on a slab of chalky rock. He licked him lips in thought, his handsome face twisting slightly. “We all got our guesses, we all got our feelin’s, but there’s only one thing that we can say with certainty,” Tom nodded, lifting his hat slightly. He squinted against the sun and locked eyes with me. “This sure ain’t where we were hopin’ to end up.”

“You think this is Hell?” I asked, sitting down next to Tom so he wouldn’t have to strain his eyes. He shrugged dismissively.

“I don’t think so. Jake over there does. And Max over at the far end thinks this is a kinda, atonement area: where you can make up for your sins and alike…” Tom trailed off.

“What do you think then?”

“Well,” Tom coughed rather suddenly, moving his entire body in the opposite direction from where I was sitting. His large frame quaked as he shook from the spasms. As quickly as his spell had come over him it was gone and he was looking back to me. “Pardon. Anyways, I’m not even sure how to reckon a guess on where this is. I think Max is probably on to something because people are always comin’ and a-goin’ here. There was a fella named Jack who just up and disappeared a few days ago and there’s been a load of em before Jack. There will be a load of em after Jack too I reckon. So I guess callin’ this place, oh what’s the word, Purgatory ain’t that bad of an idea…”

The silence that we sat in wasn’t comfortable, nor was it made any more awkward due to the other’s company. The silence was difficult purely for the information we were both thinking over. There was nothing that could be said to calm neither the situation nor our nerves about the uncertainty of it all. This was simply one of those times that the awkward silence was something to be dealt with.

“How long have you been here Tom?” I asked.
“Oh, I don’t know bout that,” he answered, furrowing his brow slightly as he looked off to the sun disappearing over the horizon. “See, the sun ain’t real; it don’t come up. We’ve taken shifts and it goes from dusk to dawn. We’ve tried just takin’ off a few hours and seein’ if that lines it up and it don’t: it’s like we ain’t supposed to know what time it is…” Tom trailed off, his face twisting into sorrow for the first time in the conversation. “I wish I could tell ya.”

“When did you die?”

“1848 if I remember. I was minin’ out in California and…” Tom struggled with the memory. “In all honesty I don’t remember much from then no more. Was that long ago?” Tom turned to me, his face filled with hope. I wasn’t sure what answer he was hoping for: neither seemed like they would make this better.

“It was almost a century ago Tom,” I answered. Tom nodded, looking back out to the horizon.

“And how did you die friend?” he asked me, his eyes still fixed on the orange orb in front of us.

“I was fighting in a war. A World War. We have these things called air planes, which are things that fly through the sky that carry people…” I started.

“Yeah, Jake talks about ‘em. He was what they called a pilot.” Tom smiled, seeming proud of his knowledge. I smiled too.

“Yeah, so was I. I was shooting at our enemy and, well, it would appear someone was faster than I was,” I sighed, looking down to my hands. The sky seemed to be taunting me, mocking me for falling from it. The blue angered me in a way I wasn’t used to.

“Hey, we’ve all been beat here,” Tom smiled, hitting me on the back again. “Come on now, stand up. S’bout time for us to start headin’ into the tents and gettin’ some sleep.”

“Tents? What tents?” I asked. Tom pointed off behind him casually. I looked over and, sure enough, there were tents set up for each of the many diggers working on the hole. They had not been there before.

“I know, don’t worry. You’ll get used to it, just like you’ll get used to putting your head down and immediately wakin’ up,” Tom smiled. He swung his arm around my shoulders and started moving, leading me back towards the hole as we walked in silence again.

“Tom?” I started, looking to the taller man. “Do you think I’m going to be here for a long time?” The sound of fear and desperation in my voice was something that I was completely unfamiliar with. In all my life, when confronted with terrifying situations I had always managed to keep my cool. I suppose this was hardly a situation that I had ever been in before.

“That I can’t answer friend,” he sighed, his lips pressed into a tight grimace. “I reckon you’ll be here as long as you need be.”

—

© Some rights reserved. “As I Woke” is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works license.

Christina Mason is an English major with aspirations of becoming an author, particularly in the sci-fi and horror genres. She can be contacted at christinapmason@gmail.com. [Website.]

In the still, crisp hours,
Dark, circled eyes staring down shoes,
Pushing against quiet, forsaking boredom,
Panged stomach, demanding crackers,

Dark, circled eyes staring down shoes,
Reliable, white canvas, worn rubber,
Panged stomach, demanding crackers,
Licked lips, suggesting cigarettes,

Reliable, white canvas, worn rubber,
Pushing east, away from home,
Licked lips, suggesting cigarettes,
Caving in, 3.50 for a pack,

Pushing east, away from home,
Auburn dashing, bleeding the clouds,
Caving in, 3.50 for a pack,
One lit cigarette garnishing a face,

Auburn dashing, bleeding the clouds,
Awaking, stirring, breathing streets,
One lit cigarette garnishing a face,
Complimenting smoke accenting hazel eyes,

Awaking, stirring, breathing streets,
Pushing against quiet, forsaking boredom,
Complimenting smoke accenting hazel eyes,
In the still, crisp hours

—

© Some rights reserved. “In the still, crisp hours” is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike license.

Michael Harper is a twenty something writer based out of San Francisco. He likes reading books, writing about erections, and listening to rude music. He dislikes fascism and dairy products. He aspires to one day live in a gutter. [Website.]

—

© Some rights reserved. “In the Lines of Our Palms” is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution license.

Jimmy Pianka is a college kid who studies brains and occasionally writes poems. He is about to spend a semester abroad in the Himalayas, and hopes to one day find employment in the middle-ground between scuba instructor and politician.

As she worked on her latest hobby, conversations from the past few months swirled in her head, one particular line popping up over and over. “Does this mean you won’t ever consider getting back together?” he had asked, out of the blue after a year and a half of not speaking with her, but it had been the start of a barrage of phone calls and instant messages from her ex-boyfriend.

The third time she tried and failed to stab the wire into the breadboard, she gave up and threw it down. The wire joined others on the table, which looked like an explosion of electronics parts had occurred there.

Maybe I’m just trying too hard to be upset about Kevin, she thought. She didn’t feel particularly angry or upset, but her hands were shaky, and she could feel her eyes stinging as she stared at the wires.

Her gaze moved to the drawing of the circuit that she was trying to build. The drawing was a copy from a book that had come in the electronics sensor kit that she had bought last week, a beginner-level kit – for 12 year olds! – her roommate had joked. She had stuck out her tongue at him in reply. At the time, she had thought a new hobby would help occupy her mind from the depressing job market and the Kevin-troubles.

Suddenly, her brow furrowed, and she leaned in to examine the drawing, and then the breadboard. She realized that for the past 10 minutes, she had been trying to place the wire into the wrong spot. She groaned quietly and rubbed her eyes. She had a feeling that as she continued with her new hobby, she would continue to have these moments of clarity where she would feel utterly foolish.

But that’s the great thing about hobbies like these, she thought. Think long enough about any problem, chances are good that a solution would become clear soon enough. Not like real life. If only life problems had a help support staff or FAQ page, things would be a lot easier. She wouldn’t have to constantly wonder if she was doing the right thing.

—

“I don’t know what to do,” she had sniffled into the phone, the last day as Kevin’s girlfriend.

Kevin didn’t respond for a few seconds. Finally he had said, “That’s childish. It’s your life. You need to take responsibility for the choices that you make.”

“What?” she had said.

“You chose to go to school away from here, before we met,” he had explained. “Of course we can’t see each other as much. You said you don’t know what to do. That’s bullshit. You already decided what you’re gonna do two years ago.”

“What?” she had repeated. His words were not processing correctly in her head.

“We broke up two years ago when you got accepted into college. We just didn’t know it yet,” he had said.

The week following the breakup, she had somehow made it through her classes. She held back tears when Professor Dean went over sound change; she almost started sobbing when the cute TA with glasses passed out the graded papers; and she finally cried while her literature teacher went on a quick smoke break.

And a couple of weeks later, she had caved. She had called Kevin and asked her reluctant ex-boyfriend, “Please, at least consider getting back together.”

“I’m moving to Washington,” he had replied.

—

She remembered the feeling of desperation well. It was hard to forget. But she certainly wasn’t feeling it now. Her apprehension about the constant calls, she decided, was just her mind trying to create problems that didn’t exist.

Night-time calls now were nothing in comparison to the rambling conversations they had had years ago. Now, at 2am, it was mostly he who rambled, his speech drunken and slurred, his intonation low and steady, a sleepy stream of commentary about the bars he had visited that night. She could hear the murmur of music and people talking in the background.

His drawl was lulling her to sleep. Suddenly, she realized he had stopped talking.

“Hello?” she said. She lowered the phone to look at it. The call had ended without her realizing it, just as quickly as it had taken their relationship to end.

The circuit she was working on earlier was disassembled now and she had organized the different parts in little piles. She closed her phone and placed it on the table. She started clearing the kitchen table, where she had been working, packing everything into baggies before placing them in the box that the kit had come in.

Her brow furrowed again, just as it had done before when she had finally realized her mistake on the breadboard. She realized that, just as she had earlier tried to place a wire where it did not belong, Kevin was doing the same. He was so set in getting back with her that he didn’t realize there was a completely different path he could take.

His words during their breakup, from years ago, echoed in her mind, and now she knew what to say the next time he called: “We broke up two years ago, only you didn’t seem to know it.”

—

© Some rights reserved. “And Afterwards, Washington” is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works license.

June Owatari is a recent college graduate, floundering in the poor economy. She likes drinking beer, listening to music, and making things.