Name: Ardy
Piece/Story: Thirst/Blood Saint
Colors: Fire Opal 7 (lusting after); Surgical Steel 1 (plasma); Fever Red 8 (muscle ache)
Styles/Supplies: Modeling Clay (“What is the most romantic thing you have ever done for someone or someone has ever done for you?”) ; Glue (September 21)
Word Count: 859
Ratings/Warnings: PG-13, violence; Warnings: homicide, discussion of death
Summary: Annie waxes poetic about vampire life, eats an NPC.

Some have called it Hunger and I see why. It starts with the same need for mortal nourishment: a twinge in the gut, that makes room for a certain hollowness.

To me, though, it’s not hunger but a Thirst. The dryness that one suffers on a hot day under the sun, the ravenous, desperate lust that feeling imposes when a cold drink presents itself, bathed in sweaty condensation that teasingly promises relief.

Imagine, if you will, having that feeling come upon you in the rich coolness of a rainy evening. Imagine your throat growing parched while the cup you grip tightly is still full of drink. Imagine that the wine which once quenched no longer satisfies. Imagine, instead, you look around and all you see are walking cups from which your lips and tongue and belly could sate themselves.

Imagine if afternoon tea was rapture. Imagine if a nightcap was better than sex. Imagine if this mysterious Thirst consumed all your drives and all your senses in one--it comes up on me and I am not the fly on the wall, but I can hear the flies on the wall. The conversations they are listening to from across the room. Beneath that woman’s cheap perfume, I smell the greens off her salad, the sauce on her husband’s plate of roast. I smell the broken cellulose in his side of cooked carrots, the sweat on his brow, I can nigh on feel the beat of his heart as she rightfully tells him that food is going to kill him. That muscle in his chest pushes in vain against the rising blockages.

The waiter offers me more wine. I ask him to leave the bottle. I shall drink, and drink, and it will not fill me. And for my next trick….

No, not from these humans. Not from the woman in that atrocious peach hat, calling “Herbert, Herbert” in the nagging voice. Not from the golden, bronzed young man in the suit three tables over--the one with horse teeth who laughs so loudly it rings in my ears.

I could drink any one of these cups, and it would be as another wine--finer, more joyous to my senses--but not to my craving.

I suckled at a strange teat when I sired myself. I want something dark, I want something bitter. I want the Eucharist of fallen angels, the finest sacrifice Hell has to offer. I want something wicked within me, something twisted and awful and macabre. Every fiber in my being twists and aches like lovers parted behind a great stone wall. There is a longing that rises like flame from my soul, burning up my veins with a fire that runs so hot I feel cold. My vision furthers sharpens, my wits gather for the kill, anchoring me to this cruel reality even as it is nothing more than unseemly fantasy that whetted my appetite. I not only am a monster, but a monster among monsters.

Finally, something I excel in.

It’s a dangerous game, I’ve been thinking. Drinking mortals is dangerous enough. But draining an immortal--there’s logistics involved. I mean, a predator should know when it is being preyed upon. It knows the signs, the meaning of that tingle on the back of the neck, the unexplainable paranoia at what lies around dark corners.

I absently hold up my glass. A waiter fills it. I flip through the contacts on my phone.

“Sebastian…” I don’t wait for him to answer. “I hate myself.”

He laughs and I nearly spit wine. “What would you have me do, My Lady?”

“I’m coming home. Fetch me something.”

“One of the new recruits?”

“One fully turned--the most obnoxious, obviously. Give me a reason not to like him.” They trusted me: I was their queen. That’s--that’s the funniest thing about all this. These horrible beasts, these creatures of the night, these terrors and idols for so many. They were the very beings of mistrust, what one most certainly should fear. But they did not fear me--when they well should. Du temps en temps, I eat my own children. And while the rest of the world would rejoice at me in ignorance, I grieve, more so than if I was satisfied taking the throats of the stinking, living wretches I am meant to feast on.