Your first year of University is hard enough, but it’s made even more difficult when there is a death, in the family, and two deaths, just don’t go there. Sure, relationships, fashion and the major environment and structure change can cause minor disruptions to your studies, but death really shakes things up, especially when it’s your own. No, I’m not a corpse or a zombie but yes, I am dead, though I use that term loosely in this sense. I’m a vampire, technically a baby one. I was turned during the last few weeks of my first University semester, as was my twin brother. Now this is always when the questions start, so let me cut out the middle-man and answer them for you, how did I and my brother possibly get turned at the same time, easy, it happened at a party.

We are pretty close, always have been, so we spend a lot of time together and so, as usual, we went to a party together. The party was like most house parties, heavy drinking, a lot of ‘high jinx’ as my grandmother would say, and a lot of raging hormones, need I say more. The only difference to your typical house party is that all of our friends are Punks and Goths, so there were a lot of people wearing black and looking comparatively creepy around us. I’m not saying there weren’t a lot of ‘normal’ people there too, I just didn’t take the time to introduce myself.

Looking back on it now, I guess that’s why we didn’t suspect what was going on, I mean nothing seemed at all out of the ordinary. To cut a long story short, this party was planned by a group of young vampires; old compared to myself but young to others nonetheless, who basically wanted a buffet, to be blunt. And my brother and I just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and hitting on the wrong people. Typical, mum always said we went for the wrong type, guess she was right.
The night had started normally enough with drunken adolescents talking and arguing about different degrees authors and what not, or making out in dark corners. I don’t remember drinking much, I generally don’t drink, unlike my brother, but I do remember a guy coming and chatting me up. A guy whom I ended up spending most of the night just talking and laughing with. Apart from that I remember nothing.

24 hours later we woke up on the floor in the tiny, extremely dirty town house from the night before though, we weren’t really worried, we woke up in odd places all the time if we had a good night the night before. However, we were hungrier than we had ever been in our lives, so we figured we weren’t hung over. So we did what any normal creature would do, we went searching for food. The search led us to all of our usual haunts, the Pancake Kitchen, my favourite, and the nearest sushi train, Malachi’s suggestion, but no matter where we went nothing seemed appetising. After two hours of aimless wandering, feeling hungry and incredibly weak we sat down on a bench in the mall to try and work out what was wrong with us , especially since we both normally eat anything that will stay still long enough. We were hungry but, the thought of food made us feel physically ill.
“Drix, what the hell happened last night?” I had been wondering exactly the same thing, the joys of having a twin,
“I don’t know babe, I just don’t know. All I remember is us going to that party. God we didn’t drink that much did we?”
“This is the worst hangover I have ever had.” I was nodding my head in agreement, which hurt like hell, when a fight broke out outside a bar on the mall.

As I watched one guy threw a punch at another’s face, fist making contact with the guy’s nose. Next moment, all I could smell was the metallic smell of fresh blood. He was more than 10 metres away from me, but I could smell it close, as if it were my own nose bleeding. I could hear his heartbeat loud in my ears. I felt Malachi take my hand, bringing me back to reality. “I remember” he whispered. So did I it had all suddenly come rushing back to me; the teeth, the pain, the blood then the immense darkness that followed and I knew, “Drix, I’m hungry again…does that mean we’re…” I stayed silent, not wanting to say what I was thinking, a pointless exercise, Malachi already knew what I was thinking, “we need to feed sis, as awful as it sounds, we have to get blood or we’ll die.”
“We’re already dead” I muttered darkly, as I watched the scene of chaos outside the bar as bouncers rushed to break up the brawl.