 I'm going to talk about how I died today, but when I tell you I'm dead, I don't want you to imagine that I somehow wrote this posthumously. I don't feel like it, but I look every bit as alive as you do, and I'm pretty sure if I went outside, I could act like it too, all except for four teeth that are slightly too perfect and slightly too sharp. I work as a programmer at a small tech startup on a coastal city in North America and North of California. I'm not going to get any more specific, I get nothing out of doing that. In fact, it could make my life even worse. It's not a cozy job, with tight deadlines and night spent drinking with a team when I don't want to, but it pays well for the hours I work and it's what I do. Besides my job though, I don't have a lot of ties here or anywhere. My parents live half way across the world and I've gotten more and more distant with them since I finished school. The same is true for all the friends I made back then and most of the friends I made playing tabletop games or go. I don't have a good explanation for that, except that I don't get attached easily and I'm usually willing to give up the attachments I do have if it goes that way. So I have a pretty plain life, all in all, my routine rarely changes and other people rarely come in to break it up. I get up, go to work and come back with just a few bright spots to make the process of keeping myself afloat worth it. When it gets late, I play whatever studios are pushing or online games of go, maybe read a book and head to bed. I barely have a footprint in the digital world and I don't even have that in the real world. In hindsight, I think my killer knew all of that. There's a few reasons I think that. A car that had never been in the parking lot before with black tinted windows. The sound of the elevator down the hall going up and down throughout the evening. The light on my balcony turning on just as I was drifting off to sleep. I should have noticed all these things before, not after getting bitten to death, but I doubt it would have helped. I was a meal, maybe even just a snack to a predator that stalked me perfectly. Start to end. I have had hours to reflect on how there probably wasn't any way for me to be more than one of their kills. The thing about dying like that is you don't realize it at first. Even the touch of blood is a warm, comforting sensation with none of the dampness or stickiness a human experiences. So when my alarm went off at five o'clock in the morning, I'd never felt more comfortable. Not so much as turning my head, I stretched my arm out to grab my phone, hit snooze, and got some more sleep. Even then it still took me a minute to realize my pillow was covered in my own drying blood. Because the next time I woke up, I was blind. Everything had gone white and my head spun so madly that it almost blocked out the pain that plastered itself across my face. I let out a hiss and jolted up before it could become a scream. Then I turned in place and next to the usual suspect, I saw two things, one my own blood in a pool across the bottom third of my pillow and two the source of my pain sunlight filtering in past my blinds. I'm not stupid. No one in this situation would be stupid. Humans are skeptic these days and people love to tell stories about vampires without actually thinking they're real. But we all know from those stories that sunlight kills them and I can't think of any normal things, any diseases, any drugs that would do what the sun just did to me. So I was already afraid. But my first response was stupid. I went about my routine, went into the kitchen, and had breakfast. It was unsatisfying. The butter on my toast was like glue, the normally crispy bacon tasted like rubber. My glass of orange juice was neither sweet nor sour and none of the salt in my meal reached me. I tried a bit of everything, hoping beyond hope that this was some kind of weird episode. When I realized it wasn't, I nearly threw up. But here's the problem. I can't. To be honest, I still can't explain why, but I think vampires don't have stomach acid or bile. I haven't heard a single growl. Hell, my bones don't snap when I stretch and I haven't ached at all. I think there's something else going on inside my body, something I obviously can't see and something I don't want doctors to see. Something that makes me undeniably inhuman. I couldn't keep my head in the sand for much longer after that. When I opened one of my cupboards, the smell of garlic knocked me out for at least a couple minutes. I had to put on my face mask and desperately roll it into the garbage, then throw it out onto my balcony. It's still there, and I'm hoping nobody notices. So I cried for a while. That was the most normal part of my day, the fact I could do it, and how I cleaned up my tears after. All of this happened just today. If I seem calm about it, I'm not. I spent 10 minutes thinking, what am I going to do with work? I called in sick, but I can't make rent on my one bedroom apartment if I don't work and going to work means going out into the sun. I haven't experimented with that. I don't want to experiment with that. I can't quite call it a voice, but something inside me fears the sun. It tells me that I should live only under the cover of night, that I should embrace its cool air and listen to the howls of wolves as if they were music, that the light of the moon is all I need. And even then, it's just as much an advantage for my prey. With thoughts like that in my head, it's hard to care about work when my instincts as a human are being replaced by something colder, something deader. It's hard to panic in the face of danger. It's gotten harder now that I've turned all the lights out. I can see just fine without them doing it calmed whatever nerves I still have. And no one else is going to notice or mind. I don't think of myself as a good person. I think anyone who does is probably trying to sell you on them to get you to trust them or like them or just to convince themselves they are. But I've done a few things right. I've never ignored strangers looking for directions. I've never hurt animals and I've never killed anyone. But now it's you or me. Either I drink the blood of the living or I die for real. And I don't just know that from the stories. I tried browsing Reddit around noon and I was hopelessly distracted. I found myself staring at images that were mostly brown or red. I caught myself and on occasion I bit into my lower lip. Just so that I could lap up my own blood. But it's only made me hungrier and my body colder and quieter. I don't want to kill anyone, even if I find a victim. Even if I find someone as loosely attached to the rest of the world as me. I'm not sure I'll be able to go through it. My killer was experienced. If I weren't a vampire now, I'd never know that they broke into my apartment. I'm not. But even then, even if I overcame that, I don't want to kill someone. I don't want someone to die like me because of me. It's too much and that's why I'd be better off dying. But there's one problem. I don't live alone. Marnie is the closest thing I have to a child and from the way she behaves, you'd think she was. Every time I go to sleep, she's there, happy to join me and nest against my chest, lick my face, or need the blanket over my legs. I never have breakfast without her looking up alertly when she hears the hiss of a can just opened. When I first found her, she was tottering through the thin gap between a pair of restaurants on a side street concrete below her and brick around her. She couldn't have been more than 16 weeks old. She's the first pet I've ever had and she meowed at me pleadingly like she saw a replacement for the parent. I was sure she'd lost. I knew I didn't have many options. So I scoop her up in my arms. I decided against putting her in my shopping bag and I brought her home as soon as I could. I went out after that back into the rain to get her milk and cat food. I honestly had no idea how to raise a cat. All I knew was that someone had to or this kitten would die. But I did my best and Marnie grew up to love me for it. She fears other animals and other people. When I have guests over, she crouches down under the bed, not an inch of her poking out and watches our feet move from her position of safety. No treats, no kissing noises, no coaxing will bring her out and the few encounters she's had with other cats and dogs. Well, they've ended in hissing, swatting, and the occasional bit of blood. Marnie is my life companion and I know that if I went away, she'd be devastated. She's an adult now and I know enough about cats to say that even if I found her the kindest owner, no matter how much I want to, she'd never fully overcome that loss. As I finish this post, I'm lying in bed. My blinds gratefully pulled up. Now that the sun is down, she's purring happily on the pillow next to me. I still don't know how all of this will work. Will everyone I bite turn into a vampire or just the people I end up killing? Am I going to develop powers or will I have to rely on my fangs and research? When I think about it, maybe that'd be better. If I stay pretty much human, there's a good chance I'll die, I'll get arrested or shot or staked by a vampire hunter, if they even exist. And the world will be a tiny bit safer, except, no, that's not better, because Marnie's world won't be safer. It'll be dangerous and lonely and sad. I can't let that happen. I can't leave my cat without her caretaker. And if that means feeding on the lives of others, I'll do it.