A Horror to a Horror

The streets were dead and empty but such is always the case of small towns at 4 AM. As I walked the strip down the center of downtown Blacksburg I hallucinated the life that permeated the store's innards in the light of a mid day sun and longed for those days when I could do more than live vicariously through the late night eyes and faces of college students that talked of their day.

It was an unusual time to exist in this world with earthquakes and hurricanes attacking new areas of the country and as the disasters shifted, so did the patterns of the preternatural, who were always delighted to indulge in the misery of humans. Perhaps it was envy that made an imitation of a living thing appear in the town this very night to watch and revel in the debauchery that only human youth could display. Perhaps it was his curiosity at the change of disaster patterns or intuition that here would be a ripe place for chaos once the real natural disasters started to hit within the next 50 to 100 years; for what is a century to an immortal? Most likely, though it was sheer coincidence that I should turn the corner to see a tiny stranger to this land roosting on the roof ledge above D.P. Dough.

Weighing in at a sizable 50 grams, he was large for a common Vampire bat but the fact that he hung from the ledge alone, not to mention the unnatural, iridescent blue flame that surrounded him gave him away as one of my kind.

"You're far from the Amazon, creature, and you've landed in a town where there are people educated enough to know that this area is only inhabited by fruit bats."

His eyes opened and faster than the human eye can see, he stood in front of me at eight feet tall with a hungry glare and glowing red eyes.

"I've not seen one of our kind who could change form before," I said.

He spoke to me in my mind as opposed to out loud, "I don't know your language creature as I am most likely one of the first of 'our' kind. I hope you don't mind me using this medium..."

I gazed into his cold, immortal eyes as my expression changed from that of running into an old friend, to that of sheer terror.

Speaking in my head, he continued, "this is your first meeting with a revenant, is it not?"

I gazed, transfixed, as if under a spell and found myself unable to move or talk. My expression changed to that of anger for the first time in 800 years.

As an ecologist at Virginia Tech, I had managed to avoid the sun, gain my... God knows what number degree... and even commandeer a trip to the home of the vampire bat to see their large clumpings in the caves of Chile and Peru. They had a bad habbit of always looking as if I had annoyed or disturbed them but this time his head did not even turn to look at me before he was instantaneously something resembling a human with elf ears.

He began to telepathically drivel in my head again, "vampires have evolved different ways in the world. Perhaps ours was the most natural and godly. Whereas you cursed God and were damned to feed off his creations, ours was a matter of simple genetic mutation."

Mustering incredible strength, I forced my rebuttle into his head with vicious vigor, "you cursed bastard! I don't need to hear your story, we are both of the same ilk in the eyes of men."

He moved forward and grabbed me by the collar of my Polo shirt, lifting me off the ground. "Your wretched race of heathens mocks the primal immortals that embody the truth to the word vampyr. Feeding off primates in dirty, sweaty jungles with virulent, diseased blood, over the course of millions of years formed my race. How amusingly unexpected I should run into your kind when all I came to see was human suffering in a nearly apocalyptic world. I shall fulfil my duty, however, and exterminating you will be a delightful added bonus to this pilgrimage."

Struggling and kicking, imprisoned in his vice grip, I began my protest in telepathy and speech out loud in my captive terror, "we both feed on mortals! I'm not your enemy! I hate the humans and renounced my humanity centuries ago..."

"You are not of my kind human! You were born a human and shall always be one despite your undead viciousness. Time to die!"

The last image I had was of that haunting face of the vampire bat 80 times its normal size. Its fangs sunk deep into my jugular and drained me to undead death.

"But we are both blood drinkers..."