Shadows and Light

What if you were a vampire alone in the world, drifting through life after a couple decades of uncertainty. You aren't sure what you are looking for anymore. On a whim, you apply to volunteer at a local retirement home for university credit. This story denies both traditional and modern depictions of vampires. The usual, overplayed plotlines of romance and male domination are disregarded in this unique and tender love story.

• Fiction
• Romance
• Fantasy

								
Shadows
What if you were a vampire, rather newly turned, still young by those standards, though old for a human, maybe only a hundred years. Not even a hundred of being a vampire, just a hundred of being alive. 

        Maybe you’ve spent eighty three years in a twenty-one year-old’s body, moving from place to place, from job to school to war zone. 

        Maybe something changed the day you saw the sign outside the low brick building with the nicely-manicured lawn, with the beautiful people ambling along the grounds and the flower-patterned curtains in the windows. 

                Volunteer Positions Available - Get University Credit!

        You weren’t even sure if people did that anymore. You feel drawn to it, pulled by some invisible hand down the cement pathway and through the oak doors. The receptionist seems surprised at your interest, looking you up and down from behind a pair of bright green spectacles that match her blazer. You can’t blame her. 

                Art major. Your friends, who’s smooth faces accurately proclaim their youth, always tease you about that. Not even something useful, like English or Philosophy. Psychology, maybe History, they say, why not do that? Instead, you dress in paint-scuffed sweats or maybe worn flannel, hair mussed and eyes tired. You take late night and early morning classes, trudge through snow drifts and rainstorms in the dark. Can never fully capture what you want to make, because of that constant absence of light; sitting in an apartment with windows blocked with blackout curtains, or in the darkest corner of a room lit by glaring fluorescent lights. Whatever you put to paper or canvas or digital screen always seems so artificial, like those lights. You can never experience true sunlight again. Your pale skin looks almost sickly, but surely that fits with the college-kid vibe? The overachieving, worked to the bone student, spending weeks holed up in a dorm frantically studying, surviving off of nothing but energy drinks and ramen noodles.

        You have nothing to study for, though. The sight of your own face makes you sick. You remember the days, long ago, where you went outside without fear, sleeves rolled up, face turned towards the sun, freckles popping up from your skin oh-so-unfashionably. One of many things you do enjoy about today, so many years later. Freckles are now considered beautiful. 

        But you stand in front of this receptionist, who has perfect hair and perfectly-lined lips pursed into a perfect line. Hands in the pockets of some old denim jeans with tears in the knees showing the ink staining your bloodless skin from your most recent attempts with rice paper. 

        She hands you a form, a ball-point pen with barely any life left in it. You scribble your information down hastily, as if the opportunity might be revoked if you run out of ink. 

                Name, fake. Date of birth, arbitrary. University ID, so much longer compared to your first, even your second. Sex, preferred pronouns (disclaimer that these people might not care), experience, medical conditions, capabilities. Preferred job assignments, do you know any of the residents, do you mind if we contact you via email, what is your email address. 

        You meet up with your friends later. A dark bar on the corner of an empty street. Red and green lights make you think it must be Christmas, but the state of the small, rotting tree in the corner makes you think maybe they just haven’t taken the decorations down. It’s too warm outside for Christmas, anyway. You don’t tell anyone what you did today. Nobody asks. They rarely do. They aren’t really your friends, just a shield, a cover. Why yes, of course I’m twenty-one, how old do I look? 

                Sometimes you think that maybe people can see it in your eyes. The extra years of life, of weariness. The years of hiding away, of daring to go outside during the day only when covered from head to toe in styles people always look askance at you in. Gothic, Islam, Modest, Cosplay, Disgruntled Teenager. These are the styles that belong to the minority. They scream of not belonging, of sticking it to the world, of attention seeking dramatic. Radical, Liberal, Terrorist, Crazy, Foolish. You take on any title just to get a glimpse of the outdoors when the sun is shining. 

        A drunk man stumbles into you, knocks you off your stool, which he then steals, unaware. You lay there on the ground for a moment, staring at one of the lights strung along the ceiling, flickering ever so slightly. Standing, you pay your tab and drag yourself out of the bar, down the street, around the corner. You always know your way back, it feels like you were there when this city was built. People on the street seem to avoid you instinctively. 

        You finally reach the apartment, fumbling with your keys. The door opens to a shroud of darkness. An old, rickety bed with moth bitten sheets, a slightly-crooked easel set up by the window, close enough to the heavy velvet curtains to get flecks of paint and ink on them. Speaking of which, three bottles lay on the floor, one cracked, one fully open. Both leaking so the colours, indistinguishable in the dark, bleed together on the floor. You’d been too tired to clean it up before and don’t bother to now, instead just letting the door click shut behind you as you blindly toss your bag toward a pile of laundry that used to be a chair. 

        A puff of dust rises from the bed when you fall into it. You wonder if it’s really been that long since you’ve slept. Do vampires need less sleep or do you just not care to? Class in five hours, before the sun rises. Projects you can’t complete long overdue. You turn your head to look at the ink staining the floor.

                When did life get so depressing? When did you feel all its glamor, the ecstasy of immortality, fade away?

        You close your eyes. Painted on the lids is everything you cannot seem to get to flow out of your hands. You used to be able to, once. Charcoal and pencil and paper, lines flowing easily, arching as if of their own will. When did you lose that ability to show what you cannot say? Did it bleed out of you like the ink out of those bottles?

        All you can feel now is darkness. It cannot be represented. The ink is too reflective, even once it's dried. The paint is too dulled, the pencil to gray, the charcoal too limited. But you don’t want the darkness, you want the light. Something so intrinsically wrong to your nature now that it will not arrange itself the way you want it to, need it to. 

                 Maybe all you are is lost. 


Light
        You spend every other afternoon at the retirement home, pretending to be a fresh-faced youth volunteering out of obligation for university credits. All the old souls suit you better than the young ones you used to try and trick yourself into believing were like you, with their false senses of immortality and disregard for the laws of life. You haven’t seen them for weeks, now, and they’ve stopped calling. 

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