Flip the Tables Over

The tables had turned.
         The change certainly was not an abrupt one; the tables started tipping around my fifteenth cursed year. I was turned a few weeks after my seventeenth birthday, and for fifteen years after that I soared across the top of the social ladder. Charm and good looks come as a sort of birth right to a vampire, and those two things were the only footsteps you needed to get yourself fame –women and men alike-. So with a pair of scorching gray eyes and skin like moonlight, I strolled my way like a god through the dimly lit streets. Fifteen years of seduction, loose smiles, silken hands and flesh under my lips as smooth as peach skin. I -Abel Russo- was a sadistic, white skinned monster.
         And then things started changing. Our town was small, and there were too many of us. There were four new deaths every sunset it seemed. Naturally, the townspeople panicked. Year by year, the numbers of mortals walking out at night diminished. Finally they got so scared that they barely even stepped a foot outside their house. And that is how it all came down to this: the hunter becomes the hunted.

         Most vampires were weak to the point of crawling on all fours to scavenge for a meager alley cat's blood. We could not show ourselves on the streets because the humans had found what they thought to be common characteristics, and ran away at the sight of them. A light smile and a flash of ivory skin could send a crowd haywire, even if it was just a normal person. Humans picked up signs of our eating habits, there was no longer any chances to lead a poor soul out of the ballroom and into the woods; there was no way to be sneaky. And what was worse was that even if you did have even a miraculous sight of a human on the streets at night, you couldn’t go up to them. Most of them carried tiny silver crosses, even if they thought the vampire scare was a bunch of hooey. No one could be too safe.
         Along with the frightened food supply followed groups, who were so angry with our race that they organized themselves with passion and hate. Those groups had one intent; to capture and torture as many vampires as they could. It was a feat that was very possible because of the weakened and sickly state of our race; mortals had bigger numbers, bigger egos, and better weapons. Years ago, a vampire could snap a man's neck in half with a flick of his fingers. But now, I had trouble even holding my body upright when ambling hopelessly across the streets. So, the men and women of these special groups were experts in bringing down their enemies. Of course they had a lot of damn luck thanks to coincidence on their side, but it didn’t really matter. One mortal man could take down a vampire without struggle.
         It was a sickening fact to those of us who had lived during the Golden Ages.


         The man took me down quickly in the alleyway. Warm knuckles crashed up against my jaw, the force causing my head to reel backwards and my shoulders to snap against the cobblestone. I rolled inelegantly to the side in an attempt to get away before feeling spindly fingers knot suddenly inside my hair. The hand at the back of my skull jerked my face up from the ground, a dry laugh slipping around my ears before an undeniable force shoved my face back into the smooth stone work of the road.
I barely felt the pain, and the only sign that the blow had caused any damage was the dark scarlet that was spilling mercilessly over my upper lip. The substance slipped into my mouth and burned my dry tongue with a metallic taste, a gag forming in his throat. My own blood was appalling, even the cats were better. My head was pulled upwards again, muscles in my neck straining as I let my mouth hang open.

Cloth was pushed up against my mouth and I felt it become tied at the base of my skull. I gagged pitifully, trying to close my teeth around it. I was tired already, and did not even try to scramble up when I felt hands ripping at my frock coat. Slowly my upper half was uncovered, my own scrawny chest revealed to me; ribs jutting out and hips brittle. My silk white undershirt was thrown carelessly to the side and I looked sadly at it, it was the only thing I had left to remind me of the days where I waltzed around in it at my prime, proper and wealthy among a group seemingly unworthy.
My reminiscing didn’t last long before I felt something pushed against the flesh over my heart. My scream was muffled by the cloth that was stretched taut over my mouth. Every single muscle and tendon in my body was pulled tight with insufferable pain. I could feel my flesh blistering under the small cross, my screams strained as I thrashed around. My attacker placed the cross then across my stomach, then my hip, my arm, my temple and then in a straight orderly line down the raised bone of my spine.

I screamed myself sick; bile spilled over the cloth and splattered over the ground. Sweat poured from every inch of me and the stench of blackened flesh filled my nostrils. Black curls flopped over my forehead and clung to the back of my neck, they blurred my vision until it got so dizzying that I just closed my eyes.


"Spawn of Satan," the man over me spat, and the world fell dark.

         As it has been for me for thirty years.


         
         It seemed like only a few seconds before I was awake again. It was dark and damp; the smell was pungent.

"I've got another one," said a gruff voice from above me, unmistakably my attacker.

         My bare chest pressed hard up against a cold wall then, and I felt cool metal slid around my wrists. I was disoriented but managed to control my head and tilted it upwards to my arms that were chained to the rocky wall that I was standing up against. There was a nasty burn mark of a small cross on the inside of my elbow, and I turned away from it, closing my eyes.

"You're the newest addition to our group," murmured a voice behind me, and then a whip went across my back.

         My scream came freely; the bounds from my mouth had been taken off. My neck reeled back and I let the scream take over me, the next slice whizzing across my shoulder blades. Rancid blood trickled across my back and I waited the third one, still screaming pitifully. The wait for the next blow was agonizing, like the air before a fall. It came and split the skin across my mid back, then another, and then another.
         
         The chains released my wrists; I slumped to the ground before a sharp kick in the side sent me sprawling into the corner. I lay shivering, bleeding and panting in the very hell I deserved. It was a long way to fall from what I had once been.