"Changed" Preface & Chapter 1

Preface:
“You don't recover from a night like this.”
(Brand New)

That night was my last. My last night as a human, anyways. I obviously didn't know it at the time. I had left the party in SoHo at about one in the morning. My usual party habits would have had me there much later, but I had finals in the morning and thought it wise to get at least some sleep beforehand.

It was late April and the weather was unseasonably cool, but nothing could compare to the chill I felt from the sight of my attacker. He towered over me at about 6"1', with light gray eyes, and long blond hair that gently brushed the tops of his shoulders. He was dressed in an odd way that shouldn't have surprised me since moving to New York City three years ago; there was always some freak trying out a new trend. However for some reason, his style of dress was especially different. He wore plain black pants that were fitted to his muscular legs, and a shirt that could only be described as a "blouse" with a sort of ruffled front. Over all of this he wore a dark colored trench coat that fell down the entire length of his body, all the way down to the slightly damp cement of the alleyway.

I could smell the stale water that had pooled all over the alley and the rank garbage from the dumpster a few feet away. The bricks of the two buildings I was between were old and had begun to crumble in certain places, the mortar too weak to hold things together any longer. I felt sand and gravel beneath my arms as I lay there, trying to figure out how I'd gotten into this situation.

Believe me, I had never intended on ending up in a dark alleyway. Before I moved here from Long Island that was the advice that every one of my family members and friends had given me-- "Don't go down dark alleyways alone at night." I had, as a rule, never even walked by them. Instead, I would cross the street and continue my journey on the other side until it too, provided an alleyway that served as a playground for the city's low-life’s.

Tonight however, I had been lost in my own thoughts, most of them centering on Ryan. Not only had tonight involved a memorable party, but Ryan and I had also taken our relationship to the next level. Ever since we had started dating six months ago, we had taken things slowly. We didn't want to be the couple that burned out too quickly. Tonight was the first night he had told me he loved me. So, instead of paying attention to the alleyways I had been advised to avoid, I was lost in my little daydreams about Ryan.

Now I was lying on the wet cement of one of said alleyways with this strange man standing above me, explaining something. I couldn't make out what he was saying because the head wound he had inflicted was bleeding through my hair and covering my ears, making it almost impossible to hear his soft, deep voice.

At this point I knew his soliloquy was coming to a close because he was making his way closer. Then he leaned over me and inclined his head to my neck. That was the last human memory I ever had.



Chapter 1:
“And the coastline is quiet. While we're quietly losing control.”
(Brand New)

When I "woke up", I knew that I was dead, as contradictory as that may seem. What I felt, or rather the lack of what I felt could only be described as death. I couldn't feel anything, not even the hard surface I was lying on, for surely it must have been hard because it was a stone floor.

What I lacked in sensation, I made up for with my other senses. I could see and hear everything around me. After listening for a few minutes, I realized the room I was in must be under some sort of restaurant-- Chinese, if the smells and language of the men I heard above me were any indication.

I love Chinese food; my dorm was half a block away from the best Chinese place I'd found so far in the city. As I thought about my favorite item on the menu, Lo Mien, I found that I was extremely hungry, but also...repulsed by the idea of the noodle/vegetable combination that I so often craved. Besides that, I had more important things to think about besides my next meal.

I sat up and looked around the crude room I now found myself in. I noticed a steep concrete staircase across the room from where I sat. I stood up with ease and made my way through the dark room, surprisingly having no trouble seeing where I was going despite the complete darkness I was in.

I stopped at the foot of the stairs listening to an impossible conversation upstairs. What made it impossible was the fact that I could hear anything at all. I slowly walked up the stairs, thinking through what I was about to do. I had always been the type to logically think through every aspect of a situation. Once I thought everything through, I made a decision and then quickly executed it.

I was prepared for the men upstairs to be startled by my sudden appearance. I was prepared for them to be angry that I was trespassing in a part of the restaurant only intended for employees. I opened the door slowly and stepped out into the bright fluorescent lights of the restaurant's back kitchen.

I saw four short Chinese men suddenly stop whatever it was they were doing before, to stare at me. Yep, just as I thought-they were surprised to see me there to say the least.

The man closest to me stammered out, "Wha...what you doing back here?!"

As the man spoke, I noticed the veins lined through his forehead. He kept asking me questions in his broken English, but I couldn't concentrate on translating what he was trying to say to me.

After noticing the vein in his head my eyes scanned downward noticing all of the tiny wrinkles in the man’s tired face. Looking closer I saw that I could easily count the pores on his cheeks even though I was standing more than six feet away from him. I was strangely entranced by the man’s face. My eyes moved down the man’s face to his neck. If I thought I couldn't tear my eyes away from this small Chinese man before, I had no hope of it now. My breath stopped as I noticed the thick jugular vein that was throbbing with the man’s blood. His blood. I want it. I need it. I have to get out of here.

All of a sudden I heard the sharp intake of the man’s breath and his pulse increase rapidly. My eyes darted up to his face and what I saw there was sheer terror. Slowly the man started to back away from me, all the while not tearing his eyes away from mine. I took one small step towards him and the man tripped over his own feet, sprawling onto the hard kitchen floor.

Suddenly my mind realized what my body was trying to do and I started to back away from the Chinese man that was still lying on the floor.

"Sorry", I apologized, "I'm leaving right now". Something was off though, my voice didn't sound like mine at all. I chalked it up to a long night of partying and continued backing up, away from the object of my frightening intentions.

I finally tore my eyes away from the men and turned towards the other end of the kitchen. I began walking as quickly as possible towards the designated dining area. As I was walking past the shiny black tables with matching chairs, something caught my attention out of the corner of my eye.

I turned to see a wall, the top half of it covered in mirrors. For the second time in less than sixty seconds, my breath caught in my chest. I slowly walked towards the reflection I could only guess was my own. Although I knew that it could be no others, I still couldn't believe what I was seeing.

The first thing I noticed was my eyes. Where the normally hazel brown color used to be, a dark gray color stared back at me. After studying the new color of my eyes, I looked at the rest of my face. I had always been pale, but the now almost translucent color of my skin surprised me. Also, my freckles were missing, as if they were something that could just be misplaced. I remembered when I was little, complaining to my mother about the abundance of dark little marks all over my face. She had told me that when I got older they would fade and eventually I wouldn't have them anymore. It was now an inside joke between her and me because they never did fade, and I had always thought she didn't know what she was talking about.

That memory brought a smile to my face. That was when I noticed my teeth. They were perfectly white, almost inhumanly white and the canines were just a tad longer and sharper than they had been last time I looked in the mirror.

My hair too, had changed since the last time I had fussed with it. The natural light brown color was the same, but my hair had taken on an almost luminescent shine. I backed away from the strange reflection I saw in the mirror and darted out the front door of the restaurant.

Once outside I was glad to have the fresh air and some room to think through the incredible things I had seen and felt since...last...night. That was when the memory of the strange blond-haired man in the alleyway came flooding back into my mind. I remembered being hit over the head, hard, and falling on the ground before the man attacked me. I reached up slowly to touch my head where he had struck me, feeling the unfamiliar softness of my hair, and finding no such wound.

I suddenly looked around me, noticing for the first time my surroundings. The buildings on this street looked familiar and I started to head in the direction of my dorm. As I walked down the busy streets of Manhattan, I ran all of the newly acquired information through my already tired brain.

As was usual on this busy island, I was bumped into by many strangers. The difference today was that every time a person bumped into me, I had a shock run through whatever part of me they happened to hit. In the fraction of a second that their body touched mine, I could feel the warm appetizing blood rush through their veins and throb through their hearts. Appetizing?! Ugh, I need to stop, I need to get away.

That was when I started to run. I had never felt so free in my entire life. The cool, polluted wind rushed around my face and through my hair. I looked around me and noticed that the people, buildings, and cars I was running by were all blurred.
It felt like when I was younger, and I would take the Long Island Railroad with my parents into the city. I always loved looking out the windows at the trees and streets we were rushing by, making everything blur with our speed. That was how this felt.

I couldn't be completely free though. Not after what I had experienced in the past half hour, I would never be able to forgive myself for the thoughts I had had about those poor old Chinese men in that restaurant. Why did I have those thoughts anyway? I wasn't a cannibal; I didn't even eat my steak that rare. Ew, steak...what....the...hell...

Just then I felt a dull pain across the middle of my abdomen and suddenly the wind stopped. I was being ripped off the crowded downtown street and into an alleyway. Oh no, not another alleyway, that is what got me into all this trouble to begin with. I struggled to free myself from the iron bar that was wrapped around my torso. Wait, since when did iron wrap around people? I looked down and saw an unnaturally white arm wrapped around my waist. The arm was just as white as my skin was now. I looked up into the light gray eyes of an extremely handsome man, with an extremely frustrated look on his face.