Vampire Books Fans, Fangs and Writers discussion

AWAKE: A Vampire Tale

Available on all ebook readers and the Authors Preferred Edition at Gumroad.com/AmarAjk

An Excerpt:
She wanted to jump. She was a beautiful girl standing on a bridge thinking of suicide, but it didn’t feel desolate, she didn’t radiate anger or despair, but rather excitement and curiosity. It was so much more than that, so much more complex and, open as she was, it was there for me to know: Death had become something real and concrete to her. She was going to die anyway — and soon — from a disease. There was not a cure, there was no fight to be made. She was just dying slowly and very, very fast. She had known for a time and was beyond mourning it. What happened after that line of life/death was crossed had taken hold of her.

She radiated a feeling like the night before a big long trip. Everything was settled and packed and ready, and before her loomed a great adventure that she was longing for. Death had become as insatiable for her as the Thirst was for me.

I kept walking slowly toward her, I didn’t want to disturb her or startle her into closing herself. I was entranced.

She was thinking of the people she loved, she lit candle flames for them in the sanctuary of her open mind. She hoped that they would join her in this death-adventure someday, but she was not so afraid of loosing them that she would stop walking her own path.

Her longing went to the open blue sky, with the ground miles below and only a parachute keeping her aloft. She had loved that ride down the one time she had gone sky diving. It was freedom to her, it was why she had decided to jump: To embrace that freedom. There was a small ego floating around the idea of jumping too: She was contemptuous of fighting the unfightable to the very end, of dying in a hospital bed battling for first weeks, then days, then hours, then minutes only to be defeated by Death, as a foe. She would have felt selfish burning through money and medicines, taking doctor’s time and the machine that could be used by someone who was battling a disease they could beat. Her doctor had subtly indicated that in order to keep her comfortable once the pain started in earnest, he would prescribe her morphine that would be fatal if she took more than the prescribed dose. The idea seemed wimpy to her, something for a debutante or the elderly. Jumping was ballsy, it embraced the death. She wanted to embrace Death and be embraced by it.

I was next to her now and I opened myself to her. I didn’t fight the Thirst: It was a part of my desire. I wanted to give her a Death, to ride with her right up to that line. I was her Reaper, her Charon. The Thirst rode this desire, it swam in it and intertwined in it. This was everything I wanted and I opened myself up as completely as she was open to me. To have this girl walk into my arms, to have me be her answer, to be able to feed the insistent Thirst without twisting and perverting desires was my deepest lust.

I could feel her moment of pause as she felt me open to her, this strange phantom that had come out of the night, a fantasy of a fantasy. And in this, her very moment of revelation.


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Good reading, friends!