I watched the last rays of the setting sun vanish as the star sank into the sea. With the sun gone, the temperature started dropping. The softly blowing wind turn cold and biting, but I barely noticed.

Like with everything else, the feeling vanished into the all-devouring void inside me. All I was left with was the ever-present numbness and emptiness.

The sunset had been beautiful. I knew It would be. I had driven over two hours to see it, but for me, it was like looking at a cheap poster. The same as when I hiked to a mountain top, visited a museum, watched a stripper, a parade, a car accident, or a house fire. Nothing affected me, nothing made me feel. The void consumed it all. I know I hadn’t always been like this. I could remember having feelings in the past. Remember smiling and laughing with people that used to be my friends. I was sure I had feelings back then. Or I used to be sure. I could have been pretending all along. I could have fooled myself into thinking I felt something.

"It's pointless," I muttered with a shake of my head. "It's all pointless."

I climbed over the fence and walked toward the edge of the cliff. My foot slip a bit on the loose sand and I felt a slight thrill before the void took it from me. Not even now would it let me care.

"Hey, that doesn't seem like the best use of a life."

The voice surprised me. I hadn’t heard a car coming, or the footsteps of a hiker. The voice was feminine and had a musical undertone that I'm pretty sure I was supposed to find mesmerizing. When I turned to look at her I was taken aback for an instant.

The woman was tall and athletic with shoulder-length dark hair that flowed with the wind. She was wearing a light sundress and designer sandals. But what made an impact on me was the eyes. Her eyes were beautiful, but I saw right through them to what lay underneath. She was not a soft and gentle beauty. She was beautiful in the same way a weapon, like a sword or a rifle, could be beautiful. Not a fancy museum piece with gold and engraving, but in the way of a refined tool of violence.

My heart started racing and I shivered as complex emotions raced through me.

I smiled. A small smile, but still a smile. I felt something. I actually felt something. I tried to capture the feeling tried to hold on and make it say. In the next instance, it vanished into the void. I looked into her eyes again. I wanted her intense eyes to do it again. Nothing.

I signed. I probably just imagined it anyway.

"Please don't try to talk me out of it. Just call the cops and leave me alone."

"You want me to call the cops?"

"It will take them twenty minutes to get here. I'll be done by them. There's nothing you can say that won't sound like bullshit so just enjoy the view in silence."

"You think I would enjoy watching you die?"

"It's a two-hundred-foot drop. You can't see the impact for here unless you try."

"I guess that's technically true. It's still a terrible waste of a life."

"Not really."

"How so?"

"Didn’t I tell you to shut up?"

"I didn't agree."

I sighed and looked over the edge of the cliff. I could just jump and be done with it. She was too far away to grab me.

"It is quite a drop."

"Damn it." I frown.

The woman had managed to get over the fence to stand next to me on the edge in the short moments I looked away. She was close enough to grab me now which was a problem since it would probably end with both of us going over the edge.

"Why don't you think jumping would be a waste of a life?"

I sighed.

"I have no family that will miss me, no friends that will miss me, not colleagues that will miss me. The only people that have a hope of noticing my passing is the IRS."

"So you're lonely? Wouldn’t it be better to get some friends?"

"No, because I don't care. I can't get any friends because I can't find it in myself to care about them. I don't care about other people at all."

"So what? You don't have to care about them."

"You don't get it," I Said and sat down on the ledge. "I don't care about anything. Not friends, or food, or beauty, or movies, or books, or art, or sex, or anything. I can eat a gourmet meal and a microwave dinner and not be able to tell you which was better. Nothing makes an impact, nothing affects me, nothing makes me care."

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

I expected her to say something else. To make another point about what I have to live for. When she sat down next to me instead I was genuinely surprised.

"I don't feel like you have a purpose."

"I don't have a purpose. Life has no meaning to me."

"Why not do something good with your life then? Maybe some charity work, or fundraising?"

"I tried. Turns out it's hard to work for free when you don't care. If I jump from here I'll at least feed a few fish."

"Did you seriously take that into consideration?"

"Yeah. At first, I considered doing it at home, but I'll make a mess and stink up my apartment. Then I considered jumping off a roof but I don’t want to land on someone or break someone's car. Next was this nice cliff up in the mountains, but some poor park ranger would have to deal with whatever was left after the animals were done. No, this is perfect. The current will pull me out towards deeper water where the sealife will deal with me. A letter in my car for the police so they don't waste time looking and a letter to my landlord telling him that the apartment is available." I looked over at the women. "Please don't try to stop me. You'll just get dragged over the edge with me."

The women smiled. "You have thought of everything. You would be a serial kills dream date."

"That's a weird thing to say," I said, "are you a serial killer?"

"No."

"You sure, you can push me over the edge if you want."

"What if your life did have a purpose?"

"It doesn't?"

"But what if it did?"

I sighed yet again. "If I had a purpose for existing then I wouldn't jump, but I don't."

The woman looked at me and gave me a wide grin that let me see her teeth.

"You have fangs," I said with a raised eyebrow. "They look good on you. Please don't tell me you are about to recruit me into some cult."

The women giggled. "No, not at all. I'm the genuine article."

"Of course. I just had to run into a nutcase."

"I love the modern era. I could drain someone on Mainstreet and everyone would think it either a protest or performance art." 

She picked up a fist-sized rock and crushed it into bits with one hand.

"Trick rock?"

"Pick a rock then."

I looked around and picked up a random rock. I hit it against the cliff and weighed it in my hand. When I was sure it was a real rock I held it out to her. She took it and immediately crushed it into gravel.

"Guess that explains your eyes," I muttered.

"What do you mean?" The woman asked seeming genuinely interested.

"When I looked into your eyes I actually felt something. The void took it almost immediately, but I'm almost a hundred percent sure that I felt something."

"The void?"

I hesitated. The last time I told someone about the void they got annoying. It took weeks before they gave up and left me alone, but this woman was probably just going to eat me anyway.

"It feels like I have an empty void inside me that eats away my insides. Whenever I think I feel something the void rips it away leaving me with only a numb emptiness."

"That sounds like depression."

"My therapist said the same. He spent three years trying to fix it and all it got me was debt and too much knowledge about antidepressants." I looked over at her. "Are you going to eat me?"

"Yes, does that scare you?"

"No, I don't mind. You can just throw me over the edge when you're done."

"You are a strange human."

"Says the vampire that's talking to her food."

The women giggled again. "I like you."

"Well, I don't like me so I would appreciate you getting to it."

She gave me another smile that showed a hint of fang. "What if your life had a purpose?"

"You’re not going to lock me in your pantry are you?"

"Not quite." The women nodded down the coast towards a massive mansion on the edge of the cliff. "That's my house."

"Looks nice."

"It is, but most of it sits empty. Vampires can't go around killing people for blood. It's wasteful and draws way too much attention. I can get blood bags but they don't taste right. If I want human blood straight from the body then I need to seduce someone and drain them during sex, or get a live-in blood donor."

"You want me to be a live-in blood donor?"

"Yeah."

"And if I say no?"

"Then I'll drain you and throw you off the cliff."

"That's good to hear."

"This conversation is so messed up."

"Why would I want to be a living blood bag for you?"

"You would have a purpose." The woman said. "I will take care of your needs and you will take care of mine. You'll be free to move around the mansion, and after your death is settled you'll even be able to go outside."

"So I wouldn't be a prisoner?"

"No. I don't even have to worry about you telling anyone since the only thing it would get you is a padded cell."

I shuttered. "Already dodged that bullet once when I said a bit too much to my therapist."

"To be fair, you do seem to be suicidal."

"I didn't say he was wrong," I muttered. "Does it hurt? The void will eat most of it, but I not keen on torture."

"It doesn’t." The woman said. "It's rather pleasant. You get a sense of euphoria that lingers for a while after."

"My void will just eat that."

"Wana bet?"

"Bet?"

"More like a test." 

The woman said and with a motion so smooth and elegant that it barely shift a single grain of dust she move so that she was sitting behind. I saw and felt her long legs on either side of me and felt her body against my back. I felt a tiny spark of emotion as she brushed my hair aside exposing my neck.

"I bite you and drink as much as I normally would. If you don't like it, then I'll finish the job and throw you off the cliff. If you don't mind it then you come with me. Sound good?"

"Will you kill me if I change my mind later?"

"I can do that."

"And you won't turn me into a vampire to fuck with me?"

"It's hard to turn someone, and I won't turn you against your will."

"Okay, then." The said and leaned back into her.

I looked out across the ocean and tried to once again enjoy the view. The soft blue light of a recently set sun lit up the horizon above which was a scattering of stares. But to me, it still looked like a cheap poster.

I felt a pinch of pain in my neck and the woman's lips pressed against my skin, but it vanished into the void before I could even pretend to care.

Then the world exploded.

The view that I had begged myself to care about was now a riot of dark shades of blue so complex and beautiful that it literally took my breath away. Each star in the sky filled me with awe at the incomprehensible size of the universe. I felt the cold wind brush against my skin, I felt the texture of the stone and sand under me. I felt the woman pressed against my back and her lips on my neck as she drank from my vein. I felt tears steaming down my face as the void cracked open and everything came rushing out. sorrow, anger, love, joy, despair, elation, excitement, it all came rushing out at once. It was overwhelming and spectacular.

I felt everything!

When her lips left my neck an eternity later I was crying at the unadulterated beauty of the world I lived in.

I was alive. For the first time in my life, I was alive.

The woman lifted me gently into her arms and I let my head fall against her shoulder while I marveled at the feeling of her skin against mine.

She pressed her lips against my forehead before a voice so beautiful that it could have made tax code sound like music reached my ears. 

"Let's go home."