It’s not the greatest feeling to wake up to, but it’s the usual one. There’s that moment, with limbs that seem to weigh against the bed, there’s the sweat that sits below, hovering upon the sheets. Seconds tick by, as an alarm rings out, an incessant beat that calls like a bird in the countryside. Eventually, I manage to tear myself from the covers.

               The sun sits upon the horizon, but it’s not going up. It’s easy to find a job on the night shift, the kind of work that no one wants to do. I take a few minutes in the living room of my apartment to orient myself. An energy drink sits in my hand, as I stare blankly towards the floor’s tiles.

               Eventually, with a violent yawn, I pull myself up, and move towards the door. If I hadn’t silenced my alarm three or four times, I might’ve had the chance to get something to eat.

               There’s a black cat sitting on the corner of the parking lot, she sits with a small food dish, likely left out by one of the neighbors; my best guess would be Martha or Jim, the married couple who originally found him as a kitten. Everyone in the complex has a soft-spot for Marvin, so much so that she ended up with the name Marvin to begin with.

               I give Marvin a soft scratch behind the ear before walking past towards my car. As I’m walking across, I see what appears to be a man standing beside my car; yet as I rub the last bits of exhaustion from my eyes he’s gone. There is a brick wall he could’ve jumped, but if he’d been trying to steal my car, I imagine he would’ve just shot me.

               With a shrug, I unlock my car, and sit down. Still the exhaustion in my bones refuses to fade, and I spend a second staring idly towards the steering wheel. If I had the time, I might’ve just called out. Eventually, I turn the ignition, and start the drive towards work.

               The glare of the lights is unpleasant at first, and as I walk towards the back, I feel that same feeling. It’s not the fatigue of first waking up, it’s that thing that sits in your bones, that dread. Some people call it waiting, some people call it life, I like to call them shackles. That consistent standing-in-place that we’re forced to do, day-by-day.

               A Punch Clock stares at me like a malignant machine as I type in my code. There’s a moment in-between before it beeps angrily at me, with a flashing Clocked-In. I let out a small sigh, before moving towards the meeting room. A small group of people sit at different tables, and their words wash over me.

               Eventually, I get told to go where they need me, and I head into the back of the building. I used to think it was interesting at first, novel in its own way; no one ever gets to see the back of a Supermarket. Then, as time went on, it became simple, mundane, an unremarkable landscape full of towering features not made for human hands.

               The work itself is easy if you can lift the boxes. You just move them to their designated place, then unpack them into that area. Some aisles are heavier, some aisles hold more products; but most of the time it’s pretty simple. It’s also monotonous.

               As I drop another box onto the floor, my thoughts wander back to Marvin. It’s kinda funny, being a cat; if you’re feral, you get into a lot of scraps with other cats, but you’re free, fundamentally. You go wherever you want; you could climb the tallest buildings in any area, and no one’s going to try and stop you. There’s no one to answer to other than hunger and thirst. Even if you’re just wild, you gain all of the advantages of civilized life without any of the pitfalls.

               The night ends as it usually does; I pick up a few things to eat, if I end up eating, and then head on out with a few energy drinks hidden in my bag. What they don’t know won’t hurt them, and it’s not like they won’t make up that money in the few milliseconds it takes me to steal them.

               The sun is rising up, and the leaves begin to sway. For a moment as I’m walking out to my car, I can’t help but take it in. Most would walk through the parking lot without even admiring the horizon, but the settling of the clouds, the swaying of the leaves, and the gentle light of the sun, all bring out a gentle sort of beauty. Perhaps if I were one of the cats, I’d get to take the time to enjoy it. Alas, I find myself driving back home.

               A darkened apartment greets me. And with it, I find that same fatigue rising into my bones. It pulls me, almost unconsciously, towards my bedroom. The sheets are still wrinkled, and at some point whilst asleep I must’ve thrown the cover off of my pillow. Silently, I find myself laying down, my bones beginning to weigh far too much.

               There’s a moment, right before falling asleep, that I panic. My heart begins to beat rapidly, and desperately I attempt to pull myself upwards, but my skin doesn’t move, my flesh is held in a vice grip, forced down upon the box springs. As that thrashing panic subsides, there’s a singular moment upon which I notice; I never once opened my eyes.

               -7

               It’s night again, but something feels off. My alarm is blaring, but as I move to grab it, my body shifts in slow motion, barely obeying my commands. I swallow down thick saliva as I pull open my eyes. There’s nothing in my room, but that sensation refuses to leave.

               As I stand up, my vision goes hazy, and I see something standing in the corner of the room. When I blink, it’s gone. The feeling only gets worst, a pit in my stomach opening up, as if something inside of my flesh is leaving. My knees shake, and I desperately grapple at the bedframe to keep myself standing.

               “Need,” The voice is a ratty whisper coming from just beyond the door, “I need,”

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               A desperate step nearly sends me careening, but somehow I manage to slam against the door. My hands shake, sweat glistening off of them as I try to latch onto the doorknob; yet my fingers refuse to bend, and I’m forced to use both hands to pull the door open.

               He stands on the other side, staring at me with frantic eyes. There’s blood dripping onto the wood below him, and he approaches me swiftly, faster than any human I’ve seen. His arm latches onto mine as I basically fall onto him.

               “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, but I just… I need this,”

               Idly, as my eyes start to roll into the back of my head, I noted that the blood had stopped dripping, and someone just kicked my door down.

               I jumped up with a start. I was laying against the hardwood, forehead pressed down against an unpleasant sensation, and the hints of a headache forming. Slowly, using still-weak arms, I pushed myself into a kneeling position, and stared down the hallway. The door to the bathroom lay open with the light flickering.

               Hesitantly I moved through, happening upon what looked like a murder scene in my sink. Blood still trailed, although lightened by still-running water. That man from earlier must’ve been in here; why would he have been washing his hands… maybe it made sense in a drugged stupor.

               Turning off the water, I tried to put that thought behind me, before remembering the last thing I’d seen. I stumbled from the bathroom, and stared blankly towards my front door. The hinges lay shattered on the floor, but the door itself was still standing. I stared blankly for a moment, before texting the landlord; knowing him, it would probably take a few years before it got fixed.

               Eventually, I landed on the couch, where I looked towards the TV. None of what had happened tonight made sense. I get assaulted by some drugged out man, pass out for no reason, and then the blood on the floor is cleaned, but the blood in my bathroom isn’t. Someone, during this assault, decides to break into my apartment, and then both the person that attacked me and the person that broke in disappear.

               The only thing tonight that was actually good, was the fact that I didn’t feel fatigued anymore. For once in my life, I felt fully awake, but all the circumstances surrounding it left me in a daze.

               Had the person attacking me be in league with the person breaking in? That was possible, but if they were, the person who attacked me would’ve told the other person about the blood. Which meant I might be thinking about the chain of events wrong. Maybe the person who attacked me had been running from the person that broke in. That could, potentially, fall-in-line with the reason for the blood in my sink.

               I swallowed that thought for a second, and shakily stood up. My body moved towards the bathroom, where I once again stared towards the blood. I tried to suppress the shaking in my arms as I slowly began cleaning the blood around the rim of the sink, and moving inwards. If the police came, I could not let them know about this; none of them would believe me, and I’d be the one tried for a murder I didn’t commit.

               Eventually, when the last of the blood had flown down the drain, I had a single incredulous thought bubble up; I’d get fired if I didn’t call out from work now. I called my boss to give some vague explanation, before hanging up and looking back towards the television screen.

               Inevitably I decided to shamble back to bed. The exhaustion of trying to process everything caught up with me, and I collapsed against the sheets. My thoughts still wavered back towards that bleeding man, and what felt like something missing from my memory. For a moment, it felt like I had it, and then just as quickly I fell asleep.

               To my surprise, the days after that fell into a familiar rhythm. The only things that changed was how I opened my door. I had to carefully pry it open, and hold the frame in-place in the desperate hopes it didn’t fall into my living room. Perhaps I should’ve been more afraid of someone breaking in, as had happened twice in the same night; but I did my best not to think about what had happened.

               As the week went on, however, I felt a strange sort of exhaustion warring over me. Even though I fell asleep on-time, got the eleven hours of sleep a night-shift worker is supposed to get, it became harder and harder to pull myself out of bed. I looked it up, but most of the results circled back to Sleep Ammonia or Insomnia, one of which I knew I didn’t have, and the other of which I was certain didn’t fit the description.

               My limbs felt like deadweights as I rolled from the bed, and stumbled blindly towards the bathroom. For a moment, all I did was stare towards my reflection, willing my eyes to open just the slightest bit wider. Seconds ticked as the endless gaze of sleep begged to drawl me back in. Yet, as if with some unshakeable will, I managed to pull myself into the waking world.

               I was shivering. I gripped the porcelain sink harder, but that didn’t stop the shaking. With a loud swallow, I forced some cold water onto my face, and stared at my reflection; paler than the moon on a dark night. The kitchen brought with it an energy drink, which had stopped working three nights ago, but I still clung to like an avalanche. At least they stopped the shaking.

               Seconds ticked into minutes in my empty apartment, before I finally shoved myself up. I couldn’t muster the strength to cook anything, so I headed for the door, thinking of perhaps buying some fast food.

               As I walked down the steps, and towards the parking lot, a younger lady ran headfirst into me. Tripping over myself, I landed on the pavement, which she hit a second later with a loud thud. Wincing, I reached down to help her up. As my hand touched her arm, energy surged through me.

               There was a beat, almost like that of a heart, upon which her startled eyes looked into mine. It was then that something began to surge from within my beings. Something desperate and needing. I hadn’t felt it until now, this incessant voice in the background, but as her arm tried to yank from mine, I knew what it wanted, what it needed. It needed her soul.

               It was only as I saw the light starting to leave her eyes that I realized what was happening. My hand frantically untightened, and she dropped to the ground. For a moment, silence was regained as she lay wheezing.

               “I…I’m sorry,” I spoke out, mimicking the words I’d heard a week earlier.

               For a moment I was almost certain she was dead, but then she said, “It’s alright, it’s alright. Y-you’re a vampire right? Please… please help me,”

               I opened my mouth to say something along the lines of ‘vampires aren’t real’ when the gunshots started.