After the long, and painful night had passed, I woke up to the searing pain of my bruise. I sat up a little quicker than usual and carefully rubbed my cheek, not wanting for it to hurt much more. Once the pain settled, I went to my bathroom and did my usual routine, but also trying some of the makeup products that were in there. I don’t remember seeing them the first two days, but I might’ve been clueless to their existence since they weren’t useful those first two days. Not understanding the basics of makeup, I tried to have the bruise hidden as efficiently as possible, even though I am a novice. After I was done, it looked fine, but wasn’t perfect at all. I was frustrated, but figured I would only get better as the bruise heals. I made a quick breakfast and made my way to the school once again. The stares still lingered since no one could ever be truly used to my presence, but I was used to it at this point, since the stares never truly left. My group of “friends'' weren't there this morning, which is fine, but it was surprising for priscilla to not be there. A welcome surprise nonetheless though since I didn’t have much more time until my first class. P.E. wasn’t as fun as it was yesterday, but I didn’t get punched at least. In fact, I never saw the student that punched me. Maybe the teacher got him expelled and reported him to the dean or something. I don’t know. But like yesterday, we ran and then played soccer. We used the same teams, but now that the other team had one less person, it was much more in favor for our team to win, even though I was with them. The score was much closer, which is a nice feeling, but… I don’t know, it doesn’t feel rewarding. Maybe it was because the student who punched me wasn’t there. It’s just hard to understand why I want to get some sort of revenge on him. The class was over in what felt like twenty minutes. It was quick, but this time I didn’t get the pleasure of changing before everyone else. Everyone, and I mean everyone, was in the locker room. While I changed, the stares were amped up to a level I was never comfortable with to begin with. It felt like what a rabbit must feel when cornered by a wolf. But the worst stares didn’t come from the guys, it was the girls that were the worst. It wasn’t pleasant in the least, but their stares felt much more sinister and carnal than the guys. It is very difficult to explain the feeling. But I changed quickly and booked it out of there. There were some laughs from the guys, but it was complete silence after that. I was having a panic attack again, and the ones who laughed could tell. I made it over to my locker and just leaned my head against it for a minute to calm down as best as I could. Once I was much more calmed down, I opened my locker and grabbed my math book and notebook. When I entered, the teacher was a little surprised by my attendance since I didn’t attend class yesterday. He didn’t have to say why he thought I was absent, I could assume he thought I was dead and drained. I took my seat, and breezed on through the class. It of course was harder than the first day, but I was fine. Nothing important happened in that class. After the bell rang to end my second period, I walked to my locker for my history class. I actually hadn’t been in this classroom for a long time since the assembly had taken up most of the time it had, and because I had gotten knocked out yesterday. But history class was very similar to common sense, it’s just they went much further in depth into the history of how humans at one point were on top of the vampires because of the weapons of mass destruction they had created to extinguish the vampires. But there is always a reason why this is taught in history class. While the teacher never went into full detail, they were extremely matter of fact, almost like they were there when the humans were on top. The class ended way too quickly because I was getting invested in the story of the past. But the class had to end unfortunately. Luckily, lunch was next. I made my way to the lunch room, just like before, and went to get my food from the same window as the first day. Today, they gave me a beef wellington with a Caesar salad. Again, the fanciest food I have ever seen. I sat down at the same table as my first day, and found my “friends” were already there. I asked if any seats were open with a small smile and they welcomed me to their table. I sat down, and began to eat the delicious food. The others had similar plates of food to me, the only difference being the drinks. Priscilla sat across from me, eating her own food like a princess. Every time I think about it, it always fascinates me how vampires work. While they are ruthless, and almost never show mercy, they can look so dainty and fragile, like they would shatter if hit with a hammer. Every now and again, I would think back to the letter priscilla left in my locker, wondering what she would want to talk about with me. The others were talking to themselves, until they had pulled me into a conversation. I wasn’t focusing on what they were talking about so I asked and they sighed and said “We’re talking about our classes, trying to see who is dumber than you.” While the comment was a bit backhanded, I didn’t mind it since it was common to get such comments. I shrugged and said “Well the semester has just started. Isn’t it a little early to say who is definitively dumber?” The one who had suggested the subject looked dejected and was politely laughed at. I smiled at the banter they had come up with and got confused with why they were so fixated on me. I know that I am the odd one out, but they should have much more interesting topics to talk about other than their intelligence compared to mine. I decided to ask and at first they looked shocked at me asking, but then they understood my confusion. Priscilla spoke up and said “It’s because growing up we are always told humans are inferior to us, yet they let you into this school. While everyone may be biased, we believe that humans can be incredibly smart. We just wanted to know if you got into this school by sheer luck or determination.” I shrugged in a way that told them I thought it was a fair assessment. I ate my food passively and just listened to them talking. I smiled to myself a little, finally understanding why it was nice to have friends. The only person to see me smile among the group was, of course, priscilla. She smiled to herself. I couldn’t see her smiling to herself because I was too focused on my food. Soon, the bell rang and everyone started to just walk out of the lunchroom. I made my way to my locker in the hallway, and got to my music class. The same teacher seemed to be happy I wasn’t dead. While that sort of expectation has gotten really boring, it was a bit more heartwarming coming from a human. I made my way over to the percussion section, wondering what I had missed yesterday when I had gotten knocked out. Luckily, most of class yesterday was just students, who had chosen wind instruments, learning how to use the air in their lungs for other things instead of using it for spouting hot garbage. Percussion is a fairly easy instrument to learn but there is a reason why percussion is the heart of the band. It is extremely complicated, much more so than you would imagine, and how you hold the sticks can even change how you play the instrument. There are so many different little intricacies that change how you play the drums. The easiest one to manipulate was the largest, the bass drum, but it was also the easiest to screw up. While we weren’t practicing our music yet, she did give us some beginner's music that is so easy that no one could screw it up, unless you’re the student who couldn’t even get past the first page of music because he was nervous. Of course Ms. Tylin replaced him with someone else as I had chosen the snare drum, the more complex instrument in percussion. The music was so overwhelmingly simple, that I was convinced she didn’t have faith in any of us to even begin trying the music she handed out on the first day, especially with the student that she replaced. Luckily, that was the only eventful thing that happened to my section. The other sections though were being lambasted with insults left and right. Ms. Tylin may be under the protection of the dean, but she is not holding back any punches. She clearly took her job extremely seriously, which made me wonder how she was with the dean’s kids. I still have no idea how vampires functioned in their families, even more so when it seems to be such a cutthroat society. But, before I could think anymore on their family dynamics, the bell had snuck up on us, ringing and cutting off Ms. Tylin while she was instructing some students to better handle their instruments. And with the bell ringing, I went to my hallway to change my materials to the biology textbook and notebooks I had. I wasn’t too sure how this class would go. I am still not used to being used as an example for the class at any moment. But the class was only that bad because I was still unsure of what Priscilla wanted to do with me. She is a confusing student, and a confusing “friend”. She was too much for me to handle. I have had constant thoughts of not only Priscilla ripping into my throat, but after learning that vampires who I approve of can have my blood, and anyone who I consider a lover is under the same rules, I still have to give permission. The thoughts of me dying because I gave Priscilla that kind of permission made me spiral in my dreams. I would wake up in the middle of the night sometimes because I would die in my dreams by the hands of priscilla. I may be writing in this journal to document my journey in this school as a record for my family if I ever die, or am ever turned and have to leave them, but I cannot bring myself to write down those dreams in this journal, at least not in detail. If I did, I would be writing for hours on end and miss a day of school at least. Each time I have dreams like those, each time I last longer and longer, seeing more and more scenes that I shouldn’t have seen. Each death, more gruesome than the last. These thoughts filled my mind as I walked towards biology. So far, this school was a much worse experience than growing up in the current human society. Being treated like cattle from afar was so much better than not knowing when the wolf would say “screw it” and just chow down. I am terrified for my life, every second that I am still alive, but the panic attacks have become less frequent. I don’t want to get used to this life, because even though I can say that I won’t get used to it, there is a point where this life becomes the norm for me, and I am scared for if that day ever comes. With my panic attack of what Priscilla wants to do with my blood over, I walked into the class expecting her to be there, but I was the first one there, the only other person being the teacher. He looked up at me, glancing away from his book and saying “Glad you covered up that bruise. No idea if the youngsters would be able to handle themselves if you kept it on display.” His tone was extremely condescending, even though he did show some compassion. Before I could even get a retort in, other students started to walk in one after another. Like, every single student. It was almost like they had heard there was a buffet opening and they were waiting outside in a line, wanting the doors to open so they could feast. I went to where I normally sit in this class and saw Priscilla walk in, wearing a lot more makeup than usual. I was extremely confused as to why she was wearing so much makeup until I noticed that she didn’t cover up all of her face, at least to the start of her neck. I saw major bruising that I wouldn’t have expected on a vampire, but it makes sense because they still have blood in their bodies, so when they get a bruise, the blood cells still get clumped together, the only difference to mine is that I could see it healing itself up extremely slowly, similar to the frost on your window going away when you start to warm up your room. She sat down next to me and acted like nothing was wrong. I didn’t bring it up at all, which was extremely hard for me since I wanted to know what happened, but I was still terrified of her. She was my “friend”, and I was worried she was just wanting to use that title to try and get me to use the privilege I was given by the dean to allow her to drink my blood. The teacher soon began after she sat down and started off on the topic of animals, and the effect that their blood gives to vampires. Although their blood isn’t as rejuvenating as human blood, it still has positive effects on vampires. The only downside is that when it is fresh, it still acts like alcohol to them. The teacher compared animal blood to a shitty human beer, and then compared human blood to a whiskey that has aged for centuries paired with a steak. Something I didn’t expect him to touch on was the fact that vampires can even make other vampires be prey. Since everything has blood, no matter the condition of the blood, there has been hundreds of reports of vamp on vamp violence as he called it. That partially answered my question from the first day of how he could dissect vampire cadavers, which just fascinated me more and more. He continued to explain how vampires aren’t fully superior to humans, but have upgrades like not having the need to sleep, or worry about calorie intake, or even be picky about food. He had also mentioned that vampires have more cons than many believe, such as when a vampire is blood deficient, they become a regular human in terms of strength and tiredness, and how they have a much higher chance of becoming feral if they drink too much blood in one go. He also mentioned how he is not a pure vampire, and how he knew about ferals because when he was dissecting a supposedly dead feral, it had bitten him, wanting to heal the wounds on its body, not realizing that there were also injuries in its mouth, forcing the feral’s blood to mix with the teachers, slowly turning him into a turned. While turned are generally treated very poorly, everyone in the class can either empathize or sympathize with the teacher because they understood that if they were human and had the option to turn into a vampire, that is not how they would want to be turned. Priscilla looked over at me and could see that his story didn’t fully resonate with me, she could tell that I was still sympathetic to the teacher. The teacher continued on with his lesson for the rest of the time that he had until the bell rang. The more and more I learn about vampires and their society, the less and less I want to even be in their society. Before I could get into my hallway, priscilla stopped me and said “you know, your heart was racing like crazy in class. Is it ‘cause you saw my bruises?” I was confused and had tried to start speaking but she cut me off and said “Vampires have a much more sensitive pair of ears than humans. It’s a drag really. I can hear anything and everything if I wanted to. But I have bruises because there was some punk talking trash on my friends. It didn’t sit right with me so I threw some punches, but I got hit as well. Thanks for worrying about my bruises though. You should worry about yours more though, it’s starting to show.” She gestured to her cheek after telling me, which made me realize, I was sweating throughout the class for some reason. She laughed and said “Later loser.” in a very friendly way. I sighed at that and went to get my common sense notebooks and get ready for the boring class ahead. While the class itself was interesting, the teacher was incredibly boring. They couldn’t speak with inflections in their voice making it hard to hear what they had to say, and they spoke in a very monotonous way that made me want to fall asleep faster than I can at night. But the class still had facts that interested me. I walked into the classroom and sat down with my other seven classmates, one of which I recognized. It was the kid that sucker punched me yesterday. I groaned to myself seeing him, but I got even more pissed off when I saw his face. I sat down in the back where no one else was. The class started after I sat down and we went over the previous rulers of the vampires and their respective nations. While humans were a lot more “organized” with their ruling systems, the vampires are much more chaotic in a very bad way. For someone to rule over a nation, they must defeat the current ruler in two battles, one of wits to prove their intellect, and a battle of strength to prove they are not all talk. It was still interesting to hear about who was the first vampire ruler and who had defeated him. They had a presentation on how much land each ruler had, and they showed it slowly got bigger and bigger with each passing one, until the now centuries dead humans had their governments collapse, then a massive land allocation had started and the ruler of the world quickly appointed different vampires he trusted to rule over different continents. He was named Elias Edwards. He was the most conniving and manipulative ruler yet, and it would only get worse the more he ruled. He ruled for seven centuries before he was dethroned by Mattias Stewart, the still current ruler of the vampire nation. Although he hasn’t been seen for years on end, leaving the vampire nations in disarray, wanting to reinstate Elias Edwards since he was still alive, albeit barely. He is still recovering from the wounds Mattias had given him. But no one other than Elias knows what he looks like, so no one can even challenge him to a fight. For there to be an officially recognized fight, it has to be made in person because many of the challengers of past rulers have either sent letters or messaged the rulers that they want to fight, and then never show up. Mattias is “smart for avoiding that rule, but people brand him a coward for basically leaving the throne. But they can’t dethrone him either because he is still giving out orders remotely from wherever he is. For the vampires to remove a ruler from the throne, they need the ruler to not be active for a whole three months to remove them. With Mattias, he sends out orders at the tail end of the three months to stay on the throne, making his public persona a laughing stock. Learning these facts is always interesting to me because he could be anywhere. But what is more surprising to me is that Elias hasn’t come forward with evidence of what Mattias looks like. Possibly because he is scared of the person that dethroned him, or it could be for something completely different. No one knows. The class ended soon after I had thought of what Elias could do. I got up out of class and saw the student who had punched me get up first and start to leave. I hadn’t noticed before, but he had a lot of scratches and bruises on his face. They were almost gone though, but I wondered where he had gotten them. I didn’t want to ask, but I figured it must’ve been the dean with his disciplinary actions he alluded to before. I didn’t dwell on it too much as I wanted to get back to my dorm room in the forest. I put my things into my locker and gazed at the blood stain on the wall, wondering who it was that was unlucky enough to be drained in school, and when the blood stain had happened. I clicked my tongue since I had no time machine to go back to when it possibly happened, so I just walked out of the hallway into the forest, getting to my dorm room in record time. The entire way though, it felt like I was being stalked by something. When I entered my room, the feeling didn’t go away. I was feeling terrified of what could be out there or even worse, in here with me. I searched around and couldn’t see anyone or anything until I went back out and saw someone in a school uniform covered in blood standing outside my door. In my rush to see my room I forgot to lock the door. They reached for the handle and the door slowly opened with a creak and crack as the hand was clenched on the door handle. Before they had entered my room, I couldn’t see their face too well, but once they were under a light, I could see they had matted hair, and she had stains of blood surrounding her lips dripping down onto her uniform. Her eyes were bloodshot with the sclera a dark blood red, and her pupil was extremely dilated similar to a cat when they see something they love immensely shoved into their face. I couldn’t do much in my panicked state but she wasn’t rushing to my neck. She was obviously a vampire. I just had no idea at the moment which she was. She kneeled on the floor and said “you need to run… the dean is-...” she couldn’t finish her sentence as the dean appeared behind her, carefully cleaving her head from her body. He looked down at me and said “Sorry I couldn’t come sooner, I was stuck in a parent teacher conference with that delinquent that punched you yesterday. She didn’t hurt you, did she?” I was trembling fiercely from the situation at hand. The dean had the students head in his hands and was calm. Way too calm. I was soiling myself as he spoke, and he expected me to form a coherent sentence with all the blood around me, and the now collapsed, and dead student lying at my feet. The dean stared at me in confusion and then slapped his head and said “Oh. Right. Dead body and all that. I'll speak with you again soon about this. Let me take care of this for now.” He picked up the body and dragged it outside, carefully grabbing the, now ruined, door handle, and turning back to me to say “Forgot to say…” he bared his fangs at me once more, having the evilest smile I’ve ever seen “Welcome to RedCrest Academy, young Simon.” He closed the door after leaving a heavy emphasis on the young part, leaving me with my soiled pants and bloody floor to my own thoughts and devices. The only thing going through my mind at that moment was “Rebecca?...” At that moment, I recognized the girl that broke into my room. Her name was Rebecca, and she was the first human accepted into this very school… three hundred years ago. She was supposedly left a human when she graduated, but it seems like any news the vampires feed us is only propaganda to make us believe we have any hope of retaining our human nature. But now, my head is spinning with theories of why the dean killed Rebecca. Did she escape after she was turned, and the dean had to tie up any loose ends? What was she going to say the dean was before he killed her? Who is the dean? Will I be next? After cleaning up the blood with the best floor cleaner for the job, baking soda and vinegar, I changed clothes after locking the door, worried that the glass panel would not be enough for the horrors that evidently await me in the forest. I somehow fell asleep that night with my last thought being ‘Is the dean Mattias?’

Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.