The Writers' Circle

Before 2020 no one believed that vampires existed. As I look over the damaged books on my shelf, I smile half-heartedly. Twilight, Dead Until Dark and countless others fill my over loaded bookshelves. The funny thing was, people had just started to get into vampires. They had just started to like them, to want to become them. They sighed over their gorgeous looks, gasped at their super powers, leered at their almost sexual thirst for blood.
	However, no one really believed that vampires existed.
	Yet here I am. Living proof of the legend. I freak out everyone living in my neighbourhood. Oh well. They'll get over it. One day.
	On November the twenty second 2020 a huge change came upon the world when Arthur McGowan caught a real live vampire. It was unlike anything the world had ever seen. Arty was on news programs, hundreds of them, telling the world about his life long obsession with these 'monsters'. The footage of the vampire was scary enough. A humanoid creature that moved like a cat almost with jerky snake like movements of its head. It had no hair, although most of us do. Its eyes were deep, deep red and its fangs dripped venom. There were thousands of groups campaigning for the vampire to be killed before its disease spread.
	What they didn't know was that it had already begun.
	Deep underground, for hundreds of years, vampires had been camping out. We feasted off rats and a couple of times a rogue human. Many of us never went to the surface. We wasted down in the sewers. When I think about it, I shiver. I still can't get the stink off of me.
	The vampire was killed. A stake through the heart. They planned an autopsy afterwards. It just so happened that one group of vampires had read the newspapers that fell into the sewers. They had been following the case very closely. When the vampire was killed, they struck out. Thirteen humans were killed but fifty vampires were murdered. They found out that we lived in the sewers. They came down to attack. However, before they could one human stepped forward. My heart glows when I think of her. A young girl, Caitlyn, stepped out in front of a vampire, in the London sewers, and stopped him from being killed. That vampire was me.
	After that, no one attacked another vampire. The vampires themselves were too weak to hurt anyone anyway. Some were even taken to hospital. Hospital! I laugh quietly to myself as I think about it. How absurd.  After so many years and they accept us on the word of a little girl.
	Caitlyn is sixteen now, much changed from the small ten year old thing I saw standing in front of me in the sewers. I sigh. I owe her my life. Or whatever this existence is.
	We kept in touch after that. Her parents were not particularly pleased at first but after a while, they got over it. Or rather, I like to think they got over it. I often turn up at their house at weekends, in the evening of course. I help Caitlyn with homework; we play games on the computer, a favourite hobby of mine. We never had anything like that in the sewers.
	Lots of people still can't get used to us at present. They still see us as those blood sucking monsters of favourite horror stories and myths. There are quite a few Anti Vamp groups around. In fact, I have a suspicion one guy, Harvey Michaels, at the end of the corridor in my block of flats is an AV member. He does look at me strangely when I go out the door. I always did hate the name Harvey.
	Then again, we are strange to look at. People used to think we were beautiful. I pause to look in the mirror. I guess we are, in a way. The vampire blood in our veins makes our face structure more defined. We grow taller and develop muscular figures. However, I will never get over the other changes. The dark red eyes for one. They gleam in my face, hungering always for blood. I look extremely pale, partly because I haven't had my daily dosage of blood this night, but also because technically I should be dead. It means I have permanent dark circles around my eyes because I don't sleep. And the fangs. They don't go away. They don't retract into the roof of my mouth. They are always there, when I smile, and I am constantly reminded of the fact that I will always be an outsider looking in on the human world. I am not part of this world.
	I shake my head and take a look at the morning mail. One specially wrapped package contains my food for this week. I open the package and pull out that one vital vial. It has my name, Alec Mount, written on the side, take two doses only, et cetera, et cetera. It sounds like a medicine. It sounds like I'm ill. Am I? No one's come up with any answers yet. Caitlyn doesn't think I am. "You're just a different type of person," she said matter-of-factly when she was thirteen. "And that's nothing to cure."
	I take the vial and set it out on the counter, This is the part I hate. I take out the hypodermic needle. I feel my body cringing away from it. It's funny, but being a vampire doesn't make you any less queasy about needles. I guess it's because they didn't have them when I was alive.
	I try to pour the blood into the needle quickly. That way, I don't smell it. It's difficult to control the rush we feel at smelling blood. I always lock my door just in case the blood rush becomes too much for me. I can smell it faintly. It smells so good. I haven't tasted blood in years. It makes us too wild to drink it, injection is safest. It smells like. think of the most delicious smell you could possibly imagine. Imagine it pulling you. It draws you, it makes your taste buds tingle. Then multiply that by ten and you get similar to a vampire's feeling about blood.
	Injecting myself is the difficult bit. A vampire's skin is tough. Therefore, the needle must be made of an especially strong alloy of metals and the vampire must basically stab himself with it.
	I brace myself and stab.
	It hurts, but only for a minute. Then the slow relief comes. The thirst in my throat goes away. The blood rush disappears. My whole body feels like it's relaxing. I take the needle out and place the vial safely in the fridge.
	Now I am ready to go to work.
	I pick up my long dark coat as I go out the door. I got it three years ago as a joke. It makes me look exactly like Dracula, minus the white hair and moustache. Caitlyn laughed out loud when she saw me. Her parents backed away a little. I often put on a hat to pull down other my eyes so I attract less attention. It's unlikely. I always attract attention. I am one of only six vampires left in London. One of about two hundred in the entire world who want to make an effort to live among humans. The rest still live where they were found, or live in one of the special 'vampire cities' around the world. They're never allowed to go free and every single one of them has a tag so they can be tracked.
	I miss some of them. But I don't ever want to see them again. They remind me of the moments before the humans stepped into the sewers. We had been geared up to fight. We had been trained to fight. Every cell in my body was crying out for the taste of human blood. I have never been so driven in my life. I wanted to hurt. To make someone feel the pain that we felt every single day at being down here. And then I saw Caitlyn's eyes, staring at me, so young, so innocent, and so . understanding. She wasn't trying to hurt us. She wasn't like the others.
	I looked around me at that moment and saw us for what we were. The vampires we had made ourselves. And I resolved to separate myself form that. Caitlyn has given me that chance. I will not screw it up.
	I walk down the corridor on my floor. Harvey peers out of his door at me. As I smile at him in greeting his eyes widen in shock and then he shuts the door exceedingly quickly. Miserable idiot.
	No one really notices as I walk down the street. I am just one of the hundreds of people going out on the town, to work or to have fun. I like this time of night. Evening. Dark enough so that I can be out, but not dark enough for people to be suspicious of everyone they meet on the street. I even get one or two good evenings as I walk down to my place of work.
	Not many places accept vampires working for them. I got turned down by about thirty different places until Sacha told me about this one. A bar called 'Grace Maurice'.  A few decades back, this place was somewhere you would not want to be. It was the sort of place which exuded menace and it was wise to quicken your pace as you passed its door. It would have died then, but it was resurrected in a way. Nowadays it feels almost like a tourist attraction with windows patterned like a circus tent. Come see the place with the first Vamp workers! Try not to scream at their fangs as they serve you!
	Anyway, it's situated on Whitechapel Road, not far from where I live. I like it because it doesn't have those bright exteriors that most bars now have. It seems pretty similar to the pubs of old, ones that I've been to. Therefore, I know my way around a bit. I like it there. Except when we get customers who stare at me and Sacha. They get kicked out pretty quickly.
	The moment I enter, the atmosphere seems to get stiffer. I pause. There is a family there, with two young kids. They mustn't have realised the time. Now they're caught out with the vampires. The mother has her fork halfway up to her mouth. Slowly she puts it down on her plate. The children look at me with open curiosity. The father puts his hand on the arm of the youngest, as if to restrain him.
	Ok, there's no need to panic. I can still smell their blood but it doesn't drive me to blood rush. I move slowly and calmly towards the bar. I can feel the family's eyes following me. It's ok, I try to say to them with my mind, I won't hurt you. I promise.
	Matt, the manager, greets me in a friendly way. Sacha obviously hasn't arrived yet. As one of the very few people who treats vampires as human, Matt is a bit of a one off. He's never really had any hate in his heart. He is a genuinely great guy. Even now, he gives me a smile of encouragement. He says he understands how it feels to always be judged by others' prejudice. I can understand this prejudice though. It's not without reason, I think.
	The father starts gathering up the children. "Come on kids," he says. "Time to go."
	"But I haven't had pudding yet," says the youngest, sticking out his bottom lip.
	"Please," Matt says, coming out from behind the bar. "There's no need to leave yet."
	"I think there is," the father says, looking almost angrily at me. I turn away from his glare, so I can hide my deep red eyes. "Why on earth would you let one of them in a pub anyway? They could attack your punters on the way home and you wouldn't even know about it."
	I feel myself getting angry. I haven't done anything wrong. I can feel the heat rise up inside me.
	"Calm down Mick," says the mother, nervously. "Let's just leave quickly now."
	"Don't worry, Julie, I'm handling it." He turns back round to me. "Why don't you just go back to one of those vampire cities. Be with your own kind. Where you belong."
	The heat is nearly at my head. I can't control it anymore. My hands start to shake. The adrenaline builds up.  Someone stop me. Someone.
	"Hey guys," a lively voice calls. In through the door comes a tall elegant woman. Her long dark brown curls bounce with the spring in her step. Her lips are coloured a fashionable red and she wears a brown jacket with a pretty patterned dress.  No one would be able to guess from a distance that she was a vampire who had just taken her daily dose of blood. Her skin looks naturally rather than deathly pale and her eyes are more reddish brown. She wears the vampire look better than any vampire I have ever known. Even in the sewers, she refused to crouch down in a catlike stance and she wouldn't touch any humans.
	"Hello Sacha," Matt says, in a relieved voice.
	Sacha breaks the tense atmosphere as she crosses the room and hangs up her jacket. Mick turns away from me and I can feel the heat from my head fading away back to my chest. I breathe in deeply. It makes me realise I haven't breathed since Mick stood up. Sacha immediately starts talking quite naturally to the family. I can see it's making Mick uncomfortable. He tries to move away as soon as possible. He won't be coming back, and in a way I find it sad. Matt loses many customers because of us. At least Sacha came before it was too late.
	After the family have left, paying swiftly and departing with a merry wave from Sacha, the very few punters left start calling for free drinks as compensation for the disturbance. As Matt moves off to deal with them, Sacha comes over to talk to me.
	"You alright?" she says in a whisper.
	"Yeah," I say. "Yeah, I'm ok. Just a little shaky."
	It's true. My hands are still slightly trembling. I hold onto the edge of the bar to stop it.
	"I sensed you halfway up the road," she says, still keeping her voice quiet. "Good job too. I'm not sure Matt could've restrained you." She laughs. "You are mad!"
	I was, I think to myself, examining my hands. Vampires are so much more in touch with their animal instincts. It only takes a few moments of anger for us to completely lose ourselves. Especially for me, for some strange reason I cannot fathom. Sacha's good at it. She can control herself much better than I can. I've always been annoyed at her for it. I try so hard to be less like a vampire, but it comes so easily to her.
	I look up and someone is standing right on the other side of the bar, waiting to be served.
	"Right, sir," I say, in a brighter tone than how I feel. "What can I get you?"
	Just another night with the vampires.