Burning into a New Skin

[Adriel (DELETED 4596)]

It was Thursday morning, 10:06 am, and I was burning.

I don’t know how I came to be standing outside. I can’t remember crawling from bed, though I must have, because it was hard dirt under my feet now, not bedroom floor.

I reached for the sun as if I had never seen light before. I could not remember the last time I had. My eyes buzzed in their sockets; an itchy simmer ran through each hand. There was a throbbing at the front of my head, between both brows, as if a fire was being kindled in my skin.

I screamed, but it was caught in my throat.

The sun had betrayed me; we had once been close friends. Sunlit walks through thin woods. Sermons spoken outside with sunshine making human halos. Waking to the sun, and sleeping with the sun, like half-way friends who knew each other only by passing glances and acknowledging nods. He had always been there when no one else was. And now he was burning me alive.

I was inside now.

I looked into my nails, and found my own skin, raw and burned, coming free of my face when I scratched. The top layer of my hand was bubbled and red; my vision blurred. Everything went black. My back hit the floor hard.


At some point, I woke again, and found myself back in bed. I must have crawled back in a delirium, though I could not recall it. Each inch of my body, clothed or not, throbbed from the touch of sun. It felt as if I had been walking through fire.

Maybe fire would have been more kind.

I could no longer question what I had become: vampire, demon, lost soul. It did not matter what I called myself, only that I accepted the loss of light, and accepted the darkness. Eyes shut, the lids themselves burning, I allowed the shadows to crawl in. Lethargy won. I slept.




At sunset, I was awake again, and praying.

I prayed for forgiveness. I prayed for deliverance.

I prayed that the burning in the back of my throat would stop.

I needed to feed.