Chapter Ten

A really long passage with small apartments, the size of two cubicles merged. From the petite or let's say trivial terrace, the third room on your left.

Firmly held by old, red bricks bountifully garnished with cracks on its surface, a pallid ash gray door stood and on its other side, all her worth outside her homeland were kept. ALL.

And there, behind the door with drapes drawn to prevent the incurs of the sun during the day- Just like a vamp will do, a small, portable plasma TV hung to the thinned walls, a stein with red, small cheap wine filled the air and a few inches from the cold dark walls, the soft thud of her heart reminded her that she was living as she lay on her single bed, curled up from the world outside and only peeking to know what was going out there through her TV.

Life hadn't been always bad, in fact, it looked like it'd stored up the bad moments like filling up a trash bag only to let all the scum out at once.

Yeah... Her life was vitiated... contaminated... polluted... depraved... infected... poisoned and contaminated too!

And she knew it, she knew things like this were bound to happen. She knew things will one day turn around for the worse but she never really expected what she'd met on the other side. No one could have... No one!

**

Her father had gone to “visit his ancestors”  about two months ago and she knew it would be her time soon because she had been diagnosed with it a few weeks after his death… before Mrs. Ileana, her mother’s death, no, suicide.

In her dad's bloodline, the vampire syndrome was a prevailing predicament. It'd taken her Uncle Stephen, Uncle Thomas too, his little child of two and virtually all of them- her grandparents, three generations before hers and now, it had come for her also and her mother hadn’t made things easier by intoxicating herself with drugs.

Memories of how it happened still dawdled in Maisie’s mind. She had gone to McDonald’s to get a meal of 4 Piece Chicken Nuggets for herself and Egg McMuffins for her mum. She almost got burnt waiting for a taxi but one soon arrived and she got the meal. As she got home, her senses told her things had gone terribly wrong. She walked into her sitting room and dropped the meals, called for her mum but there was no response. She called for her lazily again, still tired from the tears she’d cried for her dad two weeks before but still nothing. She went to her room, wasn’t there, headed to the kitchen, wasn’t there too and that was when she got really frightened. She slowly placed her sweaty hands on the cold bathroom door and pulled it open, gently, only for it to reveal a pale white body drained of blood, lying in the tub with spilled meds not far from where she was. It was Mrs. Illeana – Maisie’s mother. There was no blood spillage, it was a silent and perhaps, peaceful death. Maisie screamed in shock and passed out too. Her neighbours rescued her.

All of that happened because of her father’s demise and it still didn’t change a thing that the number of individuals that suffered from it round the world were small and insignificant compared to other ailments and no cure had been found to it. Yet. 

**

Maisie wasn't in the mood for anything. Nothing at all. Her body was itching real bad... The disease was getting to her, she knew it. It was gradually eating her, devouring her from her dyed pitch black hair down to her painted mascara face and down to the soft soles of her feet. But for a few seconds none of that mattered, nothing mattered at all; not school, nor her ailment, not Russell or Amaya, all what mattered was right there, at her front, like a poison filled dish for a puppy. She couldn't help but freeze so as she heard the reporter.

Her entire body was still in shock and unwilling to move but her heart kept on pounding harder and her brain was responding to and interpreting the billions of waves the TV was sending to her.

Like a possessed little sprite she flung to her fit and in a mad frenzy she "packed" all the stuffs she could - a few clothes shoved into her small travel bag, her documents into a file she immediately shunted down the bag, cosmetics into... No one cared about those! She didn't pack them. 

For the first time in a long time she felt scared, frightened and terrified.

"...Wanted for the murder of Logan Sullivan who was found in a pool of his blood..." 

She wasn't scared of being hungry or not having a place to sleep. She wasn't scared and didn't care about what people thought of her. She was scared of herself! She didn't who know whom she'd become. A blood thirsty vampire? 

She had to get out of her room fast but she was lost, she had no where to go or didn't she? 

Her phone's screen came on followed by consequent beeps. It was Me, Harvey Rhett - the child of a billionaire. I was calling the murderer I loved!

**

They're after me. The police... They were coming for me. I was wanted! Weren't they scared of me? I'm a vamp at least. 

Maisie wore a pale blue denim jeans with a dark purple sweater whose hood did a great job in keeping her face concealed as she slid out of the door and found her way out with her hands on the cold red bricks as there was no illumination on the passage. She was petrified and it only got worse when she heard the sirens of the police force pull up at the building where her apartment was. Three minutes later than she'd been and she'd have found herself being whisked to a cell in handcuffs.

She hastened her footsteps and hoped the sound of her traveling bag on the granite street wouldn't attract them. People were in their warm, inviting homes already, it was 10pm and she was the only one on the street - just her, her noisy little bag and the street lamps that threatened to blow her cover. 

She reached the end of the street and stood - with her bags praying for a taxi to turn up fast.

The thirty seconds during which she waited were like years. Each heartbeat for a year, ten seconds equals a decade. 

An old, grimy taxi pulled up beside her. Inside the taxi was dark and the driver appeared to have a lit cigarette in his mouth but Maisie didn't care. She had to get anywhere but where she was presently. She recklessly put her traveling bag in the secondary tail and sat. She heard a distant "Hey! Wait there!" and saw the silhouette of a burly officer hurrying up and panting to meet them but the driver didn't pause, not for a second. His exhaust pipe fought against the wind and they were out of there.

"That will be ten dollars ma'am".