Short Story: Horror? Psychological Vampire Thing

I am alone. I am a part of the earth and the wood housing me within that earth and the darkness surrounding it all and nothing more. A worm winds its way through a rotted hole in a board and crawls over my arm and I reach out and grab it, bring it to my mouth. It explodes between my teeth but I get no pleasure from it. I still crave. I’m still alone.

My eyes fly open and I sit upright with a jerk. I’m twisted in my bedsheets. The candles are blazing; we never let them go out entirely. I untangle myself and stand and go to the corner, where a pile of blankets and pillows lie. Alexander and most of my “siblings” are there, dogpiled and fast asleep. I’ve tried to be one of the stubborn ones, insisting on keeping my own bed, but I understand now what brings us all to sleep beside each other. As I lay with them I can’t hear their heartbeats, there is no inhale or exhale of breaths, there is no body heat. But still I need to be there with them.

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Short Story: Horror? Psychological Vampire Thing

I hear the shifting of earth above me and think little of it. I’ve long ago quit the attempt to escape my coffin. The marks from my fingernails on the lid are old and worn, etched a million times over in the rotten wood. I once managed to fracture a board in the side of the box, splintering it and letting a small amount of dirt trickle in, but that was my greatest achievement in my fight against the grave that imprisoned me. As the centuries passed, I grew weaker, my will dissolved, and though my ravenous hunger for something I could not identify did not diminish, I learned to live with it.

The sounds above me intensify. I think perhaps I am dreaming, as I used to dream so long ago of digging through the earth with my hands to emerge into the surface. I do still have hazy memories of grass and sun and the faces of people I once knew so well, but they’re only shadows in my mind. Cold and without detail. Certainly I have not always lain in the ground. Surely.

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