Damn, but it's a great time to be undead!! Over the past decade we Nosferatu became hip and cool. Sure, we have to keep to the dark, but when cruising the nightclubs and streets, it's sooo easy to find food willing to be sampled. All those teenage girls who fell in love with Edward Cullen are now that little bit older but still dream of finding their "immortal beloved". When you simply tell them that they're "the one", you have a willing supply of blood on tap. It’s too easy! Twilight and True Blood were great ideas and the Blade movies which were aimed at the male of the species helped us get a broad range of our target demographics. I’ve got to give out a shout of thanks to those wonderful people in business psychology and advertising. It took a lot of money and forward thinking on our part; but now our chickens have come home to roost – with all the admiration that now comes our way from the wannabees, we will never go hungry again.

Do you have any idea how difficult it is to fit in when you’re a vampire who looks like a normal sixteen year old girl?

I bet not. All the other school girls are aflutter over that fictional sparkly bloodsucker. I’m not like him at all. Not even like the cliché “Goth” kid, dressing all in black.

Yeah, okay, so I’m what they call a “daywalker,” meaning I can go in the sun. I like the beach, actually. As far as eating goes, it’s weird. I can eat “normal” food, but I love my steaks, like, bloody rare. That way I don’t have to kill.

At least this generation is all about sparkles. A few years back they were all about some cheerleader-turned-vampire hunter.
That was a horrible time. Wasn’t even one of that director’s best shows, either. I liked the space western so much more.

I live in a boardinghouse kind of place, with others like me. I mean, no, not all vampires. Ha. There’s this new TV show that describes it best. “All the legends are true.” Man, that guy is so hot.

Anyway, consider this one of those public service announcement thingies.

We’re here, we’re real, and we don’t necessarily want to kill you! Something like that, anyway.

Some of us try to assimilate into human life, like me. Others lurk on the edges of society and stalk the night. I thought about doing that, once the school thing gets boring. It could be fun to join the hunt.

Lenny, the owner of the house, always lectures me to be more cautious.
“Girl, just cause they like you in theory, don’t mean they gonna like you in the flesh,” he reminds me almost daily.

I laugh, and head out to my car to go meet the girls who I hang with after school.

I get to the spot by the store we were planning to meet at, and only one of them is there. She’s covered in blood and screaming.

“Lily, they killed them,” she cries, “these guys, they tried to mug us, and Jess didn’t want to give up her new purse, and the guys just shot them!”

I try to calm her, but I can feel my temper boiling, “Go home, Tara. It’ll be fine.”

I trace her route back to where the girls were attacked, and from there, I easily follow the muggers’ trail.

Once I found those dirty bastards, counting their ill-gotten gains, I tore through them one by one, leaving none of them alive.

I left their bodies to rot, making sure to leave no traces of my presence, and went home.

All in a night’s work, I guess.

Before I took a step out of my bed, I checked the clock: 2AM it said. The hungry feeling in my stomach started to crawl out to the open. I went around the house searching for something to eat. The fridge had been wiped clean of any eatables. I cursed my laziness, grabbed my bike key and set out along ECR road. After covering a few kilometres, I saw flashing police lights. It was then I realised that my breath was reeking of alcohol, so I took a deviation towards the beach.

As I was passing by a lonely street, I could see an man shouting for help. He was a old, short and feeble in appearance. A feeling of fear set in. It was too late and the area I was in, is known for muggings. Anyway I gathered the courage and stopped the bike to enquire him. The old man said that his wife was not waking up even after repeated calls and he is unable to contact anyone. He asked if I could help. I took out my mobile to call an ambulance but to no avail, there was no network coverage. I asked him if his house was near by. He affirmed. We both made headway towards his house.

As soon as I reached his house, I saw the door was slightly open. The old man was walking slowly so he asked me to go ahead and help his wife. As I moved closer and closer, I felt like I was being watched from inside the house. I started to slow down a bit. I turned around to check on the old man but he was no where to be found. It was like he just vanished into thin air. Suddenly I heard a loud shriek of a women. I pushed open the door and started searching for her. I moved into the bedroom where I stood shocked on the sight of two mutilated bodies. It was the old man and his wife. Before I could comprehend what was happening, I felt a strong blow to the back of my head. When I got back my consciousness, I could see that I was bleeding profusely. A guy with a hammer in his hand came closer to my ear and whispered in a bloodcurdling voice “You are my third one today. Thanks for coming by” and gave a wide grin till I bled out.

The next moment I was standing by the same street, crying for help and convincing some guy to save the old man in that house where my murderer was waiting. As the guy went into the house, I disappeared just like the old man had.

If you don’t like this story, please also let me know what you not like in order to improve. But if you like this story you can also check my Medium page ( https://medium.com/@pavanpm ) for more of my works. Thank you and have a great day.

Transcript of [REDACTED] speaking to [REDACTED] church about the contacting of paranormal entities:

[REDACTED]: Hello everyone, everyone has always wanted to contact the dead, haven’t they? I remember buying an Ouija board and trying it for myself in an abandoned factory. The only thing I got out of it was a stuffy nose and some disappointment. Everyone, maybe they were teenagers or younger than that or older than that, has tried to contact the dead; through prayer, through an ouija board, through tarot cards, through crystal balls. Hell, I once heard someone tried to contact the dead by rigging up a motorbike helmet into a lightning rod. It did not end well for that guy, I have to say.

[REDACTED]: What would you say if I told you I had been able to contact the ghosts?

Someone from inside the church: That you were a sinner!

[REDACTED chuckles]

[REDACTED]: Well, there is one way to talk to the dead.

[REDACTED pulled a loaded .44 magnum from his jacket and, before the church would react, shot himself in the head.]

Tony Keller angrily stormed into the Artificial Human Chambers. A tank had been broken open, and pale green liquid and glass shards were everywhere. A "Caution! Wet Floor!" sign had been haphazardly placed in the middle of the mess- almost comically, since the puddle kept growing, spilling into the other rows. The newbie looked worriedly at the large mess, and seeing Keller approach with a furious look on his face did not help his anxiety.

"Williamson! What the hell is THIS?!" Keller screeched.

"U-Um, I think one of them mi-might have gotten out-"

"Well obviously! How did this happen?!"

"I-I don't know..."

"So you weren't watching the surveillance cameras?" Keller inquired, his voice acquiring a deadly tone.

"Well, n-no. It's just... well, they're all in tanks, so I di-didn't think it would hu-hurt to t-take a small nap..."

"Did you hear anything suspicious?"

"I di-did hear some loud thumps, b-but I thought it might've been s-some machinery or someth-thing," Williamson muttered weakly.

Dr. James Higgins walked in, an eerily calm look on his face. "So, it would appear number thirty-nine has escaped," he said in a soft voice.

"Hey smartass," Keller snapped. "I am giving you the funding to do this! If shit hits the fan because if this incident, I WILL NOT BE HAPPY! FIND THAT ARTIFICIAL HUMAN- NOW!

"No need to lose your cool, Keller. But I am intrigued. If he broke out himself, was his intelligence fully developed, or underdeveloped? I'd love to perform a brain scan once we catc-"

"THEN FIND IT ALREADY!"

Keller paced back to his office, now extremely pissed, wondering how the little shit failed at such an easy job. He opened his desk drawer and rummaged around, searching for his aspirins. He stopped cold when a long shard of glass was held up to this throat. He heard a voice half desperate, half vicious mutter, "You're gonna get me out of here." Keller nodded fearfully, reaching for his car keys.

Thirty-nine smirked. "And after that, I'll be needing your clothes."

His eyes opened slowly, as the light was new to him. He was suspended in some sort of green fluid. He looked to his left, then his right, confused. Rows and rows of the same person. He swam close to the glass, and his reflection revealed that his appearance was no different. Why were they here, stuck in tanks? He didn't like this feeling... this feeling of being trapped...

It didn't take long for fury to replace his confusion and half-terror. He didn't want to put up with this imprisonment, and he wasn't going to. Whoever put him in there was going to suffer...

He struck the glass, dislocating two knuckles. The fluid healed them im...

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Tonight’s kind of a catalyst for this post. I just received another message, and it’s worse than any of the others.

My girlfriend died on the 7th of August, 2012. She was involved in a three car collision driving home from work when someone ran a red light. She passed away within minutes on the scene.

We had been dating for five years at that point. She wasn’t big on the idea of marriage (it felt archaic, she said, gave her a weird vibe), but if she had been, I would have married her within three months of our relationship. She was vibrant; the kind of girl that would choose dare every time. She was happiest when camping, but a total technophile too. She always smelled like cinnamon.

That being said, she wasn’t perfect. She always said something along the lines of, “If I kark it first, don’t just say good things about me. I’ve never liked that. If you don’t pay me out, you’re doing me a disservice. I’ve got so many flaws, and that’s just part of me.” So, this is for Em: the music she said she liked and the music she actually liked were very different. Her idea of affection was a side-hug. She had really long toes, like a chimpanzee.

I know that’s tangential, but I don’t feel right discussing her without you having an idea of what she was like.

Onto the meat. Em had been dead for approaching thirteen months when she first messaged me.

September 4, 2013. This is when it began. I had left Emily’s Facebook account activated so I could send her the occasional message, post on her wall, go through her albums. It felt too final (and too un-Emily) to memorialise it. I ‘share’ access with her mother (Susan) - meaning, her mother has her login and password and has spent a total of approximately three minutes on the website (or on a computer, total). After a little confusion, I assumed it was her.

November 16th, 2013. I had received confirmation from Susan that she hadn’t logged in to Em’s Facebook since the week of her death. Em knew a lot of people, so I instantly assumed this was one of her more tech savvy ‘friends’ fucking with me in the worst possible way.

I noticed pretty much immediately that whoever was chatting with me was recycling old messages from Em and my’s shared chat history.

The ‘the wheels on the bus' comment was from when we were discussing songs to play on a road trip that never eventuated. ‘hello’ happened a million times.

Around February 2014, Emily started tagging herself in my photos. I would get notifications for them, but the tag would generally always be removed by the time I got to it. The first time I actually caught one, it felt like someone had punched me in the gut. ‘She’ would tag herself in spaces where it was plausible for her to be, or where she would usually hang out. I’ve got screenshots of two (from April and June; these are the only ones I’ve caught, so they’re a little out of the timeline I’m trying to write out):

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My grandmother told me that it was a gift to see the angel of death in front of people's houses, to know that he'd be collecting someone there soon. I thought it was a gift too, up until the day I began to see it in front of every house.

Let me tell you something about jellyfish.
A typical jellyfish goes through four stages in life: it starts out as a floating larvae, which looks for a suitable site to evolve into a polyp, which then eventually strobilates into a medusa, or, the form of the jellyfish we are most familiar with. Strobilation means that the polyp pushes off a part of itself that becomes a 'medusa'.

Now, if that isn’t fascinating enough for you, there are also a species of jellyfish that can revert their medusa form back to the polyp stage, which then again creates a medusa, which can revert to a polyp and so on.

Basically, this type of jellyfish is immortal.

As you probably can imagine, modern medical science is very much interested in this species. Very much indeed. I should know, because, well, let’s just say I have a ‘friend’ that used to experiment with this specific jellyfish exactly for that reason.

My ‘friend’ is a synthetic biologist, meaning he knows all about genes and how to manipulate, reproduce or alter them. So needless to say, when he got invited to join a project that gave him all the time and resources to truly study these creatures, he didn’t need to be asked twice. And it shames him to say that even had he known in advance the terrible things he and his team would do, he might still have gone through with it. As we all know, for some men of science the results are more important than the costs.

It started out innocently. The pharmaceutical company paying for the operation stayed out of it, and he had a lovely laboratory filled with all the equipment and assistants he could possibly need. Microscopes, separation centrifuges, a powerful analytic computer and of course state-of-the-art tanks with all the climate controlling options necessary. Months went by while he happily did his research, studying the jellyfish in its various stages. Analyzing its genetic structure, doing tests, basically practicing good, honest science.

Then he isolated a couple of genes that might be of use. Genes controlling rejuvenation and transformation of the species. And of course, that’s when things went bad.

It started with the new tanks coming in. Their shape and size had nothing to do with jellyfish. Then the assistants he had grown to like and trust all got fired one by one. New assistants came in, but they seemed cold, distant. Oh, they’d do what he’d tell them, but there was no friendly banter, no jokes, just cold professionalism. Then came the semen. And the ova. Human semen and ova. And he knew what was expected of him. He went to work.


Changes were made to the laboratory while he worked. One part was cleared and a glass room build into it, outfitted with a bed, a table, a television, one of the new tanks and something that could only be an echoscope machine.

One day, an employee of the undisclosed pharmaceutical company walked in. "Are you ready?" He asked. My friend knew what...

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After spending the whole weekend in the heat of northern Louisiana, Larry got mosquito-bitten from head to toe. He was scratching himself the whole drive home.

When he got back to his house that night, he unpacked, rubbed some AfterBite around his neck (the itch was the worst there) and tried to go sleep. The AfterBite seemed to only make it worse and he was awake the rest of the night scratching himself until the bites started bleeding.

The next morning came, and Larry tried to tiredly get himself ready for work, even after not being able to get any sleep. He had scratched himself so much that his neck had multiple little spots of blood where his bites were.

On his walk to work, the itch got worse. He screamed in irritation as he scratched his neck. People walking past him constantly asked if he was okay. He could barely hear them over his scratching.

The itch got so irritating, and right before Larry got to work, he scratched so hard that he ripped his carotid artery in half. Blood spilled onto the sidewalk as he collapsed. A woman passing by dialed 9-1-1 as he lay there, pressing the side of his neck.

Larry died just before the ambulance got there. He was laying there on the sidewalk, surrounded by a crowd of people.

One of the paramedics slapped the side of his neck as Larry was lifted onto the stretcher. "Ow! Damn mosquitoes!"

It started with a small itch. If I recall correctly, it was on my left shoulder. I would find myself scratching at it several times a day. So much so, that at the end of the work day, I'd come home to find my shoulder a reddish hue. It was at this point that I decided to try an anti-itch cream. It was to no avail. I'm not sure how many creams I tried. For a while, my whole bedside table was full of half-empty lotions. While my cream collection was growing, so was my itch. It got increasingly worse each day. It began spreading from my shoulder to my middle and lower back. It wrapped around my waist and engulfed my arms and legs.

Itch, itch, itch. Scratch, scratch, scratch. My body was sore from all the tearing at my skin by my fingernails. Dried blood and skin caked my fingernails. There was no point in washing it out, it'd build back up in an hour or so. Between scratching, I noticed that little sores began to develop in spots on my body. One on my leg, my waistline, and of course, there was a festering sore on the origin of the itch, my grotesque left shoulder. Despite the harm I was causing myself, I couldn't stop from scratching my skin. The itching sensation was maddening, and mad I was.

I was fired from my job after being unable to work due to the constant scratching. I had no contact with my friends and family because of the disturbed and disgusting state my body was in. I was left to sit away in my house scratching away the time. My life revolved around the itch... the never-ending itch. Prior to my isolation, my family insisted I be taken to a doctor. I obliged and visited my regular physician.

All he did for me was prescribe a heavy-duty anti-itch cream that had no effect and ended up joining my collection of lotion bottles. It seemed that my inescapable fate was to die from the itch. To die, sitting on my blood-stained rug in the middle of my foul-smelling house (for I hadn't cleaned in weeks).

I noticed one day while digging my nails into my arm that my wound was surprisingly deep. I saw a glint beneath the deteriorating flesh. I lifted a flap of my infected muscle to reveal a white bone. I couldn't sense any pain. My wounds did not sting, my exposed bone and the surrounding muscle did not ache with the excruciating pain that was to be expected in a situation like this. Pick, pick, pick.

My index finger scratched around the bone, picking away the muscle to reveal more and more of my arm support. I pulled away for a brief moment to scratch at the wound on my forehead, when I saw an ant crawling across my bone. I flicked it off and went back to my forehead. When I looked back, four more ants were crawling along my bloody flesh. It was an odd sensation... it itched.

I brushed the ants off and looked around for the source. I saw no infiltration of the insects in my home so I took a seat on my couch to continue my impulsive habit. I glanced down at my arm just in time to see ...

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