Hunger (working title)

1

"Butterfly leg," he cursed viciously, "I'll have to wear just jeans and no underwear after work again."

"So, honey, can I bring you some tissues?" she said, playfully laughing.

"It's too late, thank you honey, you're the most wonderful and sexiest woman I've ever met." As he spoke, he felt something sticky trickle down his knee, and he began to think that he would have to take a bath soon, because dogs would bark after him in the street. Mariszka leaned against his strong shoulders, snuggled into his sweaty undershirt, and said with tears in her eyes:

"You..."

But then he woke up and once again didn't hear his beloved's words. The crypt was impenetrably dark and damp. Tears welled in his eyes at the thought of his former life and the loved ones he had left behind after being bitten by a vampire bat.

"Marishka, Marisha... I'll never see or hear you again, I'll miss you so much." Then he remembered what had happened, the moment after he transformed into the monster he had become. Marisha had arrived just as his long teeth first grew and membranous wings sprouted from his arms. Terrified, she stood leaning against the wall, and a scream caught in her throat. He was just as terrified as she was, but besides her fear, he could also feel her beating heart, pumping liters of hot blood. He wanted to tell her to calm down, to hug her and comfort her, but as soon as he got close, he felt very strange, even uneasy. The last thing he remembered from that evening was his beloved's body on the floor, everything covered in her blood. The strange wings and fangs disappeared, but in his gut he felt a terrible burning, slightly extinguished by his latest victim. As soon as the last vestiges of human emotion reached his consciousness, he fell to his knees and, clinging to his dead fiancée, screamed for who knows how long. Then he fell unconscious, and when he awoke, his beloved lay where he had left her. He heard his faithful dog, Kujon, scratching at the door. Standing, he looked into Mariszka's glassy eyes, frozen with terror. He suddenly felt uneasy as he saw a reflection that wasn't his own.

2.

Drip... Drip..., that damn drip, drip. The sun is shining outside, a beautiful May afternoon, and I have to lie here motionless, listening to that damn drip, drip...

3.

While I was asleep, fangs sank into my lower and upper jaw. Fortunately, it didn't hurt, but I drank about two liters of my own blood. I vomited for a long time.

4 .

Since yesterday, I have a new, practically old friend. He watched me for a long time, clumsily hidden behind the curtain. Then he forced himself and slowly shuffled towards me, glancing in my direction warily. I didn't think individuals of the same blood could be so repulsive, but oh well, my new companion in misfortune might be useful someday. As long as he doesn't bring trouble to my coffin. I just thought I'd have to take him for a walk too. Kujon used to be an Alsatian, but now that he's twice as big, his mouth has grown enormously, and he's sprouted clumsy wings on his back. Taking him for a walk will probably be a problem, not for me or him, of course, but for everyone else. It was all my fault, after all, because I didn't kill him after drinking his last drop of blood. I wanted to spare him; he was my friend, and he used to almost always sleep in my bed. When I transformed, I was afraid he'd attack me, but nothing like that...

At night, whenever I woke up, I'd quietly sneak out and put the last of his food in his bowl, then escape to my room before he woke up. Everything was fine until I forgot to close the door. He quietly lay down at my feet and fell asleep, as he always did. A good old dog, how could he have known that his owner would grant him ghostly immortality? While I was sleeping, I dreamed I was eating something delicious, heavenly. It was dog blood, and I only woke up when I had a dried bundle of hairs from the large dog in my hands.

I only remember cursing viciously and clinging to the remains of my only friend. I fell asleep, my terrible hunger having been satisfied. Everyone must have watched "Interview with the Vampire," in which "poor" Brad Pitt eats only rats and other carrion, refusing to kill anyone. I had already passed that stage; in Libya, I had to kill not for pleasure but out of duty. I was sent, like many others, to bring "democracy and freedom," and it ended with a massacre of civilians, followed by an evacuation in my underwear, an insult to the soldier's dignity. Fortunately, the unified African forces returned the wounded and the remains of our fallen comrades to us for a relatively small ransom. For weeks, I waited with others in a POW camp for the end of hostilities, and while our "tormentors" spared us water and food, hunger and thirst were my curse, and the curse of others. Sometimes, as evening approached, we and the others would check who was still barely alive and, in this madness, try not to lose any moisture from our former companions in misery and fortune. It was a veritable hell on earth, but thanks to such cruel practices, only about one-fifth of the 10,000 "prisoners" of war perished in captivity. Well, we were the aggressors, along with our American "brothers," who, seeing the inevitable defeat, fled faster than the law allowed, incidentally, or rather deliberately, depriving us of any means of transportation for evacuation.

As I mentioned, this ill-conceived aggression and its consequences caused most of our boys, like me, to taste the blood of their brothers. I don't know how it happened, but the shock and drama of those moments meant that no one but us—the victims—found out about that tragedy. Neither our family nor the press, much less the command in Poland, learned of these practices. The presence of dried and mutilated corpses was attributed to animal activity and the desert climate, and some superstitious people blamed the desert demon, the Great Juju, for everything. Our chaplain claimed Juju had nothing to do with it until he drew the short straw and learned the truth.

As I mentioned earlier, I became a vampire before that damn bat bit me. I don't even know where it came from, because I had mosquito nets on my windows and all the air vents had grilles.

(The Great Juju cursed me, and I temporarily lost my creative inspiration. Haha.)