All the Lonely People

Feeling her presence as she neared allowed Jake to track her movements. Stopping for small talk with friends, he could hear what she talked about and listened in as she flirted with one guy or another.

As she made her way closer to the bar, his hunger grew. Soon Jake knew he would be satisfied with his cravings and could go back to being his normal for a while longer. Until the cravings returned and forced him to hunt again.

Once again, Jake cursed the one that made him that way. The memories of that night still made him angry. Working later than Jake expected, he exited into the torch lit night.

Not minding the mile walk, Jake exited into the night. The temperature alone should have driven him back inside, it was a quarter to three in the morning and easily over eighty degrees, a humid eighty at that.

With youth comes a sense of invincibility, and in my twenty-seven years of life experience up to that point, had told him he was young, fit, and in no danger. The years since, have taught him differently.

Too late.

Then a shape emerged from the shadows.

Before Jake could react, the shape grabbed him and twirled him around. Jake felt paralyzed in fear, or was it the hypnotic unearthly glow of his silver-blue eyes?

Panicking when Jake saw him hiss, it was not from the action, but from the fangs that he now displayed.

“This is not happening to me!” , Jake’s mind screamed in stark terror and disbelief.

Before he could even begin to mount a struggle, he pulled close and the beast lowered its head to his neck. Its fangs sank into Jake’s skin and his blood seemed to burn as it quickly oozed out and was sucked up by the creature’s eager tongue.

The tongue reminding Jake of a cat’s, the sandpapery feel as it greedily stole his life. Jake tried to struggle but found it hard to move his body.

To this day Jake could still feel the sensations of his life slowly draining away. He remembered preparing myself to meet God, reciting the Lord’s Prayer.

Strangely appropriate, Jake thought and began laughing softly to himself.

“After all,” he thought, ” I am in the shadow of death. I do fear evil; it was standing right there taking my life.”

Suddenly the creature stopped and looked around startled. Confused and weak, Jake was slowly able to hear the sounds of something or someone approaching. Hurriedly, the creature dropped Jake’s nearly lifeless body to the ground and disappeared into the shadows just as quickly as it came.

That had been his saving grace and punishment to purgatory all in one. The creature did not have the time to finish the job, and so Jake was in this bar, quenching his immortal thirst.

Jake Mackenzie shook those thoughts and memories from his mind. Now was not the time to dwell on such things.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.