• -_What Can I Do?

    -_“At midnight on your seventeenth birthday, you will get a dream. In it, someone will ask you a rhyme:

    “Would you love or would you hate,
    To control all others’ fate?
    To live forever or to die,
    To be okay; to never cry?
    Or find yourself among the normal,
    And consider yourself average mortal?

    -_”You must answer like this: I would hate it, I will die, I will be normal; among the mortal.” He informed me gravely, “It’s the only way. I know for sure; I had three daughters like you.”
    -_“Only three?” I asked, “Then how do you know it’s the only way?”
    -_“Annabelle, Linda, and Anne were their names, Annabelle didn’t know anything about it, so she responded ‘I would love it, I won’t die, I won’t be normal; among the mortal.’ Needless to say, she became a vampire.
    -_“I warned Linda, telling her I knew nothing about it and she would have to save herself, in her dream she recited what I told you. She died at the age of 96 thirty years ago. Natural causes.” He told me, but he seemed hesitant to talk about Ann.
    -_“And what about Ann?” I prodded.
    -_He hesitated a split-second, then continued, “Anne. . . listened, but she was like you, not sure it was the only way, and so she said something slightly different and woke up immediately; vampires can’t sleep.”
    -_Nikki ran through the door just then shouting, “We won, we won, we won! One more win and my team’s headed to the playoffs!”

    * * *

    -_I woke up at 2:31 in the morning, having nightmares of slaughtering my family. I got up and went to the window. I thought I saw the shadow of a person. I rubbed my eyes. It was still there.