I wake up early even though it's Sunday, and I'm at my great-great-granduncle's mansion, and in my own crypt, and he has already gone hunting for the day. Its probably the way the cold moonlight sends its mist across my legs, the way the room is still full of afternoon refracted sunlight but I'm protected by my heavy coffin, the way I can howl and turn over and howl again.

I walk to the bathroom, and sit underneath the rusted showerhead, aware that there is a possibility that water can dissolve my undead flesh, spirits, I've missed the feeling of water, blessed holy but melting water. I can not feel it on my face, on my back, on my legs, I can not repeat the sensation. A cape (with a cowl to be precise), chill from the crypt.

Breakfast, rustle something up from the peasant village below. I open the shutters of the windows and let the white moon pour in, the balcony and misshapen trees glowing with winter's unnatural moonlight. The neck is warm beneath my fangs, blood, ichor and the peasant's last dying breath. Coming home always makes me feel like an old fashioned-breakfast. The mansion creaks as I open the shutters, letting in the moonlight and the chill.

I have my wings, I'm going to go SOMEWHERE, no way I am staying inside on a glorious october night, crisp and clear and cold in the moonlight and chilled in the shade, black and sky and darkness. Fly a little aimlessly, find myself at one of the dismal forests nearby, deserted at 10:00 p.m. in Autumn.

I'm not dressed for this, flying; in fact, I'm not really dressed for any mortal activities, I only have my ancestral cape and the old boots but the rocks! and trees! and the air and the way the stream moves swift and clear as blood in a jugular vein near the hiking trail and oh! I'm off and moving.

I've climbed this trail once before, lifetimes ago, when I was a mortal. It's less recognizable through my paranormal eyes, when I get to the halfway mark the cold ichor is pounding underneath my alabaster skin. I stand on the rocky outcrop and take in the sight of my castles, the villages, the countryside spread out beneath me. Moments, really, then I feel the need to move up and on, leaping with unholy precision from crag to crag, I left the trail somewhere and I'm climbing up the side of the hill like some type of common fleshy animal.

I could fall and hurt myself, no one would know, since the eldritch energies in my body would repair me in minutes. I could get lost (but not really, since my eyes see like the eyes of a wolf) and no one would know where I was, unless they traced the trail of brimstone stench that my infernal passing had left from my castle. I could reach the top of the world and share the triumph with myself, alone in clear moonlight and darkness.

I do, and stand there without breathing, face pale from the effortless of my undead muscles and cold with unlife, tingling with a cursed and lifeless existence and thrill and power and me. Just me, the great cursed vampire.

I take my time going back down.

Necronodecon: The 2008 Halloween Horrorquest