The Ultimate Vampire Resource and Directory

(For all you clueless people out there Shinku means Crimson)



I watch the blood drip from my fingertips onto the carpet. It's a white carpet; the blood will stain it. But that doesn't matter. No one comes into this room anyway. And if anyone did it's not like they'd care that I was bleeding.



The cuts on my arms are long but shallow. The knife did not cut deep. I want to hurt, not to die.



Four wounds. Four long slashes from my elbow to my wrist. One on each side; top, bottom, left, right. Each symbolizing pain. My pain. The pain of my past. The pain of my present. The pain of my future.



The pain of what can never be.



My arm hangs limply down at my side. It's almost hypnotic, the way the blood flows smoothly down my arm, the way it falls onto the pristine ivory carpet. Unlike in books or movies, it doesn't make a 'drip, drip, drip' noise when it falls from my fingers or when it hits the floor. No noise when it becomes a droplet of blood, hanging precariously off the end of a finger. No noise when it loses the battle with gravity and speeds towards the floor. And only a faint, barely audible thud when it hits the white carpet, like the sound of something running into a wall from the distance. No 'drip' sound.



The blood spreads out when it hits, extending to stain as much of the carpet as possible. It reminds me of most of the people I've met, all of them trying to taint me, change me. Stain me. But I'm like a black carpet. You can't really see the bloodstain, but its there all the same. Only if you look really, really close and really, really hard will you notice it. And no one cares enough to check if there's a bloodstain. Out of sight, out of mind.



Unless, of course, you know the stain is there. Then you see it, feel it, even though you don't want to. It haunts you.



My arm is starting to go numb, but still the blood stains. Flows and falls and stains. Never ending.



I don't know why I haven't killed myself yet. Or 'committed suicide', as most prefer to call it. Toughen up, people, and call it what it is: Death by choice.



But I don't know why I haven't killed myself. Maybe a part of it is my brother, the knowledge that he needs me. I need to be needed. Everyone needs to be needed, at some point in your life, or else you go crazy with despair and a sense of uselessness. Maybe that's why I hadn't sliced my wrist open instead of my arm. But really, I think a lot of it is my stubbornness. I refuse to give up, refuse to lose, refuse to let everyone who ever hurt me to have the last laugh and dance on my grave. I'm absolutely determined to inkinokoru. It means to live after a disaster. I won't let the demons take me, and I've got a trump card: Survival instinct.



Everyone has it, but the difference is that I know how to use it, and use it well. I shut down everything but the most basic instinct. I lose myself, becoming nearly animalistic except that I am a human. I have only one goal, all the same; Survive. And I will.



For a few more moments, I watch the blood collect on my fingertips, then fall, one by one. I pull a white bandage from my pocket, wrapping it tightly around my arm. Blood soaks through, staining the once-pure cloth like people stained my once pure soul.



The remaining blood drips from my fingertips.



It's crimson.