The Ultimate Vampire Resource and Directory

The girl ran fast and hard, adrenaline coursing through her veins as she charged down the empty streets. Fear washed over her in chilling waves. Her dark hair whipped around her face in the wind.

Then she saw the branches of the tall yew tree reaching over the high stone wall to her left and knew she was almost to safety. Not daring to turn around, she squeezed through a gap in the tall iron gates that were the entrance to the cemetery. Then, standing completely still with her back pressed against the wall, Andrea waited.

It wasn't until she heard the many footsteps of her pursuers fading, and exhaled slowly, that Andrea realized she had been holding her breath. Sinking to the ground with her head in her hands, she closed her eyes.

"Why?" she thought, "Why do these people have to make my life hell? Just because I'm different."

Thinking that made her feel like crying. She felt like crying for everyone who could never fit in. Everyone who had ever been laughed at and tormented simply because of the clothes they wore, how they styled their hair or what kind of music they listened to. She wanted to cry for all these people who were just like her, but she didn't get the chance.

Just as her face was getting hot and her eyes started stinging, Andrea heard a sound that made her sit bolt upright. She heard the footsteps and voices coming back. They must have realized that she had turned somewhere. They would find the cemetery gates, she was sure, but there was nowhere to run. The gates were the only way in or out of this place. Frantically, she looked for an escape route, or at least somewhere to hide, but there was nowhere.

That was when she saw the yew tree for the second time and again connected its fully-leafed branches with safety. Without pausing to think, Andrea sprinted to the tree and began to climb.

When she was roughly six feet off the ground, she saw the first of the teenagers slipping through the gates. Terrified, she climbed higher and higher until she was level with the top of the wall. Slowly, carefully, she edged along the branch and looked down onto the street below.

Just as she decided it was too high to even consider jumping, she heard an ominous creak and knew what was about to happen. Before she had time to react... SNAP! The branch gave way beneath her and she was falling.

Andrea hit the ground with a dull thud and a few more snaps that weren't the branch. Her head made contact with the hard pavement, pain shot through every part of her body, her vision blurred and Andrea's world went black.

"Dying while trying to escape a graveyard. How ironic," she thought.

Then, "I'm dying! I can't die. I haven't lived yet." but even as the thought came into her mind, she knew that it wasn't true.

She had lived. She had lived a lot longer than many sick people could ever hope to. But it wasn't so much her age that mattered - alway, she had been herself, whatever the cost. No matter how much it hurt her socially, she had never given in to conformity.

It was this that made her realize, as she drew what she knew to be her final breath, that she had lived her life her own way - no one else's. She had lived her life in a way that would ensure that for many years she would remain never forgotten.