Vampires

"Mushroom ravioli." I repeated looking at the menu, finally finding it and reading the description. "Yum." When I heard him say he wasn't hungry I looked up and bit my lip. "I'm the only one eating?" I felt kind of awkward. I looked back at the menu and finally decided that I would get the ravioli. I set my menu down and looked at him again, still a bit uncomfortable that I was going to be the only one eating.

(Psst chatbox)

I was able to sense her discomfort easily. It wasn't the first time someone got uncomfortable when I left them to eat alone. "Sorry," I chuckled. "I hate it when people do that to me, too. I thought I was hungry, but I'm not anymore." I shrugged. The waiter came back and asked us for drinks. "A coke, for me." I said quietly, then looked at Ivy patiently. I did my best to sneak in a breath so that I could talk without sounding odd, but the air burned like acid on the way in. The waiter was much too close. I leaned away inconspicuously and smiled at Ivy, still waiting.

"I'll have the mushroom ravioli and water please." I said tot he waiter after Noah asked for his coke. "Glad to know I'm not the only one. It's pretty awkward to be the only one eating." I laughed lightly and shrugged. "It's fine." I glanced out the window at the incoming clouds, it looked like rain. I bit my lip, I hadn't brought an umbrella. Well that should be a fun walk home. I thought sarcastically.

I smiled politely at the waiter as he wrote down we asked for, and then disappeared to the back of the restaurant. I crossed my arms on the table and turned my eyes back to Ivy. "So... What about you? Are you still in high school, college, in between?..." I asked curiously, trying to shake off the awkward feeling that had crept it's way in between us. I had to remind myself to blink, and shift every so often. It was far too easy to sit inhumanly still, and although they didn't particularly notice the blinking and fidgeting, they do notice when you sit or stand as still as a statue.

"I'm in my last year of highschool." I answered with a smile. I looked out the window and watched a few people walk by, then I looked back at him and bit the inside of my cheek wondering what to say. "Do you have any hobbies?" I asked randomly and laughed internally at my lame small talk. I really needed a book on 'how-to-talk-to-people-you've-just-met'. I rolled my eyes at myself and tried to think of other things we could talk about, while I waited for his response.

I had to think about her question for a little over a second, trying to recall anything I did that might be considered a hobby. "Hobbies?... Not that I can think of. Unless you would consider reading a hobby." I chuckled, leaning back in my seat as the waiter returned with her dish. "No paper mâché or clay figurines or anything, though. No." I pulled my soda toward me and dropped a straw in, but just left it there, "What about you? Any hobbies or intriguing talents?" I tilted my head a bit to the side, grinning as I waited for a reply.

I laughed lightly. "I think it's safe to consider reading a hobby, because I do a lot of it." I smiled. I then thought for a moment. "Well, I do a lot of horseback riding on my spare time, and I love photography." I said. "Those ware my two main hobbies." I leaned back and glanced towards the kitchen waiting for the waiter to come back. I looked back at him and found myself staring. I quickly looked away and blushed a little. Wow, Ivy.. Wow. I rolled my eyes at myself again.

I smiled in response to her answer. "Those are excellent hobbies." I said honestly. Horse back riding seemed fun, though I'd never done it. Animals didn't tend to come within a mile of me. And getting on a horse would just be a death wish... for the horse.
I was about to ask another question when I heard a high pitched noise, the frequency that cell phones let off just before the ringer started. "Phone." I smiled politely, a split second before the music set off, coming from her bag. I leaned back and stirred my soda slowly with the straw. Unappetizing, I idly thought again.

I smiled and nodded and looked at him oddly when he insinuated that my phone was going to go off. What is he tal- I was cut off as my ring tone filled the silence around us. "How did...How.." Lucky guess probably, he had been a split second early, odd. I rummaged around in my purse and pulled out my phone. "I have to take this." I said as I stood up and walked towards a corner of the restaurant where there were no people. "Hey Jess, What's up?" I asked, Jess was my sister.

"Mark just dumped me." She said through a sob.

"WHAT?" I yelled into the phone, earning a few glares from people. I lowered my voice. "What do you mean he dumped you?" I demanded. The idea that Mark, her boyfriend of 4 years, had just dumped her was impossible. They were perfect together, and he had said he was going to propose this summer. I felt so angry and sad at the moment that I didn't know what to do.

"He was cheating on me Ivy." She sobbed. I felt my stomach clench together inside of me. I was so mad. "Hang on Jess, I'll be there soon!" I said and hung up. I walked to the table just as the waiter arrived with my food. I uneasily shifted from foot to foot. "I'm really sorry.... My sister.. She.. she needs me." I said and bit my lip, looking at him sadly, sad that I had to go, and sad that my sister was going through this. It was horrible. I felt bad that I had to leave so soon.

I was able to listen to the conversation on the phone fairly easily, despite the fact that she was across the restaurant. I smiled when she returned, shaking my head a bit. "No, don't worry about it. I should go anyways." I stood and pulled a twenty out of my wallet, leaving it on the table. "Good luck with your sister, I hope everything is alright." I added as I shrugged into my jacket. I put my book under my arm and reached out to sake her hand. "It was lovely having a sort-of lunch with you, Ivy. Maybe I'll see you around." I smiled widely.

"Okay, I'm sorry again." I apologized then smiled at him. I shook his hand. "It was lovely having a sort-of lunch with you too, Noah." I said and nodded. "Thank you!" I said as I turned and waved, heading towards the door at a medium fast speed. When I got outside I glanced around and spotted a taxi headed in my direction. The town was small, but not so small that it didn't even have 5 taxi's that ran around. After all the residential area outside of town was large, and people tended to get lost. I hailed the cab and jumped in, giving him my sisters address.

I grinned at the girl once more and waved goodbye as she hurried out the restaurant, pausing for a moment to hail a cab. I weaved through people and table in the restaurant and walked out the door just as she was climbing into the back seat of the cab. The cab went right, and I went left, toward my neighborhood. Walking down the bleached sidewalk, I quickly became impatient with human pace. An understandable reason that I kept myself in solitude most of the time; sometimes it was hard to pretend. Walk a little slower, react a little more sluggishly. Attempt to walk sloppily, though there was still somehow a grace that caught people's eye. Of course the pale skin in the heart of California was a pain to explain, and the color of my irises surfaced questions in those brave enough to ask. Aside from being annoyed by the fraudulent feel of it all, there was also the fact that nearly every human seemed to have a natural instinct to stay away. Alienation, though it didn't bother me as much as faking my wellbeing, produced loneliness from time to time. Although I pondered for much of the walk through the town, it dragged on just as slowly. My mind was complex, advanced. I could focus on so much more than one thing at a time. Especially how long it seemed to be taking for me to get somewhere that I could run. However, I eventually came to the edge of the forest. I briefly made sure nobody was watching before slinking into the thick brush, and as soon as I knew I was completely alone, I began dashing through the forest. Without so much as getting brushed by a twig of a grass stain on my clothes, I arrived in the forest behind my home in less than a minute. Five miles that had taken me a little over an hour earlier, cleared in the time it took to drink a glass of water. I smiled loosely as I jogged lithely up the stairs to my condo.

[SKIP TWO WEEKS]

I sighed as I sauntered down the street. The past two weeks I had been babying my older sister and helping her get back on track. She had Been moping most of the time till I finally dragged her out of bed a week ago and too her out to get a mani pedi, and a new outfit. Yes, it was girly, but it was what made her happy. We had decided to go ice skating that same day and she ended up, literally running into one of her old friends from college, Joseph, Joey for short. They had it it off quite well and were now going steady. I was glad that all of that was over with and that I was finally free.

My phone vibrated in my pocket and I fished it out and flipped it open, bringing it up to my ear. "Hello?" I said into the receiver.

"Oh my gosh IVY! You won't believe it! There is a Masquerade this Saturday and I'm going with Josh, you should totally come with Jess and her boyfriend!" Gushed the familiar voice on the other end.

"Whoa Katie! Slow down!" I laughed. "What time is the party at?" I asked.

"It's from Ten to Two AM." She said. "Josh just got a new car, and it's huge, he can take all of us there!" She gushed.

I smiled and laughed. "Okay, as long as you go shopping for a gown with me I'm going." I said.

"You betcha!" She said happily. "I'll see you tomorrow at Two o'clock sharp!"

-Two weeks later.


It was nighttime, and I was hunting. Naturally. I preferred to do it at night, as much more animals would come out and that made it easier for me. The mule deer were plentiful in the National Park, and black bears also lurked around almost every corner. Tourists didn't generally see them, as they knew where most of the traffic was. But I didn't exactly follow trails, nor smell the same. I knew every place that the bears would hide. Of course, it wasn't my goal to devastate the population of bears. So occasionally I would go after the mountain lions of coyotes, which weren't awfully common, but they kept up their lives there easily enough.
That particular night, I had hunted the deer. It wasn't a favorite of mine, the wet musky smell of it's course fur took away from the meal. Still, after two bucks, my thirst was as muted as it was ever going to be on this diet. I left the forest, just as clean as when I had walked in, and found myself in the middle of an RV park, stuffed with tourists. An eager, curvy girl with bouncy brown hair jogged up to me, either very brave or unintelligent. She smiled widely, and the smile never faltered as she burst into a description of a masquerade dance. She held a pile of flyers against her chest as she spilled her guts to me, the random man who had walked out of the forest.
"—Okay, so, imagine you're in the park at night. It's warm out, but not too warm. I mean, just right. And there's beautiful live music playing in the background, you're surrounded by women in beautiful gowns and men in sharp tuxes. And you're with the one you love the most, I mean, your soulmate. This girl is the apple of your eye!—" She squealed excitedly, and I put a finger up to shush her.
"Without the intro?" I asked, smirking just a little bit out of amusement. But something she said had stabbed me just a little bit in the chest...
"Sorry! Right, uhm. Okay, I mean. I'm new to this. So excuse me if I'm, like... really excited. Sorry!" She squeaked again, and I lifted an eyebrow. "Oh, right! Well. There's this masquerade that is being held, by the lake. To the left of it? Like, near that shelter. That's where the food will be. But it's fifty dollars per ticket, masks are required. And, well. Oh, look at the flyer! Here, take some! Plenty for all your friends." She beamed as she stuffed four flyers into my hands. "I hope you'll come! It's going to be awesome." And so, before she could launch into another gut-spilling monologue, I politely told her thanks and turned around. She didn't seem bothered by the fact that I randomly came out of the forest, not an RV, nor that I was going back into the forest. Regardless, I tucked the flyers into my coat and left them there until I got home. Once there, I analyzed the event and started thinking about something crazy. Going. I'd been lonely lately, and clearly asking a random person to lunch wasn't the way to go. I must've frightened that poor girl. I pushed the thought aside and scrutinized the flyer a little more before setting it on top of my desk, and deciding that I would go.

I smiled as Katie stood behind me tightening the corset of my dress, not too tight though, this wasn't the olden days when not being able to breath was in style. Since my dress was a strapless dress it had to be tight enough to stay up on it's own though. I stared at myself in the mirror. The corset ended right at my waist and then the skirt fell elegantly around my legs, and only the tip of my open toed high heels peeked out. I had red lipstick on, light pink blush, black smokey eyes, my nails were painted red, and my hair was pulled up elegantly. I had gotten a tan these first weeks of summer from working with the horses outside at the local stable, so the red complimented my tan nicely along with my dark hair. I stared at myself, barely recognizing the person staring back. I had never been so dressed up before. I wanted to get something a little less extravagant, but Katie and I had been in a thrift shop and she dug around in some clothes and found this, practically brand new gown, the only thing wrong with it was that it had a stain on the back, and there was a rip at the bottom seem. But my sister, who knows it all, managed to get the stain out and sew up the tear. The dress was like new. We had also found a beautiful mask to go with it that matched the lace on my shoes and the little bit that was on my corset and the lace hooked gloves I was wearing.

I pulled on my long black trench coat when Katie finished tightening the back of my dress and gazed at myself in the mirror once again. I adjusted the fake rose that was on my neck and bit my lip.

"If you ruin your lipstick by biting your lip, I swear I will wipe it all off!" Katie hissed from the bathroom.

I giggled and nodded. "Yes ma'am!" I touched my hair one last time then strapped on my lace mask, tying a neat bow in the back. "Hurry up Katie! Josh will be here any second to pik us up!"

I won't lie and say that I didn't feel silly. If that bubbly girl in the park had known that I had no friends anymore, and that my significant other had been gone out of my life for a long time, she probably wouldn't have invited me. What was I expecting to do, dance with somebody? I had a pair of leather gloves on, just in case, that neatly clung to my fingers. But I was still unsure of the idea.
I stepped up to the mirror in my home and looked over myself. A silky black pair of dress pants with a white cotton shirt, scarlet red vest and a matching red hankie tucked into the pocket of my jacket. I put on a pair of black, leather dress shoes, and at last, tucked the black zorro-style mask into my pocket. I made sure my hair was acceptable, with a subtle amount of gel, and then I gathered my keys and walked to my car. I'd spent a fortune on it, but it was worth it. A black 2010 mustang shelby gt500. My baby. The interior was tan leather, spotless, as always. I shut the door behind me and turned the key in the ignition, pulling out of my driveway. It would be faster for me to run, even if I drove fast. But there was no need to start being weird with my entrance. People would notice somebody coming from the woods, and leaving through them.

Exactly like this, with small trees around it, but the only difference is it's surrounded by a forest, that looks mysterious but beautiful at the same time.. Muahaha xD

The trees look like this.

These kinds of lights are hanging everywhere else

I arrived in the parking lot a few minutes after departing from my house. I parked back away from most of the cars, as I usually did, not to have any awful drivers ruin the paint job. I had plenty of money, but that didn't mean I liked to waste it. I cut the engine on my car and pulled the mask to my face, tying the wide ribbon on the back of my head. For the thousandth time, I rethought what I was doing. And again, for the thousandth time, I found some petty reason to justify it and went ahead anyways.
I tucked my keys into my pocket and left my car, walking across the somber parking lot. There were a few couples and one group also drifting through the parking lot, under yellowy streetlights, toward the lit trail through the patch of woods. I smiled at a few of them, but let myself fall behind the majority. I walked slowly along the silky red fabric, meant as a carpet, laid out on the forest floor. Once through the trail, weaved with twinkling lights and streamers, I came into the large clearing, filled with people. I handed a fifty to the man at the entrance, after waiting patiently behind the people I'd fallen behind, and dropped the small ticket into my pocket, next to my keys.
I stared around the area, everywhere from the lit dock to the glowing gazebo, as I walked slowly through the groups of people. I took in a deep breath, testing myself, and was pleased to find that it wasn't quite as painful as I'd feared. I was suddenly thankful that I'd gone and hunted just hours before. I stood for a few more seconds, and on a second intake of breath, recognized a certain scent. It took me a moment to place it, but when I did, I was absolutely positive of it. Ivy, the girl I'd seen in town weeks before. I smiled to myself at the irony and glanced around for a few short moments until I located her. It was harder, but not impossible to recognize her. She stood only a few feet to the right of me, wearing a perfectly fitting scarlet dress that billowed out from her waist down. I assessed the area right away to try and find whatever partner she'd come with, but she seemed to be standing alone. I frowned a bit and wondered what kind of boyfriend would leave her just... standing there.

I felt someone watching me as I stood there quietly and looked up, meeting a pair of butterscotch colored eyes. They seemed familiar, but I couldn't place it. It had been a few weeks since I had seen Noah and I had pretty much forgotten everything that happened that day, because I had been so busy with my sister and all. I bit my lip as I gazed into the strangers eyes a bit longer. I offered a small smile then glance away my cheeks turning a light shade of pink. I made my way over to the punch that was sitting on a table to the right and I grabbed a cup, dipping the ladle into the bowl and pouring it into the cup, careful not to spill it. When I was done I took a sip of the tangy fresh liquid, letting it quench my thirst.

I glanced around again and sighed feeling a bit lonely already. I wished someone would at least ask me to dance. I finished drinking my punch and tossed my cup into the trash can that was beside the table. As a habit I smoothed out my dress and adjusted my mask again as I turned to face the people that were dancing in the center area. The fast paced song that was playing suddenly switched to a slow song, Perfect Time by We shot the Moon. One of my favorite songs. Ughh, why the heck did I even come?! I thought, not so enthusiastic anymore.

I narrowed my eyes as she turned and looked at me. Her eyes tightened and she pursed her lips as she tried to place where I was from, but as far as I could tell, she couldn't put her finger on it. Once she turned away, I chuckled. Yes, it was probably for the better. I wandered around for a few minutes with my hands behind my back, admiring the decorations. I observed the people who danced, too. Some were awkward and stuff, tripping and stepping on each other's toes often. That was painful to watch, so instead I would turn my eyes to the more experienced dancers. They swayed to the rhythm of the music. Suddenly, I yearned to be able to dance with somebody. My chest ached hollowly, so I wandered away from the gazebo, to the right, toward a table with punch and crackers on it. I saw Ivy once again, standing alone, looking even more uncomfortable. Maybe even a little disappointed.. But it was hard to tell exactly with the mask on. I pondered whether or not to approach her. It might wind up worse for me if I did, and she recognized me. The last thing I needed was a restraining order. She'd think I was a maniac.
In the end, though, after spending a few long moments weighing my chances, I decided to talk to her again. Wherever her date was, if there was one, he was being absolutely inconsiderate and primitive. I folded my hands behind myself again, joining them at the small of my back. "Lose your date?" I murmured as I wandered up behind her, standing at her left, and chuckled once.

As I was sulking in my thoughts I didn't notice the stranger approaching, till he spoke and caused me to jump. My heart leaped into my throat and I held back a small yelp. I quickly controlled myself and looked down, embarrassed. "Oh.. well, you see, I actually um.. don't have a date." I finally said and shrugged like it was no big deal. I glanced towards all the couples dancing and sighed wistfully. It had been such a long time since I'd actually danced with anyone. I then looked back at the stranger and smiled a little. "What about you? Did your date run off with another handsome stranger?" I asked, of course teasing.. but if she had then I'd seem rude. But the chances were unlikely. I shifted and thought to myself. Maybe he was one of those few dateless men that came to these dances. I mentally crossed my fingers. But my luck didn't do me much good, probably did more harm then good.

"Oh." Was all I really could say when Ivy responded. It'd caught me by surprise, which didn't happen often, and I found myself embarrassed that I had asked at all. Of all the things I paused to consider before speaking to her, the idea that she might not have a date for the masquerade wasn't something that had even entered my mind. Then she asked about my date, and I tried to hold back a smile. "No, not quite. I came alone, out of curiosity. I've never been to a masquerade, and got invited. So..." I trailed off, letting my eyes wander around at our surroundings. After a few seconds I let my gaze rest on her again, amused by the fact that she didn't seem to recognize me at all. Selfish to think that she might. After all, I was just that odd ball who had bought her a lunch that she never even got a chance to eat. I moved my hands from behind my back to inside the pockets of my suit pants. I felt a smile pull at the corner of my mouth. "Have you danced yet?" I asked, already assuming in my mind that someone must have asked her by now. Though, perhaps not. I'd already been surprised, why not once more?

I nodded, "Oooh," When I was about to ask how he was enjoying it so far, he spoke again and asked me if I had danced. I looked down then back up at him and shook my head. "No, I haven't." I said and shrugged with a half smile. "Ah, oh well." I said, trying to make it seem like it wasn't a big deal, which it wasn't, well, maybe it was just a little bit, to me anyways. I let my eyes wander around. I was surprised that there were other single people here other than me. But then again, just because he came alone didn't mean he was single, but it meant there was a pretty good chance of it. "What about you?" I asked looking back at him.