The letter awaited me at the front door.

It lay face down among other envelopes. I flipped it over and seeing the name took me back.

I lifted the envelope off the floor and held the weighty packet in my hands.

Curiosity told me to open it, common sense told me to throw it away.

Here I was torn, once again because of him. I thought I was better, I thought everything was alright again. I thought I could move on.

Hate rose from somewhere deep inside. I hated that he couldn't let me move on. He always finds a way back in.

I ripped the envelope in half as tears streamed down my face. Then I rip it again, and again.

I throw the pieces on the floor. Covering my face I sunk down among the scattered letter.

I hate him so much for leaving me. I hate him so much for loving me, but I need to know what he has to say.

I gather the papers and place them together like a puzzle.

"Dear Rachel,"

I ran my fingers through my hair. I hate his arrogance.

"I hope you can forgive me."

That first sentence topped off my anger. He expects me to just forgive him after all I went through without him? Just like that. Forgiven, forgotten.

My tears dripped onto the paper, smudging Carter's handwriting into blue puddles.

That was all I needed to read. I scooped up the letter and threw the pieces into the garbage.

I collapsed on the counter. I wish he knew how badly I wanted to forgive him, but I can't.

I wiped my tears and realized, all the hate I have for him, is actually love that had nowhere to go. So much love, it hurts and I mistook it for hate…

It hurts, but I don't know what hurts. What hurts the most? I can't separate my hate from my love. It has all jumbled into one big knot of strings around my heart. Perhaps I have no hate for him, or I never had love to begin with.

I want to run, but my body won't move. I can't run because if I do, I know I'll just end up back with you. That's what I want, but I don't at the same time. I don't know what I want. I am torn.

What is this feeling? It's not love, it's not hate… it's fear. Fear that I've lost the only person meant for me. Fear that I was the one that screwed it all up. Fear that I will never find anyone that'll love me. I'm scared and it’s because of you.

I loved you against reason, against promise, against hope, against happiness, against discouragement that could be, and what did you do? You threw my love in the trash.

You treated it like a piece of garbage you could just throw away. Get rid of and move on, but I will never move on.

I gave too much love to just forget about you. Move on like you say you have,but I don't see how I can.

I grab my heart as if it's going to fall out of my chest and land in a pool on the floor alongside my tears, because it feels that way sometimes. Like it wants to leave my foolish self behind. All the pain and tears you left me with. The only memories I have of you.

'If I could only hold myself together. It will get better', I tell myself, but I do not believe it. It is the only thing I can do to keep myself together, to lie to myself. Tell myself things to let myself know, ‘someone is here for you’, because if I don't, no one will.

‘I hate you’ I want to say it to your face, but I don't hate you. I love you, and that is the problem. Too much love to someone who doesn't return my love turns to hate.

'Love is a joke', I scoff through the tears, but something deep down, some small part of me knows that is not true.

Love is a joke when you give it to the wrong people, but when you give it to the right one, it's so special. It will heal all the broken cracks from all the times the fake love dropped it. It will hold it, and never let go, but until then, I have to survive without you. One day at a time.

"Young love" a voice from beside me came. "So innocent".

It was a man's voice, raspy and rough from age.

"Indeed" I agreed without turning to see who it was I spoke to.

He claimed the seat next to me on the park bench and let out a long sigh.

A pigeon fluttered to the ground in front of us and broke my attention from the young couple across the park.

I pulled bread crumbs from my pocket and tossed them to the bird who eagerly pecked them from the ground.

"Can I ask you something?" I perused my lips and stole a glance at the man.

His hair was silver, but still thick. Lines stretched from his eyes as if they were permanently happy, but his eyes looked worn. Tired and beaten by what the world had put him through.

He turned to me and I threw another handful of bread crumbs to the greedy bird.

"I don't see any harm in that" the man replied, then turned his attention to the pigeon.

"Why is it that the best people are usually the loneliest?" I scuffed my shoe on the sidewalk and regretted opening up to the stranger.

I looked into his eyes as his gaze drifted up to the couple, giggling and talking about whatever couples talk about these days.

"That's a tough question" he replied, but he did not seem taken back by it. Almost as if he had been asked this everyday of his life.

I slouched and pointed my eyes to my shoes. "I'm sorry. I don't know why I-"

"No child" he cut me off, "It is good to ask, otherwise you would never know."

He pulled out some of his own crumbs and set them at his feet, but the pigeon did not notice. He kept on pecking the bread I had thrown.

He pointed to the pigeon, "see there." He said, waving his finger at it.

"The pigeon?" I asked, looking closer at the bird as he hobbled around.

"He will gorge himself on bread crumbs and miss something better that came a little later."

I threw another handful and watched him peck them from the grass.

"People are a lot like this pigeon. Not wanting to wait for the better things to come and settling for what we can have right now and whatever comes easiest. We miss the better option because we were too busy gobbling up the breadcrumbs."

I folded my hands in my lap and looked back at the couple.

"Do you think they were meant for each other?" I asked as we watched the two disappear around a bend.

The old man sighed and stood from the bench with a grunt. "That's not my place to say."

He turned to leave, "Wait mister!" I stood and brushed the crumbs from my shirt and shorts, "what's-" I stopped when I found the park empty.

"Sir?" I followed the sidewalk with my eyes and found nothing but pigeons and squirrels.

I emptied the rest of the crumbs from my pocket and watched as a flock of pigeons came to stuff themselves with dry, old bread. I noticed the cake crumbs, still sitting where the man had left them, unnoticed by the greedy pigeons.

The heart is never the same, After it has been broken by the one you trusted, The one you thought would never let you down, The one you thought would hold your heart forever,

I loved the time we spent together, The way you would smile at me from across the room, Or look at me like we were the only ones that mattered, But all good things must come to an end,

I can feel it now, Every beat feels like broken glass in my chest, I never thought you would be my demise, But I guess you can't appreciate love without the heartbreak,

'Trust me' you say, And my heart would trust you without question, Even though it has no trust left to give, You have emptied it of the only things it had to offer,

So when you ask for my forgiveness, I will tell you no, Because my mind will not allow my heart to love you again, It will never forget the pain you caused and didn't even care to fix,

My heart wants so badly to forgive you, To take you back and tell you about all that has happened since you left, But my mind is smarter than my heart, It knows that to forget is to forgive, And it will never forget...

Sometimes it is better to follow the crowd, but what happens when you have no choice but to go your own way?

I held the ability to see my end. In the small vial filled with purplish liquid held secrets that no one else knew yet.

I shook violently as I unscrewed the cap and dropped it to the floor. Being scared of knowing things not meant for you in normal, right?

I have always felt that some things in life were meant to stay a mystery. Stay unknown for reasons I should never understand, but it was so very tempting to know.

I felt like Eve in the garden. Reaching for that forbidden fruit. Thinking I would have knowledge of things that were not meant for my eyes to see or my ears to hear.

I poured a small droplet onto my fingertip and applied it to my eyelids, which I left closed. I did not dare to open them. I felt guilty, like I had just taken a bite of that fruit and realized the reward wasn't worth the consequences.

I ran to the bathroom and rinsed my eyelids off. I could not go through with it. 'Let my death remain a mystery' I thought before going to bed and quickly falling asleep under the warm covers.

…

When the dreams came, I did not dream of my own demise, I dreamt of everyone else's.

The people I loved, all falling away around me. I stood alone. The only one left in a world full of dying people.

I reached out to grab the hand of my best friend, who reached back, but we could not touch. She fell to the floor, turning into dust at my feet.

My mother, my father, my brothers, my sister, friends, family, all fell to dust around me as I watched. Unable to stop it.

I startled awake. Sitting up in bed, sweat drenched my body and a tear ran down my cheek.

'There must be a mistake' I thought. I pulled the blanket off and ran to the bathroom.

I flicked the light on and it instantly burned the backs of my eyes.

In the mirror, I leaned in close to see. Yes, I could see a faint purple still laying in the creases of my eyelids.

I curled into a ball on the floor. This couldn't be happening. What does it all mean?

Was my dream just a glimpse of my paranoid subconscious, or has the serum really worked? Maybe it had failed because I had diluted it with water before going to bed or maybe I was going to actually live through the deaths of my loved ones. Live on while they all pass to dust.

'Maybe it is better to not know the inevitable. To fall with the crowd rather than to be different.' I thought as I washed my eyes off once again. This time I rinsed them till my skin was raw and my eyes were bloodshot.

Sometimes, when I lay in bed late at night, I don't think about the day that's past, I don't think about the work I have waiting for me tomorrow, I let my mind wander and when it wanders, it finds you. It always finds you.

The night sky was always so mysterious. So dark as it's secrets shown through dim stars, as the moon tried to reveal its deepest darkest corners. Every night without fail, the stars greeted me. Welcoming in the night as the stress from the day swiftly went with the sun.

After standing in the same spot for years on end, having not a soul to talk to. One has time to think, ponder upon life's most ignored questions. One can get wise just by standing and immersing oneself in thought, but through the years, one tends to get lonely. No one to say goodmorning to you when you wake up, no one to tell you goodnight as you drift off under the stars and no one to sit by your side during those sleepless nights that drag on forever.

Those nights you can hear the breeze blow the grass and the crickets drift off to sleep until everything is so silent, you are sure everyone, except you, has dozed off into dreamless sleep.

One night, as I stared up into the night sky, the moon shining it's gentle beams through the tallest trees, I dozed off. Leaving the lonely woods behind as I found myself in a better place.

I dreamt of the stars and how they came down and took me away. They brought me to the sky to meet the moon that had been there, watching me bend beneath the weight of life's problems and I felt at home. Surrounded by the only things that had stayed constant through the years.

Then I awoke to the birds chirping and the sun making it's morning arrival. I realized it had all been a dream and I was still in the same place I had been for years.

I stared at the sky, as the moon slowly disappeared into the brightness of day, the warm breeze brushed through my leaves and I drowned myself in thought once again. I was just a small sapling, with a very big dream…

There is a very different world behind the mirror, One that everyone sees differently, Not one person sees the same as the other. Some see beauty, some see pain, Others see monsters that stare back at them.

I see a monster. His ugly smile and his messy, uncontrollable hair, I hate how he stares back at me, he's always there when I come to see him, I wish he could be something else. Something beautiful.

How the monster wished he could say what he sees, Staring back from the other side of the mirror. If he could talk he would compliment her eyes that were always so alive, Her blonde hair, her bright smile that could light a room.

He sees a very beautiful girl staring back at him And how he wishes he could show her the world he sees. The girl that cries in the mirror every night is beautiful to him.

All of her imperfections are perfect to him. They are the things he looks forward to seeing every morning when she comes to see him, Her messy hair, her crooked smile that she hated, her sleepy eyes.

How he wishes he could tell her all these things, But he is just the silent monster that she hated. He was simply just the monster behind the mirror.

The diluted beams of the moon's light fell to rest on Billy's pale skin.

Night was home to Billy. He never cared for the blinding light and heat of the sun. He also hated the crowds. Day was when everyone came out to play and shop and just do whatever they pleased, but the night was quiet and peaceful. It gave one room to think and slow down to listen to the things around one's self.

Tonight felt different from all the other nights. He could feel someone watching him as he made his way down the dirt path.

He slowed his walk until it fell to a stop beside a large oak. He could feel the eyes watching him, fascinated by him and drawing near.

He scanned his surroundings. The moon had moved behind the clouds causing the shadows to come alive and dance among the underbrush.

He made no sound. He did not feel threatened by the presence, rather he felt comforted in an odd way.

A slim silhouette emerged from behind the oak that towered next to him.

It was a girl, young and very beautiful. Her hair draped over her shoulders as she leaned against the oak and the moon light danced on her skin.

"What's a girl like you doing out here in the middle of the night?" He took a step towards her.

"I should ask you the same thing. " the girl replied, summoning a smile to Billy's face.

He gestured to the sky, "the sun and I never got along too well."

The girl nodded then stopped down onto the trail. She stopped inches from Billy. He could feel the warmth of her body and smell the sweet fragrance of her hair. She stood on her toes and leaned close to his ear, "I know what you are." Her warm breath sent shivers down his spine.

He pulled his face away from hers, "what am I?" He asked, trying to see if she was bluffing or telling the truth.

She sighed a laugh and placed her hand to his chest. "I watch you walk every night. I know where you go. I know what you do." She locked her blue eyes with his and tilted her head to the side exposing her neck to him.

Billy licked his lips then turned away and bit his lip as blood flowed from it. The salty flavor pooled on his tongue and ran down his throat.

He looked at her again. She still stood close to him, her head tilted. He leaned in and planted a kiss on her neck.

"What am I?" He asked again.

She smiled and whispered. "You are the same as me. A monster in the night, just trying to live life in peace."

He pulled back and held the girl at arms length as he searched her face.

Her eyes met his and he knew she was serious. "You want me to say it?"

"Please do." He prodded. Curious as to what she would say next.

She smiled and twisted a strand of hair around her finger.

"We are the same." She said again. "We are," she paused and locked eyes with him again before uttering the ugly truth "vampires."