He gazed out over the bright city lights that could be compared, almost, to the brightness of the sun. Somewhere, amid the cheering crowds in the distance, a clock struck midnight, ringing in the New Year, the new millennia.
He could still remember, as his memories had only begun to fade after so many years, the last one he had seen, in 1000 AD, amidst the forms of humans almost on the brink of war, in the area of modern-day Europe. Yes, he had seen many things in his lifetime; things like the ends of old religions, the births of new and greater ones that still existed today, and so many wars, most of them pointless, but some ending with great outcomes that not even he had guessed would happen. Yes, he had seen almost everything.
Brought out of his thoughts as suddenly as he had slipped into them, he became aware of his surroundings and silently made his was down the side of the building on which he had been standing, letting the wind blow through his uncombed black hair.
He could not feel the same way as humans felt. He couldn’t feel the wind blowing through his hair; it was a habit he had picked up as a human. In fact, he could feel nothing at all, except for the one thing that he couldn’t live without, the insatiable hunger for human blood and flesh. Though he could not feel anything physically, he still had the emotional ability to feel the beauty in everything around him, the beauty of the night. For hours upon end, he could stand on the top of a building, watching the bright city pulsing greatly with the lives of so many humans going through their day-to-day motions, and how fragile they were, the humans, who weren’t cursed with immortality as he was.
Once again, he had drifted into his thoughts. He had to push his thoughts aside, once again, as he made his way out of the alley-way. He had more important matters that needed to be addressed.
So many humans in one place; the mere thought of it could drive humans and monsters alike to insanity. He walked the crowded streets, searching for the night’s prey.
In his search, he noticed his reflection in the glass of a closed-down store. His ghastly pale skin and contrasting black hair, his hungry erubescent eyes that would frighten most humans, and his tattered clothes and fang-like teeth, all of this stared back at him. He turned away from the glass. He wasn’t human; he had barely been one when he actually was a human. He was a monster.
Abruptly, something caught his eye. From across the street, he could see two girls, no older than seventeen, walking down the sidewalk, with a man, a thief, following a few yards behind. The moonlight hit something in the man’s grimy hands that could instantly be recognized as a knife.
Silently behind the thief, the creature followed, until the thief adjusted his attention away from the girls, to the creature, who led him into a dark alleyway.
“Give me all of your money,” the thief demanded.
The creature felt a grim smile roll onto his lips, revealing his fangs, his sharp, dagger-like teeth. He took the thief into his arms and let the teeth tear at the flesh as the knife fell to the ground and as the thief’s muffled screams of terror faded away.
His hunger was quenched, but only for a few seconds, and it ended before he dropped the body to the ground with a soft thud. He looked around the area, scanning everything. He knew he was being watched. The strong scent of pure silver filled the air as he ducked and a bullet went past where he had been standing, embedding itself in the wall behind him. The creature growled as the first of the hunters appeared in front of him.
The creature was capable of many things. He was fast and strong and he could also transform into most creatures in the blink of an eye. This time, the form of a wolf was the image he took. Just as the transformation was finished, another bullet hit the wall. All of the hunters were on the ground, only a few yards away from him.
He had been known by so many names over the century: vampire, werewolf, killer, but the hunters only saw him as one thing: a monster, but they could not realize that he had to kill, that the options were to kill or starve for eternity in the nightmare in which he was trapped.
And every night, the creature debated on whether or not to take another victim, whether or not to let the hunters catch him and end everything, whether or not to wait until dawn and see the sunrise one, final time as he was slowly being destroyed by the growing rays of light.
No, the hunters could not fathom his inner conflicts that he had debated for centuries. The hunters had one mission: to destroy the monster before any more damage could be done. For hundreds of years, the hunters had found him almost every night in almost every city imaginable, cities like Paris, Miami, New York, London, and so many more that he had lost count.
The creature faced the hunters, and with a growl, sprinted out of the alley and into the streets, where as soon as he was sure he had lost the hunters, he turned back into his human-like form. The crowds had thinned out dramatically, and the sun was going to rise in a few hours. Still, a few people walked the streets and the creature didn’t look too much out of place.
How quickly time flew when the predator was being hunted, and it was the same routine every night. Every night as he rose, the creature questioned himself on whether to give into the hunters and finally end the stalemate. And every night he decided to keep on fighting in the endless war.
As the creature made his escape into the undergrounds of the city, he thought of his inner battles and the questions that stood behind the hunger that controlled him.
“Should I end this battle, this nightmare now?” His inner voice whispered as the creature looked out at the dimming stars.
The monster silently smiled to himself, revealing his sharp, skin-piercing fangs. “No, not tonight,” He whispered aloud, and disappeared without a trace.
The nightmare of his life was going to continue for eternity.