Chapter 5

The hunger wasn't enough to drive Katherine from her bed that night. Thinking about what her life (un-life? Did vampires even say stuff like that?) might be like. Was she supposed to go around attacking people to eat? What about animals, could she drain them instead? Could she have kids? Those and so many other things whirled through her mind.

There were plenty of physical aspects that caught her attention too. Along with no breathing or heart beat, she wondered if she would ever need to use the bathroom again. Kat didn't need to that night at least. With her hands in front of eyes she could see the black mist of her own aura, but that wasn't really new. No, the new thing was if she moved fast a black manikin-like hand would seem to come out of her own almost like she was too fast for her own body. Then her flesh hand would snap to catch up and absorb it or the black hand pulled the flesh along with it, one of the two.

Sometime after the sun rose the next day she drifted off to sleep having never left her room. Her wounded leg wasn't enough to wake her, only keep her turning in bed a little more. Dreams came and went like normal, maybe a few featured buses and bad opera capes but it was a pretty usual sleep for Katherine. George checked on his niece a couple of times during the day, it was nice to have her home. He was still disturbed to watch her thrash in bed, inner self popping out here and there as if the flesh was the surface of a pond.

When the sun touched the horizon Katherine's eyes opened to watch the light fade from the edges of the blinds. More out of habit than anything else she took a deep breath let it out and climbed out of bed. Staring back at her from the mirror on her closet door was a battered image of herself. The right side of her body had taken the brunt of the impact, that much was obvious. Huge bruises covered that side of her face, her chest was also flattened too, her arm looked OK, but her foot was at a ninety degree angle to her knee. At least she couldn't see the hole that had caused her problems leaving the hospital, the ace bandages that her Uncle had wrapped around her were still there covering it. That was when it dawned on Kat that she had no problem standing on a broken leg. She was leaning just a bit to the left because the break had shortened her on that side but there wasn't any pain or stability problems. She very well could of walked out yesterday if she had realized this then.

It was then that she felt her Uncle pull into the driveway with someone else in the car. Well maybe something else? It was a big life but apparently she couldn't really tell who or what something was unless she knew them already. It wasn't moving like a person anyway unless it was a bug kid who needed Prozac. It was all over the place around her uncle as he moved up the steps and into the house. Kat had just decided to stay in her room after taking another look at herself in the mirror when her Uncle called for her to come out.

"Be out in a minute," she yelled back as she hopped into a pair of sweatpants. She was clumsier than she ever remembered being before, at least since she had started taking Tai Chi as a kid. A long sleeved shirt and a moment to brush her long hair over the damaged side of her face and she stepped out of her room.

As soon as Katherine came out a large mutt that her Uncle had on a leash started barking and snapping at her. It caught George off guard and dragged him 3 feet towards Kat before he could get the animal under control. In the mean time the frightened Kat had done like her name sake and jumped back as fast as she could into her room slamming the door shut with a loud double thump.

'Double thump?' she thought. That was when she looked at her black hand and arm holding the door closed. Slowly her head looked down to see that she was a black three dimensional silhouette of herself, well her undamaged self. No twisted leg or flattened chest on this wraith.

"Oh shit oh shit oh shimmering shit!" she chanted as she now leaned against the door.

"Uhm, Kat," her Uncle George called out after he got the dog calmed down and put away. "Are you alright in there?"

"I think so, I'm not hurt I guess. Does my voice sound funny to you?"

"Yeah its pretty different, kinda hard to listen too," George didn't have the heart to tell her it made him wince like fingernails on a blackboard. "Why don't you come out here if you can and see if you can uh uhm I guess pull yourself together?"

The first thing Kat saw when she opened the door was herself collapsed on the floor like a marionette with the strings cut. Then when she looked up from the floor her Uncle standing in the dark hallway his aura a brilliant blaze, with colors swirling all around him mostly the red end of the rainbow was there but a few streaks of the other colors too. Birdy was looking into the hallway from the living room, it looked like she was back to keeping her distance from Katherine again. Kat couldn't blame her really, Uncle George and Birdy both looked so very tasty to the now hungry girl. It was all she could do not to take a step towards them.