Immortality is far from a silent thing.

Your mother tongue babbled around you in your youth—voices in chirped and croaking tones and babies whose first words spoke of the sun and the stones. Mothers who crooned of the cold sand and the fire that could warm the meat of the beasts you hunted.

Of the creatures in the dark.

Your tribe did not know what exactly the creatures did or how they came to be in the dark, but you all knew they were there.

They found you first. The bite felt like a thousand stinging nettles. A hushed voice asked you if you wanted to live forever.
Yes.

You thought you said the word. Eternity flooded your veins. It was over for them. For you, it was just beginning.

Back then, you huddled with the masses and fed on them when they slept. Their pained cries were drowned out through layers of furs and found later in the piles of bodies struggling to keep warm as winter arrived.

It was so cold. They didn't have time to silence you.

Eventually it was Kang, the leader’s boy, who stood up to you. Called you what you were.

Monster. The word was more complex. It doesn't translate well.

Banishment tasted more sour than the blood of the beasts of the forest.

But, immortality meant that all things turned to dust eventually. The tribe would die. The rocks would weather. The ice would melt. The chirps and croaks would make way for a smooth, ancient Germanic language.

You would learn it, of course. Perfectly rolling off your tongue in cool, clear tones like a viola played to perfection. In this era, you did not have to huddle in tiny caves; you could pull in a bar wench and talk to her. Seduce her. She would coo and she would cry against your ear as you purred against her throat.

But in your head, you thought only in your native tongue. In the language that was dust, along with the cave and the tribe. The occasional time you would run into another like yourself, you might hear the language, but the Ancient Ones were getting rarer. Too much sunlight. Too many accidents.

The word for what you were was different then, too.

Vampyre.

By the time you reach the age of technology, you stop thinking in your native tongue. When you think about the fact that your back hurts, it is easier to just think that it hurts in English, rather than to translate.

You press your thumb against the button on the frame to your door. Another long day at the university with the shades drawn. Late nights. You're so knowledgeable about history, so many languages known. So charismatic. They think you need the additional security to keep the obsessed students from clamoring through your doors.

In a way, yes.

The door opens, and you step into the empty building. No furniture. No tables. One lone leather chair in front of a flat screen television, a wine rack, and a coffin. Your patent leather shoes click against the concrete floor as you step over to pour yourself a glass of wine.

Professor of linguistics.

What a hock of crap.

You've forgotten more languages than your department head ever knew. You've written more books than are in that college library. You've been more than those students will ever be.
You flip on the TV and lower the blinds on your floor-to-ceiling windows.

A sunrise starts on the screen, playing from the camera positioned outside your home.

That.

That is what they have that you do not.

The envy you feel is palpable. Vicious. It swirls inside of you like the red wine in your glass and it makes you want to vomit. Your anger is more real than the image on the screen.

You had no choice back in the cave.

With the vampire.

You had no words for what was happening to you.

Words for what it was didn't exist. The bite. The Turning. They came later, when you left the Stone Age.

Back then, you were but a victim.

Choosing to change was like breathing. You breathed. And now, now they breathe--

But look at your accomplishments. And they haven't caught you yet.

It should be worth it.

A notification interrupts the sunrise. News. You flip away from the things you want and cannot have to the things you deal with that are part of the world you live in instead.

“And now we have the latest candidate to jump in the Senate race, dark horse candidate, Kris Kartsoris. Kris, do you have anything to say?”

You follow politics. You follow what the world is up to. After all, you're going to be here a long time.

However, the person who steps on screen, standing under a dark umbrella is known to you. The dark hair, the tawny skin, the black eyes. He smiles a broken-toothed smile that has all the charm of a man who has led more people under harder, more dire circumstances.

It's Kang.

“This city is hurting. Every day, we see violence to the youth of our city at night, and we don't know why. I'm going to start campaigning to clean up our universities and find out what's been happening to the children of our state.”

Prick.

The mobile phone on your chair rings. You step towards it and look down. It is from an unknown number. The tinny noise reverberates across the empty room like a baby's cry in a cave.

You answer.

“It has been a long time, Monster.”

A language with one is dead.

A language with two is alive.

He has come to find you and to stop you. For him, you will be his Monster.
​
Your mother tongue was immortal after all.

You never should have followed her down that alley, but you did.

She moved like she knew you, like she had been waiting for you. Her bare feet made no sound against the damp pavement. The streetlights buzzed overhead, casting flickering shadows that seemed to stretch and twist as she passed. The alleyway smelled of clove cigarettes and something rancid-something sweet and spoiled, like fruit left too long in the heat. No one else saw her. Or if they did, they refused to acknowledge her. But you…

You were curious. Or maybe it was something deeper than curiosity. Maybe it was something pulling you forward.

The alley was narrow, the walls slick with moss, bricks pressing close like the ribcage of something ancient and dying. You stepped forward, ignoring the way the light behind you dimmed, ignoring the way the night swallowed sound, until there was nothing but your own breathing, your own heartbeat, the wet drip, drip, drip from somewhere unseen.
She never turned back, never slowed, until-

Until she did.

Her head turned first, slow and unnatural, and the rest of her body followed. Her skin, pale, too pale, like something pulled from the bottom of a river. Her lips, peeling and cracked, stretched into a grin too wide, too full of teeth. And her eyes:

Empty. Hollow. Waiting.

Your stomach clenched. The air pressed thick against your skin, and you wanted to run. But before you could move, something beneath your foot gave way with a sickening, wet squelch. The scent of iron filled your nose. Not garbage. Not some dead animal.

Meat.

Human.

A hand. You could see the fingers now, half-buried in the grime, skin darkened, nails torn. And when you looked back up, she was already there, too close, too wrong, her grin stretching, splitting, revealing layer upon layer of needle-thin teeth.

And then--

Darkness.
 
You wake to silence.

The room around you is white, too white, the kind of white that makes your head ache. A table. A chair. A mirror. But it isn’t a mirror. You know it isn’t a mirror.

A voice crackles from the other side of the glass. Calm. Controlled. Clinical.

“You’re doing good,” it says. “Try again. Tell us what happened next.”

Your mouth is dry. Your tongue feels thick, wrong. You swallow, but it doesn’t help.

“I-” The words catch. Your teeth ache.

The voice continues. Papers rustle.

“We found you in that alley. Do you remember that?”

Yes. Maybe. No.

“We found the others, too. Or what was left of them.”

Something cold coils in your stomach. You don’t want to ask. You don’t want to know.

“Tell us what you saw.”

The woman. The alley. The shifting walls. The thing wearing human skin.

Or-

Or was it you?

You don’t remember biting down. You don’t remember the taste of copper flooding your mouth, don’t remember the way your fingers dug in, pulling, tearing-

But your teeth hurt. Your jaw throbs. And when you open your mouth to answer, the voice on the other side gasps.

Because there, beneath your tongue, another row of teeth is growing.

And you know.

You never left that alley.
 
You try to sleep, but the dreams won’t let you.

They are wet, sticky things, full of whispers and laughter and teeth. The taste of raw meat lingers on your tongue, even when you wake gasping, even when you shove your knuckles into your mouth to stop the sound from escaping.

The door opens. A different voice this time, lower, softer.

“How are we feeling today?”

You don’t answer. You stare at the walls, at the too-bright lights, at the tray of untouched food beside you. You are not hungry.

Or maybe you are, but not for that.

The voice sighs. A chair scrapes against the floor.

“You were found in a bad state,” they continue. “Alone. In that alley.” A pause. “There was blood.”

Your hands clench.

“You kept saying the same thing over and over when they brought you in.”

You don’t ask. You don’t want to know.

But they tell you anyway.

“Not mine.”

Silence hums between you. The air is too thick, pressing against your ribs, pressing against your skin. The voice shifts, uneasy.

“Do you remember?”

You do.

You remember the alley. The woman. The shifting walls. The taste of something you should not have tasted. The hunger curling, twisting, growing-

You shake your head.

“No,” you say.

They sigh again, pushing a paper across the table.

“This is for evaluation purposes only,” they say. “We need a sample. Just—open your mouth.”
​
Your pulse pounds. Your teeth ache.

Slowly, you obey.

The voice on the other side goes still. The scrape of chair legs. The sharp, sharp inhale.

You close your mouth. Too late. You already saw it in their eyes.

They know.

They see.

They know you were not alone in that alley.

And they know-

You brought something back with you.