i'm sill not /akira day 4

"blood-filled
jewel of life
take my soul,
take my sacrifice."

The wine's gone sour now, oxidized after being open for three days. I hold the bottle open under my nose anyway, eyes shut against the broken pews in front of me and the bloodstained altar where Erwin once was laid out.

My shirt, which has barely held on these past couple days, has finally given up. The ruffled collar is stiff with dried blood, sitting on the pew beside me. The shirt itself is too stained and ripped to really even call it clothing anymore and before, this wouldn't have mattered, but now I've gained feeling back, I know how fucking cold it is.

The chapel is less frightening in silence. It's almost hard to remember now, that first day, when we were all running through the grass to reach the rotted wooden doorway. I picked up a wooden stake and ran, fever making me ache, making it hard to think. I didn't know then that I was actively dying.

The wine masks the scent of the boy's blood, heavy still in the air. Not like I can do much about that seeing as it's his blood that is flowing through my veins now. I'll never get his scent off of me, he's become part of me. They don't tell you about that part in vampire stories, it's all about the thirst and the hunt, never about what comes after.

Izzy's outside because I asked to be alone.

I like it when people look at me but I don't want her to see me like this, bent over a bottle of stale wine, trying to erase the way I feel like I'm not done.

I feel good and there's daylight left. Part of me wonders, why stop now? Why wait for someone to come to us? We could go to them instead. I heard a few canons today, there's others out there, maybe even already wounded. Maybe it wouldn't even take much to kill them.

That monster, that thing that I thought I sated, it only was quieted for mere minutes before it was already asking for more and now I know just how good it feels, it's getting harder to quell it.

And I've never been good at handling my vices.

dead children think too highly of themselves.

I open my eyes and can't help but smile at the memory of that lake monster, understanding more about me in minutes than most ever did in years. Somehow even here, in the hollow bones of a chapel, with someone else's blood running through my veins, I still think that I have control.

But I surrendered that the moment I volunteered.

"Ah, whatever."

The bottle slips from my hand and lans on the stone floor with a splintering sound. Wine begins to slowly trickle out from a crack in the base. It pools around the bottle, then my feet, until I'm in a puddle of it and the bottle stands broken, empty.

I've done a lot of bad things to people in my life but I've never done something like that.

I was hoping I'd feel worse about it but I don't.

I remember when this girl in another class tried to get us all to stop eating meat by showing us videos of the farms in Eleven and how sweet the little animals were. I think it worked on some people, for a week or so, but pretty soon everyone was back to eating meat.

We're not at the top of the food chain for our empathy.

I'm still staring down at the wine when I hear the soft beeping of an approaching sponsorship. I look up just in time to watch it come through the window, the little capsule's light blinking in tandem with the sound. I sit up a little bit straighter, curious. It's been days since that first sponsorship, I figured Storm had given up on trying to help me when it turned out I was dead.

The parachute settles, deflating over the capsule and I stand up to get a closer look. It auto-opens with a soft hissing sound and the parachute lifts with the lid, then falls back gently and flutters to the ground instead. The item within blooms out, packed in way too tight.

I run my fingers over black patch letters sewn onto a white t-shirt. "Warning?" I mutter, reading out loud. I pick it up, letting the shirt unfurl so I can read the whole thing.

"What the fuck?" I whisper.

Then I laugh.