The Lonely Vampire

I go to bed halfway dead,

Wanting to lay in this coffin I call a bed.

Oh, why work at night?

Sun and light make my skin turn red,

Like a rash that has been scratched.

My butler is worried for me.

He walks into my room every morning.

I recall the words he said to me every day:

"If you don't walk towards your future now, you will never be able to get used to the human world. The sun is not your enemy. It is your mental state and willingness to get up and do something."

He was a good man. Too bad he was a human and died along with everyone else.

What else am I to do with all this pain that clouds my judgment?

The people in the town know that I am a vampire, yet they are not afraid.

Why am I afraid then?

What is clouding my judgment?

Mother, father, brother, sister, butler, and my one and only wife—

All died hundreds of years ago, yet I still can't forget the pain, happiness, and hopelessness they felt as they took their last breath.

Mother and father took me in when I turned fifty.

They did not know my age and treated me like their own.

Mom and Dad had my little sister, and it was the best thing that happened to me.

I took care of her when she got sick, and she did the same for me.

On my 60th birthday, I technically became what the humans would call an adult.

Vampires gain the ability to not age anymore at 60 years.

My mother and father grew old, and when they died, I went into deep sleep.

I woke up to a grave my sister put me in, and next to me, my sister’s grave.

I missed everything.

Three generations of my family passed by.

No one knew who I was.

I just wanted to be left alone.

Walking into town felt like I was an outsider.

I could see posters for vampire hunters.

I went to sleep during a great war between humans and vampires.

Elisabeth, my last light in the darkness, withered away as the plague swept across the land, leaving me alone once more.

Thoughts surged into my head.

What could I have done better?

What made me want to love a human who could not even fight off a small infection?

I laid there, pondering what I should do for the next hundred years.

There's no need to hire maids and butlers if they are just going to die.

Who can stay with me and love me for me?

A vampire with depression and a fear of being alone for eternity.

Who will be there?

You might question: Why do I ponder this?

Why do you want someone to love?

Does the fear of being in the dark all your life not scare you?

I do not know what's happening in the world, and I don't want to know.

I just want someone here next to me, to welcome me home right when I get off working a long shift.

Someone to make dinner.

Someone to laugh with.

Do you not want that?

Someone to spend a lifetime pondering the good and bad times.

Vampires do not love.

They lose and ponder, Why was I born a vampire?

Vampires feel more alone when left in the coffin of their loneliness.