Art Prompt Writing Contest #4 - Sunburn

Sunburn

Jocelyn released a deep, long-awaited laugh from the depths of her belly.

“The sun! The glorious sun!”

Pushing herself completely out of the culvert, she shimmied to the creek bank with minimal damage and only a spattering of dampness from her waist down. Sitting in the dew-draped grass, she pulled her knees tight against her chest, taking a moment just to savor the feel of golden light upon her chin and nose.

Over two hundred forty years had passed since she last laid eyes upon a sunrise, and she was going to make the most of this moment. Perhaps it was boredom, but more likely a foolish inclination that lead her to conceal herself neatly in the overflow pipe a few hours ago, instead of making haste back to that dreary warehouse basement on the south side of the village.

Borris the Slav had been right! God, how she missed him. How many nights had she spent debating whether or not she loved him? Could a creature of the night love? Did she even have a soul after being turned? She chose to believe that her soul was still in there somewhere, even on the nights that she had to feed. After all, this fate was forced upon her on the eve of her nineteenth birthday so very long ago.

Like a ghost, Borris had simply vanished. No goodbye. No letter. No last dance beneath the ancient oak. He was gone. She had searched for him for months on end, and finally managed to make her way into his hidden quarters only to be served disappointment upon the discovery that there was no sign of him or any recent occupancy of his bunker. Her heart, or what would have once been called a heart, shattered in an instant.

Sighing into her own corner of melancholy, Jocelyn stretched the full length of her petite frame and fully reclined on the grassy slope while studying the scrap of fading parchment she had been grasping all night in her left hand. Among the few belongings that Borris had left behind, she had been especially drawn to his journal and decided to keep it. For days she had poured over his deepest thoughts, greedily consuming his story and secretly hoping that with each turn of the page, she would find herself glorified in his musings. Eventually, she did. The heat had risen in her cheeks and stirred in her loins before she backslid into mourning his absence.

And then she stumbled upon a folded sheet tucked neatly into the back lining of his book. This very page that she held so carelessly now had prompted her boldness in venturing where no vampire dare go. Straight into the sunlight.

She chuckled at the simplicity of it. Borris had penned an age old secret that the elders apparently were quite miserly about sharing. Feeding on a virgin during the dark of the moon was all it took to become immune to the disastrous effects of the sun from rise to set. She felt a tinge of sympathy for young Charles. He had looked so eager to bed her, and the tender touch of an almost twenty-two year old had indeed been tempting. He had no idea of her intentions, but her focus had been honed on testing this little known theory.

She could almost still taste his metallic vigor as she replayed the sequence in her mind for a second time.

Something intangible had shifted in the air around her while she was lost in her lecherous thoughts. An acrid smell assaulted her keen olfactory senses, and a sudden tightening of her skin made her itch like never before. A stark and daunting realization struck Jocelyn with the strength of Odin. Panic seized her mind as her burning body remained paralyzed there by the apathetic waters of the creek.

Consciousness initiated a game of tag with an alternate reality, and she was certain that she could now hear the sweet irony of Borris’s laughter from behind the trees.

Copyright Tina Jordan 2017 All Rights Reserved