Fallen Blood by Martin C. Sharlow Page A

before she woke, and even if he wasn't, it wouldn't be long after.

    That decided, Brian sat back into the chair and closed his eyes. He concentrated on his home, on the room he slept in his entire life, The dirty old curtain that his mom put up years before, when she was still alive. The bed he had grown up sleeping on. He concentrated on all the things he was so familiar with in his home, until he felt a pop sound in the back of his head, then a rushing sound, and the feeling the whole world was passing by him and if he just opened his eyes he would see it shooting by. Long ago he had learned that lesson, when he first gave into the temptation to look. If the world had been passing by him, Brian never saw it, because the moment he opened his eyes, the image of who or where he was going disappeared from his minds eye, and he found himself somewhere between the two. It wasn't any trouble to get back on the path, but it was a way to increase the time of getting from one place to another. Brian's forward movement stopped, prompting him to open his eyes and look about. It was his bedroom, and he was glad to see it. He hadn't tried this before without eating for so long, so he hadn't been to sure this was going to work correctly, or for that matter at all . Well, the easy part was done, now he needed to get to the basement.

    A quick walk through the downstairs revealed no one as far as he could see, and the basement was empty as well. Several old chairs sat about where he had brought them after his mother passed away, and made the basement seem a bit cluttered. Now, it was time for the tricky part. He sat down in a chair, and closed his eyes. The key here was that he needed to fall asleep. Yeah, he knew the whole metaphysical theory about what he was trying to accomplish, and he knew to the unschooled eye this would never work. But he'd read up on things that said it would , and in those years of his traveling, he had found that they were right, and the rest of the world had been wrong. Slowly, he cleared his mind, concentrating on the feeling of exhaustion he'd had just a few minutes before. Slowly he felt his mind starting to slip.

    --

    "Here you go, little boy, take it." The scary old clown held out the dripping red popsicle at him, the smell of blood filling Brian's nose.

    "No! I want Chocolate!" Brian stomped his foot and clenched his little fists.

    "Now, you know Chocolate is for normal boys and girls." The clowns voice began to deepen and long canine fangs began to extend from his mouth.

    --

    Brian awoke with a sense of deja vu. The basement felt cool to his burning skin, which he could appreciate right that moment. Standing, he felt a bit woozy, but steadied himself. It wouldn't do to go to all this trouble just to pass out right when he was within reach of his prize. The fridge opened, revealing a shelf filled to bursting with opened boxes of breakfast cereal and assorted other foods that a teenager would eat. The light that turned on as it opened practically blinded him, and causing him to fly into a panic realizing that it could possibly give him away. He quickly twisted it till it shut off. He hoped that since he was downstairs in the basement, they wouldn't be paying much attention. Even if they did, in few more minutes it would be too late to stop him. Grabbing a box of cornflakes, Brian took it out of the fridge and shut the door. Reaching in, he pulled out a plastic IV filled with blood. A smile crossed his face as he looked down at it a moment, then bit the top of it and tore it open. In moments he ingested the entire IV and sat back down in one of the old chairs, feeling life flow through his whole body. He wasn't sure, but he would have sworn he could feel the blood rushing though every vein and capillary in his body.

    It had been so long since he had last eaten that the sensations he was feeling had to be better than sex itself. At least, that's what he imagined. Except for his dream excursions with