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“No!” I said defiantly. “You’re going to answer my questions,” I declared as my heartbeats shot ripples of pain through my chest.
“I said, you will go and not come back!” my father insisted.
“And I said no,” I shout, fighting back the feeling that my thumping temples would explode.
As if retreating from my mind, my father took a step back. His retreat was like a cramp that suddenly subsided.
“Now,” I began, almost out of breath, “You’re going to tell me why you left me and my mother. I’m not going anywhere until you do.”
I couldn’t tell if the look on my father’s face was terror or disgust, but it haunted me. There was darkness in it. Seeing it created another feeling in me. This one I couldn’t describe.
“You want to know why I left you and your mother?”
“That’s why I’m here. Tell me why you abandoned your son,” I said losing grip of the armor that guarded my heart.
“It’s because you’re not my son,” he screeched.
“I am your son. I’ve always been your son.”
“You’re not. You’re an abomination!” he bellowed with conviction.
His words did something to me. The pain that was once in my temple came back twice as painfully. It was like there was a thought within me fighting to come out.
“I’m your son. I’m your son!” I insisted.
“You’re a spawn of the devil!” the pale man decried.
“I’m your son!” I kept repeating, grasping my head, trying to keep it from exploding.
“I’m not your father,” the old man said a final time before shoving me with the force of a wrecking ball onto the hallway wall behind me.
I collapsed in blinding agony as the door slammed shut in front of me. I felt like I was going insane. Without warning, my mind was awash in thoughts. The echoes only stayed long enough to touch before spiraling away replaced by another.
I couldn’t take it. It was tearing my brain apart. Moaning at first, I screamed. Screeching at the top of my lungs, it was like a miracle when it all stopped. With only the scars left behind, it was suddenly all gone.
Scared to open my eyes, I did. As if the headache had possessed my vision, everything looked different. It was like I had opened my eyes at the public pool. The hazy world around me glistened. And as my sight slowly returned, I noticed something that somehow I hadn’t.
The floor of the hallway ending at my father’s door was burnt. Worn to the texture of charcoal, it was covered in ash.
This wasn’t right. Something had changed. There was something different rattling around inside of me. And without a moment of doubt, I knew my father could tell me what it was.
As if it hadn’t been closed, I touched the door and it flew open. The interior of the apartment was now different. Everything from floor to ceiling was burnt. It looked gutted by flames and the only thing that wasn’t was the man I had cried at night hoping would acknowledge me.
He wasn’t only that man, however. The image of my father was a ghostly hologram that masked the creature beneath it. Bent and malformed, the person I had known wasn’t a man at all.
Growing up, my best friend, Hil, was a wolf shifter. Knowing what he and his family were challenged my belief of what was possible. How could humans who shifted into animals exist? More extraordinary than that, how could vampires?
“You’re a vampire,” I said before I knew what I was saying.
The man stared at me dumbfounded.
“You’re not my father. You can’t be.”
As if the image before me swept away, I stood across the room as my father and mother shared a bed. At first it looked like the two were having sex, but they weren’t.
“You fed on my mother. You compelled her to believe she was pregnant?” I said as the film strip in front of me continued to roll. “But why?”
“I did what my masters told me to do,” the decrepit creature replied with building fear.
