PRINCESS OF THE UNDERWORLD: BLOOD AND MOON

ALINA STUART 16 YEARS AGO I leave the car, my legs trembling slightly as they touch the gravel. My small suitcase feels heavier than it should, or perhaps it's just the weight of fear inside me, growing with every step I take. I don’t want to be here, but I have no other choice, and I have no family to stay with me. This is my new home, a place for children like me with nowhere else to go. The air is cold, and a light breeze carries the smell of rain and wet earth. I walk, feeling my heart pound in my chest. I’m afraid, and I blink my eyes, seeing a woman standing next to four children. None of them smiled. The children look at me with dark curiosity, their eyes empty of hope. The woman, dressed in black, has a hard, stern expression. Her lips are thin, pressed into a line of disapproval at all times. Every line on her face seems to tell a story of heartbreak and impatience. "You must be Alina Stuart. I’m Mrs. Peterson, the director and head of this orphanage.", the woman says in a voice that sounds more like a sentence than a greeting. I nod, my voice lost in my throat. Fear is a tight ball inside me, growing with every second. The children beside her continue to stare at me, their gazes far from welcoming. It feels as if I’ve already done something wrong, and they’re just waiting to see what it will be. "Come with me, grab your suitcase, I’ll show you your bed." Mrs. Peterson turns, expecting me to follow. With no other choice, I obey, gripping the handle of my suitcase so tightly my fingers hurt. The inside of the mansion is as gloomy as the exterior suggests. The walls are cold and damp, and every step I take echoes on the wooden floor. The smell of mold and age fills the air, and the windows seem to have never seen sunlight. I want to run, to flee from this place, but where would I go? I have no home, I never did. "We have rules. And if you break any of them, you'll end up behind the Wall of Silence!" I frown, confused. It sounds more like a threat than a punishment. The Wall of Silence? I barely know what that means, but I don’t like the sound of it. As we walk, a blonde girl beside me leans in and whispers in my ear, her voice so low it’s almost a breath. "The Wall of Silence is where Mrs. Peterson puts the kids who break the rules." Her eyes meet mine for a moment, reflecting a fear I begin to recognize in myself. I was the weird girl, the child no mother or father wanted to adopt. Throughout the years I lived in Mrs. Peterson’s orphanage, I felt alone. All the kids hated me, I never had a friend, and everyone called me strange because I could do things a normal child could never do. I wasn’t normal; I never was. I could do things that people didn’t believe in, I could see dead people calling me and talking to me. I guess I’ve always been crazy, since childhood. Mrs. Peterson hated me more than anything because I was always blamed for something that happened at the orphanage, even though I was innocent most of the time. "Mrs. Peterson, please! I didn’t do it, please...", I cry, feeling the tears in my eyes as she continues to drag me toward every child’s nightmare here. The Wall of Silence. It was where she placed children and left them in the dark for a long time or many hours alone. "That’s why no one wants to adopt a strange child like you! You need to learn how to behave here!", she yells, and I feel the pain of her nails digging into my arm harder. "Please, I promise I’ll be a good girl. Don’t do this to me!" "Too late for that, stop crying now, Alina!" My eyes widen as she pulls open a small door built into the wall, which only opens from the outside. I scream, crying, but I can’t fight against her. "You’ll stay in there until you admit your mistakes, I can’t deal with you anymore!", she yells, pushing me into the wall. I scream as she closes the door, and I keep pounding on the wall, begging to get out. I hate this place; it’s wet, it smells terrible, and there’s barely any air. I cry, hugging my body, feeling the surrounding insects, and I close my eyes, screaming for help, but I know no one will help me. Then something happens again. I feel a hand touch my shoulder, and I open my eyes, turning my head to see another dead person like all the others. This time, it’s a girl who smiles at me and sits next to me. I blink, looking at the ghost sitting beside me. I’ve never been afraid of them because I always knew they were a part of me—a strange and crazy part. "I’m scared; I don’t want to stay here anymore; I’m alone...", I cry, looking at the girl. She shakes her head, touching my arm, and I look down, seeing the mark I’ve had on my skin forever. "Don’t feel that way; you’re never alone, princess...", she whispers, smiling at me before touching my face and wiping away my tears. All my ghosts call me that, and I never understood why. Maybe it’s a kind gesture, so I won’t feel so alone. I’m humiliated every day here; the kids make horrible jokes about me, and sometimes they hit me. I kept looking at the girl beside me, knowing she existed only for me, and I never understood why.  TODAY "I guess I’ve always been crazy since my childhood; I’ve never been normal...", I say, lying on the couch in my psychologist’s office. I blink my eyes and turn my head, seeing her writing something in the notebook she always holds in her hands. She lifts her head, and our eyes meet once again. "Why do you think that way, Alina? You had a very complicated past, you suffered a lot, and you learned to deal with your pain alone." "Yes, I’ve always been alone. I grew up in a cruel place, and I still have scars inside me. I didn’t deserve that." I look at my arm, seeing the same mark I’ve always had. I always thought it was a birthmark, but people describe it as a very dark and strange tattoo. "Are you taking all your medications correctly?", she asks, and I shake my head before sitting on the couch and looking at her. "And why not, Alina? I gave you that prescription because those medications can help with your lifestyle after so much trauma in the past." "They make me feel worse and confused." I look down, wondering if I should tell her what happened to me the night before, but I’m not sure if my psychologist would believe me, even though this is her job. "Maybe you could prescribe me something stronger; I can’t sleep at night anymore...", I whisper, feeling tears in my eyes. "Why? What happened now?" "I’m having more vivid nightmares; this has never happened before. I see things that weren’t in my mind before, and it happens every night...", I explain, seeing her looking at me, confused. "What kind of nightmares? Do you want to tell me about them?" "Monsters, shadows chasing me, souls, dead people...", I whisper, feeling the tears wetting my face at this moment. "Dead people? Is that still happening to you, Alina?" "Yes, all the time..." "Well, I can prescribe something for sleep, but I want to talk more about this. Have you ever thought that none of this might be real, that it’s all just in your mind?" I shake my head. I know what I feel and what I see, and it’s real. "No, it’s real. I know it sounds crazy, but I feel people chasing me, but they’re not people...", I murmured, confused. "And how do these people look?" "They look like us, but they’re not. They have red eyes and sharp teeth, and they chase me..." My psychologist keeps looking at me and sighing before writing something else, and I feel my heart pounding in my chest as I keep looking at her. "Vampires? Are you seeing vampires, Alina?", she asks, and I don’t respond. Vampires. "I don’t know what’s happening to me..." I stay for another half hour in that room before leaving, holding yet another prescription for a medication with side effects, but I need to try again. I am no longer that scared little girl, but even as an adult now, I still have the same problems. It’s almost night, and it’s raining heavily. I pull up the hood of my jacket before continuing to walk through the wet streets, seeing people running around me, but I don’t care about the rain. I enter the nearest pharmacy I find and buy all my medications; swallowing each of these pills is an endless torture for me. I see dead people. I swallowed one of the pills before leaving the pharmacy, feeling the rain on me once again. I grew up alone; I was left at the doorstep of a couple’s house when I was a baby, and they took me to an orphanage. I’ve been in many orphanages, but I never knew anything about my parents. I blink, hearing the cars around me and people holding umbrellas. I turn my head, and at that moment, the feeling of being followed returns inside me. I stop walking and feel my heart beating harder when I see a man in black clothes following me. This time, it's real. I can see it. He wears sunglasses, and I look around before continuing to walk faster. He keeps following me without stopping, and the panic returns inside me. I turn my head again, seeing that he’s getting closer. I see another man behind him, also wearing the same kind of sunglasses. I start running through the wet streets, dodging the bodies of people around me. The two men start running too. I feel and know they’re here for me, but I don’t understand why. I run faster, feeling my lungs begging for rest, but I can’t stop now. I run down another street, trying to enter a*****e so they won’t keep following me, but my plan fails. I keep running, feeling the raindrops hitting me harder. A car honks at me as I run across the street. Everyone looks at me, confused as if I’m crazy. I’m still far from my apartment, and I widen my eyes, stopping when I see another man in front of me. I run to the other side, grabbing my phone to call the police, but before I can do that, I find myself trapped in a dead-end street. The three men walk toward me, and I clench my fists tightly. I took martial arts classes to learn to defend myself after everything that happened to me at Mrs. Peterson's orphanage. I blink, feeling the raindrops falling on me nonstop. The men look at me, and I watch as their leader takes off his sunglasses before looking at me. I widen my eyes, feeling my whole body tremble when I see the red pupils of the man approaching me. I step back, trying to move away as much as possible. He smiles cruelly, and I get the confirmation I need after all my nightmares about people like him. Vampires. “Get out of my way!”, I growl, clenching my fists tightly. Part of me always believed that all my nightmares were real, and if my psychologist were here right now, she would see that I’m not going crazy about the existence of vampires. “We want something you have. If you give us what we want, maybe we’ll let you live, but I must confess, I’m craving human blood, and yours seems delicious...”, he murmurs, and I place my hands on my boot. I pull out a knife that I always carry with me since I learned how to defend myself. I don’t know what they’re talking about, but I see that I’m in danger. There aren’t many people to hear me scream for help. I’m surrounded by vampires.