She awoke in a room, white and glowing walls that stretched up in all directions, as far as she could see. A brilliant dim glow of the early morning sunshine, a place no shadows could live, phantasmically aseptic. Eyes crusted over, she couldn't see much farther than the end of her nose. It was hard to tell where all the brilliant bright light was coming from. She rolled over, face planting her self into darkness once again.
Where the hell was she? The last she remembered had been at the bar with Ben and Jake and Catherine. Out for a few beers. There had been dancing and laughter and talk of taking a trip to the Hamptons next weekend. She was training for a bike ride in November. There was an awkward hesitation in the entire party when Jake realized it was the same week as his birthday, but that was cleared up when she promised to show, at least for a while.
She licked her lips. Dry, like salted caramels, it left her mouth thrusty for more. No sense of urgency, though. But where the hell was she?
You're supposed to be dead, he said. It was then that she realized that her feet were missing. As were her hands. And the sunlight that had been pouring in was really a spotlight. The ghoul reached out his hand and said "and now, you're one of us, love". She was in a water tower, the one at the top of her apartment building. There was no one there, but her. She had drank too much the night before, blacked out (as one will, when there's little to eat the day before), and made a pact with the devil. She was here, stuck in the bottom of a dry, ghoulish tank, white, curving walls of smoothed paint stretching up a sheer twenty feet. The sun turned on its axis.
I'm not a vampire, she thought, neither miserable nor elated, just hung over.
She died of thirst three hours later. Jake, although he attended the funeral, never quite forgave her for scheduling a bike ride the same day as his birthday.
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