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Not really a poem, but something odd to toss in..

The sky was a burning red, almost arterial red.
I quickened my pace, as soon it would be dawn and I had to get back to my lair- and sleep.
The cursed sleep of the damned that all of my kind were cursed with.
How many centuries had it been now?
30?
I shook my head in grim thought.
All those years, all those sunrises that I could never see.
Ever.

I passed by some flowers and was tempted to pick one.
A silly thought, what do the undead need with flowers?
My kind would think me mad, stopping to pick a flower as if I were courting a maiden!
Maidens...
Again, I shook my head, partly to get rid of some horrible images and slow my quickening and growing hunger.
And to stave off the salivation that would come from following that line of thought.
Somewhere a dog barked.

Sticking my hands in my pockets, I traveled onward towards my eventual seclusion from the light.
A woman exited a door to my left, and the pock pock sound of her high heels told me she felt secure.
She was heading home late from work, and felt secure that the alley was deserted.
I knew better.
I could sense him before I even saw him.
He waited in the shadows, like a thief, like a predator, like a vampire, like me.
I sensed him tense for the spring.

He jumped upward, grabbed the woman roughly and proceeded to try and drag her further into the shadows where his intentions were quite clear.
He stank of fear and predatory energy.
Soon he stank of his own urine and terror.
He was pinned to the wall by my immobile stone cold grip.
The woman looked at me oddly as I told her to leave.
She hesitated.
I could hear her heartbeat where she stood, smell her skin and her perfume.
Almost taste the life in her veins..
My outraged bellow sent her running to her vehicle, the pock pock of her high heels coming more as a stacatto series of machine gun like clacks.
And then I vented my fury on her attacker.

His eyes had bulged at the sight of my fangs, and I shuddered as I drank his life.
I detested what I was, what I am.
What I will always be.
I turned back around the alleyway, leaving the body of the rapist to moulder in the boxes like trash, and picked a single flower from the cluster I had seen before.

And then I went home.
Maybe someday I will be granted my freedom from what I am, maybe someday I will get absolution..
*/ end story*