Immateria

“What… the fuck,” I said breathily, “What the fuck is going on here?”

The woman pouted at me, and for some reason, it sent a sliver of ice down into my heart. 

I staggered backward and collided with one of my dressers, a stick of deodorant and a framed picture of my parents clattered to the ground. 

“Now now, sweetie, don’t panic, it’ll come back to you,” She said smoothly.

But that was the problem. 

It had already come back to me. 

I remembered every gory moment of the night before. 

I remembered dying on the street, blood gushing out of me from a stab wound in the back. 

I remembered the woman, sauntering down the street as if she owned the bloody place. 

I remembered her taunting me, picking me up as if I weighed nothing and then… and then… biting down on my neck like I was a two-for-two meal at a nearby chicken shop. 

“I remember,” I hissed, “So I’ll ask again, what the fuck is going on here?”

The woman looked me up and down quizically and I couldn’t help but feel like I was a piece of meat on display at a butcher's shop, especially considering that hungry red twinkle in her eye. 

“I thought you were meant to be smart, you can’t figure this out on your own?” she all but purred. 

She was enjoying taunting me, I could tell, she was probably getting off on my confusion. 

“I am smart,” I retorted, “But what happened last night doesn’t make any sense. It’s not a matter of smartness it’s a matter of absolute ludicrousness.” 

She rolled her eyes at me. 

“Come on,” She said, “You can do it, put the little puzzle pieces together, you should have enough of them by now.”

She was right, of course. I did have enough information to go off of now, but the answer I was coming to was equal parts ridiculous and impossible. The word my brain was screaming at me made no sense, not least because she was sitting there in broad sunlight and she wasn’t burning to a crisp or shining like a diamond. 

Her smirk widened and her eyes narrowed, almost as if she knew exactly what I was thinking. 

“What are you, some kind of vampire?” I asked, shaking my head at how absurd the question asked even as I said it. 

The red flecks in her eyes glowed darker for a moment. 

“Well, that’s the human term for what we are I suppose,” She said, her fangs were on full display now, pointy and jagged things that looked like they could rip my throat out in a moment's notice. 

“The human term,” I said incredulously, the fangs weren’t enough proof for me. Neither was my sudden return to virility and health. There were technologies that could have caused both. 

“Indeed,” The woman went on, “We call ourselves the Immateria, a name that you would do well to remember now that you have joined our number.” 

My mouth dried up. 

If I were willing to take her word on what she was telling me, then it was clear that some aspects of the Vampire, or Immateria, mythos wasn’t correct. 

Clearly, they weren’t impacted by sunlight in any way, but could the status of being an Immateria be passed on through a bite, just like vampirism in books and legends?

That was the implication. 

“Prove it,” I said. 

She raised an eyebrow at me and rolled her eyes, “I don’t need to prove it silly, you can prove it all by yourself.” 

She nodded toward the door that led to my walk-in closet. 

There were full-length mirrors in there, but once again I didn’t like the implication. Was she telling me that I was about to find that I no longer had a reflection? 

I hadn’t been paying attention when I took my shower, there was every chance that I could have just forgotten to take a look in the mirror while I was in there. 

I swallowed thickly, glanced at the woman to make sure that she wasn’t going to try anything funny, and then moved into the closet. 

My relief was immediate. 

I still had a reflection and it looked exactly as I remembered it did. No strangeness at all. I was still me, and this woman was mental. 

“I still have a reflection, if that’s what you were getting at,” I called out into the bedroom, “Not that I believed this nonsense for even a second anyway.” 

“Who said anything about a reflection?” The woman was standing in the doorway so quickly I felt as if I were ready to jump out of my skin all over again. 

“Well if not that, then what?” I growled, I was beginning to get tired of these mind games, I wanted answers plain and simple but it was clear she wasn’t interested in giving me any. 

She rolled her eyes again and then smiled at me, a full teeth smile, to reveal a mostly normal human mouth… save for two long fangs jutting out where her canines should have been. 

I turned back to the mirror and bared my teeth, but once again was met with nothing out of the ordinary. 

“And now… think about blood,” The woman said, her voice had turned low and husky. 

I didn’t want to think about blood. 

I didn’t want to think about the tingle in my gums when she said those words or the way my stomach suddenly lurched and my senses became just that little bit keener. 

“Think about the jugular, running up someone’s neck, pushing through so much of that sticky red liquid,” She went on. 

The tingling in my gums became worse and I was sure that, just for a moment, my canine teeth may have become a little sharper. 

“Think about it rushing down your throat, pouring out of their necks…” She went on, “That’s it… let them come out.” 

And I had to. 

I couldn’t deny it any longer. 

Fangs. 

My canine teeth had become fangs. 

I was a Vam… No, not a vampire. 

An Immateria. 

I had become an Immateria.