NIC’S ALTERNATIVE ENDING
Final part rewrite…
By the time I arrived back at Dudley Road it had really begun to rain, a sort of depressing mid-September drizzle which suited my mood perfectly. Thomas closed the front door with a final bang and turned to me but we couldn’t bring ourselves to speak or look at each other directly for quite some time, neither one of us daring to break the silence. I sat on the edge of the sofa, from my right Bosworth jumped onto my lap but I couldn’t even bring myself to push him away even though the weight of the fat animal caused my legs to ache.
After a while I looked round slowly as Thomas came into the room and stood beside me; I could feel the blackness of his cloak almost touching me but not quite, hovering inches away. It seemed like a promise of something remote, intangible. I could feel one of the cups in Thomas’s hands almost scalding my cheek and I stared at it blankly for several moments wondering what it was.
“Brought you a cup of tea,” he announced with his usual theatrical flair.
He sat down next to me and I could feel his black cloak swishing past me as he moved, the shadows in the room seeming to mingle with his presence and become one. I took the cup from him and took a sip savouring the intense heat of the liquid, it seemed a welcome sensation in the circumstance.
“It might make you feel better about this… steady your nerve.”
My tears continued to fall, unbidden. I swallowed down a great lump in my throat before managing to speak in a strangled voice.
“It feels like a last request… Thomas, do you really mean to go through with this? I still can’t believe it.” I shook my head firmly, trying to make sense of what was going on, I still felt as if I was slithering down a steep slope into black water, absolutely nothing to grab onto to save myself. Bosworth leapt off my lap as I stood up, spilling some tea onto Thomas’s beautiful cloak – I hoped that he wouldn’t notice. Perhaps tea stains wouldn’t last on a Vampire’s clothes.
I got to my feet and took Thomas’s cold hand pulling him up.
“Come on, let’s go upstairs then… we might as well get it over with.”
As we climbed the stairs I was aware of Thomas following behind me, still the reluctant vampire right to the end. A sort of numbness had descended upon me which was absolutely self protecting, I was just unable to handle this situation. I reached out towards the bedroom door but Thomas stopped me, laying an icy hand on my shoulder.
”Not in here… I want to die underneath Chatterton,” He told me gesturing towards the back bedroom. “In here.”
It was only when we had moved into the back bedroom and he lay down on the bed that the full detail and horror became real. As I bent down to pick up the stake and hammer my grip upon these objects failed me completely, so I dropped them uselessly upon the floor. I couldn’t stop crying by then, I just stood there stupidly shaking my head.
“I can’t do this, Thomas… I’m sorry, but I just can’t.”
We looked at each other desperately or at least I felt desperate – Thomas simply seemed to look completely resigned and even peaceful, and just waiting for the hammer to strike.
“But we agreed, Alison,” he said flatly.
“I know but I just can’t!”
“But we agreed!”
I looked down at the beautiful face of my eternal friend, an idea gradually gelling within my mind.
“There must be some alternative… some other way.”
Still Thomas’s eyes remained fixed on me although he didn’t speak. And then he sat up slowly reaching out his hand towards me.
“There is.” He said simply.
I was drawn towards him so that I was completely enveloped by that magical sensation of the excitement of the unknown night filling me completely and making my nerves tingle with excitement. As Thomas kissed me tenderly once again I felt the sharp prick of his fangs… but I wasn’t at all frightened – I just wanted him to go on, to go further, to go the whole way. I lifted my chin, exposing my throat… I suppose rather like a sheep asking for its own slaughter.
“Go on then,” I whispered.
Thomas didn’t need any encouragement, obviously. As I felt his fangs sink in further and further below my skin, I thought about the horror my friends would feel when they found my dead body lying there on the bed with big fang marks in my neck. The thought made me almost laugh despite the pain of the actual kiss off the vampire… I suppose there was no way they could keep on telling me my stories weren’t true anymore! And Doctor Lloyd-Jones would be really pissed off now that he would never get another chance to meet Thomas, now that we had both escaped together never to return to Timperley. Where we would fly to exactly, I wasn’t sure… perhaps the Carpathians or some such suitably gothic and remote spot.
I was quite happy to follow Thomas blindly as he flapped his bat wings against the stillness of the night… I felt myself unfurl my bat wings quite naturally even though I couldn’t explain where exactly at what point the actual pain had stopped and the change into bat form had begun – it had happened without a doubt. I followed Thomas off into the night, and as we rose higher and higher above Timperley I was completely filled with such excitement that there was no room for even a single trace of reluctance.
THE ENDYou can now read my CONCLUSION post here.
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