I’ve waited three years to get the courage to tell this story. I finally think I’m ready to be honest and tell it like it happened.

I was only nineteen when they got me.

My girlfriends and I all took our gap year in Europe, backpacking started in Spain, onwards to France and Marseille, and up into Paris and eventually made our way east, into Prague. When you’re pretty, there are doors that open for you. Some doors you don’t want opened for you.

Heather and I were both too easily down for whatever. I hate to say it now in retrospect, but we were toxic together. Always pushing each other further and further, drinking more than we should, taking more than we should, getting into cars with boys with harsh accents to hostels we never bothered to look up to see if they existed.

We met Milo in a respectable bar just off the Charles Bridge, locally known as the Hemingway bar, though who knows if Hemingway ever actually attended said bar. But the drinks were stiff and the bartenders were hot. Milo stirred our martinis with a silver spoon a hundred times around, fifty each way as he flirted with us. He was thin, a little sallow in the face but in a sexy sort of way. He looked dirty even though he wore a tuxedo. And as the night continued on, the drinks kept coming. My sister would say, ‘just because its in front of you, doesn’t mean you have to drink it,’ but my sister wasn’t there and so Heather and I drank each little Hemingway martini placed within arms length. The night became blurry after a while, and I only remember vignettes of specific moments, like a baggie of cocaine plopped into my hand, the girls bathroom and Milo’s hands all over me, I remember singing, Heather and I singing as we crossed the Charles Bridge and feeling the cold stone rough against my fingers.

When we woke up, it was dark. Blackout curtains is an understatement here, we were someplace where the windows must have been boarded shut tight with nails. I simply couldn’t see a thing. At first, I didn’t mind the darkness, my head throbbed and my body ached. It felt like I had bruises on my arms and on my neck. It felt as if I had slept funny, maybe sitting up with my head hung low straining all night. What did we get into this time? That’s when I thought of Heather. I called for her, there was no answer, only an echo. I couldn’t see anything. I called again, and the echo reverberated into the distance and I knew I was in a large space, cold, cavernous. I didn’t have my phone, did I leave it at the bar? The only silver lining I could think in that moment was that my clothes were still on and it didn’t feel like I had sex. Maybe it was because I could smell the vomit down my blouse. Damn Milo was a pusher. At least he wasn’t a rapist.

Heather? I called again.

That’s when I heard the strike of a match and saw the room brighten in a fleeting orange glow if only for a moment. I didn’t really register what I just had seen. It almost looked like a dormitory, beds stacked on either side in two long rows that seemed to go on forever, the darkness swallowed them before I could understand how far they went.

“Did you have fun last night,” he said. He lit the cigarette and the orange ember only revealed part of his face. Milo stepped toward me and causally put his hand on the small of my back, familiar like my high school boyfriend used to do.

“I don’t really remember last night to be honest,” and I remember laughing. I don’t know if it was because I was nervous to be in the dark with the near stranger, or the fact that he either didn’t notice the rancid smell of vomit on me or didn’t care. Because he pulled me close into him and put the cigarette in my lips.

I inhaled and the smoke burned and he cooly put his lips to my ear and said, “I want to show you something,” and it was nearly a whisper. He took back his cigarette and my hand and led me further into to the black void. I had no choice but to follow. Where the hell was I? Where was Heather? I asked him.

“I want to show you,” he said and it sounded as if he was smiling. As we walked, I began to notice how cold it was. Cold and damp. I could hear the clicking of his shoes and the wet smack of my bare feet against the stone. Where the hell are my shoes?

“How can you see anything?” I asked him but he didn’t reply. I started to remember now, how the night before he seemed to choose what to answer and what not to answer. Like a married man with his ring tucked into his pocket, saying one thing but his eyes betraying something more, a secret, and the more you played along the more you became a part of the secret.

I felt like I was going to get sick again. Something smelled. It was different than what was blasted down my chest. No, this smell was rotten. Acrid, even. It reminded me when a cat crawled underneath our house and died and the smell lingered. This smell lingered all around us and it seemed to only be getting stronger.

I was happy to see a flickering light in the distance, a fire? Voices too. They were hushed and excited and as we drew near the voices grew louder but then quickly subsided to nothing at all. Whoever was just beyond the crack in the door was awaiting our arrival.

When he pushed open the door, I took in the room before me. It almost looked like a movie set, there were high vaulted ceilings with statues that seemed to be forever praying, looking down at us instead of up toward the heavens. There was firelight by torches which hung from the walls and the slight crackle and whip from the flames fluttered from an ominous crosswind which smelled sickly sweet and almost burned at my nostrils.

There were probably about two dozen of them, men and women standing. They all held cups of wine and stared at me as Milo continued to march me forward down the center aisle. They all seemed to have a crooked smile as we passed. They looked hungry. I turned to see where we had come from but the door was being shut by two of them, and the door clunked with a thud which I imagined to be some sort of old locking mechanism. Between the pillars and deeper into the darkness where the light dared not to go I could see more of them. They were not still like the others but swarmed around something. It almost looked orgiastic they way they moved as best my eyes could make out, but I simply could not see well enough.

‘Milo, I’m scared,” I whispered to him. He did not answer, only lightly squeezed my hand to let me know he heard me, but he did not turn around. He was taking me to the room just beyond.

When we entered the room, there were four men lounging at ease by candle light. Just beyond them I could see three others, naked standing at attention in front of them. They were shivering. One was a young man, bearded, transient from the look of his ragged beard and mopped hair. His penis was shriveled tight against his body and his hands quivered by his side. The other two were young women. The one looked Indian from her complexion and long dark hair, the other, well, the other was Heather. She stood nude and I could see bruises on her body. In fact the others had them too. Up and down her arms and up her neck. Even by candle light I could see blotches of dried blood which speckled her fair skin. Heather’s eyes locked with mine. She discreetly shook her head and it felt like a warning.

I looked down at my arms, and only then did I really notice the sharp pain at my wrist. A bruise swirled around puncture points which streaked against the veins leading up toward my elbow. “Undress,” he said. I looked a Milo, he had a wickedness in his eyes I did not see before.

“No,” and I heard my voice quiver and break. I needed to breathe. He turned and looked back toward the other men lounging. One of them, a sinewy bearded man who yawned nodded his head and, FWACK!… Milo’s hand ripped across my face. “NO!” I screamed and the shrill echoed and reverberated against the walls and it felt like my head was going to explode. He grabbed me and threw me to the floor and in an instant they were on me, all of them, tearing at my clothes, ripping them clean off my body as if they were paper. He grabbed me by the hair and lifted me up and placed me to Heather’s right and just as quickly the five of them surrounded us.

The bearded one, who I took to be their ring leader eyed us up and down. “You belong to me now, okay?” and it wasn’t a question. “You will be happy here, I think,” and he reached for my chin, an lifted my face. His eyes were coal black and he smelled like the air. I then noticed he was not looking at my face. He was not looking at my body. He was looking at my neck.

Beyond him the others started filing in, one after the other in a line, polite and watching with hungry eyes. The men took the four of us to each corner of the room. Milo held my hand with just as careless a grip as before and led me to the corner with an engraving, SOUTH. Heather was taken to the EAST, the others to their respective corners. Below the engraving was what looked like a throne. Draped across it was a white silk robe which Milo took up and urged me with inviting arms to cover up. It was loose and hung low against my shoulders, and the sleeves and hem were easily maneuvered. He sat me down into the chair which had straps which spread my hands and feet out like Da Vinci’s Vitruvian man.

“Please,” I said to him, and I knew I was going to die.

He said, as if almost responding to my thoughts, “You aren’t going to die. You are going to enjoy this.” He buckled the last strap to my ankle and moved into the nape of my neck. He whispered, “you’re sweet,” and he smiled, “we like to keep the sweet ones,” and I felt him bite into my neck.

He wasn’t wrong. When the blood pulls from you and you feel it leaving you, when you feel the suckling and the sustenance and life you are giving you feel bonded. There’s a euphoria I can only relate to heroin the one time Heather and I tried it in the back of Danny’s truck on the Fourth of July junior year. You get high. And when I could feel them all over me, their mouths on my ankles and up my thighs, down the length of both my arms and on either side of my neck, the room feels brighter. You might think its heaven calling you, and perhaps for some it is. But for me, when I felt warm all over, when I felt no pain and felt that I was floating and it somehow made sense as to why they strapped me down, I relaxed and gently nodded off to sleep.

If you have ever felt withdrawl, you only know a glimpse into what it is like after the feast. It was like no pain I thought I could imagine, the sweating and shaking and shivering and the headaches. I found myself in a bed with an IV in my arm. There were others just like me down the line, some awake, blank and staring, others twisting in fits and spasms and other simply asleep or dead, I couldn’t be sure. Above my head was a suspended clock, which was counting down. It said four-days, three hours, twenty-seven minutes and the seconds counted down.

“That’s when you’re cooked,” he said. I turned to find a boy, he couldn’t be more than ten years old. He was pale and ghostly and the bite marks could be mistaken for chicken pox they were so plentiful across his body. “They need you to replenish before they feast again.”

“How long have you been here?” I asked him. He told me that he was traded here just a few weeks ago. Before he had belonged to a Elder, “a snack boy” he had told me. He’d accompany his Elder like a teacup Chihuahua, only to satisfy the hunger whenever it pleased him.

I began to cry, and I told him I didn’t know where my friend was. I told him she went to the east when I went to the south. “Sweetblood,” he said, “you’re lucky and unlucky. They love the sweet blood and pay top dollar for to feast in the south.” He seemed to retreat for a moment, then looked at me and said “You’re friend is the other way, unlucky and lucky. They go through the sours the quickest. Unlucky to be drained like that, but I suppose she lucky to be gone from here.”

I wanted to ask if he meant that they let her go, but I knew better.

I cannot tell you how many feasts I endured. Too many to count and soon I was asking for to shorten my time to get back to the chair. They listened but they shouldn’t have. I wasn’t regenerating the way you should, I was beginning to lose my taste. They traded me out after what I assumed was a year to a private club for high profile clients and the newly anointed to snack like bottle service. Given out night after night to whomever was looking to score.

The thing is, it didn’t dawn on me to escape, to find help, to get back my life. It had become all I knew and I was brainwashed to believe it was all I was. That was until he came back.

Milo saw me on display and purchased a round in the back room. I didn’t notice him at first until I heard his whispers, his voice in my ear rang like a bell and something inside of me awoke. I let him sample my wrist and he spit it out, he said it made sense why I was here, why I had become so cheap. It didn’t matter though, he had paid and I was his for the next half an hour. I made for the bathroom to freshen up, to offer him my right side, the side I remember him liking best.

When I went into the bathroom I saw just how much I had disappeared. I was no longer myself. I hated what I saw. It wasn’t my fault, they took me, they took my life from me and left this rotting corpse with barely a heartbeat left pumping. I bashed my reflection in the mirror and saw the blood running down its splintered web.

When I came back, Milo was seated behind the curtain, legs crossed and waiting. He asked me if I wanted to go away from here. Leave this life once and for all. He could do that for me. He could make me feel god one last time and go out in oblivion. I told him I was ready. I was done.

He moved so fast I didn’t see him before he was on me, his teeth deep into my neck and I could see the stars behind my eyes and the blood began to drain. Then I felt him jerk violently, and shake. He stopped sucking and pulled back to look at me, the blood running from his lips. His eyes were wild with rage and confusion. He coughed and the blood bubbled out of his mouth and all over me.

I drove the glass dagger deeper into his neck and started to rip it back and forth, back and forth, tearing the skin and sponge-like muscle with every saw back and forth. When he fell to the couch I got on top of him and drove the glass down harder as I felt it slip between the cervical discs and with a wet crunch pass through and into the other side of his neck. I could feel the makeshift blade slicing at my palms but I had known my own spilt blood and didn’t stop until his head was severed clean off. I put that asshole’s head in the toilet and propped his body atop and shut the door.

I slipped through the back door and no one noticed. Those in the V-Trade rarely have the ability or will to escape and so the doors are left open.

I eventually found help and got clean and made my way back to the states. Everyone thought that I had died. In so many ways I did. But I’m alive now and finally ready to tell this story. Why?

I’m ready to seek revenge on all the rest of those vampire pieces of shit.

Who’s with me?