…the student must overcome the master is bullshit. [story part 18]

Before starting this part of the story, I really have to make you understand something important for later in the post. You have to understand how resilient and how strong, how complex and magnificent the human body is.

Nowadays, humans see themselves as inferior, physical wise, to animals. a human will think that, just because he doesn’t have claws, fangs or super-speed, he is inferior in all ways to a predator.

I have to tell you, the human body is the most complex and amazing killing machine that ever walked this earth. Your body can do much, much more than what you give it credit for. And it can withstand much more damage than you would think. That is the human body, and we compensate for not having deadly fangs with brains, but when it comes to resilience, we’re as tough as it gets.

Just because today, we rarely run and jump, we sit in front of the laptop, read books and drive everywhere, it doesn’t mean that our body is any less prepared to deal with the wild nature than it was thousands of years ago.

Even if you feel your body stiff, rigid, tired – in a short two or three months you can turn your body from a piece of walking meat into a killing machine. Your body can perform jumps and twists, can climb faster, higher and easier to heights that not even the most advanced predators of the African savanna can.

Especially when fear comes into play. When your body is shot up with adrenaline, it goes into overdrive, it becomes ten times stronger, and that is not an exaggeration. It is something that has been documented. your body becomes purely amazing. It stops feeling pain, joy, it goes numb and invincible. It transforms from a vessel of your life into a weapon of destruction and survival.

If a big cat, like a panther could think in such a way, it would be jealous of the human body.
Did you know that the human body is among the very, very few creatures that can run for an undefined time? You can keep running and running. Few animals can do that, most of them sprint and then have to stop.

But regarding to strength, the human body is amazing. you can do much more with your body because of your mind. you make use of the environment to help you, you use it wisely and you make split-second decisions without thinking twice. Most big predators cannot do that.

Ok this is getting too long – but remember this: the human body is the most advanced piece of biology out there, and it is a perfect survival and killing machine.

Now, watch this thing, which illustrates precisely what I am trying to say: please watch this.
By all means, please, watch that.

That movie is you and me. It is the human body in action. You should be more proud of it, take more care of yourself and give yourself more credit. We are not the dominant species on this Earth for nothing.

Now, imagine all that you saw in the movie, and add the strength of another twenty men in that body and over four hundred years of training in doing that. Try to picture the result of that.

***

It was the 27th of May, 2005…

…after watching Regina sleep like an innocent kitten almost all day, she finally woke.
The night before, I had planned on taking a bath and going straight to sleep, but just as I was falling asleep, you know that feeling of weightlessness, I felt a sharp sting behind my shoulder. I instantly realized what’s going on and I stayed still, but then I turned around to nag on her about the manners.

She was actually playing with me, again. By the time I had turned around to pick on her, she was faking being asleep, eyes closed, and a big smile on her face, a kind of “trying to control not to smile, trying to be asleep”.

I didn’t say a word, I just kept staring at her, knowing she would feel my stare and eventually give up. She did, in about five seconds.
Without opening her eyes, still smiling, she said: “I’m really starving you know…”

“Order room service then!” I said.

Then I realized what I had just said, and also realized she was actually giving it a good thought whether it would be a good idea or not.
I smiled and went closer to her.

And by the way, sleeping with her behind you was pretty much like taking a snake in your bed and turning your back to it, hoping it won’t kill you overnight. That’s what it felt, in the beginning, but by now I was used to it.

I knew that there’s no such thing as “you have to ask” in her world. She just took whatever she wanted, when she wanted it. So I stopped nagging her and just offered more.

The interesting part was that, even though she seemed in a frenzy, with fangs fully extended, eyes darkened and red glowing deep inside her retina, she was perfectly lucid, smiling and talking with me. I had hoped this change would be permanent, and that she could always be like this.

She had a bad habit of actually holding my head stiff, with both her hands, sometimes so stiff that I couldn’t even talk, not that I wanted to talk during her… lunch. But at times it hurt, it felt as I was caged, or disabled. I felt trapped when she took my head with both her hands. I think it was a gesture developed over the years, years in which most of her dinners tried running away.

This time I gently pushed her hair from over her face and leaned over her, I took both her hands with my hands and pinned them above her head, her eyes widened and she started smiling with a mouth that went from ear to ear.

She didn’t say anything just pursed her lips and closed her eyes, but instead of offering her mine, I leaned over her and offered something that she made abundantly clear earlier that she wanted. I rested my neck on her lips and because I was tensed above her, blood flowing in my head which was tilted down, I could feel my pulse in my neck and head.

She rested her lips on my neck without moving, for few seconds, enjoying the feeling of my pulse that she felt on her lips, and then, she bit.
I barely felt it, I actually enjoyed it more than I should have, but then, unlike any other time, she released, and just stood there, mouth open, with me above her, my pulse doing the rest.

It didn’t need any sucking, she was now beyond bloodsucking. She stood there, under me, mouth wide open, eyes closed, still smiling.

She took the wound in her mouth from time to time, more kissing it than sucking on it, and we just stood like that for what seemed like hours.

I could tell she enjoyed it more than she would actually enjoyed sucking it. It gave her a feeling of… freedom. Of not guilty. Of offering. This is what total offering felt from my part. She didn’t need to do or say anything. She didn’t need to hold her prey so it doesn’t run. Her prey came willingly to her and offered itself.

“Bite me.” She said.

“No… I don’t… I’m not.. Why would I bite you?” I replied. I don’t remember the actual conversation, but I do remember it was pretty mind-boggling. Why would I… Was she proposing what I was thinking? She wanted to turn me there and then! I was over-reacting.

“Bite me, I want to remember how it feels…” She said again.

I complied. I bit her neck, as hard as I could, but my “fangs” were not even close to being able to make such tiny holes, I didn’t give up and I bit as hard as I could until I felt her blood in my mouth. I felt sick.

It tasted coppery, iron like. Warm and nasty. How could they enjoy this was beyond my understanding.
She made a feint sound in the process and then she put a finger on her wound and touched my neck wound with her blood. For healing, I remembered Viktoria telling Sophia the same thing.

Her neck wound was almost healed completely by the time I even released with my mouth. And it also seemed to me that there was way less blood than it should have been, it was like instant cleaning. Don’t tell me they absorb blood with their skin because that’s too much. My imagination was running wild again, “they”, of course, didn’t. She just didn’t bleed as much as I did.

Where does the “human body is amazing part” come into this story?

Well, let’s go back to the start of the post, where I was telling you how I watched Regina sleeping almost all day.
Finally, just as the sun was going down, she woke. Still smiling.

She was literally radiating with life – I just wanted to be able to feed her more often, so I can see her more like this – but I couldn’t. I already had carrot juice and steak, for breakfast. Who eats that for breakfast? I did. With my little knowledge of biology I knew that red meat and carrot juice would help me the most. In any case, I didn’t feel pale or dizzy. I felt just fine. I was already planning on feeding her again, tonight.

So where does the little “human body is amazing” come into play?

Soon enough.

The rest of that day I had spent it inside the hotel, a big, scary looking man, with absolutely no language skills except Russian came into the room with two boxes, big boxes. Then he left and continued getting more and more and more boxes.

Regina and I had spent almost the whole day staying inside the room and just picking clothes from the boxes. I can’t stress this enough, the clothes were all new, original, well-known brands. I didn’t care how and where the man got them, I loved them anyway.

They were “a welcoming present from him”. Interesting enough, didn’t care. I was a fashion addict anyway, way before meeting Regina. And we needed clothes! We did!

Regina went out that night and didn’t return until the next day on the 28th, after sundown.
Needless to say I was not only bored out of my skull but also as angry as a “girlfriend left behind” can be.

I forgot about all my anger as soon as I saw her and we pretty much repeated everything we had done in the first night.
I’m skipping this fast forward with no extra details until the 29th.

We woke up on the 29th around 14:00 and Regina said, instead of good morning.

“I’ve decided you will stay here.”

“The hell I am. I don’t care where you’re going but you’re either taking me with you or I’m going home. I didn’t come with you to stay in a hotel.” I replied determined to do what I said. I really intended in going home if she left me behind again.

“Fine then, but it’s dangerous and if something were to happen…” She agreed.
“Then it’s your fault. ” I said, and smiled.

She didn’t say anything, which actually meant that she agreed on what I had just said.

“Where are we going anyway?” I added.

“Well, Nikita asked me to come and deal with a group of critters because apparently it would be of a personal interest to me.” She said.

“Who is Nikita?” I replied.

“The elder of this zone.” She answered.

“And how is it personal to you…” I added, referring to how else, beyond the fact they were kinship.

“Somebody turned over night, almost a whole building, there are apparently over twenty of them…” She said.

“Few vampires can do that… and I know them all.” She added.

It turned out, that, if you wanted to mass-turn humans, you  needed to be really old. Because you needed to feed them your blood, and it would have to be the one or the other. As in: either quality (old blood) or quantity. And how quantity is limited even in a vampire… There’s only so much you can do if you’re not old.

However, Regina, Viktoria, and a few older ones, could literally turn a human with two or three sips.

“So what are you thinking?” I asked.

“I’m thinking that I need to deal with this, and then find out who did it.” She replied.

It wasn’t forbidden to turn humans, of course not. You could turn as many as you wanted, no issues there. But there was still the issue of letting them run freely, no Codex no nothing…

“I’m hoping that it’s someone older than me, and the only one older than me that I’ve ever met is…” she trailed off

“Your maker?” I replied.

“Yes.” She said.

“What was his name?” I asked.

“Sigismund…” she said and trailed off looking down at the floor.

“Like a father.” I said.

“Yes, like a father.”

I gave up on that and stopped asking questions.
We spent the next couple of hours down in the dinning hall, she studied a book the whole time, turned it in all directions like it was a Playboy issue not an old manuscript, and I mainly spent my time online, occasionally stopping to talk with Regina.

As soon as the sun went down, we left the hotel.

In no time we were on our way towards the “vampire nest”. We passed the Red square on our way there and I could only feel regret that it wasn’t daylight so I could see it better. I also felt regret for not being able to take photos, any photos, Regina made that abundantly clear time and time over. No photos, ever. Fine. I didn’t like taking photos anyway, I would rather take them with my mind.

We walked for about thirty minutes before arriving in front of a soviet style apartment building which was in a very bad shape. Blackened on the sides and the first floor, all of it, had no windows. No apartments had windows at that floor.

Not the kind of place in which to spend your afterlife…

We went inside like we were having a stroll through the park. No stealthy moves or anything, we just walked in. I followed Regina closely and she didn’t look back. Not even once. She just kept going without saying anything. We climbed to the top floor where, at the end of the corridor, there was an open door and sounds were coming out. Laughter and growls. I felt a hint of “why the hell did I insist in coming here…”

We continued going and Regina just strolled inside the apartment, through the open door, with me following, like she owned the place.

Inside the room there were four people, vampires by the looks on their faces. Blood was smeared all over the walls and Regina took a second to analyze the whole layout of the place.

They didn’t seem to realize, not even for a second, that they were facing another vampire. They simply assumed we were fresh food.
They stood up and started talking in Russian with Regina, smiling and approaching.

Regina said something back and then half turned her head to me and said: “Youngsters. A week maybe.” – I nodded and stepped towards a table which was just to my right, almost in the middle of the room.

Regina then started speaking louder and louder, it was like she was trying to order a pack of dogs to start counting to a hundred. It was clear, even without understanding Russian, that she didn’t reach to them. They just kept getting closer and closer, and by now their fangs were starting to extend.

Regina was still calm. No frenzy. I remember I told myself that, four of them don’t pose any danger to her. I tried reassuring myself of that but before I finished my thought I heard steps from the corridor and to my amazement, over ten or fifteen of them entered the room and encircled both me and Regina.

“I don’t wanna die.” I said.
Regina giggled and pulled out her big golden knife which seemed to be always with her.
She handed it to me.

“Just in case.” She said. And with that, all my bravery went down the drain. I felt shit scared and couldn’t even muster my strength to hold the damn thing, not even mention wielding it. I didn’t have the mental power to stab someone, no way. Still, I took it.

We were now circled by twenty critters, which apparently had no idea who Regina was, and that didn’t seem a good thing. Even for her strength, twenty of them seemed too much.

Imagine you’re in a poorly lit room, with twenty creatures you haven’t seen in your life, creatures with long fangs, dark eyes, elongated faces and sunken eyes. Creatures that were by now growling and hissing towards me, looking at me like I knew I looked at a very, very delicious cake.

They still had no idea Regina was not human. So young they were, some of them didn’t even knew what to look for.

A thing that I had read popped into my mind, and although I didn’t remember all of it, I remembered the main point of it. Here is the whole thing:

“Many classic horror icons, such as Geger’s Xenomorphs, Silent Hill’s Pyramid Head, and other disturbing creatures, share common characteristics. Pale skin, dark, sunken eyes, elongated faces, sharp teeth, and the like. These images inspire horror and revulsion in many, and with good reason. The characteristics shared by these faces are imprinted in the human mind.

Many things frighten humans instinctively. The fear is natural, and does not need to be reinforced in order to terrify. The fears are species-wide, stemming from the dark times in the past when lightning could mean the burning of your tree home, thunder could be the approaching gallops of a stampede, predators could hide in darkness, and heights could make poor footing lethal.

The question you have to ask yourself is this:

What happened, deep in the hidden eras before history even began, that could affect the entire human race so evenly as to give the entire species a deep, instinctual, and lasting fear of pale beings with dark, sunken eyes, razor-sharp teeth, and elongated faces?”

I think the whole thing above is really on to something. There seems to be an instinctual fear of these creatures, deep in our mind. Even a baby, who has no idea of the terms vampire and bloodsuckers or demons, will be frightened and cry as loud as he can if presented with such a creature. But then again, he could hug a lion or  a black panther, having absolutely no fear of it. Proof of what I’m saying here. Would you think that the same baby would be smiling and be so oblivious to such a creature? I hardly doubt it. But look at the baby’s reaction when faced with the “worlds greatest predator”. Smiles.

Why is that? What really did happen, long, long ago in our history as a species, that we have such a fear of these “mythical” creatures? How old these creatures really are? Who were these creatures and where are they now? That is the question you have to ask yourself. Who else shared, or is still sharing, this world, with us?

I can’t even imagine how terrifying a creature needs to be, to imprint, biologically, a fear into another species mind.
Like the wolf for the deer or, in other words:

We are as scared of these creatures, instinctively, as the proverbial elephant terrified of the mouse.

Back to the story,

Keeping in mind what I have said above, I was in that situation. I was in an ancient time, a time when man was deeply terrified with the images of such creatures. And I was surrounded by over twenty of them. I was shaking deeply from the bottom of my everything.

One of them, more impatient I think, because they don’t really have a pack like approach in attacking, jumped towards me and Regina literally stuck her hand inside his chest and pulled it out quickly. He fell to the floor, dead. I really think she crushed his very heart in under a second.

When I looked at her, the Regina I knew was gone. The attack of a “critter” directed towards me had been enough to set her off.
Those pale creatures I was talking about, seemed nothing compared to her face.

She was now in her battle stance, knees bent, straight back, arms slightly detached from around her body, as like she was forming a “my circle” area.

Even I, was by now, like I said above, instinctively afraid of her. Terrified, beyond reasoning. I knew all to well she didn’t intend on attacking me, yet, I was terrified of her. WHY?

She moved and breathed exactly like a predator. Her eyes, her head and her gestures were all quick. Quick start, quick stop. They were very well synchronized and controlled. She was watching all of them in short bursts jumping from point to point in the circle around us.

She was revolving around me and I was just standing there, paralyzed, with a big knife in my hand, no idea what to do with it.

The others needed about two or three seconds to realize three things:

A) The one that attacked was dead before they even had the chance to realize it.

B) They were facing one of them.

C) She looked more menacing than them.

But then again, they weren’t thinking rationally. And just like that, they jumped at us.
And don’t picture Hollywood movies here. They didn’t jump at us one at a time, like in the movies. Waiting in between for Regina to finish him off. No. They all jumped ON TOP of us, in the same time.

It was the most terrifying feeling I ever had in my life. I remembered the scene in the movie “The mummy” when one of them was literally encased in a web made of those little bugs, scarabs they were called. I felt exactly like that.

I remember I started swirling that damn knife like a mad-man in any direction I could. A game I had played really helped me out here, I’m talking about “World of Warcraft” which most of you might have played. I remembered an advice I got from a friend in the game: “When facing a melee enemy, always put your back behind a wall so you at least can be sure he can’t kill you from behind.”

I did just that. I put my back behind the closest wall and started swooshing the knife in all directions. I turned over the table to my left and started screaming like a girl.

And now comes the part with “the human body is amazing”.

I presented that, so this next part won’t seem so science fiction.
When they all jumped on us, Regina literally pushed them in a single swirl around me, aside. All of them. And then, with a speed that really was too intense for me to observe closely. It wasn’t supernatural or anything the like. It wasn’t a blur or some magic. It was just really, really fast, and really, really well synchronized.

She was literally dancing around the room, ripping heads off in the process, bouncing between walls, ceiling, floor, and the critters. She jumped and twisted in the same time in the air, landed on top of another of them, and bounced from him in a wall. I was watching an artistic ice skating competition of death.

She jumped from that wall pushing herself hard towards the ceiling and then ricocheted from the ceiling towards a large group of them.
She was dancing a deadly dance. They were listening the last song they will ever hear.

The whole thing couldn’t have taken more than ten seconds. Without a knife, she bounced from wall to wall, using everything in the room she could find. I heard bones cracking, skulls being crushed and screams coming from each direction. She was killing faster than I could turn my head.

Three of them eventually grabbed me and my knife proved to be pretty useless at that point. They grabbed me and before Regina could get to me they had managed to bite me in five different places, and I had felt each and every bite, and then I saw and felt them flying off me. But two of them held my hands so tightly that they managed to break both of them when Regina took them off me.

I don’t think I’ve ever felt more pain in my life, hearing my own bones crack, and that, combined with the bites I had all over my body… was just… a feeling that would make anyone faint, if not for the adrenaline and the fear.

In any case, Regina didn’t seem to have any issues with them at all. It was just a matter of “can’t kill fast enough”. They all tried biting her, jumping towards her and others but she had successfully dodged each and every attack thrown towards her. Matrix is nothing compared to what she did.

If this seems to much for you, watch the movie about the human body above again. And then imagine her, doing that, but amplified by twenty.
She was jumping in the air, doing a twist, biting one and killing another with her other free arm in the same time. She took two or three at a time and had no problems in dodging all their attacks. She was just that much stronger, more flexible and faster than any of them.

After she had taken those two off me, she took the knife from the floor and literally decapitated two of them in one single blow. The last two of them.

I cannot explain this in enough detail or cannot stress this enough: Life does indeed, beat movie. Every, single, time. No movie, and I’ve seen a lot of them, ever managed to portray such a thing. No superhero or vampire, in any movie, managed to have such deadly and fast moves. This was just so much better than a movie. It was just… I… you cannot put this in a movie.

It is like this: when you watch a horror movie, you might be scared, but that’s it. But if you ever stumbled upon a “forbidden” gore movie, like the ones in which the Talibans cut the head off a journalist, which you knew it was 100% real, you know what I mean.

Horror movies make you scared, real, gore movies, in which you see a head being cut off for real, make you sick and dizzy, make you scared from your very essence, make you absolutely paralyzed.

Silence fell over the whole floor, the whole world it seemed to me. I was loosing blood, my hands were hurting and by now I was cold as hell.

When I tried moving I felt a sharp pain in my back and when I looked down, I had a piece of wood, the foot of the table, stuck deep inside my abdomen. On the left side, and I could barely breathe. Blood was flowing from me like a river. So much with feeding Regina tonight. I knew it was my spleen, and I also knew a perforated spleen usually meant death from blood loss.

The only thing that I remember next was Regina walking around casually between them, searching for something on the floor. She picked one of them and started talking with him.

He was missing a hand – I was not delirious – he really was. I felt my stomach trying to exit through my mouth.
I was so scared and so wounded I didn’t knew what to do, scream, cry, start begging god to spare my life… My head was a mess. I remember I just lied there on the floor, unable to move eventually, shivering and thinking: “This is it, this is how I’m going. I’m too young. I don’t wanna die. I’ll start going to church if I survive through this. I don’t wanna die. This is it…”

I was so scared I started puking, I puked everything I had inside me and then I started puking more, with nothing but a yellow, bitter, nasty liquid coming out. At least I was not coughing up blood like the movies had taught me it usually happens before you die, but I was pretty sure I’m was going to die either way.

The wooden thing was still inside me – I left it there intentionally remembering how it’s not good to pull it out until you’re ready to stitch the wound up. I had done everything I remembered you need to do in such cases, but I couldn’t have taken it out anyway, my arms failed me.

I just remember staying there in my own blood and puke, shivering, and everything was spinning around with me.
I heard a very, very loud noise in my ears, the kind of high pitch noise you hear now and then, but this was really intense.

I also remember a very ugly feeling, a cold sweat encasing me. It is a really disturbing feeling, having a cold sweat. I had heard the term before, but never felt it. Now I did, and it was worse than I had imagined.
I don’t remember anything else afterwards.

I didn’t dream anything, nothing. I didn’t have genius moments in my dreams nor did I see “all my life flash in front of my eyes”. I didn’t see no light at the end of no tunnel, I didn’t see any relatives calling me to them. No. It was black. I had died. I’m sure, somewhere deep, deep down inside, that night, maybe for a second maybe for more, I was dead.