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Author's note: This is my most serious attempt at writing a novella yet. I will post chapters here periodically. Any con/crit would be lovely. Thanks and enjoy.

Tracking Blood

Part One - The Haunted Mist


Chapter One

The circumstances have made the wild horses of my actions gallop way beyond the hills of my self-control. I feel lost. Doomed. As if my path had led me to a fork where I must choose between plummeting down a cliff or getting quickly mauled by lions.

Never will I feel joy or be at peace again. There is a really strange comfort in knowing that everything is gone and your life is nothing but a time bomb. I used to mock people with nothing to lose. Now I understand. They spoke the truth when they mentioned how easy it is to throw yourself into the void after the universe has broken you. Its ability to shatter everything you were and wanted to be is way more than remarkable. It borders with the terrifying. Sometimes it’s unavoidable to think that it is its true objective. That we are part of some sick game. Pawns getting crushed in God’s chess board.

Fate is a curious illusion. It always makes you think you have the power to change it. It all looks so simple when you look back at it from the present. But in reality every decision we make is done and there is no other way to do it. There never was and never will be. Using this reasoning I’ve almost defeated my regret. Almost. I do wish I could change it, and I do feel stupid. I just don’t see the point in complaining anymore. I find it best to be unbiased about everything. Tell it like it is. Sentimentalism was always an obstacle for me and my kind. I had to learn that along the way.

It’s now carved inside my eyes like the cruelest lesson. Buried in my skin and clinched inside my guts. Running through my veins. Staining them with tainted blood. Same blood I refused to give them.

To this day I don’t know why it has been so hard for me to give up. I was never brave. I guess everything changed when they took over. I don’t even have a name anymore. But that just might be one of the few blessings to be bestowed upon my life, considering my former one was Luther. I never quite liked it. So this is where I give you a little background isn’t it? Well, I refuse. There is nothing about me you need to know besides my terrible luck and my shady outlook. I’m somewhere around eighteen. But you probably guessed that from my attitude.

My story is not a pink one and you will find it hard to gather any hope from it, since I myself am totally abashed right now. But it is worth telling. I don’t know if this paper will survive long. In fact, I don’t think it will. But writing is enough. It’s something to do while the storm arrives. And if it helps to take the masks off of these creatures in the future that belongs to you, I will be very proud in whatever anonymous grave awaits me.

Apparently, there was a time when we humans romanticized the idea of a vampire. I would like to talk to the past for a bit and tell them what a terrible mistake they made. How amazing that those seemingly mythical beings would be most terrible plague to ever seize the planet. The ones to sink the world into this ocean of never-ending sorrow in which I live. In the twenty-first century. It’s not possible to know the exact year anymore. Not since they took away the sunlight.

I can only imagine the brightness that used to charm this forsaken place. It all happened when I was much too young. I don’t know what happened to my family after our city was raided and almost everyone was locked up in a camp. I don’t really care anymore. That’s what a world of gray does, in case you wondered. It tears the color out of your insides too until all that’s left is a slob of apathy and fear that you learn how to live with.

At this point, I’m not afraid of dying. I know they’ll get to me for being a nuisance. It will be soon. I’m not asking for a savior. That is impossible and I will not go down being foolish. All I want, if it’s not too much, is a listener. I don’t think there are any history books being written right now, and I am probably the only witness with a notebook. I must tell you how it happened. One day there will be a new dawn, I know it. And if a bug like myself can be spared some hope from the unforgiving universe, I would use it in imagining a future where somebody learns from our blunders and erases them. I would like to blow a wish into the air asking for light to come back. To our world, to our lives, but especially, to our hearts.

I shall start.

Nice metaphor, and I like the image, but it is an odd and passive hook.
Not a common sentiment. Perhaps explain why he felt the need to mock them?

Verb tense shift. This is generally to be avoided.

Equating lack of hope with embarrassment just seems a little odd to me.

You use some really great imagery, and a compelling world. The language seems a little stilted, but that's nothing some editing won't fix. Overall, an interesting start.

Chapter Two

As I’ve already stated, I’m too young to remember life as it was before. However, I can tell this era of darkness began, most surely, on a sunny day of April. According to some newspaper scraps I was lucky enough to find, it was around this month in the year of 2006 that a private college discovered a way to create permanent fog using some newly discovered chemical elements. The names of the elements themselves were never released to the public but the compound was named Rysenium-3. Tests in some highway in the Rocky Mountains showed that a few drops of the liquid over the asphalt arose thick non-toxic smoke that covered the sunlight, but not the heat. They returned after some months. It hadn’t faded away.

There’s even evidence of an award given to the student who led the investigation. His name is Clausen Rommedahl. He came to America on an exchange from Denmark. They were very clever to send him over here, where he’d have the support to produce Rysenium-3 on a large scale under such an innocent façade. I’m sure they discovered the thing way before we’re told, they just couldn’t get enough of the elements for a full scale takeover. Clausen got a good deal out of it too. He’s now the 3rd most powerful being on Earth. Not bad. Only behind Great Master Johannes King and His Grand Highness. No one knows the name of His Grand Highness.

They dominate with their army the bulk of humankind. At the present time most of us are enslaved in breeding camps working to death or otherwise being slaughtered for the purposes you can imagine. They sure need a lot of blood. When you live inside the system it’s easy to sink into it and think of them as another tyrant government, if slightly crueler. But to live outside of it, as a rebel, means living in a total wasteland nobody owns but the terror of eternal shadows. Here you are not selected methodically to be killed. You are just gone in the blink of an eye and never heard of again. It’s more common to find bloodless corpses in the bushes than an actual living human.


Death can strike at any time from the invisible trees or rooftops, or any other spot of the haunted mist. That is what I chose. And I would be a terrible, gutless coward to back down now. Back when I was a child I had no trouble with being just that. But now it makes me sick just to think about it. Not after all that’s happened and what we’ve been through. We meaning Green and I. Green is a guy I escaped with. Turns out we were sent to the same camp a little bit after the takeover. We befriended quickly because we were both pretty shy and held back. There used to be another guy. Micah. Not anymore.

We do not talk about Micah. We do not talk much since leaving camp actually. My best guess is that we’re too afraid the slightest sound will make a monster appear before us. When we walk we focus on the road ahead of us which we can barely see, and when we sit, we ponder. There’s plenty to ponder about and the supplies for trauma are not running out anytime soon as far as I can tell.

The camp we were in is called Lughnasadh, after some kind of Celtic festival or something. I think that’s where they come from originally. Northern Europe. But what I think doesn’t matter, it’s just rubbish I have no way of proving. It all points that way though. Even the way they built the camps, you’d expect something more sophisticated for the years we live in, but no. They’re mostly rock. Maybe they didn’t want us to come by any hi-tech artifacts. They must have them even though I’ve never seen one carried by them. Something tells me they do.

I have a feeling by now you think I’m avoiding to actually tell my story. And you’re right.

It’s hard, I won’t deny that. In some sense it’s like being stripped of my last bit of dignity by revealing all my flaws and faults to the world. Whether it gets to read them or not. But I know I must. It’s probably the last thing I’ll do and I want it to be the best one. Truth be told, I was always terrified of being forgotten, and maybe that’s what set me apart. Fear of not living through to the next day has wiped almost any desire of grandness out of the people. The ones in Lughnasadh, at least.

I remember the day I was brought into that place. I had been running from the catchers for about 5 days and, as a prepubescent brat, was tired and hungry beyond belief, so I gave up and dropped to my knees in some street corner. I thought they were going to kill me right there, so I cried, but these things in gray uniforms only picked me up, tied my hands and sent me somewhere I had no clue of in the back of a car. Looking back on it, I wonder if it was worth it to contain my rage and not bite them, maybe they would’ve slain me quickly. There’s this sea of things I saw after that day that I wish I would forget.

A sea begins with a droplet. After going through the grim iron doors of the construction, I was dropped in some filthy room guarded by 3 vampires at the door. There were other 5 people with me. It was when I first saw Green and Micah, though I did not speak to them that day. Neither did they, or any of the others talk between each other. We were all new, fragile, our minds were being squeezed by terror in a way I think none of us could describe. I certainly can’t. Not to this day. If I were to try I would say something along the lines of having a steamroller flatten your heart over, and over, and over again.

After a wait that dragged on like snails over the grass, a masked creature came into the room. He had a strong voice, yet still with a hint of charm. That’s another thing I hate about them, how they could be so normal all this time. How they could fool us with a smile and some gentle manners. But I guess that’s really a thing I hate about us, not them, now that I think of it. Anyway, we were informed through this hypocrite that we would be living in that room together from now on. And also working together at the mines. I didn’t know it at the time but that meant chained together. We were what they call a lot, to be precise we were called Lot 537since then . There is no such thing as an individual inside the system, even if you do something wrong at work or stand up to a vampire individually, they punish the whole lot. They know us all to well, you see. It’s simple peer pressure, if somebody messes up and everyone gets punished, you’ll have the majority abusing the felon in no time. Smart bastards.

The droplet that I talked about, however, came on the second day, when we were taken out to work. Endless rows of people hitting stones with their hammers without even daring to look up. Completely petrified in body and soul. And that’s when I saw that. I say that, and not her, because there is a point when a living person can no longer be considered human. I wouldn’t know this if I hadn’t seen it. It was an old lady, around sixty. But who cares who she was. It was her eyes. They were like mud cakes. Completely black and shineless, even barren by what must’ve been nights suspended in time crying. She only looked up for a second, but I was unfortunate enough to catch her glance, and that’s when the horror hit me. Needless to say she and her lot were whipped for her wandering eyes. I don’t think I ever saw her around again. The other 5 probably beat her to death that night.

If that’s the case, I’m sure she enjoyed it.

Sorry, I didn't realize you had posted the next parts! Commenting now.
I'm not sure how I can clearly state how much I love reading this. I don't take joy in the pain of innocent people, so it's not your subject matter I like. I think it's the writing. It's written so clearly - for me, at least - that I can sense every bit of pain you're trying to make me understand. At the same time, it's dulled with that jaded sense your narrator has, that this is how it was and this is how it is. I'm being exposed to the suffering of a future generation and feeling how jaded your narrator is about it.
I love reading this. I do. But I think it's time for your beginning explanations to give way to a little more action and dialogue, if possible.