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It was only a glimpse, then it was more. That was the day I became a addicted. How it happened, I'll never know, but it did. Whether it had been a double-edged sword or not, I do not care. Ever since that day, I couldn't ignore it anymore. I needed more...

Earlier that said day, I awoke hours before the rising of the sun, darkness still intense in my room and yet, enough hours to be called today. Panting heavily, I was cold and shaken from that miserable nightmare. Unfortunately, it was a nightmare that I have had the bitter dark pleasure of being overcome by before. Every year, around the spring time when Master increased her number of partners, these nightmares came whenever I have just let down my guard and carry on through "term". No matter if they bleed into the heat of the summer time, the dreams happen for the same amount of time in the year.
I believe that the dreams started when I was eleven or so. Yes, a year after I came here. After the first couple weeks of the dream, I couldn't tell Master of them anymore, suffering them alone. My reasons being that I simply couldn't because she might take them the wrong way. In those first couple weeks, I woke up, night after night, in a cold sweat, shaken and relieved at the faltering border of nightmare and reality. Each time, I awakened, Master came and I told her. After one specific dream at the end of those miserable couple weeks that I had thought the worst, I lied to keep the truth of my nightmares from her. With time, I realized that if I kept awakening like this, she would undoubtedly question me until I finally got it into my system that the lying couldn't be lying anymore.
Reaching that resolve, I thought two things that could help me: learn to control the fear at a satisfactory level enough so to not waking up screaming, or I'd find a way to make myself a mute every night without being a mute when I awaken. As the first would take time, I used the second method until the first kicked in. Though I can't remember them, I know the intense despair and fear when I unleashed every dark memory I had at full force, bombarding my own mind. Somehow, the night saved me from being traumatized fully again, even though the nightmares had become my worst fears.
In the beginning, the nightmares were bizarre, but at one point, they changed all direction, becoming too seemingly real that I checked every morning...if Master was fine. I can't really say that these dreams were always the same as they changed night to night like an alternate reality which I switch between with this one, yet the themes and people in them were always the same. Sometimes, I dreamed that I found Master dead and I was the killer, that I was killing Master then and there, that I was the leader of the band of thieves who killed my brother and father and raped my sister and mother, that I was the driver of the car that had killed Ahava and had intentionally done so, that I've been dreaming all of it, and that I'm being killed by Master in a slow brutal way. To describe them is too much for me.
Now, these nightmares have gotten worse, but in an entirely different way. I know Master has sensed it because now, she's insistent on keeping her distance from me. Gifts, talks, and the small bits of interaction in our daily routines has seemed to cease. She doesn't even look at my eyes anymore and that makes me want to cry. This is always how it is when the dreams come, and they're coming later and later into the season. They're unbearable...
After moments of sitting in my bed, trying to erase the dream from the stream of my memories, I slowly stood and walked into my bathroom. Of course, I had to prepare it myself, except I didn't care. The bath was just like at the monastery, only difference is I have it all to myself. With the baths in this house, the water is always fresh, automatically drained and refreshed every six hours of the day, then heated for the remaining six hours. So really, the only job of the servants was to prepare the said resident's water preferences as in herbs, temperature, water pressure from the shower that resembles a waterfall, and bathing implements. It was also their job to prepare the towels, organize the toiletries, and keep it clean. Being that these tasks were basic, I could easily carry them out for myself, as I've been doing every term of my nightmares.
Walking around the edge of the large four foot deep bath, I took my basket of herbs and dried flowers and threw them into the water, then taking a pole, stirred them in the water until I was satisfied. I set the water temperature at sixty-five degrees to seventy, set the waterfall on moderate pressure, and set out my bathing oils, shampoo, conditioner, and soaps. Back at the monastery, the women said I was either mysophobic or very self-conscious. Neither is true. Actually, I just really like baths and I want my body to be healthy, so when I take a bath, I want the most from it, before, during, and after. Finishing preparations, I made sure the soft sheet on the low-rise slab of marble I usually lie on after a bath was flat, placed my many skin and hair oils and creams and balms along one edge in one corner of the slab, made sure the full-sized mirror facing the slab was clean, and placed my toiletries along the same edge in the opposite corner of the slab from where my oils, creams, and balms were. Once all preparation was finished, I headed over to the bath and walked in.
For a few moments, I submerged myself fully and then rested on the steps all over the bath, stone steps leading from the surrounding marble to the main part of the bath where it was four feet deep. The warm flowery scented water was calming and some parts of my body exposed to the cool air above the water, I felt those delightful shivers of something chilling against something hot. My eyes were closed a few minutes and then I massaged the oils into my hair, dunked my hair in the water, lathered my hair with shampoo, scrubbed my body with soap, washed under the waterfall, lathered my hair with the conditioner, washed under the waterfall, massaged the oils onto my skin, massaged oils into my hair again, and lastly, rested some more.
All of a sudden, I shivered and sat upright in the water, but not from the draft, or course not. The intensity and memory of the nightmare hot in my skin was what had made me shiver. Even now, it was haunting me. Looking out through the steam clouding the room, I searched for that one reassuring implement in the room that never failed to be there during spring and summer, the fresh flowers that the servants insisted in placing in vases around my bath. For some reason, I found ten today, ten large ones. Seeing them, I decided to walk out of the bath, yet once I got out, I didn't feel like using my towel. Instead, I sat down on the marble slab and lied down, making no movement towards the oils, balms, and creams farther than my head on the long slab.
Thinking about something, I glanced up at the mirror, sat up, and looked at myself. I'm fourteen already and yet, some of the maids have already started fawning over my appearance. Compared to how my siblings and parents were, I was nothing near close to pretty. My long dripping raven locks cascaded in loose tendrils to my hips, dark against the abnormal creaminess of my skin, a white very much like prestige paper or milk. Thankfully, I had fine brows, high cheeks, and didn't look in any way gaunt. Still, I was a bit thin, unseemly thin. Slender waist, slight abdomen, slender neck, slender arms, slender wrists, slender fingers, slender legs, and a slender chest, everything was slender, even my "lithe" feet and developing almost adequate breasts. So slender that it had become too much to me. In a sense, I reminded myself of Abner's effeminate features, only purely female and not to a point. Gazing at my face, I didn't know how to describe my face. Innocent chocolate brown eyes that reminded me a bit of crystals and a complexion that wasn't fair or foul, rather I didn't know what to call it. Nothing like father, my eyes were crystals, not diamonds and I didn't even have a word for my strangely indifferently placed complexion. With such assets, I didn't see why the servants fawned over my appearance and Master's mother insisted on dressing me in all manners of clothing and playing with my hair incessantly. I was nothing compared to what my family had once been.
Just then, a figure appeared in the steam and took a hold of me. From the contact, I knew who it was instantly, not a glance needed to be taken at the mirror. Immediately relaxing, I rested in her embrace, closing my eyes and smiling to myself. My calm quickly left me as she suddenly had one of my oils on her hands and started massaging it carefully into my skin. A strange sound was purged from my lips, a sound I knew all too well from my Master's lovers. Applying them one by one, she massaged the oils onto my skin and into my hair, lightly applied my creams, and administered the balms. She knew perfectly well in what order and how. As her hands danced on my skin like trails of fire, the sound emitted from my lips over and over again, against my wavering control. To my surprise, she continued, moving on to my toiletries. When her hand went there of all places, the strange sound was ripped from my lips, stronger and leaving my heart racing, pounding in the cage of my chest. Such an experienced hand, instinct kicked in and as I panted from the sweet trails of fire, I glanced at the mirror through half-lidded chocolate irises, watching those skillful hands roam on my skin and touch me. Then I looked and I saw it, for the first time since I had come here...a smirk, a genuine smirk. Even if mischievous, it was a genuine facial expression nonetheless. At that unexpected sight, I felt something in me stir, as if awakened or aroused.
"You like this my pet?"
Closing my eyes and bathing in the bittersweet sensations, I then nodded. Right at that moment, I was turned to face her, one hand on the arch of my back and one hand hot at my core. Her lips came crashing on mine, devouring me. From the different sort of tension in her actions, I knew she found my instant response pleasing, especially how I learned and caught on quickly. Pulling from the kiss, she made a trail from my jaw to my pulse. In that instant, I knew my first guess was right...a vampire. I felt bitter ecstasy as her fangs pierced into my flesh and drank from me. She must've taken too much because after a few moments, I became dizzy and darkness consumed me...
Hours later, I woke up in a bathroom, one I recognized, but not my own. In the four years that I've been here, I have found myself in this bathroom only two times before. It was Master's personal bathroom and I was lying on a marble slab just like the one in my bathroom. Looking hazily at the mirror, I then shot up as my eyes set on a strange mark on my pulse. It wasn't anything like the vampire bite marks I had come to know about, rather it was a pictorial symbol surrounded by a ring of characters that I couldn't recognize from any known written language.
"S."
My gaze instantly shifted to my master's face in the mirror. As indifferent as ever, I saw the unusual gaze in her eyes. Being that Master Marie was twenty now, I felt that something was wrong about the situation. That didn't seem to be mutual as Master suddenly right at my backside and repeated the events from before. Only this time, nothing was applied to my skin and hair, her hands merely roaming on my skin. This time, she rested my back against her and kissed me, not allowing me the sight of her hands on my body in the mirror. In those moments that I spent with Master, I realized...I was addicted. I needed not only her touch, but her kiss.