Anna Banai

She kept close to the shadows wherever she could, slinking among the dark corners of the world. The same world that had rapidly spiralled out of control as soon as humans had discovered the existence of vampires among them. Chaos and violence erupted almost immediately as a result, and she too had been shunned.

If anything, she was one of the lucky ones. That’s what she tried to tell herself. At the very least, her housemates had let her live—albeit reluctantly. And by reluctantly she meant they’d pointed any gardening tools they could find at her, warning that if she so much as thought about coming back, she wouldn’t be leaving in one piece. She supposed they had hoped the sun itself would take care of her. It almost had. Except she’d gotten lucky again and found a discarded blanket on the side of the road that she’d wrapped around herself, shielding her from the deadly rays until she’d found an abandoned building to squat in until nightfall.

Going back to work wasn’t an option either. That had been one of the first places she’d been identified as a vampire. For one, she was so pale, she was practically translucent, and it didn’t help that she had a reputation for going to work before sunrise and leaving after sunset. She suspected her coworkers had alerted authorities because she had seen her face displayed on a dingey old TV in the window of a corner store the following night.

That was their latest method for attacking their vampire problem. A modern-day witch hunt.

A montage of at least thirty identified vampires was displayed on the news every few minutes—wanted dead or alive—though the preference was always the former.

Citizens were encouraged to keep their curtains open during the day and their crosses close at night. Oh, and they had started to advertise wooden crosses on TV. ‘It doubles as a stake to stab the big bad vampires in the heart!’ the infomercial said, ‘with only $29.99 you could save countless lives, including your own!’ Because why not profit, even during an unfolding apocalypse? Ruby sighed. Perhaps some people were truly better off being some vampire’s dinner.

Thinking about dinner made her stomach growl.

As if on cue, she caught a movement in the distance. A woman cautiously rounded the corner of a building, holding a bag of what Ruby assumed was food. What a fool. With the sun almost fully set, her minutes were numbered. Ruby pulled the blanket lower on her face as she skulked into the shadows. Nimble on her feet, she carefully avoided any remaining sunny patches while closing the distance between her and her next meal.

She stalked up to the woman, her finger grazing the pulse on her wrist lightly. The startled woman let out the loudest shriek Ruby had ever heard, dropping her bag and causing a variety of fruit to roll away on the ground. Before Ruby could register what was happening, the woman turned around and kicked Ruby into the only exposed patch of sunlight nearby. Ruby tripped on her borrowed blanket, falling backwards. Her arms splayed out instinctively, accidentally opening the blanket, revealing only a tank top and shorts. It took a moment until she felt the burning on her chest. Then it spread across every exposed patch of skin. Then came the blisters. This time the shrieks that broke through the silence were hers. She rolled on the ground in a panic and managed to get back into a pocket of shadows. She crouched down in the centre of the fallen fruit, shaking uncontrollably from the adrenaline running through her veins.

‘I’m not your blood bank!’ the woman let out a battle cry as she launched herself onto Ruby, wooden cross in hand. The sharpened end of the cross found home in Ruby’s heart, too fast for her to even react. She looked down at the piece of wood protruding from her rib cage, at the blood now streaming down her shirt, and then looked at the woman, mouth agape. The woman, half dazed, looked down at her own hand still clutching the stake buried in Ruby’s chest and then up at her face. Her eyes widened. ‘Why aren’t you bursting into flames?’

‘Not—a vampire. Allergic to sunlight,’ Ruby gasped before collapsing to the floor.

Her head rolled to the side. Her unseeing eyes forever gazing at the red apple that would have been her next meal.

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Anna Banai is a writer drawn to narrative concepts that converge beauty and darkness with a hint of suspense. She explores life’s complexities, where emotions defy simple categorization, believing meaning emerges in the grey areas in between. When not writing, she can be found in the gym, reading, painting, or indulging in drinking large cups of Matcha.

With two degrees in creative writing, Anna has been continuously refining her long-time fantasy novel—one rewrite at a time—chasing the perfect balance of magic and meaning.

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