Of Human Form

~=I=~

Vertigo.  It swooped down upon her like a grey wave from an advancing ocean.  A strange, high-pitched buzzing assailed her ears while spots of varying shades from white to black danced across her vision in frenzied static.

Red.  There was lots of it.  Magnified by the flood of longing that surged through her veins, it trapped her breath and filled her mouth with the hot, slippery taste of salt and iron.  She swallowed, imagining it was the wine-coloured ambrosia that caressed the inside of her throat and not the saliva that threatened to stream from her mouth in long silver strings as if she were a ravenous dog.  She was hungry, she was thirsty.  The craving for the salty liquid was strong, so much stronger than her restraint.  Her canines gnawed her lower lip in the farcical mimicry of feeding; her gums sore, aching, sharp stabs of pain shooting through the nerves and settling to pound in the joints of her taught jaw.

Red.  Thick, vibrant liquid.  It spilled across the table, glistening with amber elucidation, pouring from the edges in crimson falls to splash on the floor and fill the furrows between the stones.

Seras stuffed her knuckle into her mouth and bit down hard enough to cause a sharp pain.  The ceiling whirled around overhead, and the muted candlelight slashed amber veins across the pitted granite walls.

Red.  Hot and steaming, it gushed over the lip of the steel bucket in a fountain of continuous scarlet.  Spilling, hot, exciting. . .

She forced herself to refrain from sinking her teeth into her own flesh, if only to stop the incredible urge within herself to bury her fangs deep within skin and muscle, to where the sharp points of her canines could puncture the fragile wall of an artery, and drain all of the sweet liquid from its chambers.  She knew that if she were to sink her fangs into her own flesh there would be no sweet liquid to well from the perforations they would make, just the thick, dark sludge that congested in her veins.  Even if there was, by some strange miracle, a main artery in her index finger.  She needed to feed.  She was so hungry.  Thirsty.  Ravenous.

Rapacious with the instinct and ignorant of the sharpness of her fangs and the position of her finger in accordance with; her jaw tightened and her teeth punched down voraciously into her knuckle.  Starting, with a yelp of surprise and not a little pain, she yanked the wounded finger from her teeth’s grasp.  Abruptly her room slammed back into focus.  The swimming stopped, her sight clearing, reality folding back upon itself, sucking up with it the sea of red lapping at the walls and sprouting endlessly from the jug in the centre of the room.  Seras blinked, and came back to herself.

Well, that was certainly. . . intense.

The floor was clean, smooth and unstained.  The table in the centre of the room was immaculate, too.  And the only hint of the colour red was from the large sachet of type-O blood chilling on ice in the steel tureen Walter had left for her. 

She sighed heavily, releasing a shaky breath.  She was even more hungry than she’d thought.  It was not often that her mutated mind made worse the reality she had a feeble footing on at best, and convinced her that everything was bleeding.  Sometimes, when she had skipped a meal or two due to an extended mission, she’d see blood where there wasn’t any.  She had become accustomed to it, though, expected it almost - it was just a way of her transformed body telling her that she was neglecting her duties towards keeping it working adequately.  But what had just happened. . . It was like some twisted scene from The Amityville Horror movie. 

Sitting down daintily on the edge of her customized coffin-bed, feeling for the side with an outstretched hand before trusting herself to sink into the soft mattress, she unbuttoned and shrugged off her jacket.  Despite the coolness of her keep room in the Hellsing mansion, she felt uncomfortably hot.  She eyed the blood bag warily.  It hadn’t been all that long since she’d last fed.  Master, overtly disapproving of her nasty habit of skipping lunch, had insisted upon it, actually shoving a sachet down the front of her shirt before the entire squad and Sir Integral Hellsing, when the team she had been assigned to had returned from the latest mission successful.  She smiled embarrassedly at the recollection of the mild amusement that had briefly twitched at the corners of Lady Integral’s lips and eyes, and that idiosyncratic grin Master always wore as it dipped into a fabricated frown before broadening into something wholly disturbing.  She swore, sometimes he was so henish - if there was such a word.  Pick, pick, picky Master.  She was glad that she was in her room so no one could witness her embarrassment. 

Still glaring at the tureen and its viciously delightful passenger, she folded her jacket, carelessly tossing it over onto one of the naked chairs around the table, and then started with her shirt.  She popped the first few buttons, tugging the bottom free from her skirt and then unfastened the remainder, leaving the blue police shirt to hang open.  Kicking off her shoes and pushing them under the bed with her toes, she rose and moved towards the table.  Plucking the sachet of O-Pos blood that had been generously left for her to go momentarily insane with blood lust over from the polished steel tureen, she unfolded the drip-tube from the end and using it as an improvised straw, drained the sachet of its entire contents in a few un-ladylike sucks.  She didn’t care if it appeared gluttonous – who was gonna see anyway?  Well, other than the possibility of Master walking through the wall singing something unintelligible rather loudly, or materialising unannounced in her room, that is.  And he wouldn’t care anyway; he’d just find it amusing.  Besides, she didn’t have the time to be civilized with her feeding.  She was tired, and grumpy, and more than a little annoyed at her Master for humiliating her like that in front of her team-mates.  Not to mention that Fergusson had chastised her earlier that evening for ‘rough-handling’ one of the newbies on the team she was assigned to.  Really, it had not been her fault.  It wasn’t like she could avoid the situation in any way.  The blasted kid with the nerve to grab her ass had been begging for it!  And hearing her Master laughing in her head while she was being trampled down by the more than domineering voice of Fergusson had been an extra affront to her pride. 

More angry than she had realized, she tossed the empty sachet back onto the table and set about readying herself for sleep.  Pausing on her way about the chamber to blow out the candles Walter had considerately lit for her, she took up her carelessly flung jacket and folded it neatly, re-draping it over the back of the chair.  Blowing out the last small flame, she flung herself none too carefully onto her bed and activated the mechanism that lowered the lid over the base.  With a dull ‘thunk’ the coffin sealed itself around her.

For long minutes she stared at the lid of her resting place.  The darkness was no hindrance to her vision and she could see in perfect detail the swirls and flecks of a darker hue in the deep sable grain less than half a foot from the tip of her nose.

“I really ought to put some pictures up in here.” She whispered to herself. 

With a final few moments of glaring at the small darker whorl of grain that somewhat resembled a drowned version of her Master’s hat, she closed her eyes and waited for the days shadows to come and take her.

“Sleep well, Master,” She murmured, sinking into the silent rest that was so like sleep but was not; for in that darkness she would never dream.

:: You too, Policewoman. ::  His sepulchral baritone replied, echoing quietly in her mind as her consciousness faded and slipped into the dark.