To an outsider’s eyes, the place looked like nothing more than an abandoned warehouse. But that was to an outsider’s eyes. For those who knew the place, those who were there every night of the week, it was a safe haven. It was a place to find others of their kind. Others who felt like them, believed like them, and were like them.
Those who knew the place, those who believed, they called it the Red House. To them it was not simply a warehouse, but a bar, a club, and a meeting place.
It was where they met others of their kind. It was where they socialized, and it was where some of them indulged in what they believed were normal behaviour for 'their' kind.
For them, the Believers, it was the only place they could truly feel free. For him, it was just another vampire club, just another place where he searched for the meaning of it all. Where he searched for his own meaning in life.
He was not like the others. He did not believe that drinking pig’s blood, wearing fake fangs and staying away from sunlight would grant him immortal life.
Some truly believed this. In their own eyes, they were the True Believers. Others, mere Believers, they wanted so badly to believe that their way of life would lead to something better, for it was all that they had left. Last, there were those who did not believe, who were there because others they knew were, and those who had nowhere else to go.
He was nothing like any of the others. He could feel it. These places attracted him, because they were the only places he could think of looking. What he was looking for, he didn't know. But he knew that places like the Red House was where he would find what he was searching for; what he longed for with every fiber of his being.
All his life he had felt different. He had felt like he was all alone in the world. Even surrounded by family and friends he had felt alone. In the beginning he didn't know why, he didn't understand. He thought that there was something wrong with him. Not until he turned 18 did he realize that it was not him that there was something wrong with. It was all those that surrounded him.
So he started searching, searching for people like him, searching for a place where he could truly feel at home. Places like the Red House felt closer to home than any others. So he sought them out, looked for them. He had visited many, for there were more than just the one. But this particular house was new to him. The Red House was difficult to find, and those who did find it usually never wanted to be somewhere else.
It was located in New York, a little outside perhaps. It wasn't easy to tell, at least not to him who had lived most of his life in Florida.
He had moved to New York six months before, and had spent the first three searching. He had found quite a few places like the Red House, but he had not stayed long in any of them. This was the next place on his list, the next place where his search took him.
He had been planning to go here for a week, after finding out its location from a man he had met at the last place his search had taken him. He always had a plan ready when he visited new places. He never knew what to find or what to look for, but he liked planning. And unlike most of the others you would find in places like this, he had a job, and tried his best to live a normal life.
He had approached the Red House slowly, his eyes searching, scanning the area for something he didn't know he would recognize even if he did see it. The door opened in front of him, people walking out, wearing black, two or three of them wearing capes, all of them sporting white fangs, glasses holding pigs’ blood in their hands. They were True Believers, and they knew it. Their attitude screaming it, their eyes looking at him like he was beneath them. And in their own eyes, he was.
He knew better than to follow them with his eyes, and instead he looked straight ahead, past the doors, as he walked into the Red House for the first time.
Story Notes:
I started writing this story a few years ago, but as I am currently working on book three in this series, I figured I should post the previous ones before starting on the last.
