I never believed in vampires. I read all of Twilight, watched all of Vampire Diaries, read Dracula, and even watched Hotel Transylvania over and over again as a kid. I thought the idea of vampires was scary. So I told myself that they never existed.
On my fifteenth birthday, my parents surprised me with backpacking Europe. One month in hiking boots on dirt and cobbled roads. I was homeschooled so I pretty much had all the time in the world during summer.
My parents weren't very adventurous, but they always found family hiking and traveling as fun. I loved them for it. They always tried to make life exciting for me. Or at least when they could. You see, my parents and I made a pact—a promise. They would be gone for a month for work, leaving me alone at the house, with occasional visits from nannies, then they would spend a month with me. They were part of a traveling agency for celebrities. So they were always busy.
But anyway, I had been begging them for a trip to Europe and they had finally given in. I didn't have very many friends, considering myself an introvert. It wasn't that I was uncomfortable around people, just that I enjoyed listening and not talking. I liked to read instead of making no sense in a conversation. So over the days that my parents weren't with me, I was either homeschooling online or learning about different cultures and countries.
My parents and I were almost done with our journey as we came to the last country of Europe: Romania. It was getting dark. We were hiking in the mountains with no guide or other civilians. It was a rash decision to make but my dad wanted to see the infamous Dracula's Castle from an extraordinary angle as the sun went down.
I wished we hadn't.
As we hiked, each step became heavier, every breath a little louder, and the path became narrower. We were cutting it close to a cliff.
I can still recall every thought, feeling, and smell during that traumatic experience:
My ankles began to slowly lose balance as my knees were wobbling. A month of hiking can really tire someone out! I look ahead to my parents who I can tell are just as tired as I am. When are we going to just pitch tents or get back to the hotel room? Maybe we can just visit this spot tomorrow?
It's really starting to get dark. But the sunset is breathtaking... isn't this enough?
"Sweetie?" My mom calls to me. I notice I have just stopped. I nod and force my feet to keep moving. My stomach drops as I look over the steep slope. The air began to smell grim. If that's even a thing.
Crack!!!
I'm falling, I'm screaming, I hear my parents yelling. I see their arms flailing. The unstable cliff broke under the weight of our feet. Now we're sliding down to the dark abyss of Romania.
My arms are scratching, yet I feel no pain, my head is knocking on rocks, yet I feel no ache.
Is this really happening? I thought these kinds of things only happened in the movies? Now my family is going to be known as the hushed story told around the world of a small family that all died while stray—hiking.
I want the chaos around me to stop. I want to see clearly. I want to stop hearing my parents yelling and screaming. But now that's my greatest fear. If they stopped making noises, that ment they were...gone...or just knocked out.
Everything went black.
