IT THE BRAKE!

Schizobloodyphrenia, my arse.

"Damn her!" I screeched. "Damn her to Hell!"

No brake, two bumps. No rabbit.

Crazy, sure, but how would you feel if your own mother called you a madman to your face, then cruelly denied you your final sanctuary before St Peter's cock had the chance to clear his throat?

Sure, I'm soaked with blood, but my mother, my real mother, should have been glad it wasn't mine, not trying to brainwash me! They'd got to her, twisted her mind. They'd taken away my last hope.

She says I'm sick, I'm weak, I've lost control. She tries to laugh at the very word "vampire" but can only manage a sneer. So you know weak people, do you, witch? How many do you know who've crushed a twitching, beating heart with their bare hands? Ha.

"You've gone too far!" she screamed at me, back-lit by a stifled moon, angelic in the wintry murk. Well, twenty years of nurturing, Ma, I'd have hoped for the extra yard!

Then she's crying convincingly and you know you've got to kill her, too. You don't want to, you just have to. How do you feel? What do you do?

What you do is wrangle with the demon, wrench your mind back from the pit and wrestle him back to the car. Grit spray like bullets as you slam down the pedal and you're half-wishing they were real, hot lead. Night bites the car hungrily, salivating squalls of rain as a devil of a storm rumbles up. When the tail stops slewing and the wheels find sounder road, you watch the unlit hamlet dwindle in the rain and dust behind you, a wake wherein you pray the godless town will rot.

Cursing the witch for a final time, you roll down the window and almost begin to relax.

But first, check your mirrors. Check them again.

A gloss of frost adds lustre to the tyres' thrum on tarmac. I check mine. Pinpoint coloured lights cross an absent horizon.

No, you're not the madman. Keep reminding yourself that or you're done for. You're not the one that's gone too far. You haven't gone far enough. You've not even started.

A voice says, You've killed one, remember? At first you wince but then, guiltily, feel warmer and calmer. The dead can die again, it says, and you can kill them. Kill them all.

But then you're distracted, start wondering. You don't know where the thought came from, but suddenly know it for fact. Their blood is poisoning you.

What if they don't need to bite you? Their blood could be different, red cells burrowing down through your pores like slugs, chewing capillaries and wriggling in to infest and subsume the waters of all that you are.

You tailor a theory and bank on it: they could have poisoned you at any time, through the medication they thought you were taking. You popped the pills dutifully for almost a month, until you discovered they were using them to track you. They could have had you then, but missed their chance. You were too clever for that. You stopped the pills and ran. Ran amok, the radio said, but the radio says what they make it say. They are everywhere.

Crazy, sure. That's what you think of me, isn't it? Let me tell you, that's just what they want you to think. If you don't, they'll think your against them and soon enough you'll find them sniffing out your trail. Be wary of what and who you believe, or you'll find yourself in another car, on a bitter midnight road that's all your own.

This is how it will start: You find out something you shouldn't, you start asking the wrong questions and something that simply shouldn't be unfolds right in front of your face. See enough to drive you crazy, sure, but that'd be you, not me.

But even if you're strong enough, if you hang on for dear mind and repel them, they'll convince the world around you that you've lost it anyway.

Vampires. Bastards. Trying to drain you into your grave sip by sip. Not enough, though. They suck your brain before they quaff your blood.

Theirs is the first finger that points, the first oily whisper of slander. They crack the sarcasms and start the dark rumours, appending themselves to the gossip of those that you know and tainting their trust in your sanity. The cowards hone the blade that takes your life but need others to plant it in your spine. The maliciously gullible who once shared your life will betray you.

Who are they, these vampires that you find so hard to credit? Merely symptoms of my universe, or signs that you are in denial?

But you are acquainted already! Theirs are faded-snapshot faces, staring out too hard from buses, those that hold doors open while faking smiles, trying to trick you into giving up one of your own.

Now understand, vampires are neither crackpot's fancies nor your dapperly cloaked, pointy-canined late-slot favourites. These are different things, grotesques, whatever they want to be. They hide everywhere, and they pursue.

And now you've got the law on your tail. You spot them straightaway, of course, with their lights and the siren that's tuned to your skull and sets it ringing like a parlour wineglass.

Of course it crossed my mind that the cops might be involved, that two of the nation's finest could be parasites scratched from mangy pelt of Satan! But then you've got to shake yourself, reign in the wild imagination or you're done. You know they're only policemen just doing their job and that once the whispers had brainwashed Mother, she had every right to call them.

Don't let them put thoughts like that in your head, or you'd end up paranoid for real. I didn't know where I was heading, but that way lay only delusion. There, there be dragons, not vampires.

You almost laugh at lines like that, but bite it down in case they hear and think they have you fooled. But they taste your thoughts and in a flash the stalking lights are dancing on your exhaust. Flight or fight, your blood is screaming, and now is the time to choose.

But then fate laughs and there's this big bike, some kid on a machine he can't handle. You hover on the brake but their slug-cells are in your blood and you feel the demon growing from their seed. Then the hands on the wheel aren't your own any more and control of the engine is yours no longer.

So it's, Sorry, kid - should have bought yourself a car.

The crash helmet bounced and the cops swerved around it, ploughed into the sliding bike and both slewed straight off the road. And there's me, glued to it all in the rear-view mirror, which is why I never saw the second headlights.

What it was, whether it hit me, who cares? Leave that to the cops and coroners, I thought as, studded with windscreen rhinestones, I lay on twisted metal; buckled, bloody wreckage.

Any last words?

It's that bad. Part of your throat hangs limp your chest. You're still alive then though, and the irony is that is you're lying there looking right back up at them.

On the crest of the ravine blue lights are twirling, flashing brief cop shadows on the bracken as they peer over the edge. You need not see their faces to know that they wear smiles.

You cry awhile to fool yourself that someone mourns you, and your dying prayer's that Judgement Day's a myth. Life fails to flash before you as it pours into the dirt; a tender mercy. But you do see the vampires.

You watch the lawmen limber up, silhouettes writhing, unfolding. You see twin patches of blotted sky, know the grace of death on the wing. You think that you know Evil, too, but it's breath falls softly on you and its bite is a welcome caress.

They are The Beast, ravening... magnificent.

What next? You are grateful, then you die.

That's right, Doc. Die. But the sleep of forever lasts only to dawn. The sun's advent lightens the clouds, seeping into perfect night like effluent staining a glacial stream. Reveille booms louder than death, its touch a nettle to bare skin and drying entrails alike.

The sun; more awesome, feared, than Death himself. From the sun, there is only escape. You pull back together what's left of you, scuttle like a cut frog behind a rock and for three days the maelstrom stops. Thought crystalizes as the carcass repairs, filling you with a new thirst for life, one like never before. You scrape the strength to roll away the rock, but act before your time and blunder, immature, into the waiting arms of your re-captors.

What more is there to say? You know the rest.

But still you don't believe me? I pity you, Doctor. I have my strength now, and midnight approaches. Do you really think straps and soft walls will contain me?