A Day in the Life: The Strigoi

The Heavy Sleep

He does not sleep in a coffin lined with satin. He sleeps in the dirt.

Buried six weeks ago, the wood of his cheap pine casket has already warped under the weight of the damp soil. He kicked the lid open on the third night, preferring the embrace of the earth itself. Now, the soil presses against his chest, filling his nose with the scent of clay and roots. To a living man, this crushing weight would be a suffocating terror. To the Strigoi, it is a blanket, heavy and comforting.

But his slumber is not peaceful. It is painted red.

Dreams plague him—not of angels or heaven, but of blood. He dreams of his wife, her neck pulsing with life. He dreams of the cow in the barn, warm and full of vitality.

He has two hearts now. One withered and died when he took his last breath. The other, the dark heart, beats with a slow, rhythmic thud. Thump... Thump... It drives the ruddy color into his face, keeping him from the pallor of true death. He looks flushed, engorged, like a tick that has fed too well on the life of the living.

The Ascendance

The sun retreats, surrendering the world to the cooling embrace of twilight. The soil begins to chill.

Deep beneath the mound, he stirs. He claws at the dirt above him, his fingernails—grown long, yellow, and curled like talons in the grave—scraping against the packed earth. With a strength born of unnatural hunger, he hauls himself upward. The earth churns as he breaks the surface, his hand emerging from the grave mound like a gnarled root, followed by his head.

He gasps, spitting out grave dirt. The air of the cemetery assaults his senses, smelling of dry grass, old wreaths, and the fading warmth of the day. Standing up, he shakes the dirt from his body like a wet dog, soil cascading from his tattered clothes.

He is no longer the man he was. His hair has grown into a wild, matted mane. His beard is untamed, and his face is swollen, red, and angry. He still wears his Sunday suit, the one they buried him in, but it is now stained with heavy clay and torn by his nightly excursions.

Looking down the hill, he sees the village. Smoke rises from the chimneys, a sign of life, of warmth, of prey. He is not invisible, nor is he a mist. He is a walking corpse, a physical horror. He pushes open the cemetery gate, the rusty hinges announcing his departure with a shriek, and begins the long, shambling walk down to the valley.

The Barn

He goes to his own house first, drawn by the echo of memory.

He tries the door, but it holds fast. A bundle of garlic hangs on the frame, its pungent odor hitting him like a physical blow. He hisses, the smell burning his nose like ammonia, repelling him with its purity.

If he cannot enter the house, he will take what is outside. He moves to the barn.

The cow is there, shifting nervously in her stall. She smells the death on him, the predator that shouldn't exist. He enters, the barn air thick with the scent of hay and animal warmth.

He grabs the beast by the horns. She bellows, a sound of primal fear, but he twists her head with a strength that flows through his dead arms like hydraulic fluid. He does not have delicate fangs; his mouth is filled with jagged, predatory teeth designed for tearing.

He bites. He tears the vein. As the warm blood flows, hitting his stomach, his dark heart begins to beat faster, a drum of unholy revitalization. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. He drinks until the cow falls silent, draining the life to fuel his own cursed existence.

The Window

He feels stronger now. The hunger in his belly has settled into a dull ache rather than a consuming fire.

He returns to the house, drawn by a hunger that goes beyond blood. He creeps to the window. Inside, he sees his wife. She is sleeping, her face etched with line of grief and exhaustion. She looks old. She looks tired.

He remembers loving her, once. But the Strigoi cannot love; the Strigoi can only envy. He envies her warmth. He envies the breath in her lungs. He envies the life that he has lost.

He taps on the glass.

Tap. Tap.

She stirs in her sleep.

He taps again, more insistent. The folklore is true; he needs an invitation. If she says his name, if she acknowledges him, the barrier will fall.

"Ion?" she whispers into the dark, her voice trembling.

He smiles, and it is a rictus grin, a horrifying parody of the husband she once knew. He pushes on the window frame, feeling the wood groan.

The Escape

A rooster crows in the distance.

He freezes. The sound is a physical blow, a hammer of sound shattering the night. It is the herald of the sun, the anthem of the living day.

He hisses, recoiling from the window. He looks at his wife one last time, a mixture of longing and malice in his dead eyes, then steps back into the shadows.

He runs. He runs with a loping, shambling speed that defies his clumsy appearance. He must reach the grave before the light touches the church spire. He vaults the cemetery wall with unnatural agility and finds his hole.

Jumping in, he pulls the dirt over his head, burying himself in the safety of the earth. The darkness returns. The heavy soil presses down once more, weighing him down, trapping him.

His dark heart slows. Thump... Thump...

He waits for tomorrow, when the hunger will rise again.