The sounds of miserable retching echoed off the basement walls just as they had been for the past week.

I wet a cloth and wrung it so it wouldn't drip on the way in, and handed it to her. She took a break from vomiting and trembling just long enough to wipe her skin and swallow the knot in her throat.

This is the longest she has gone without blood so far, and for all my reassuring and encouragement to stop; that she needs to take baby steps, and that breaking her record by 1 day was good enough, she insisted on pushing on. I knew better than to harm her resolve by pushing the issue any further. This was her choice to make.

11 months ago, Emia became a different person.

Emia had been cornered and grabbed by a woman in her 40's, bitten with venomous fangs, and lost almost a liter of blood. That should have been the end of it. But Emia's body did not wipe out the invading disease when it could welcome it as symbiotic. She found herself clumsy and impaired by the rough, jerky movements of her blisteringly fast muscles; pound for pound as strong as a tiger or bear. Her mouth was full of bleeding cuts as she "bit the fuck out of it" on a daily basis. She saw her last sunrise before she woke up with eyes mottled with large, ugly red and brown scalera and pupils meant for seeing in the dark. Sleep would not come at night.

For all the woman's profuse apologizing, she couldn't take back what she had done to Emia's physiology. She had colored every social interaction Emia would have from then onward. That was the second Emia I knew. The sad and desperate one. The third arrived to swipe my friend away with a flurry of intense stress and and aggression. She hadn't become shunned overnight. Not for reasons outside her control. You can deal with people looking at you like you're a charity case that might snap any minute. You can't deal with feeling that something is fundamentally, conceptually wrong with you. When you wake up every day of your life, feeling like a passenger to a hellish cycle of failing even the most basic of tasks, you don't take the rudeness and verbal onslaughts of random strangers on the chin.

And take it she did not.

That was the birth of the third Emia. The single inch she stood above my height would feel like a mile. Her muscles were steel wire under tension. Her eyes could be accusatory and guilty at the same time, and to pass her in the street felt like a cannonball had just barely missed your chest. We knew what she did. She knew what she did.

And like that, she was gone.

Three months ago, someone came back to the village claiming to be Emia, but none of us recognized her. Though overbearing and neurotically cautious, this Emia didn't want to hurt people. She simply believed she was. You could hardly speak to her without saying something that would send her backpedaling and profusely scrounging for something to apologize for. One by one, people fell off. The mannerisms and the drama left them uncomfortable enough to try and return to the days when she was out of sight and out of mind. But I grew up across from the first Emia. We drew an entire kingdom in the sand together. I felt I knew her better and I could see where the actual her began and ended.

The fourth Emia needed only a drop of blood from people to hold her off for a few days. A drop that any sane person was unwilling to give. But I had bled and bled for plenty of my life, and I knew no difference. Which brings us to where we are now.

"It's morning now. You've officially made it two weeks." I told her. Head slumped between her knees, she nodded slightly. I offered her a hand but she rose on her own on impulse. I was silent as she ascended the stairs and squinted out the window at that bright, blurry ball on the horizon. "We both know how this has to end." I told her. No response but the gentle thump of her head leaning on the glass. I placed a bottle of strong spirits in her hand, and you could see her stoicism turn to silent disgust for the object. Wrapping the strip of cloth around my arm, I kept breaking the silence. "Don't make me wait."

Good enough for her. Begrudgingly she swished the alcohol in her mouth and around those daggers of hers. The soft skin under the bicep makes the perfect target. I tense up, but I'm always tense. I'm paralyzed and lowered limply into a chair, but I have time to sit. She won't take too much. I know it.

Between the occasional misery of blood fastings, there's a person there. Someone who can be witty and fun and selfless. Someone who could have gone missing. Someone else chose to make Emia a monster, and Emia tried it, spat it out, and said "no".

When she came back to us, she came back dragging a friend behind her. Her own Emia. The disease comes in countless varieties. Some produce beard-like fur from the backs of their wrists, and conical claws that can cut glass. Some have brains which ceaselessly think, and torture them with endless counting and categorization. This one would flinch away if you made eye contact with him, and would suffer sunburns in a matter of minutes. The vrykolakas are burdened with the knowledge that they can become the abuser if they are not diligent, but they need patience as much as they need blood. The world is a complex mess of give and take to them. For those who for whatever reason cannot bring themselves to take, we'll be waiting.

I zone back in as she bandages my arm. These blood-takings are often her excuse to cook, and I smell some form of bread cooking in my house. She thinks I don't pay attention to her when I'm slowly regaining my composure, but I see it all. I see the effort that goes into her attitude, her appearance of normalcy. She must be a good example for the others. That's what brought her back home, I think. She hasn't felt hope in herself for almost a year, but I don't think she minds. She can place her hope in others instead. She can do it right this time. As our little group stretches out, and others trickle in, I can't help but notice and accept...

I will be leader in name only.

>!Written about my experience with PTSD!<