The Perfect Virgin

For the first few years of your life, everything's normal—well, semi-normal—and you could be a little happier, but not much. Not a perfect A nerd, but not a blockhead like all the jocks, either. Your parents fight—mom and stepdad, really—but they don't fight more than any other happy couple would. For the first seventeen years of your life, everything is crystal clear.

All that changes on your eighteenth birthday, when you finally decide to take up your friend's offer of a kegger. It is, you remind yourself thoughtfully as you think the offer over, your eighteenth birthday. And, since your sixteenth one sucked—come on, mom, you accidentally ordered a two hundred dollar flowered cake, really—you figured that you deserved at least one nice birthday, anyway.

Besides, you'd be leaving for college in a few months, and you might as well get the taste of a college life so you know what to expect.

The party was being held just a couple of blocks away from your house—luckily your parents have decided to have a night out, which means they won't be home when you get back drunk—so you decide to walk, and meet your friend there, so you won't have the temptation to get another  DWI. You might not be going to MIT in the fall, but you weren't stupid, either.

 It was a pretty wild party. That much was clear as soon as you set foot on the property. You had no idea who was hosting it, or how you had managed to get invited, but beer was being passed around, several people were smoking, and you could see some people lighting up joints in the background, subtly passing them out to all others with the dough to hang around. This, you thought, as soon as you get inside the throng of dancing kids, is definitely your kind of party.

 “Hey,” your friend, the one who convinced you to come, stumbled up with two cups of beer and three girls hanging off his arm, “you made it,” he slurred, already drunk, “I'm so happy to see you.” He tried to hug you, but ended up spilling the warm beer down his front, and the three girls leave, disgusted.

 You only laughed, and guided your friend over to a table where he could clean himself up. But he wandered off, leaving you by yourself, and you can't just sit at a table. You were eighteen, not some dorky twelve year old with an awkward crush. So you did the only natural thing someone in your position would do; you got up and grabbed yourself a cold beer.

 Dancing was never really your thing, but as you drink more and more, you slowly start to make your way into the middle of the crowd. Your head was spinning, the lights in the room making you want to throw up, but with all the people crowded around you, you couldn't help but keep up the pace, even if you were starting to get a little tired from all the moving around. And anyways, it couldn't have been more than twenty minutes after you got there. Who stops dancing after twenty minutes.

 “Hey,” someone snatched onto your arm, the small hand cold from holding a beer. “You wanna dance?”

 You looked down, because the person who had grabbed your arm was tiny, and see a girl. With her hair falling all over her face, it was impossible to tell what she looked like, but then she glanced up, green eyes locking with your brown ones, and you smiled.

 Because she was hot. Very hot. Hot enough that you'd do her every night if she was your girlfriend. But maybe not so hot that you would make her cheat just to do her. No, she wasn't that hot. But she was close. Just a little bit taller and she would have been there. Because, honestly, she was a midget. You were no giant, but the top of her head barely came up to your bicep.

 But those thoughts weren't going to get you anywhere, so you finished off the beer you had been holding, tossing the can of somewhere in the distance, and give her what you hope is a flirtatious smile. “Sure.” She grinned at your words, her eyes lighting up, and skipped to a less crowded portion of the dance floor.

 Ten minutes later, she had her hands tangled in your hair, and you were playing with her ass, which was, you noticed, just a very lovely ass. It registered in the still sober part of your mind—the quite, sophisticated scholar that was tucked away in the farthest reach of her brain—that this hot girl couldn't have been more than sixteen, and you were eighteen. But the drunk part of your mind thought, hell, this girl is hot, and she's the one that dragged  me '' to the dance floor. Why does that make me the bad guy? Who cares what age we are, because we're probably never going to see each other again.''

 You ignore the sober part of your brain and go back to enjoying your make out session.

 Someone drunkenly bumps into your from behind, and you and your hot new friend are both pushed forwards, causing you to accidentally bite down on her lip. Neither one of you stop, because you were both drunk—or, at least, that's what you thought the reason was—but then the blood landed on the tip of her tongue, and you froze.

 It raced through your senses like wildfire, burning its way down your throat and into your stomach. A warm feeling, like the pleasant one you always got from drinking hot chocolate in winter, spread through your body, giving her hands and feet a tingling effect, like pins and needles. Your hot friend was staring up at you in disappointment, not even noticing that her lip was bleeding, but you couldn't stop yourself from thinking of the wonderful feeling. And all from just a little blood.

<p align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom:0in"> You probably shocked the poor girl when you bent down and kissed her again, but she obviously didn't care, because she kissed you right back. But you weren't focused on the physical aspect of kissing someone—even someone as hot as she was—because you were too busy drinking the blood that was spilling out of her lip as you kissed.

<p align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom:0in"> Her hands moved away from your hair, and fell limp at your sides. You paused, then grabbed her when she fell back and nearly hit her head against the wall. Her skin, which had once been a lively almost olive shade, was ashen gray and her lips were cracked and blue, like she had pneumonia, or hypo-whatsit, or whatever that disease was that caused you to freeze to death, or something. Her emerald eyes had glazed over, and she didn't even blink when you snapped your fingers in front of her eyes.

<p align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom:0in"> Cautiously, almost like you were afraid she would crack if you touched her, you reached down and felt her neck, hoping for a pulse. Contrary to what you were expecting, she wasn't dead. Her pulse thrummed under your fingers quickly—a little too quickly, actually. Worryingly so.

<p align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom:0in"> You didn't think CPR was called for, but you had no idea what you were supposed to do for this girl, who you had never met before, and didn't think you would ever see again. Once more, someone bumped you, right as you were trying to lift her up so she was standing straight, and she slipped out of her arms.

<p align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom:0in"> When she hit the ground, she cracked. Like a china teacup, she shattered when she hit the floor. But that wasn't even the weirdest part. The weirdest part was that her fragments, which had skidded to a ten foot radius around you, suddenly and out of nowhere turned to ash.

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<p style="margin-bottom:0in;"> That was then, when you didn't have a clue what you were really capable of. Now you're unstopable, uncatchable, and wanted in nearly every country around. No one knows what you look like, of course—you're far too careful for that—but they do know your name. Cresil.

<p align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom:0in"> After years of trying to get that fuzzy feeling in your stomach, you finally figured out what it was. That girl, who couldn't have been more than sixteen, was a virgin. It doesn't matter if you drank ten people dry. If they aren't virgins, they might as well be cardboard.

<p align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom:0in"> Nowadays, it's so hard to find virgins older than fourteen, so you had to switch to a younger diet, but you don't mind. Because on those rare occasions that you can find someone—sixteen, or, dare to dream it, seventeen—who hasn't given up her virginity, you dine better than a king. All those ten year old girls are merely snacks, or appetizers, for when you find that perfect meal.

<p align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom:0in"> It becomes a quest for you. Each girl that you find, in the middle of her teen years with her whole life ahead of you, seems to be better than the last. So that poses the question; is there one who tastes so much better than her peers that you won't want to kill her right away, so you can keep enjoying the meal running through her veins?

You don't know, but you're determined to find out.