[PRESENT]
If I was still alive, My mouth would have gone dry, and my heart would have pounded while I sat by the old bedside, watching him die. Each breath which was struggling to push in and out of his tortured lungs shattered the peace which lied in the hospital calm. A feral smile graced my terrible face as I watched him struggle for life, struggle for hope, a last grasp at what he might have, rotting away in an old-folks home.

[FLASHBACK]
Sweaty summer day. Laughing, playing in the burst fire hydrant with kids on Dorchester Street. Inside house, woman lying exhausted on the couch after a hectic day in the Emergency section, Boston Hospital. Kid believes surprise dinner is fun. Had been watching the cooking channel on the black and white television. Poured plenty of spices into the stew . Went off to wake woman up in time. See the smoke billowing from the kitchen. Burnt away half the cupboards and a bit of the kitchen floor with the fire. Woman put it out. Man came home, and picked up the hard, wooden baseball bat....

[PRESENT]
I snarled slightly, my hand rubbing my ribcage at an age-old pain. One which never recovered. The air which twisted harshly at my snarl woke the geriatric up with a quick gasp for air. I stood up, quietly scraping the chair closer to him and staring down. Sensitive hearing he had... Always the one to claim that he could hear me disobeying across the city. The fog of illness and time clouded his vision as he looked up at my hideous visage looming above his pristine clean bed-sheets. Well, not so pristine white anymore. The little beep which filled the air, told us both that his colostomy bag was now full. The Horror, disgust, and urgent call filled his eyes long before his mouth even tried to call for help. I didn't bring a gag, but the brutality which had once invaded my life too many times for me to count made me react, near instantly. With one handing moving the oxygen mask, the other flickered out at the man's mouth.
Choking noises filled the small, secluded, private hospital room as the distasteful mixture of rotten molars filled his mouth. I calmly licked the blood off my left fist, drinking in his fear, his terror... so sweet, so delectable... such a sweet smell in the bland smell of hospital disinfectant. I smiled, my fang-filled maw gaping wide at the old man.
"Hello Father. Payback's a bitch, isn't it ?"

[FLASHBACK]
A young man now, rubbing the scars lingering on his ribs from shattering childhood. Standing on a pathway outside family home, wondering how to break news to Family. Throat tightens as he wonders what his father will say. Wondering, wondering.... life so full of wonders. Wonders of how he got through without killing himself because of the pain, wondering why the pain was brought upon him, wondering how the pain-giver could do such a thing... But most of all, awe-fulfilling wonder at the being who had pulled him out of the gutter of despair. He quietly walks up the wooden porch, his hand hesitates before the doorbell, not sure of what to do.
Door opens. A middle-aged man, one who has aged gracefully opens the peeling fly-screen door, eyes harsh and demanding an explanation. The younger version of the face on this old man hesitantly smiles and begins a stuttered, nervous greeting. The older man cuts it out with a shake of his head, and a sharp, ordering bark. Younger one hesitantly explains his situation, and pulls out a small photo showing a brilliantly smiling young blonde, arm in arm with the young man. The father looks at the young man, his eyes not truly understanding what is going on. Then... realization strikes the old father. Anger blossoms on his face, shame fills his gut. And rage places a well-placed punch in his son's gut.
A few hours later find the old man, dragging his son's body out of an old green Chevy, double-parked in front of a new-age apartment. The old man hammers on the door of one of occupants, to find a brilliant smile shining at him, which is followed by a gasp as the occupant of the smile sees the body, dragged by its hair, by it's father. The smile with shining white teeth vanishes in a shower of small porcelain pieces as the mouth is torn apart with a lead pipe.
One hour later, the father walks back to the car, his work finished, his life's hope which has turned into disappointment, lying there with his son's lover. Flames slowly flicker, then grow as they consume pieces in the lovers apartment. The son wakes up to hear the screams of his lover fly out of his mangled mouth. Rushing in, ignoring flames, he grasp the burning body and carries it outside onto the cold, brutal concrete parking lot, and tries to beat out the flames with his own hands.
Strong, cold, pearly white hands grasp him by the shoulders, pulling him with inhuman strength away from the body. Tears of pain fly from his eyes as he tries to reach out for the body of his lover with blackened hands. The sobbing continues, as he tries to ineffectively wipe the tears streaming down his face, ending up searing pain into the bubbles of burn scars forming on his hands. With cold detachment, a meticulously clean, scarlet handkerchief droops over his cheek, and cleans face, not unlike a mother wiping ice-cream off her grubby offspring's face.
He looks up at to see who this kind stranger is, and regrets it immediately.

[PRESENT]
"It has been quite awhile, hasn't it ?" I calmly rhetorically asked as I paced around my father's deathbed. He struggled ineffectually at the tight, leather bonds on his arms. "Oh relax old man. You won't be able to give me another beating." I paused at the end of the bed, my left hand digging on the inside of my pitch black Gucci suit. His eyes widened, as the belief of a gun sprang up onto his face, his mouth in an "O" of fear. It was just so comical to watch him still cling to life, even though he must have known he was dying for at least two months now. No respite, no hope for his cancer-ridden breathing organs. To his obvious relief, I pulled out a packet of Lucky Strike Cigarettes. With my distorted lips, I grasped one of the cigarettes and tugged it out from its colleagues. A small, plastic lighter grasped in my left hand lit the coffin nail as my father's bloody tongue licked pieces of yellowed teeth onto his lips, hands tugging again at his bonds as he looked at the rising smoke which went up to the roof. His eyes looked up at where the fire alarm had been. Somebody had obviously smashed it with a very large blunt object, which might have been a fist. I stared down at him.
"The question which must be running through your mind is 'Why is my son alive ?'," I waved the cigarette slightly, letting the ash fall to the ground, my right hand picking up the clipboard containing my father's statistics and illnesses. My left hand left more snail trails of cigarette ash as I perused through the sheets, which fifteen years ago, would have made absolutely no sense to me. " After all, my sire has told me that you did a fairly thorough job of beating me half to death." Bitterness tinged my voice, and it must have shown, as my father's struggles continued without respite.
"Hmmm.... well well well, your alcoholic days has also played an important part of your parting with life..." I waved a hand as I explained " Oh I'm sorry... I forgot that you didn't finish your precious high school... what I just said, means that your liver is giving out, and you're guaranteed to die." his struggles ceased, as his mouth began a new struggle. His thick cracked lips struggled to formulate the words which he must have been choking on, what with his teeth lodged in his mouth.
"Fuh....Fucsch ..y-you.... homo...." Whatever he must have wanted to say was rushed out with an "Guh" of released air as I smashed a clenched fist into his chest, breaking a rib with a sharp "CRACK". Judging from where I hit him, it must have had been the 4th rib. I smiled grimly, as another piece of revenge entered the room.
"No Father, Fuck you." I smiled and blew out a smoke ring with my thick lips, being acutely aware of not letting the lighted butt of the cigarette not come in contact with my flesh. "Fuck you and your damn rules. And what bloody rules they were weren't they father ? Don't disobey Father, Do your homework, behave, Don't be usual, Oh and yes... How could we possibly forget ? Don't be gay." I looked down at him with hate-tinged eyes.
"But now, twenty years... Twenty long years hasn't it father ? You must be really scrambling your brain in how I remained alive." I cruelly laughed, his natural curiosity rising up through the rage and terror lurking in his eyes. " I must tell you, you didn't make it easy for me. So I suppose I shouldn't make it easy for you either. To put a long story short, after you set fire to Patrick and my apartment, I dragged his corpse out. There, an unusual person found me. A Vampire, if you will. She gave me the chance for revenge, a chance for life which I seized. There was a few.... sacrifices, but I'm happy enough with them. After all," I covered his mouth with one hand, and butted out the cigarette on his body, ignoring the moans of pain emanating quietly from his smothered mouth. "It's gotten me this far, hasn't it ? Oh yes, to show you one of my sacrifices, here it is."
With the ease of long practice, I dropped the face my father knew. The one which he had tried to bring up in his own image, the one of a nice young quarterback who turned out to be gay. Who tried to ineffectually confront his father about his own homosexuality, and was nearly beaten to death, and thrown into a burning apartment with his lover. A face which had cried for mercy, when it was "punished" for each and every bad thing it had done in it's miserable mortal life. And I brought up my true face. My face, of a Nosferatu.
To be quite honest, his petty screams of terror amused me. The fear which he had smashed into me all my mortal life, was now returning into his own dying body. " It's a crying shame isn't it ? that I could kill you here and now, and have sweet revenge. It's a crying shame that you don't have long to live, that your body will," I checked the elegant Casio watch on my left wrist. "finally die in fifteen minutes." I smiled again.
"But still, it will suffice. To watch you die, to see the terror and pain of death reach your eyes, to know that you have truly gone with your last minutes knowing that a homosexual has won. Not only beaten you at your own game of brutality... but also cheated death, an event, which I will make sure you never cheat. So enjoy your last minutes on earth, Father."
And with that triumphant speech, I sat back into the chair, my legs crossed in a polite fashion, creasing my suit minimally. But, in spite of my beating of his dying body, and the facts laid before him, my father quietly chuckled. Before I could question him about what he found amusing about the situation, he spoke.
"mah... mah boyee.... You are still... still your father's son... a vulture of pain..." he gurgled off into another chuckle, but my eyes still coldly watched him. And so I watched, and waited, for fifteen minutes as his life gurgled out of his body, a smile resting on his face. I walked and leaned against the wall, becoming a part of the wall's shadow as doctors, and nurses raced into the room to try and save the corpse. The shock on their faces at the wounds I had smashed into them was a slight reward. Yet.... his words rang in my ears, leaving the last rites I had come to say upon him... hollow...

THE END.