Sunlight ~ 2/21/2014

I dreamed a world where vampires existed and were out in the open, like in Charlaine Harris' books.  I bought a large house on Royal St. right by the cathedral, that was an old warehouse renovated into an open, airy, three story home for vampires and vagrants to live in.  The vagrants were warned about the vampires, and had to be okay with it, and understand the dangers, and the vampires had to promise not to bite anyone in the house.  The only problem was that one whole wall of the living area was windows facing the sunset, and the wall that caught the sunrise had many large windows, too.  As long as the vampires weren't touched by rays of direct sunlight, they'd be fine, but a single beam of sun could burn, and if it hit the face, could cause the entire body to go up in flames.  Because of the buildings around the home, the only time direct sunlight entered the windows was right at sunrise and sunset, and I made sure there were dark, heavy blankets to wrap up in, and went through several test runs with willing participants to try to find the spots in the large room where the sun wouldn't touch.  I was one of the testers, because I, too, was a vampire.

So we found some spots, and we each laid claim to one, and stashed the blankets around the rooms. Each day a bell would sound to warn us of the coming of the sun, and we'd scamper to our stations, wrapped up, and then the bell would tell us when it was over and we could come out.  But someone kept moving furniture and stealing blankets, or putting holes in them, and we were getting burned and killed day after day. I finally took to building a fort out of blankets and the coffee table, and someone came by as the sun rose and tried to kill me by stealing the blanket hanging over my fort, but fortunately I was also mostly wrapped up in a second blanket, and only got burns on my hands.

That night I went out and bought lots and lots of huge blackout curtains, and hung them in all the windows, but I had to weight them down with lead to make them too heavy for a person to open.  We figured that should do the trick around sunup and sundown, but also let us have the indirect light the rest of the time.

What I remember most, though, was thinking how beautiful each brilliant shaft of gold was, streaming in, glinting, piercing us like daggers.  Terrifying, painful, ruthless, but beautiful.