The Purge 2

But the purge was far from cool — it was a curse! Shaving off all the hair was bad enough — Mr Crepsley used a long, sharp blade, which scraped my skin raw — but the changes my body was undergoing were much worse. Bones were lengthening and fusing. My nails and teeth grew — I had to bite my nails and grind my teeth together while I walked at night to keep them in shape — and my feet and hands got longer. Within weeks I was five centimetres taller, aching all over from growth pains.

My senses were in a state of disarray. Slight sounds were magnified — the snapping of a twig was like a house collapsing. The dullest of smells set my nose tingling. My sense of taste deserted me completely.

Everything tasted like cardboard. I began to understand what life must be like for Harkat and made a resolution never to tease him about his lack of taste buds again.

Even dim lights were blinding to my ultra-sensitive eye. The moon was like a fierce spotlight in the sky, and if I opened my eyes during the day, I might as well have been sticking two fiery pins into them — the inside of my head would flare with a metallic pain.

"Is this what sunlight is like for full-vampires?" I asked Mr Crepsley one day, as I shivered beneath a thick blanket, eyes shut tight against the painful rays of the sun.

"Yes," he said. "That is why we avoid even short periods of exposure to daylight. The pain of sunburn is not especially great — not for the first ten or fifteen minutes — but the glare of the sun is instantly unbearable."

***

Cirque Du Freak: Hunters of the Dusk, Chapter 9