I used to love apples. My mom whould complain about the cost, "Twenty dollars a week," shed'd say, "so you can have apples for breakfast, lunch and dinner!" Then she would laugh, kiss my cheek and cut up another apple for me to eat. I didn't just love apples, I loved my mom too.

One day in October, I came home from school and my mom was gone, absolutely disappeared. Being eight years old at the time, I was afraid of being home alone. I went to the fridge to take out an apple for my snack (they always made me feel better), but each apple in the completely full crisper had a single bite taken out. Their perfect redness marred by teeth marks that revealed snow-white flesh.

I sat down and cried, until pretty soon my dad found me. When he saw all the ruined apples, he was furious. Without asking any questions he sent me to my room. The window was open and outside the wind whistled menacingly. I crawled shivering into my bed and tried to go to sleep.

Just as I was drifting off, the door to my room squeaked open. Walking towards me, with a strange look on her face, was my mom. Her eyes glowed ruby red and seemed to illuminate her entire body. Scared to death, I pretended to be sound asleep. Through the slits in my eyes I saw her set an apple on my night table, and then felt her ice cold fingers stroke my cheek.

That night I had nightmares. My friends, teachers, and everyone I had ever known were chasing me. All of them had glowing red eyes like my mom. I tried to run away but kept falling, tripped by apples, apples everywhere, and each had an identical mark where a single bite had been taken out.

The next morning I awoke to find the apple still there, but now it was sitting in a pool of red liquid, and -you guessed it-there was a bite taken out of it.

My mom was still gone (except for her strange appearance at my bedside), so Dad picked me up from school. We went to the grocery store to buy more apples. We were silent except for when I asked where Mom was. He just gave me a cold look, and-it was probably my imagination, but his eyes looked reddish in the dim light.

That was the first day in my entire life that I did not eat any apples. I tried to stay awake to see if my mom whould cme again, but my mind was too tired from worrying all day and even though I fell asleep, I did not feel rested the next morning. Once again, sitting on my night table was a beautiful apple resting in a bigger pool of what I realized was blood, more than the day before. But there was something different about this apple: two bites were missing.

I did not eat any apples for the rest of the week, in fact the very sight of one made me want to throw up. I began feeling weaker and weaker and each morning there was an apple on my night table. The amount of blood increased every morning as well as the number of bites taken out of it.

This went on for days, until the apple left on my night table was just a small piece and the blood ran off my table onto the floor. That night I woke up. I was too weak to scream at what I was. A figure with glowing red eyes stood over me. I could feel ice cold fingers around my throat and as I stared in horror its mouth opened to reveal sharp fangs. Transfixed, I could do nothing as those teeth came nearer to me. I was going to die, a vampire was about to suck all my blood-or what was left of it. I looked frantically around the room and my desperate search landed on the apple on my night table Without thinikng I reached for it and pulled it to my mouth. The vampire stopped. I took a bite and it let go of me, another bite and it backed away further. I ate desperately until finally with a look of utter fury the vampire vanished out my window.

My mom never came back; she didn't like apples. It has been eight years now and I wake up every morning and quickly look to see how many bites are taken out of my apple, because now I know, when the world runs out of apples, I will run out of blood. So just remember, an apple a day does not just keep the doctor away...