Author's note: This story was inspired by Champagne Challenge #176, Dark. Thanks to choccyterri for reading it over and offering welcome suggestions.
Light and Dark
The first time Beth saw my freezer, she made a big deal of how pretty the light inside was. (For the record, the light is NOT pretty. Cool, yes. Pretty, no.) She asked me why I picked blue (I like the color), and if the light goes out when I'm asleep (it doesn't), and if it keeps me awake (nope). I answered her questions as casually as I could and changed the subject. I love Beth dearly, don't get me wrong. But you know how she can be. I didn't want her to keep asking questions, because I didn't want her to figure out the real reason for that cool blue light.
I'm afraid of the dark.
I know, I know. Big bad vampire's a scaredy-cat. Go ahead, laugh. It is pretty funny in a way. But it turns out, a lot of vamps are. It comes from way down deep in the brain stem, I guess. When we're turned, our animal instincts go into overdrive. Yeah, we're predators. But even predators are wary of being jumped. And being in the dark brings out all those feelings that raise the hairs on the back of your neck. Imagine the way you feel when you pass a graveyard at night, and multiply it by about a thousand.
When you're first turned, you spend a lot of time locked in a freezer, learning self control. Back when I was a newbie, there was no such thing as a custom freezer, not even for a wealthy vampire like Coraline. So I got shoved into a deep freeze in the fetal position, and I spent a lot of hours in the pitch dark. Yeah, I've got a pretty good case of claustrophobia, too. The light helps with that, and so does the glass top of my freezer.
Josef tells me that when he was a new turn, his sire confined him in a small, stone chamber about the size of a bathtub. That was long before refrigeration, so vamps needed to stay cool however they could. (Back then, wine cellars were big, according to Josef.)
So anyway, that's why I sleep with the light on. And I'm glad that technology lets me do it. One of these days, Beth will figure it out, and get all motherly about it. But it's not really a big deal--it's just a fact of undeath. We cope with it, like we cope with all the other stuff. It goes with the territory.
love it - our boy is scared of the dark. Makes me 
him more.
And you really gave me something to think about. I would guess as a new turn you still have some human anxiety to work through along with everything else, and being in a small, dark, cold box could certainly lead to a fear of the dark (even as a creature of the night) and some claustrophobia. Makes the blue light and the glass top so sound practical!
Our Mick, perpetually cool.
It occurred to me as I was writing the post about the Challenge that it's a bit odd that Mick sleeps with the light on in his freezer, and I started to wonder if maybe he was afraid of the dark--and also, if that might be a common phenomenon in vampires. (After all, Mick's is the only freezer we ever saw.) So, once that thought started bouncing around in my head, Mick began to whisper to me, and I took dictation. 
I love, too, the emphasis that it's one of the things Beth is ignorant of. There's a subtle implication that it's one of the reasons Mick is hesitant to turn Beth. Beth tends to see the glamorous side of being a vampire - like that pretty blue light - but not the parts of it that can get - very literally - dark.
Oh Alle, you know I loved this voiceover when I saw it. And I'm so thankful that you let me read it, and tell you what I was thinking. 
He's a sensitive guy--he doesn't get over things as easily as some do. 
)
