vampire_musings___original_story

Author: Douglas Scaddan (c), 2001 Feedback: Welcome Repost, or Print: Please request.

I live in darkness. Yet, oddly, I also live in the light. My world is as dark and cold as the marble columns that surround me. A thousand years of life, if it can be called that, has made me wealthy by the standards of the cattle and feed that live in the light. I feel the weight of gravity as it pulls my body into the comfortable arms of my plush chair. I feel the sadness of the music that plays and echos through the large gallery that I rest in. Yes, gentle reader, I rest. I need rest and I need to eat and feel and love, yet these things are strangely absent to me. Can one love, or truly rest when one's heart doesn't beat? You may not think of the beating muscle that lays inside your breast. You may not notice the constant pounding, the rhythm of your life as it keeps time and ticks away your existence to the very second. Yet I notice it's absence now. There is no weight in my chest, no beat, no life. A fire is burning to my left in a fireplace big enough to put a bed. I feel drawn to it, somehow. Fire, one of the few things that can kill me, yet why does it draw me? Is it, perhaps, a part of me that wishes to explore what is beyond this world? I am dead, yet I live in the realm of the living, yet I cannot touch the sun. I am within, and without. Can my existence be truly called dead, my heart does not beat, yet I stand and talk and write. I must feed, and I can reproduce, yet I will not, for I will not condemn another to my fate. My servant, William, brings me my food. A glass of thick, red liquid. As I drink it, I feel, for a moment the life of the person it came from. I feel their loves and their memories in an instant. She was a mother of three, now she is dead. She loved a man named Franklin, now she is dead. She dreamed of one day going to Scotland to see the famous Highlands, now she is dead. I am disgusted at myself for feeding on this woman, yet there is a strange exhilaration. I have not only taken her life, I have taken her dreams and her passions. The emotions that she held are now within me, and I have a strange urge to go to Scotland. Are these the things that keep me walking, though my heart doesn't beat? Is my life to be only a memory vessel for the lives of those that sustain me? There must be more. I wander through the dark room and pull back the heavy, velvet curtain that holds out the sun during the daylight hours. It is dark, yet my eyes are attuned to the shadows. Every one is familiar to me and every one is like a lover, covering me in blissful darkness. There is a shadow that I don't recognize however, a shadow that moves clumsily from hedge to hedge and strives to stay away from the light of the nearly full moon. I watch it for a moment with interest. I watch it with the detached interest one might watch a bug crawling on the ground.

"William, " I say. "Let our guest in." William shuffles off to the front door. He is mortal. I will not turn him into the beast that I have become, and that upsets him, but still he serves me. Hoping that somehow I can keep him alive forever. Is my refusal to make him immortal a torture to him. Like I am dangling a treasure just beyond his grasp. I have watched him grow old, yet he has watched me remain immortal. I am attuned to my home like none other. Every living thing that enters is known to me. Everything that happens in my home is known to me. And so I know that as William lets the young man into my home he is smashed violently over the head with a club. The stranger stands above William's dying body and breaths heavily, a thing that I haven't done for a millennia. He searches the walls and decides to head into the parlour, just off to the left of the entrance.

"No, " I whisper, knowing that he can sense my voice all around him. "Upstairs." The man stops. I smile. He seems startled at the disembodied voice, and I can understand why. My power in this house is absolute. None stands above me here. I glance down at the almost finished glass of blood on the table and lift it to my lips. It's taste is sweet and gentle as it cascades down my throat. The memories are renewed. This is the husband, Franklin. A bile rises in my throat. This man that loves so strongly, this man that risks orphaning his children to exact vengeance for the death of his wife. I am aroused. I am a monster. Franklin is now moving to the stairs, cautiously taking each marble step slowly, passing dark tapestries and bloody paintings. My home would be a reflection of my soul, if I had one. Black marble stairs and tapestries that steal the light. Heavy velvet curtains that block the renewing strength of the sun. I am dark, and evil. This man has come to rid the world of my cancerous existence. I welcome him, I invite him. Franklin now walks along my hall of souls. Paintings of those that have changed my life. The man that made me, cursed me. The vampires that have taught me to survive. All of them memories now. All of them dead, I am the last. My kind is dying, we are the Old Ones, we are the ones that remember the Inquisition, with it's brands and burnings. We are the ones that remember what it was like to hold power in our hands and wield it with no questions. Now, I am the last of the Old Ones. New vampires rise and seize power, like greedy children they hold power like a toy. They have no respect for the mortals, our food. This man that comes to me with vengeance in his heart, I respect him. I invite him to come and face the monster. A younger one would have killed him on the stairs, but not I. I know that he wants to face me, I know that I am a monster, I know that I am the thing that he hates most in this world now. I am all that is evil. He comes to me with hate, he feeds himself with his surroundings, the reflection of what he sees as my soul. I have no soul, I have no heart, I have no goodness in me. I am evil, for I am a killer. I cannot bring myself to feel pity for this man, I cannot bring myself to feel sadness for the three orphans I am about to make. All I feel is respect. This mortal that faces the thousand year old evil. He dares to face the last of the Old Ones. The great oak doors to my gallery open and there stands the mortal Franklin. Husband to the woman that fed me and father to three children who will be orphans before daybreak. He is a solid man, wide shoulders and calloused hands, a hard worker. I smell the stink of rum on his breath, he felt the need to bolster his courage before he faced me. He wears faded jeans and a blue shirt that has his name sewn onto the chest above his left breast pocket. Short, brown hair and angry brown eyes that look almost black in the firelight from the fireplace.

"You." he says softly. In that one word I feel his anger, his loss. A part of his life has been taken away and I have done this thing. I am the focus for his vengeance. I, the thing that took his mate. I, the evil that will make his children orphans. I, the vampire, the evil, the Old One, the target of his hate. I see it in his eyes, I hear it in his voice and breath. He feels he will be victorious. He is wrong. He moves deftly and quickly for a mortal. His hand raises and he brings his club down on my shoulder. I did not move. The club breaks, I laugh. His eyes widen in shock and horror as I reach for his throat. Words tumble from his mouth, but I cannot hear them, my evil has taken over. The curse that lives in the blood, the curse that keeps me walking and feeding, the curse that makes me kill. I crush the man's throat as one might crumple a piece of paper, and I drop his lifeless body to the floor. I regard him with respect still. I see him as a man that I might have enjoyed to spend time with, if I wasn't evil. I feel a strange pang of guilt as I look at him. The neck twisted and crushed in an unreal figure. The eyes open and staring at whatever it was that I missed when I died. I envy him, experiencing death in all it's majesty. I wander to my chair by the fire and sit down, like a king on his throne. I survey my kingdom, a land of death and decay. My world, my doing. The stench of death rises and fills my nostrils. A bittersweet flavour that excites and disgusts me. I hate what I am. I am forced to live on, though. Kill to live, live to kill. An endless circle of death and rebirth, with each death their memories live on in me. My nature drives me. My hunger drives me. My evil drives me. I am the last of the Old Ones. I am the evil that evil fears. I am the Darkness, and the Death that lurks there. I hate myself. END