Illusions of Soul

I am consistently amazed by the human ability to deceive oneself.

Is it really so bad to know what’s actually out there in the world with you? It must be. Why else would such knowledge be so desperately avoided?

Of course, the acceptance of certain types of being does lower the standing of the human race. If we exist, you fall from the top of the food chain. If we exist, all the weapons training you possess cannot protect you. If we exist, the best in any human discipline that relies upon physical prowess is far from unrivaled.

You cannot surive if we exist. We are superior to you in every way.

Except the ways that matter most.

You have the urgency. And the death.

Of all the creatures in this universe, none rival the human ability to die.

It was an experiment in which sociologists everywhere could take pride, though the actual intention had been to gather information. I should have known better.

I asked around about the bizarre disappearances, the recent rash of particularly brutal murders that have cropped up. Many people claimed they hadn’t heard. Of those who have heard, a majority are convinced these people are somehow responsible for their own destruction. They are convinced these people weren’t careful enough. That they went off with the wrong person.

A person.

What they cannot see is that they too would have no will to resist if these “people” beckoned them. It’s the same reason that every person stopped with a whiplash-inducing abruptness when I approached and started asking questions. It’s the intrigue, the allure. They don’t understand it, but they feel it. And they will feel it again, if the others come for them, and they will be drawn away, and they will die for it.

But they can’t see that truth.

They don’t want to.

At my order, we moved into their world. I with my army.

We integrated ourselves into their lives, into their city. Slowly. At first, they might not have even known that we were there.

It could have been any number of things engaging in the killing. Any manner of animal or beast. Of course, it would have to be something capable or cunning enough to get over the city walls or in through the gates.

That did narrow the possibilities.

It could have even been human. A human with inhumane tendencies. I’ve met my share. There were a hundred excuses for each body, blood-drained, that was found on the streets.

Excuses were safety for them. The real executors were the ones that no one wanted to see.
But it cost them. My, did it cost them.

The longer it took for them to admit to us, the more violently we demonstrated that we were there.

If this person is me, revisited, they have developed a skewed impression of my needs.

Tonight, as I walked the garishly lit streets, I couldn’t help thinking, why here? Why this city? If this is my life relived, shouldn’t it closely follow its course?

This is far removed from a bastion of culture. It’s more like Carnivale, with its dependence on flash and shock value. There is no depth, no truth. That isn’t what people here are seeking.

The similarities to Renaissance Florence are lacking, to say the least.

Then again, there is the laissez-faire attitude.

What’s that motto I keep hearing?

“What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.”

It might come as a bit of a surprise, but, in Florence, I’d found the same.

When I arrived in Florence, it was at the beginning of the Renaissance. There was such an obsession with beauty, culture, and knowledge, all things that, in my former life, I had yearned to experience. So much was the city overflowing with these fundamentals, once I saw the vibrancy of it, I knew that I would stay for a time.

Florence… my new home.

People are dying. Not deserving people. Not terrible people. Decent people. Relatively innocent people. They are dying, because I am always one step behind.

These are still my sins. These are still my crimes… carried out precisely, in the order in which I carried them out. But I remember what comes next only after it has already occurred.

My memory isn’t exactly lacking in aptitude, but it was so long ago, how can I be expected to remember?

But that’s what it is, isn’t it? This is why I’ve been assigned this mission. I’m meant to remember. I’m meant to relive. I’m meant to experience, once more, every single horrific thing I have done.

Am I being punished or saved? It’s hard to tell. I suspect that it is one by means of the other.

Florence.

There was a time when I looked upon it as the best period of my being. It was all still new. The strength. The craving. The eternal life. I was carnal. And I was free. I could take what I wanted, but everyone was so willing to give that I never had to. The power then… back when I allowed it… There are moments when I wish I still could. I try not to dwell on them long.

But, in Florence, I found my superiority over what I once was. I learned how to dominate without brute force. I learned to be new. I learned to be commanding. I learned that I could have anything, do anything, to anyone, without punishment or remorse.

…lessons that it took me hundreds of years to forget…

There’s not a city that’s safe now. When they serve as your sustenance, you go where the people are. And there are numerous choices here, cities with large populations and people who don’t pay adequate attention.

But they won’t move. Not yet. There is plenty of blood walking these streets night after night. There is so much for them to accomplish here.

I get the notion that the people here are starting to become aware that something isn’t right. But in a place like this, where it is easy to discount disappearances as part of the scene, it might take them some time to really start to show concern.

After all, the clues haven’t even begun to stack up.

It was a time of great richness of being. The wrong kind of richness and the wrong kind of being, but still it was wealth, and I cannot discount it as a time without personal success. Or at least what felt like triumph at the time. Because I was creating, generating immortals by the dozens, and then the hundreds. Within a few weeks, I had numbers at my disposal that would give the greatest dictators in history pause.

And they were attached to me, dependent upon me. They would never leave me, unless I told them to. I would be the one doing the abandoning. But why would I ever? I had an army to do my bidding.

I remember that feeling, creating eternal servants, one right after the other.

And I understood then how God feels.

And then there are those things for which punishment isn’t necessary. Things that, by no means, make amends, but do make me experience some form of delight in myself again.

I have arrived here, where they are, in Las Vegas. I should have known.

I arrived still hungry. After my fast, it seems I cannot quite get full.

So, I went out.

My, how the bounty is plentiful here. So many people so deserving of the demise I can bring them. And I found one that made me glad in my ability to kill.

She was gorgeous in a way that said that she knew it. And used it.

But it was all that she knew.

And she used it everywhere.

Including at the school where she worked as a junior high teacher, which she told me, but didn’t have to, because I already knew. It’s sort of a psychic ability that isn’t. It’s really more intuition, and it comes from this. There aren’t many things that you can do that I haven’t already done. You cannot hide them from me, because I know what your sins look like.

I knew exactly how to seduce her. With this type of person, the key is to make it all about her; her pleasure, her beauty, her effect on you. She did not crave union. She craved adoration. A fan. I could be that. And I could also be her assassin. It was, after all, what I was there for, why I’d honed in on her in a crowd of beautiful people just like her.

And she’d pleaded, as they all do, told me that she wasn’t guilty of those things of which I accused her. None of them. Not one of the thirty kids she’d made into early adults in ways that were irrevocable. She’d done them no favors, though I’m sure she had convinced herself that she had. And she fought the accusations, did it until the end, until my daggers sunk in and she felt so euphoric that she couldn’t argue with me anymore.

I wish, wish, that I knew a way to make my drinking hurt. For so many of these people death isn’t good enough. I wish I could inflict pain, but it disturbs me now to do so, even if these people are so deserving of it. So, while it doesn’t actually constitute punishment, it still offers protection to those who would be future victims.

Of course, when they discover the body, it will be the woman herself who is considered a victim. And they can think that. But I know. And so did she.

A word to the wise -

If I find you - I know. Don’t try to fight the inevitable. Admit your sins, at least to yourself. Cleanse your heart. Free your soul.

I’m going to kill you anyway.