Where I used to fear nothing, now I have even less to fear. I possess power now. I don’t just have it. Every moment, I feel it, as if there is no weakness left inside me.
Save for one.
If I have a superstition, it is of Jekyll and Hyde, the belief that one drop of the wrong serum can bring the evil bubbling back to the surface.
And if I have a personal bogeyman, it is me.
I should have been, but I wasn’t frightened out on my own at night. Back then, I had no idea about the dangers after dusk. I was raised to believe in righteousness and godliness, and my brothers hadn’t yet taken their turn to the dark side. I had been sheltered, protected from the perils of the world, and it resulted in ignorance.
There was nothing I could pinpoint as something to fear. I had no personal bogeyman, no superstition. My dread was completely unfounded. It just always lingered.
I’d gone out for spite.
My father had forbidden me from taking a lesson in swordsmanship with my three brothers. They thought it was funny. My mother, dutifully, failed to come to my defense. What need would I ever have to handle a sword?
My brothers, they would come to use their skills in many different endeavors in the years that followed. I won’t lie and pretend that I didn’t get a special fulfillment when they took up a life of crime and were finally caught robbing a governor’s carriage and hanged in the town square. They used their learning for destruction. I’d only wanted it for defense. Not that I felt particularly threatened. I was just hoping for a way to get a handle on my fear.
So, I’d gone out for spite, snuck through the front door in the middle of the night. What I was hoping to find, I’m not sure. I was just angry and wanted to disobey.
It was my first and only act of defiance.
I expected more life. The time I have spent in Madrid, Paris, Milan, apparently I have become accustomed to nocturnal people. Those people who live as I did after my grandfather’s remedy. Who live as I live now.
I’m used to seeing them at all hours, walking along the cobblestone streets, spilling out of bars, rushing home for sleep, only to wake two hours later and head off for work.
It’s not like that here.
The city of lights is bright, but it looks closed. Human traffic is nearly non-existent after the sun goes down. If they have a place to go, they are already there. It’s as if they realize the night doesn’t belong to them.
She reminded me of someone, the girl from the ship. Someone from long ago, back when I was new to this world.
Me.
I was like her once. What I put out into the world, it was virtue, kindness, trust, and complicity. It was who I was then, a good girl, well-behaved, pious, doing only what was expected of me, never thinking of breaking a rule.
It was my outer face, I know that now, the one I wore out of expectation and demand. Had I lived that life forever, I might never have learned what was lurking just beneath the surface. Or maybe it was that way of living that created it.
Nature versus nurture.
It’s debatable.
It turned out the girl didn’t find me a monster after all. When we left the ship, she followed me for a mile, discretely she thought. Then, I doubled back and snuck up on her from behind. I wanted her to know what I was, so that she wouldn’t attempt it again. I told her to leave me alone, that she had nothing to offer me. I think she supected as much.
But it was a lie. She had much more to offer me than I had to offer her. She could give me a taste of mortality, of life. I possess only death and darkness. But still, it always tempts me, the human spirit, so eager it is to please and be pleased. I could have given her pleasure, undoubtedly, but in the morning I would be gone, and I no longer have it in me to be that callous.
That… and the truth. She was too tempting. On the street, it took all the will I could muster to not take. But alone in a darkened room, her sweet scent overwhelming my senses, that resolve would have left me. I know it would have. Though I’d consumed enough on the ship to sustain me for a week, I would want this one more. A little taste of sweetness to overpower the bitterness on my tongue.
I miss the urgency. The search for meaning throughout the human race is vital. Everywhere, people, they seek their purpose, their destinies. Find meaning now, they think, because it doesn’t last forever.
I too seek meaning. Find meaning now… because it can’t go on like this forever.
The only signs of life are the bars. They are still crowded with people. If I’d gotten off the ship with any need for nourishment, I would have hopped from place to place until I found someone to take away with me. In places like that, it never takes long to find something to drink.
Instead, though I hate to waste the night hours, I have found a room at the kind of place where they ask no questions… which is good, because I have no answers.
I’m just tired.
They are just illusions… promises. One will either do something or they won’t. Any words before that decision are only superfluous. Later, they can be confessed or they can be denied, at the speaker’s discretion, to suit his or her own purposes.
I never speak in promises. Not anymore. If I state my intentions in advance, it is fact.
Facts can’t be broken.
They seemed surprised to be let go, the two crewmen who survived to the end of the journey. Their steps away from me were measured, cautious, as if any sudden movement would engage the animal and cause me to attack. But I needed them to guide us into harbor, and I told them, upon our safe arrival in California, they would be rewarded with their freedom. So they were.
My word is good, but people always expect me to break such promises.